My next call to my parents is not until Christmas the following year, 1993. I find out a lot has happened since I left the Farm. About six months after my departure, they were also given an ultimatum: move to a full-fledged Family Home or get kicked out of the Family. For my father, this would have meant losing his monthly stipend, which he relied on. He and my mother would have to depend on fundraising, which they’ve never been very good at, and riding lessons, which barely covered the cost of caring for the horses. So my parents agreed to move back into the mainstream Family. They sold the horses and moved with my younger siblings to a large Combo in Taiwan.
When my visa to Japan is about to expire, I’m sent on a trip to Taiwan and I get to visit with them for a few days. I’m so happy to be together after all this time, but I’m worried for them. Dad has always done his own thing, which doesn’t work well in Family Homes; and Mom has her own secrets. They tell me they’re planning to go to the US for their next visa trip in three months to take care of some legal business. Dad and Esther want to file the paperwork to legalize their divorce; though it doesn’t matter in the Family, divorce simplifies System paperwork that requires a signature from your spouse, especially when the spouse doesn’t live in the same country. Once the papers are processed, Mom will be my father’s only wife.
I’m not sure what to say; I had no idea that my father and Esther are still legally married, as they’d been Family divorced and living apart for years. Before I can pose my questions, the words scatter when my parents invite me to join them on the trip.
“Yes!” I blurt, jumping up. This is a totally unexpected opportunity for me to complete my high school diploma. I’d finished all the study requirements before I left Macau—I was able to fulfill them in two years instead of the typical four because I’d been able to get through the workbooks at my own pace—but I need to take the final high school exam to get my diploma. The test must be administered by an American licensed teacher. My heart jumps in my chest. This might be my only opportunity.
I petition my teen Shepherd and get permission to take my next visa trip to the US with my parents. I count down the days until I have books, washing machines, televisions, and especially Grandad and Barbara.
Indiana is beautiful in the fall, the riot of red and gold on all the trees, the crackle of leaves in the driveway, and the smell of pumpkin pie that Barbara bakes. We sit down to eat at a table that looks the same, in a room that looks the same, surrounded by the same paintings, like the house has been frozen in time. It’s strange and comforting. Nothing in my life has ever stayed the same for long.
After I lick the whip cream from my fingers, I return to my room to study. I’ve been brushing up on the subjects of a typical high school curriculum—especially math—since I heard I was going, so I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
Barbara has arranged for me to take the exam in an empty classroom at her school. Walking past the white walls plastered with colorful posters, I flash back to those early weeks the first time I attended public school in Atlanta. I feel the same thrill of anxiety as I take out my No. 2 pencils and the same steady confidence as I fill in my answers. Time passes in a haze, and I don’t realize two hours have passed until the buzzer goes off. There were definitely questions I didn’t know, but I know I’ll pass. The question is: How well did I do?
My score lands me in the top percentile in English. Not quite as good in math, but I’m not surprised. And who cares? I’ve qualified for my high school diploma, which arrives in the mail two weeks later. My mom presents it to me like it’s a royal edict, while Grandad and Barbara clap and cheer. As I hold the flimsy piece of paper in my hands, I feel the power of it run through my fingers, up my arms, and up to the tips of my red-hot ears. I finished high school at seventeen with barely six months of traditional schooling. And even if my education is considered a side hobby in the Family, and even if I’m the only teen I know who’s done this, and even if the Family has no need for high school diplomas—and even talking about one would be frowned upon as “worldly”—I stand a little taller knowing I have a diploma as a backup plan.
In October 1994, just before I catch a plane back to Japan, I have a layover in Los Angeles at a local Family Home. I’m chatting with a couple of teens after dinner when the whole Home is called to the living room. I squish myself into the corner of a worn, brown corduroy couch and sit with thirty others to hear a new letter from Mama Maria. The air is heavy. The Home Shepherd is trying to hold back tears as he begins to read.
“God has called our Prophet home to his Heavenly reward.” The words struggle to penetrate my brain. My grandfather Moses David is dead at seventy-five.
21
Long Live the Prophet
Mama Maria puts out a press release, and newspapers around the world print the news: “Children of God Founder Dies, Sect Says,” announces a headline in the Los Angeles Times.
Grandpa’s death shakes the Family. We all knew that he’d had a heart condition since he was young, and at some point, he’d been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Over the years, calls would go out for us to pray for him, and he’d repeatedly said that Mama Maria would take over the Family in the event of his death. “Maria is already my manager and tells me what to do,” he admitted. She and Davidito would be the two End-Time prophets of the Book of Revelation. But he’s always rallied; his death seems impossible.
If Grandpa is the Prophet of the End, how could he die before the Antichrist rose? What about all the prophecies?
Grandpa had originally prophesied that Jesus would return in the Rapture in 1993, after the seven final years of the Great Tribulation, a time of truly horrific persecution of all religions by the Antichrist. In the late ’80s, when we didn’t see more persecution than normal and we couldn’t identify the Antichrist among the world leaders, Grandpa suggested that the Antichrist had secretly risen and was in power behind the scenes; he would only reveal himself in the final three and a half years of the worst persecution, when he will impose the mark of the beast on the world. While this kept us on our toes, I’d always thought the End Time would be a bit more obvious, what with locking up and executing Christians, like in Heaven’s Girl.