Grandma is not happy we’re going back to the Family and Macau, but she’s been clear that her house is no longer an option and we have nowhere else to go.
As we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to pay for the journey back to the Farm, Grandma pulls Mom aside. Apparently, her maternal grandfather, Warren Smadbeck, had left her some money in real estate stocks. He and his brother, Arthur Smadbeck, were New York real estate developers and together built residential real estate developments all over the country. They had quite the entrepreneurial flair. Someone once called them the Henry Ford of real estate. After building a new development, the brothers would take one of the large handcars used to fix the railway tracks and load a barrel of beer on it and roll down the railway through downtown New York City, where people would jump on and they’d take them out to the new brownstone developments in Queens and sell them real estate—consumer marketing for the early 1900s. My great-grandfather also owned El Presidente Hotel in Havana, Cuba, where my mother remembers visiting as a seven-year-old, shortly before it was nationalized by Castro’s revolutionary government.
I’m in shock to learn that my family was wealthy, and not a little wealthy—but national real estate developer, New York skyscrapers owner wealthy. How can this be? I’ve known nothing but scraping by my whole life.
Before I get too excited, Grandma holds up a hand. In the honored tradition of old men marrying young women, most of the family wealth got siphoned off. After my Jewish great-grandmother, Madeline, died, Warren married a much younger woman, Violeta, and most of the family fortune ended up in hers and her children’s hands. It reminds me of Grandpa and Mama Maria, and I’m slow to suppress the disloyal thought.
Still, a trust account had been set up for each of Warren’s grandkids, and my mother holds a few shares of the Dakota building in New York City. It received a small sum of money every year from rental payment dividends. But because my mom had joined the Family, Grandma never told her about it. Instead, she had used the money to buy herself a car and to give her two other daughters financial assistance.
Mom is furious when she finds out, and so am I when I think of our desperate situation and the suffering we’d endured over the last year.
“If I’d given it to you, you just would have given it all to the Family,” Grandma says to justify herself. That is true.
There are $2,000 of dividends left in the account where the small interest on her shares is deposited every quarter, and we use it to buy our plane tickets back to Macau.
I jump up and down as I think about the Farm, the animals, and my friends. Though I was just starting to get to know kids at school, there is no one I really regret leaving. Perhaps I would have made friends if I’d stayed a little longer, I think wistfully.
When I tell my teachers, they look at me with concern. “Promise you’ll find a way to continue your education,” they tell me. I promise, determined to do so. In the Family, all victories are immediate: a soul saved, a fridge provisioned, a floor swept. But like mist, they vanish with the rising sun and must be repeated. I like the feeling of making measurable progress toward a long-term goal. The validation. Do the exercise, learn the material, get an A. This was straightforward compared to the confusing requirements of spiritual progress—breaking, humiliation, and abandoning self. After one semester of traditional school, I’ve discovered that I love learning. I don’t want to let that feeling go.
I resolve that I will never suffer from a lack of skill and education, like my mom. The world is not certain; things happen that are not your fault and I have to be prepared to take care of myself.
Within days, we pack up our little suitcases and say our goodbyes.
We will be back in Macau in time for Christmas twenty months after we left, but it feels like we’ve been away for a lifetime.
17
Gentling and Breaking
The tires crunch on the gravel driveway as the black cab we take from the Hong Kong Macau ferry pulls around the bend into our tiny Hac Sa village. It is quiet. Too quiet, like a city after a plague. Where are the voices? My friends coming to greet me? My brothers?
“They’ve all left,” Dad explains.
“Aaron, Mary, Caleb, Esther?”
“The Shepherds moved everyone to Japan and Taiwan. They planned to close everything down and abandon the place, but I got back just in time.” He doesn’t say why leadership decided to close the Farm, but I suspect it’s because securing visas for so many people had become increasingly challenging, especially without my dad there to help with public relations.
Auntie Jeannie and Andy have moved to Taiwan. Aaron, Mary, Caleb, Josh, and Esther have moved to the HCS in Japan. After nearly three years of separation from my father, Esther has no interest in getting back together with him. A legal divorce isn’t necessary in the Family; you are considered married to whomever you claim is your spouse, papers or no. Grandpa says, “When the private marriage ties interfere with our Family and God ties, they can be readily abandoned for the glory of God and the good of the Family!” So, it’s quite common for couples to break up and choose other spouses.
“What about Patrick?”
“You just missed them,” Dad says, which makes me feel even worse. “His family moved to Europe. So did Zacky Star and Hope’s family.”
I feel left behind. Abandoned. I didn’t realize how much I expected a joyous reunion—the laughs and hugs, even being buried in Esther’s smothering hugs, which smell like face powder; the chance to tell Patrick about my adventures and real school; the elbow jabs and back slaps from my brothers—until I was met with silence. There was no one to share it all with—to say it out loud and weave the complex experiences into a story, making sense of them.
I run to the farmyard to greet our animals. It’s quiet here, too.
My chest burns as I stare at the empty stalls. The calves I watched become cows, the goats I took to the field every day where Patrick and I would play Heaven’s Girl. A Doberman jumps on me, and I pet him absently—Which one is this? Where are our chickens? I hear a familiar honking screech. Mad Max is still here!
The Shepherds had gotten rid of all the animals except the donkey, the pony, and our three quarter horses before Dad could get back and put a stop to it. The Shepherds didn’t know where to send them anyway, as we were the only people on the island who have the facilities to care for horses, other than the Jockey Club. I imagine they were glad to turn them back over to my dad.
How could they sell off all our animals without asking us? I know we don’t have personal possessions, but this feels very personal. The Shepherds have sold off my childhood companions without a thought or care. I was nothing to them; my dad was nothing. All we have worked for a decade to build was just an inconvenience.