I can’t tell you how hearing that Deirdre had accused Papa J of rape made me feel. This is how indoctrinated I was: I remember thinking I’d rather have to be tied to that tree for a full week than have heard what I’d just heard. I’d been raised to think Jonathan Wace was the closest thing to God on earth. The church teaches that allowing bad thoughts about our leader or the church itself means the Adversary is working inside you to resurrect the false self, so I tried chanting, there in the dark, which is one of the techniques you’re taught to stop negative thoughts, but I couldn’t forget what I’d just heard about Papa J.
From then on, I got more and more screwed up. I couldn’t tell anyone what I’d overheard: for one thing, if Mazu heard me telling a story like that, God knows what she’d have made me do to myself. I tried to suppress all my bad thoughts and doubts, but the crack in my belief was getting wider and wider. I started noticing the hypocrisy, the control, the inconsistencies in the teaching. They preached love and kindness, but they were merciless on people for things they couldn’t help. For instance, Lin, Deirdre’s daughter, started stammering when she was really small. Mazu mocked her for it constantly. She said Lin could stop if she wanted to, and she needed to pray harder.
My eldest sister Becca was on a completely different course from the rest of us by this time, travelling round the country with Wace and helping run seminars and self-realisation courses. My other sister Emily was very envious of Becca. She sometimes got to join mission outings, but not as often as Becca did.
They both looked down on me and Louise, who were the no-hopers only fit to stay on the farm.
I got really bad acne in my teens. When UHC members go out in public, they’re supposed to look groomed and attractive, but Lin, Louise and I weren’t allowed out even to collect money on the street, because we didn’t fit the church image, me with my acne and Lin with her stammer. Louise went grey early and looks a lot older than she is, probably from working outside all the time.
The next bit is hard to write. I now know I started planning to quit the church when I was nearly 23, but as you never celebrated birthdays in there it wasn’t until I got out and found my birth records that I even knew what day I was born.
