Not Without My Sister (29 page)

Juliana

Something in me finally snapped. The folly of it all smacked me in the face like a gust of refreshing wind. After that, there was no going back.
I began to feel the confines of my cage, stunted like a claustrophobic imprisoned in a tiny world. It was a prison with invisible bars. A prison of the mind. At times I was seized with a desperate panic, when I felt sure I would either go mad or explode.
Despite the endless attempts to try and turn me into that perfect little Family girl, they had never been able to get into my head, the place I frequently retreated to, the hiding place I had stumbled upon as a child where no one could touch me. I secreted away the innocent child in me and kept her hidden indefinitely, safe from the beatings, the humiliation, and loneliness.
After some time, I forgot her existence entirely. Time and years grew over the lock, until it was hard to tell there had even been a door. Eventually, she grew tired of the
confines of her "safe," and began to knock on the door. I heard the pounding every so often like a frantic beat in my pulse. A familiar voice called out to me begging for release, but I could not remember where the voice was coming from.
Finally one fateful day the child broke through the door. I recognized a little piece of my identity, but it was an emaciated creature who emerged from that inner chamber.
"Why did you leave me?" her haunting eyes asked me in the mirror.
"I wanted to protect you."
"From what?"
"From pain."
"Then leave it." Her answer was so simple I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before.
"I will." And I did.
It started with a trip to Europe for a family reunion, with relatives and grandparents on my mum's side meeting up in Portugal. On the way, I decided to visit Celeste and my brothers and sisters in England whom I hardly knew. My father argued against my visit, saying my sisters would turn me to the dark side. The visit was a turning point, but to what "side" was a question of perspective.
In July 2004 I found myself in Celeste's cosy flat in the Midlands. I gave her the news from Africa and Dad. Then we decided to go and see the sister I had never met before. Kristina greeted me with a massive hug as I entered her house. I found my bitter, vengeful, Vandari sister to be a beautiful person inside and out. I understood the saying "blood is thicker than water" then. No amount of dehumanizing and demonizing of my ex-Family family could lessen my affection for them, or keep me away. Deep down, I knew it could not be true, and it wasn't.
Yet, the side of me that had been so brainwashed to think the way I was told to tried to surface one last time. Celeste, Kristina and I went out to a nightclub and began talking over the loud music. The conversation turned, inevitably, to the Family. Kristina began to speak of the evils done, expressly by Maria and Mo.
Suddenly a voice out of nowhere screamed,
Vandari, Vandari, Vandari! Don't listen!
And a picture came into my mind of that creature dripping blood from every opening in its face. It scared me. Had I been so conditioned that I was imagining my own sister to be a blood-sucking demon of the Nether-world? In a flash of disgust I understood the true evil. Any group that could divide a family like that was the real monster, not the other way round.
This was my point of no return. I went to the family reunion in Portugal, my mind made up. I would not return to Dad ... to the Family.
In the south of Portugal, I saw my brother Victor and my sisters Mariana and Lily again. Victor had left the Family, and I wanted to talk with him about it. He had been through a serious car accident in Senegal and nearly died. When he awoke from his coma, he began to seriously think about his life and what he wanted to achieve, realizing how short life is. "During the time I was comatose," he told me, "there was nothing. No alternative reality, no spirit world, like we have been told. Just blackness. That was when I realized that there is no God."
Every day I strolled down to the deserted end of the beach, and sat for hours, thinking. The foaming waves crashing on the shore and the wind whipping through my hair had a calming effect that contrasted with the turmoil inside my head. My mind grew weary trying to process the barrage of foreign ideas, which I had refused to entertain until now I had opened Pandora's Box, and could no longer shut it. So I let my mind run in dizzying circles until it was thoroughly exhausted; I thought I would go mad.
It's difficult to wake up and, realize your entire life has been spent living someone else's lie; that you've been kept from living your own dreams in order to keep the manic delusions of one man alive. It's like believing you were born blind because you have spent your whole life blindfolded. Then when you suddenly do see, you cannot understand what it is you're seeing.
