Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (10 page)

I was still young enough in the Family to believe that my feelings about my marriage might be taken into account by my leaders. I went to Bart and Tirzah to ask for a separation from Cal. I thought that four months of trying was enough. My caring leaders were absorbed in their own private matters. Bart was checking out the latest electronic toy he had bought, some recording device, and Tirzah was fashioning a new dress for Martha, which, I noticed nostalgically, included a lace bodice from one of the dresses I had forsaken when I joined the Family.

I stammered out my feelings, hopes, and disappointments about marriage and my request for a separation. They would not even discuss the matter with me, and basically I was told to get into the Word more.

However, they did talk to Cal.

“Maybe we need to have a baby,” suggested my husband. “You have always been caring for other people’s babies, don’t you want one for yourself?” I thought this was an odd statement, considering the fact that the children were supposed to belong to us all, but Cal always had a way of remaining personal in a very impersonal environment.

“Well, yes, but we have been together for four months already, and I didn’t get pregnant yet,” I replied, somewhat surprised by his statement. Actually, we had not been legally married yet, since most of us did not obtain a marriage certificate unless a child was expected. So what Cal was really saying was that if we had a baby, we would become legally married. I did not consider the added incentive Cal might have had at the time for me to get pregnant, and I think Cal was only repeating what the leaders had told him to say. He probably thought it would be good for both of us, but having a baby made it almost impossible to break a marriage. In those early days, Mo taught that a baby was God’s stamp of approval on a marriage.

Cal’s question, however, did prompt me to consider having a baby as a solution to my marriage problem. Before I joined the Family, I would have laughed at such a simplistic idea, but after living in a closed society for such a long time, with traditional, and often oppressive, perspectives reinforced constantly by everyone around me, my critical thinking capabilities were extremely weakened. The Bible did say,“Be fruitful and multiply.” If God was the one who gave babies, it made sense to ask Him for one. The more I prayed for a child, the more I felt that a baby was what I really wanted in my life.

Ironically, I was still aware enough to know that a child in the Family ideally belonged to everyone. It wouldn’t necessarily be “mine. ” Sitting in the bathroom, the only room that gave me complete privacy with my thoughts since our bedroom was converted back into the living room every morning, I pondered the imagined happiness of holding my own baby in my arms and the very real threat of having that baby taken away from me and cared for by others. In order to prevent that from happening, I reasoned, I would make sure that I was always in the “child-care ministry.” I even justified my thought processes, which were definitely selfish according to Family ideals. My mother had given me the name “Miriam.” In the Bible story, Miriam was the sister of Moses who watched her baby-brother in the river and suggested to the Egyptian queen who found Moses that she would get a nursemaid—her own mother. In this way, Moses, although destined by God to live in the royal Egyptian palace, was actually raised by his own Hebrew mother. I reasoned that I could be like Miriam and cunningly make sure I would always care for my own child. Few sisters desired to stay in child-care work for long, so I did not foresee a problem keeping a spot. Curiously, I never noticed at that time how I had to work my way around Family policy. The thought of leaving the Family rarely occurred to me in those early years.

Cal and I tried harder to conceive, and as nature would have it, I became pregnant the next month. The nine months of carrying a child was one of the most joyful times of my life. In my idealistic and naive state, I thought that now I would be fulfilled. Being a mother in the COG carried a certain amount of respect at that time, and extra attention was paid to both mothers’ and children’s needs. I was given a quart of milk a day, as well as extra fruit and vegetables. I could have time to take a nap and could go to bed early. Life was full of comforts now, and I enjoyed it to the fullest, knowing this would not last.

It was planned that I should have the baby in Troy, New York. All COG girls were encouraged to have their babies at home, and midwives were trained among our group to perform the delivery. There were no midwives among us in the Boston area, but Troy had one sister, Sheriah, who had assisted at a birth. That was good enough training for us.

We calculated the birth date, and I was sent to the Troy home about two weeks ahead of time. Cal was supposed to come down when labor started, and before leaving, I married Cal in front of a justice of the peace.

