Several nights later, Mom surprises me when she announces that she is going to take us out of the compound for a walk.
“I didn’t have Get Out today,” she says when a young man spots us about to exit the big gates in the high wall that surrounds the commune. “We’re just going to the park across the street.” My mother shoots him a big smile as we walk through.
There is no guard at the gate, but people are always watching each other, and if you plan to leave the property, you are expected to get permission. We are told it’s for our safety so that if anything bad happens, any accident, someone will know where to come find us.
Mom glances behind her as she adjusts Jondy in her left arm and her shoulder bag with her right. Then she grabs Nina’s hand and steps through the high entry gates and out onto the public sidewalk of our quiet residential street. At first, she walks at a normal pace, but once we turn the corner, she breaks into a sprint and begins racing down the street. I don’t know what she’s doing, and for a moment, I hesitate.
“Come on!” she yells back, and I start running.
She is moving too quickly for Nina’s toddler legs, and soon she is literally dragging my sister along the pavement. I speed up, snatch Nina’s hand, scoop her up in my arms, and run alongside my mother, dodging cow poop that’s been left by the neighborhood cows that roam freely in the streets.
“What are you doing?” I shout, puffing hard. “Where are we going?”
“Shh, I’ll tell you soon,” she replies breathlessly.
She keeps going, through the streets and back alleyways of Bangkok until finally she comes to a stop on the blacktop and throws her arm in the air to signal to a passing tuk-tuk. The vehicle comes to a halt in front of us. Mom pushes us aboard, handing up Jondy, and mumbles something to the driver. As we pull away from the curb, she is shaking and I’m gasping for breath.
I try to stay calm as I balance my little brother on my lap with Nina sitting between us. But I am frightened. What is my mother doing? Where is she taking us? The tuk-tuk driver stops in front of a dingy, dark motel in a seedy-looking area I’ve never been to before. Now I’m worried. I know we are in Bangkok, but I have no idea where. I’ve barely been outside the compound walls except for a few witnessing trips.
I follow Mom inside, surprised when I hear her inquire about a room with two beds, which costs only a few dollars in baht. She must have picked up the money witnessing. The smell of roach spray and the shabby brown bedspreads do nothing to lessen my discomfort.
“Mom, what’s going on?” I plead quietly.
After latching the room door, Mom collapses onto one of the beds and breaks down sobbing. “They are going to take you away from me!” she cries over and over. “I can’t let them do that. We had to escape.”
I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s clear she believes it, and her fear scares me. I hold Jondy tight as I try to calm her.
“Mom,” I begin gently.
“No!” she snaps. “I won’t go back! That home is like a prison.”
The air is heavy with the heat. The old air conditioner beneath the window doesn’t do much more than make a loud rattle. I watch as my mother repeatedly pulls back the curtains just enough to peer out the window, eyeing the street for someone from the compound. She is scared we will be found, but she is also afraid of being on her own.
We have no money, no connections, and nowhere to go. We don’t even have a map. There’s no one we can call, and soon we won’t have enough to pay for the motel with the little bit of money Mom managed to sneak out.
“What about Dad? Can he help us? Can we go back to the Farm?” I ask hopefully. He’s been gone for over a year with almost no word.
She collapses onto the bed. All the fight has drained out of her. She’s like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
“I’ve written to your dad many times since he left,” she says quietly, “but he doesn’t write back. I don’t think he will help us.” The silence surrounds us, interrupted only by the death rattle of the air conditioner. Finally, she goes on. “The new leadership in Macau broke up your dad and me even before he left the Farm. They said I was a bad influence on him. We had problems,” she admits, “but we were working through them. I love your dad, but I don’t know how or if we will be able to get back together.”
No wonder she was so miserable and agreed to go to WS to try to demonstrate her loyalty to the Family and see if she still had a place of service. I listen in silence as my mother tries to reason through her current position. It’s clear she sees everything and everyone as a threat to her family; and she’s become convinced that if she stays at the compound, she’ll wake up one morning to find that her kids have been taken from her. I hadn’t realized the extent of her paranoia. Suddenly, I feel scared for her, and for us.
At twelve, I have no answers. The only people we can turn to are in Macau, and I don’t know how to contact them outside of the Family channels. But it seems they don’t want us; they sent us to Thailand, after all. Mom wants to call her parents for help. I’d met them twice when they’d visited Macau, but to me they are Systemites—strangers who stayed in a hotel and we took sightseeing. Not anyone I’d think to ask for help. After counting the baht left in her purse, she starts to sob again in defeat. We don’t have enough for a long-distance phone call to America.
“Mom.” I reach out to touch her shoulder. “The Family would never take kids away from their parents,” I say, trying to soothe. “That’s not loving like Grandpa teaches.”
“Oh, yes they would,” Mom sobs. “Do you remember Auntie Kat of Zacky Star?”
“Yes,” I say warily, thinking of my old friends, their children Ching-Ching and Yanny.
“Her marriage was also broken up, and Zack took her two kids away to Europe.”
Mom names a few more people who were deemed rebellious, or a bad influence, and lost access to their children, the spouse spiriting them away to another country.
My confidence drips away. Maybe her fear isn’t so irrational after all, I worry. But what can we do? I try to reassure her, “If they try to take us somewhere without you, I’ll refuse to go. I’ll plant my feet and refuse to get on the plane. They can’t drag me on screaming.” I can be stubborn if I need to be.
My mother gives me a weak smile before she stands up again and takes her post at the window.