In Portugal I told my mum that I had decided to leave the Family. She begged me to try for just six more months and if things did not get better, then she'd accept my choice. After thinking about it further, I decided I would return to Uganda and promised Mum I would stay for six more months. If I were going to leave, I would not do it the cowardly way. I was also worried about leaving my little brothers and sister behind. I wanted to keep an eye on them and help maintain contact between their flesh family and the outside world.
During the months that followed, I did everything by the book, but my heart was no longer in it. I went through every fundamental Family belief and researched every letter written by Mo on the biggest doctrinal controversies, and went through the entire Bible on the very same subjects. I discovered some shocking truths. Anybody can twist Scripture to their own ends. For every single verse the Family used to justify one of their doctrines, there were four that argued against them.
I realized that I had grown up looking through the wrong side of the glass. Like Alice in Wonderland, I lived the distorted reality of a bizarre upside-down world that made no sense. I was a seeker of truth, embarking on my quest for enlightenment. I started with an open mind, and ended with a closed one. It was shut tight against those beliefs I had been told were God's truth, Mo's truth.
My life had been a sequence of barred gates, and this journey opened them one after the other, until a horizon of infinite possibility stretched before me. I stood on the brink of freedom, but I was terrified of jumping. I needed a push to take the plunge.
Davidito pushed me off.
The morning we were gathered for an urgent all-homes notice, we all sensed something was seriously wrong. The message was read saying that Davidito had killed Angela Smith before shooting himself in the head.
He had recorded a videotape the night before his death, though none of us knew what was on it.
The entire room fell into a hushed shock. The message said that Davidito had allowed Satan into his mind and had gone over to the dark side, but that there were encouraging prophecies. Now Davidito had passed over he saw how wrong he had been, and was truly sorry. He had betrayed his birthright in the Family. He had cried tears of repentance in Heaven's halfway house and he had been forgiven not just by Jesus but even by Angela.
Nobody moved. Davidito had been glorified as the little prince from the day he was born into the Royal Household. We all grew up looking up to him as a shining star. This tragedy sent shock waves through the Family.
It was so unexpected and unnerving that everyone started talking to release their agitation. I kept quiet because it seemed irreverent to speak at such a time, and I felt no inclination to do so. The "prophecies" had knotted my stomach and I wanted to puke. ..
"This is heavy stuff! The war in the spirit is intensifying. The Enemy's starting to pull out his big guns."
"It just goes to show how even someone as close to Grandpa as Davidito could fall so far to the point of possession."
"If it could happen to him, how much more to any of us."
I was amazed and angry. It felt like they were spitting on his grave. After ten minutes I could stand it no longer and spoke up. "Don't you guys think there had to have been something terribly wrong for someone to be driven to this extreme?" Everyone turned to look at me. "I mean, honestly, you have to be pretty desperate to reach the point where you feel the only choice left is death! Davidito was a very nor-mal, very kind person. People don't just snap for no reason."
"No, Julie! You're right, they don't," Keda interrupted. "This is a perfect example of how letting Satan in can turn a perfectly normal person into a murderer."
I left the room before my anger overwhelmed me. Anger at the Family's self-righteous presumption that Davidito had now repented in Jesus' arms, and at everyone's blindness in failing to see why the event had occurred at all.
Davidito was just one of many ex-members to kill them-selves. Nobody was asking why. His own mother, Queen Maria, did not appear the least bit heartbroken; her son was apparently better off dead than in the Devil's clutches.
The next day I packed my bags and walked out of the house. I went to stay with a friend, but I needed to get away completely. I decided to help out in the Tsunami relief work, and so a friend and I went to Sri Lanka.
The devastation was incredible. Two-thirds of the island's shoreline had been hit. With the money we raised, we were able to send five hundred displaced children back to school, buying schoolbooks, pencils, backpacks and uniforms. We went through the tents of the displaced and brought each family a gas cooker. And we spent time listening to their stories of loss. Lost loved ones, lost homes, lost possessions, but mostly, lost hope. I read a quote on a wall:

Never lose sight of your dreams.
For to be without dreams is to be without hope
And to be without hope is to be without purpose.

I had stopped allowing myself to dream, because "hope deferred makes the heart sick." But I was finally free, in charge of my own life. And I could dare to dream. I felt alive like never before, knowing that whatever came my way, I could deal with it. I was not without hope. It was on this thought that I flew back to Uganda.
