As the days pass, I realize that Mom has no real plan except to buy a camper in which we can live and travel around like idealized Gospel Gypsies. Grandpa has been floating this “life in a camper” concept since the late 1970s, in response to the ongoing police raids of Family Homes around the world, declaring that it’s harder to be caught if you’re mobile. He’d also introduced the concept of furloughing, where Family members could temporarily return to their “national homes,” as in birth countries, visit their parents, and witness to their families to encourage them to support them when they are on the mission field. The end goal is always to get back to the mission field (non-Western countries), so no matter where you live, you must stay dropped out of the System and remember that loyalty to the Family always comes before relatives.
Mom used this furloughing concept to escape the prison that the Thailand Combo symbolized. Normally we’d limit our time spent with System grandparents to a week or so; living overseas there is a natural barrier to communication and their worldly influence.
The Family’s message about Systemites is to “spoil Egypt,” in reference to when the Jews left Egypt and took all the wealth they could carry from their Egyptian masters. Our right to use Systemites and take from them what we can is embedded in the Family and that’s a legitimate reason to spend time with relatives. Mom calls her parents and asks for money to buy a camper for us to live in so she can fulfill her Gypsy dream. They both agree on the condition that we come visit them. Grandma, who is in Atlanta, is closer.
When some money from Grandma arrives at the local Western Union office, we buy tickets for a twelve-hour Greyhound bus to Georgia. Mom arranges for us to stay at the Family Home in Atlanta while we visit Grandma.
I pick up on Mom’s moody silence and worried looks, which she tries to cover with a fake enthusiasm. We have no idea how we will be received. I’m excited but cautious. Perhaps Grandma will give us presents! Grandparents do that in the movies.
Grandma lives in Marietta, a city about twenty minutes northwest of Atlanta, in Cobb County. She and my grandfather, Gene, divorced right after my mom left home as a teen, and she’s never wanted to remarry. She was used to being alone in her marriage to a military man who was gone much of the time anyway.
Grandma is waiting for us with a smile when we arrive. She is fairly overweight, with white, short hair—something I’d never see in the Family, where women are expected to keep their hair long and their bodies in good shape to be attractive to men. My mom is always on one diet or another and stressing about her weight and her big butt. “I don’t want to end up like my mother,” she often tells me.
Grandma gives each of us a quick hug and steers us inside a nondescript, flat, low, three-bedroom ranch house shaded by tall trees. Her place is not particularly homey; it feels dark, decorated with muted greens and grays. I’m immediately uncomfortable, but Grandma seems happy here.
We are exhausted and relieved. I know Grandma has so many questions. I don’t know how Mom will answer them. Why are we here? What happened to her marriage to my father? At least she doesn’t ask the one question all the other Systemites in America seem to: Why is Nina’s coloring different from her siblings? With her black hair and brown skin, she has been getting strange looks from people, looks I never noticed back home. But that’s because Grandma knows about Nina from Mom’s letters. She even knows about FFing because she met some of my mother’s Fish when she came for a short visit when I was three. She has an unusually progressive view on things like extramarital sex and homosexuality. Her older sister, Doris, was one of the early outspoken advocates for gay rights on Long Island, and Grandma, a liberal New Yorker, has many close gay friends in this bastion of the conservative South.
“Jondy, don’t touch that!” Grandma yells as my brother reaches for one of her antique glass globes on the windowsill.
I know this place will be trouble. It’s not toddler-proofed at all, and Jondy is an active, noisy one-and-a-half-year-old, with Nina not much better at five years old. I’m going to have to stay hyperalert to keep the two little kids from breaking anything. Who puts a bunch of glass stuff everywhere anyway?
Grandma takes us all out to dinner at McDonald’s, so the little ones can play and she and Mom can talk. I look longingly at the bouncy ball castle, but Grandma tells me I’m too big to jump in, so I quietly listen to Mom trying to put a positive spin on what we are doing in America. I notice she follows the cardinal rule by leaving out all the important details—never say anything that makes the Family look bad.
She tells Grandma that she and my dad are separated and that she didn’t want the separation. She glides over what happened in Thailand and says she is looking for a new start, but she doesn’t know how to do it without her husband. As Grandma has been divorced a long time and never remarried, she tries to give Mom some encouragement.
After dinner, we go to the Family Home in Atlanta. I’m relieved that we are staying there instead of at Grandma’s gloomy house. The main family here has thirteen kids, some of whom are my age, plus a few other couples who stay with them. With that many kids, it’s a typical Family Home furnished with the bare necessities and nothing breakable, so I can relax a little as Jondy and Nina play with the kids their ages.
I soon discover one of the best things about living in America is the appliances.
The first time I use a clothes dryer is at Grandma’s house. It is a beautiful miracle. I love how the clothes come out warm and fluffy and smelling like Bounce. I hold the soft towel to my face and breath in the floral “outdoors” smell. Much better than the clothes stiff with clothesline marks, a few insects, and bits of dirt stuck on them.
But as much as I love the clothes dryer, I am even more amazed by Aunt Madeline’s dishwasher. Aunt Madeline is Mom’s older sister, and she lives nearby with her husband, Rick, and their two daughters, Erin and Erika, who are five and two years old, respectively.
I discover I like Aunt Madeline, even if she can be a little scary at first, loud and brash. I’ve never seen a grown woman yell at other adults; kids, yes, but never at adults. She always has a kind word for me, though. I’m not her enemy. But she can really irritate my mother.
Aunt Madeline’s house is decorated with great care. Even her bathroom has pretty, matching towel sets, carved soaps in crystal dishes, and color-coordinated rugs. Family Home furnishings are clean, worn, and functional. No time or money is wasted on matching colors or style. Aunt Madeline’s house is beautiful in a way I didn’t know I was missing.
Over dinner one night, she gets into it with Mom. Aunt Madeline disapproves of Mom. She views the Family as a cult and doesn’t hide her opinions about Mom’s decision to be a part of it. “I don’t understand why you’d want to keep your kids in the Family, anyway. At least here they can go to school,” she says.
“It’s my decision, not yours,” Mom barks. “You don’t know anything about it. We are happy there, and the kids do have school.”
“Well, Faithy is smart, no doubt about it, but it can’t be good for them to keep them away from their family and a normal life.”
Mom shoots back, “What’s a normal life done for your kids?”
“Don’t you dare!” Aunt Madeline is building up pressure to blow.
Ever the peacekeeper, Uncle Rick steps in. “Now, now, what are we having for dinner?”
“Fish . . . and don’t think you can change the subject!”