In Troy, I practiced the Lamaze breathing method, as outlined in advice we received from our child-care leaders, to help during labor.

The Troy home was kept very clean, and since I had been assigned to work in the kitchen, I needed to mop the floor every night. After mopping one night on my hands and knees, I felt the labor pains start around nine o’clock. I went to bed, knowing that the first labor usually takes awhile, and some labor pains could be a false alarm. At midnight, I was sure this was the real thing, so I woke up Sheriah.

She began preparing the labor room, while I called Cal and started my Lamaze exercises. They put me on the table about three in the morning.

Sheriah began prepping me by stretching the skin around the opening, but the labor pains were so strong I had to push her away frequently.

“I don’t think that Cal will make it,” she said. “Your contractions are coming pretty fast and regular. How do they feel?”

“Hard, very hard,” I said between puffing.

Another sister who was pregnant came to see my delivery. She was at my side stuffing my mouth with crushed ice in between my contractions. I chewed on the ice and savored the cool, fresh liquid quickly before returning to heavy breathing.

Cal arrived about 6 A. M. By this time, I could tell that Sheriah was worried. Cal’s first sight when he came in the door of the delivery room was the view of my legs wide open, a gaping, bloody birth canal, and me huffing and puffing in between contractions that were less than a minute apart.

Sheriah called him outside.

“I think something is wrong,” she said. “I want you to pray about it, but I am going to call for Mary. She is in New York, and she has had more experience than me with complications.” Mary arrived a few hours later and took over for flustered and exhausted Sheriah. Twelve hours had passed since I had first told Sheriah I was in labor, and she had missed a whole night’s sleep. Mary continued the job of stretching me with a renewed vigor, but I was so tired, and the pain was so intense that I could not feel the stretching.

After each contraction, which now came only a minute apart while I was breathing hard and heavily, I asked for crushed ice. No one told me what time it was, but I noticed the light coming in through the window, so I knew it had been a long time. I also knew that we were not supposed to scream. Childbirth, we were told, was a natural function of the body and should not cause excess pain. If. I screamed, it would be a sign of lack of faith in the Word. The Bible, I had learned, said that it is God who delivers babies, so what was I worried about?

But I could not bear the pain any longer. I took my last rhythmic breath and screamed for as loud and long as I wanted. I no longer cared what Mary or Sheriah or Cal, or anyone, would think.

“The head—it’s here. Push! Push,” cried Mary!

I took a breath and screamed through another push.

“It’s a redhead! Push again!” Were they crazy? I didn’t have any strength left to push. I could not do it.

“Push! Push!” The undeniable urge to push came again, and I pushed while a full body plopped out covered in mucus and blood. Mary held up a baby boy for me to see, and then she cut the umbilical cord and gave him to Sheriah to wash.

I was ecstatic, but the work was not finished. Mary, who was very knowledgeable about childbirth, told me to stand up and squat so the afterbirth could come out. Then she washed me and helped me onto a clean, soft bed that had been prepared. Finally, they brought in the baby.

He was a beautiful nine-pound infant. His perfectly rounded head was covered with bright red hair. Cal had been given a dream in which the baby had red hair and he wanted to name him after the Norse god of thunder. The day he had the dream, he had read a verse in the Bible about James and John being the “sons of thunder.” Although only Bible names were the rule in the Family, we named him Thor. As I adored him lying in the softness of my rounded arm and sucking firmly at my nipple, I thought that never again in my life would I be sad. The moment should have been eternal, but it was snatched away all too soon by Sheriah.

“You have to get up and get dressed,” she barked. “You ripped pretty badly, and you will have to go to a doctor.” As she said the word “doctor,” I shuddered. We all knew that one went to a doctor only because of lack of faith. We had read about the sister who was in labor for three days, and when she finally went to the doctor, Mo said, she developed a spiritual problem. What was my problem?

Oh, who cared? My baby was fine and healthy. That was all that mattered.