Less than an hour back in Kampala, Dad asked me to go somewhere private. "There are little ears around."
After making sure there were no children in earshot, he turned to me. "Well, during the time you were away, Davida passed on."

My mind drew a complete blank. I wasn't sure who he was speaking about.
"Who?"
"Davida, your sister."
"My sister Davida, what?"
'Well, she's...she's dead."
I laughed then. "Yeah, very funny, Dad. Is this your idea of a good joke? She's not dead!"
But the look in his eyes said otherwise. "Honey, she's dead. I was contacted by the Family in Greece."
"I...I don't understand. When? How?" I could not believe this; it had to be some misunderstanding.
"About a week after you left for Sri Lanka, I got an email. The details are unclear, but there was a phone call from Sotiria. She was blubbering incoherently, crying and saying over and over, 'He's killed her. He's killed her.—
"Who? Who killed her?" It hadn't sunk in yet.
"Her boyfriend, Stavros."
"So you're not joking?"
He shook his head. "I didn't want to tell you till you got back, so it wouldn't distract you from the work you were doing there."
While I was helping the survivors in Sri Lanka, my own sister was dying. I was still in shock too much to feel any-thing. I looked at Dad's face. I expected to see signs of grief a normal father would show, but Dad showed nothing. Instead he had a kind of,
Oops, that's too bad, but such is life,
attitude.
You don't look too cut up about it," I said. 'Aren't you even sad?"
"Honey, of course! We may not have been close, but she was still my daughter. It's not exactly fresh news to me now It took me a few days, but I got over it," he said rather flippantly.
I could feel my blood begin to boil. "Really? A few days!"
"Julie, sweetheart, you know your sister was a drug addict. She's much better off now. If anything, it's a comfort to know she is happy in a better place."
"Yes, it must be comforting." I sneered. "Especially as her death was your fault!"
"What? What do you mean her death was my fault?"
"Why do you think she became a drug addict in the first place? If you had been a proper father, she would never have turned to drugs, she would never have met Stavros and she would not be dead today!"
Dad looked stunned. "Honey, you're just upset. You know that's not true. I know you need someone to blame right now, but my being her father or not had nothing to do with her death."
"It had everything to do with it, Dad!"
"Julie, you're being irrational!"
"I don't care if I am! My sister, your daughter, is dead! I think I have a right to be irrational. Have you called Sotiria? Did you speak to her?"
"No I assumed if she wanted to contact me, she would. I don't think she wants to speak to me."
"I wonder why that is! Have you told anyone else in our family? Do Kristina and Celeste know?"
"Uh, no actually."
"Give me Sotiria's number, please. I'm going to call her and find out what really happened. I'm only surprised you haven't."
"Well, I thought maybe you'd be better to do that."
I could no longer speak. I would only say something rash. Breathing slowly, I steadied my voice. "Find it for me now, please. I'll wait downstairs."
I ran down the stairs. I could no longer look at Dad. I just wanted to leave. Leave his presence. Leave this house where death righted all wrongs. How long might Dad mourn for me if I died, I wondered, if at all?
He came down and handed me a paper with the number written on it. "Keep me updated," he said.
The next few days I moved about in a daze of remorse. I felt I had deserted my sister. I had not been back to see her. I had not called her in almost two years. And now she was dead, and she probably died thinking I'd abandoned her just like everyone else. I knew the pain of abandonment is one of the worst of all and what did I do? I abandoned someone I loved for a cult that did not love me.
Why? Had the pressure to leave her been that strong? I knew it came back to my father. He always used to mock that he could play me like a violin and I knew it was true. I wanted his love and approval. Dad could give love and withhold it as it suited him. He withheld it from Davida because she was not part of his bigger Family. Not only was she an outsider, a Systemite, but more embarrassing still, she was a drug addict!
With Davida's death, my ties with the Family and my father died too.
I learned more about life and death in those three months than in my whole life up until then. There was no bearded man in the sky judging who deserved to live and die. Death makes no distinction. Death is a great leveller; it reaches everyone. All you have is time. Through my sister's death, I experienced my own rebirth. She had died, and I lived. Well then, I'd do a bloody good job of my time! For Davida, I thought. Do it for two and live twice as hard!
For the first time, I allowed myself to look into the future. I realized I could accomplish anything I set my mind to, and the only person who could hold me back was myself. I was determined then to prove to Dad and the Family that I could thrive without their help. I left with $300 of my hard-earned savings, which I promptly handed over to a friend from Congo to assist his orphanage there. Then I went into battle, as it were.
My first purpose was clear to me—helping the plight of the child soldiers in Congo and the north of Uganda. They were children who had been kidnapped by the rebel factions and made to kill, and sometimes even eat, their own families. The rebels used this unbelievably cruel method to turn children into little killing machines. I had been exposed to different and less lethal violence but I knew what it was like to be robbed of one's childhood.
I drove to Gulu in northern Uganda with Kirsten, a Scottish woman who became one of my closest friends. We took all kinds of supplies, and we agreed to help raise money to send the brightest of these children to school in Kampala. The hope was to educate them to come back and work towards reconciliation and peace. I organized an art exhibition with a number of local and international artists on the topic of "Children in Conflict" and found sponsors for the event.
The cocktail opening of the exhibition was held at the Sheraton Hotel and featured in the two largest English newspapers and aired on the local TV station. Predictably, the entire Family Home showed up for the event and took pictures, which they later used in their monthly newsletter, flaunting the fundraiser as one of their own.
Within three months, I had my own apartment, a car and a job as manager of one of the largest nightclubs in Kampala. I received news that Mariana and Lily had left the Family. We were all out of the cult now, except the youngest siblings.
Dad was speechless with amazement. He had not expected me to succeed, let alone so quickly.
I kept myself busy, so that I would not have time to think, but I could not keep up the pace forever. Now at last on the other side, I understood the reality. You may be able to forgive, but you cannot just "forget," nor erase a lifetime of memories. Unlike a computer memory, the mind has no "delete" button.
Most of the time I pushed it to the back of my mind, but the smallest incident would bring it all flooding back. I had been four months out of the cult, and two months into my job, when I started to shut down. It was the same feeling I had when I was dragged down by anorexia-a deep, suffocating sadness. The only place I felt at peace was on the roof of the four-storey apartment building where I lived. I would stand
balanced on one foot at the edge of the pinnacle, not because I thought of jumping, but because it put all the madness back into perspective.
I knew I could not carry on the way I was going for much longer, but when I was sexually assaulted in my own office, I reached the peak of my endurance. My job at the nightclub had become unbearable. I was sick of having to reason with unreasonable drunks. Sick of breaking up fights, locking up guns. Sick of watching young kids dealing coke under my nose. Sick of seeing perverted old men escorting home underage girls who were too drunk to realize how their night would end. Sick of being hit on by nearly every man in the club simply because I was the manager. Sick of catering to rich tycoons who indulged their every whim while elsewhere in the country children were starving to death. Sick of being powerless to do anything about it.
It had been a monumental year and I needed time out to think and heal, to resolve the past and move on. I had promised Sotiria that I would go and see her. I knew she suffered greatly over my sister's death and it was nagging at me like unfinished business, so dropped my job and flew out to Greece.
Sotiria met me at the airport and that evening we talked as we sat outside a small pizzeria in Athens. I told her about my trip to Sri Lanka and the Tsunami relief.
"Ah yes! Terrible thing. So many children die this year. Davida cry when she watch that on the news. And soon after? She die herself." Her eyes grew sad.
"The day I returned home, Dad asked to speak to me," I continued. "He said my sister had passed away. I was so mad, I could not even cry. I told him if he kept in contact she would never have got depressed and started taking drugs, and so she would never have died."
"And what did he say?"
"He said I was just upset, and needed someone to blame it on and not to be ridiculous."
"Sweetie." She put out her cigarette. "I have been wanting to write your dad for a long time, but always I decided against it. Now Davida is dead ... I want to tell him all the truth. I did not want to say when you came with him to visit, but Davida, she start drugs because of him. She did not understand why her father did not want to keep contact with her. She was a very sensitive child. She was very hurt."