Cal helped me to get dressed, and one of the brothers drove us to the nearest hospital. I sat in the emergency room for over an hour while Cal talked to the nurse.

“They won’t take you,” he reported when he finally came back. “They said you are too much of a risk since you did not have the baby here in the hospital.” I felt weak and was shivering. I was continuing to lose blood, and I had no idea how big was this rip that needed to be sewn.

The brother suggested we try another hospital, which was farther away.

By the time we arrived, I was holding on to both of them for support.

Cal went to talk to the nurse again, but no one would believe that I had just had a baby until they came and saw me.

“Bring her in here,” they said. Within an hour I had been sewn by a kind young intern who later advised us to go to an obstetrician, but I never went to one.

I went back to the Troy home and spent the rest of the night admiring my sleeping baby who lay snuggled in my arms. Early the next morning, I had a message to see Sheriah. She was the colony leader’s wife in addition to being midwife.

“My husband has already talked to Cal,” she said sharply. “We have prayed about this, and we believe that you two must seek the Lord for an answer.”

“An answer to what?” I asked.

“Well, as to why the delivery went so badly,” she retorted, looking surprised that I would not know. “I want you to pray about this and write me a report today.” I was left speechless. The absolutely most beautiful memory that a woman can have in her lifetime, that of giving birth to her firstborn, had been splattered with this acid of someone else’s cruel reality. Now every time I recalled that wonderful experience, I would remember that I had somehow failed.

Returning to Boston in a week, I was grateful to be back. The Family life in a “regular” home was so disciplined, and the leaders seemed to be very harsh. After my experience in Troy, I appreciated the colony in Boston where musicians could still joke and laugh about the idiosyncrasies of life. Jeremy was always a great one for seeing humor in everything, and he was an inspiration to me because he had given up fame and riches to follow the Lord. Although he was respected by most leaders with a kind of man-worship attitude, which placed the “great Jeremy Spencer from Fleetwood Mac” slightly above others, he still lived pretty much like the rest of us, with one memorable exception.

One day, some FBI agents showed up at our apartment looking for the English rock musician who probably had visa problems and found Jeremy in the backyard on “kitchen duty” splitting beans for dinner. Every one acted completely calm, and the FBI seemed perturbed by our lack of anxiety. Little did they realize that we “knew” everything was in God’s hands, so we had nothing to fear from man’s laws and activities.

I was not aware of the details of this incident. In fact, it was only years later that my husband told me it was the FBI who had come to our home. However, my husband said that this visit from the FBI was why Jeremy and his family left our home to go to a COG colony in Europe.

Jeremy, behaving in his typical ingenuous manner toward these men who seemed to be important in the world, made me laugh, and I realized after my first day back that I had not laughed during my entire four-week stay in Troy. I decided to work harder and never complain again about being in the band home.

However, life in the Boston home had changed since I had been gone.

There had been some trouble at Columbia Records involving scandals in their business, which had nothing to do with us, but for some reason, the band took all of the money that was owed them and left Columbia Records. In any case, the album did not become the big hit we expected it to be. We heard that Mo was not happy with the hard rock album that Jeremy and the band recorded. In a letter titled “Conferences, Colonies, Bands, and Buses,” dated July 15, 1973, after the album Jeremy and the Children had been released, Mo wrote, Those poor band groups have been in pretty bad shape for a long time ever since they got this big-band spirit when the system took them over! But they disobeyed and didn’t do what we told them to do…I think these band people have got what they wanted, They wanted a band and they wanted a record—But they failed to be a success or hit because they didn’t do it God’s way…Maybe we should make such folks an associate colony, if they’re not interested in following our authority and obeying only us. [253, 10-11] Since Mo did not mention the name of the band he was talking about, although we were the only ones in the group who made a record at that time, we never were sure whether he meant us. Mo was often vague in naming offenders in his specific judgments, but the result was that none of us wanted to be considered an “associate,” which in COG terminology meant a second-rate disciple.