"It was not just her. It was all his kids. Even me."
She grew quiet and we withdrew into our thoughts. She lit another cigarette, took another drag. Finally she spoke again. "You have suffered even more than Davida. She told me this. She said to me one day after you had left, 'Mum, at least I have you my whole life. Julie has no one. What kind of father is he? He is just using her. I don't want to see him again. He is no father. I only want to see Julie.—
"She said that?"
"Yes. After that time, she want nothing more with your dad. She was very angry. But she always love you. You must remember that. She love you very much," she said.
"Yes. I know. I loved her too." It was strange we were so close, as we had met only once.
My phone rang and I fumbled through my bag till I found it. It was Nikos, Davida's uncle. My sister and Nikos had been very close; he loved her like his own child, and she was his best friend and confidant. Maybe he could offer me a little more insight into the life of my sister. We arranged to meet the next day and go to the beach for a coffee.
The next day Nikos and I went to a pretty seaside cafe that I vaguely recognized and found a secluded spot with an undisturbed view of the ocean.
"Sotiria tells me Davida used to write some diaries."
"Yes. She wrote many things. I am planning to write a book telling her story with these diaries. I have it here." He pointed to his head. "I will do it one day. But not yet. Not now It is too soon."
"I wish I could read them. I want to know all about her. Was she happy after she got off drugs?"
"At times. At times she was happy, but most of the time very depressed."
"Why? What was she depressed about?"
He poured coffee from the pot into his cup. 'Well ... for Davida ... she live in two worlds. One was this material world around us, the other..." his voice trailed off as he tried to find the words in English, "...the other, the spiritual. She could never adjust to this one. It was very difficult for her. She tell me, she could not feel. She feel dead."
"Because of drugs?"
"Maybe, yes. At times she was fine. She would be with friends, and go out. Other times, she just shut off her phone and not speak to anyone for a week, two weeks. She like to be alone. She don't like people. She could not hold any relation-ship. She tell me once she would like a man, and be with him maybe a week, and then, ah!" He wiped his hands. "She don't
want to see them again. They bored her. She would not see them again. So, she prefer to be alone."
If only I had been here
, I thought to myself.
I understood. She would not have felt so alone.
Nikos continued: "And she was so beautiful! She tell me her beauty was like a curse. Men always follow her down the street, call to her, all the men fall in love with her. She don't want any of them. She could not love anybody. She expect them to leave her in the end. So anybody she start to feel something for, she push away and never see again."
I understood then. "It started with our father."
"Yes. She expect all men to be like her father. Even friends. She could not accept love from anybody."
"Sotiria thinks Stavros killed Davida. Do you think so?"
"Uuh ... yes, Sotiria likes to believe this, but I don't know. He would not kill her I think. She told me one day, maybe a month before she die, that she fight very hard not to take drugs, every day she must fight. And she say she is tired to try. One day she will take again, and that day she will die."
"She told you this?"
"Yes. She did not feel any will to live. She tired of life. I don't know what is truth, but maybe because she meet Stavros again one week before she die."
"She met him again?"
"Yes, he find her at her work and she talk to him. I don't know. Maybe he gave her drugs and she not strong enough to fight him ... ah! Yassus Sotiria!"
I had been concentrating so much on what he was saying I did not notice Sotiria approach. She kissed her brother, pulled up a chair and sat down between us. I told them about Davidito's tragic death.
Sotiria crossed herself and muttered, "God's mercy. I pray every day for these children, for their souls. Poor children! Poor, poor children." She pulled out a cigarette and lit up. "You know, I never lie to Davida. Always I tell her, her father is busy with his life, and we have ours. But if she want, when she turn eighteen, she can go to see him. But then, this woman who live with your father calls one day when Davida is fifteen. She tells her many things about her father, and so she writes to him and her father sends her a letter."
I cleared my throat. "I ... I remember that letter."
Celeste and I were horrified when he showed us his letter. We told him that we thought it was insensitive; he emphasized that he had a new family now. We had asked him to write another one apologizing for abandoning her. We added a letter of our own and gifts, but a year later Dad told us that they never received the package. Then we heard that she had started taking drugs.