1
The Great Escape!
āFaithy,ā my fatherās Texas drawl barks in my ear. āGet up. Donāt say one word. Not one word, you understand?ā
Itās pitch-black outside the window. I nod, half-asleep.
Mommy Ruthieās long, brown-black hair forms a frizzy cloud around her head as she runs around the tiny room, stuffing things into the type of cheap, colorful, striped canvas bag the Chinese market hawkers use to carry their goods. My father gathers me in his arms and throws me over his shoulder, and my world turns upside down. My bare foot scrapes his cowboy belt buckle. Through half-closed eyes, I see the orange linoleum tile floor, the threadbare living room carpet. I strain my neck up to see Mommy Esther, my fatherās other wife, standing by the door with her six blond children, my half siblings. She brushes her straight pale hair from her lovely face, which is now pinched with concern. They all have small bags in their hands.
āWeāre all going to walk down the stairs and get into the van,ā my father says. āMake no noise.ā
Struggling to hold up my head against gravity, I spy eighteen feet and four paws racing down five flights of dirty white-tiled steps, the slap of my older brothersā flip-flops loud in the dark stairwell. We wait as my father unlatches the heavy steel door entrance to our small apartment building before stepping out onto the worn, rounded cobblestones that were brought as ballast by Portuguese trading ships several hundred years before. As we pile into our old Dodge Ram van, Daddy passes me to the back. Iām pulled onto my motherās lap while he wrestles with a sliding door that refuses to stay shut. His wiry frame is surprisingly strong, and the door eventually closes with a hushed clunk. Weāre off. Questions bubble to my lips, but as soon as I open my mouth, I feel the pressure of Mommyās finger.
āJust keep quiet,ā she whispers.
The narrow, colonial-style streets are empty as my three parents, six siblings, and beloved Doberman escape into the darkness.
Itās July 1981, a couple of months after my fourth birthday, when my parents decide to flee our home in the city of Macau, a province of China and, until 1999, its own country and a Portuguese colony.
I curl up on my motherās lap and settle into the vehicleās soft rocking motions. From my position, I canāt see much, just shadows and momentary glimpses of empty cobblestone streets. It looks so different from Macau during the day, when the thriving city is a hive of activity and people shoving and shopping.
This city Iāve called home since before I can remember is built on a peninsula jutting out from the south China coastline and connected to two trailing islands by bridges. In the 1600s, the peninsula was only one square mile. But by 1981, the inhabitants added another five square miles to the city by dumping all their garbage in the sea and gradually claiming land as the refuse built up. Even with the added land, Macau is listed in the Guinness World Records as the most densely populated country on Earth. Its 250,000 citizens (95 percent Chinese and 5 percent Macanese, an Asian-Portuguese blend, and a far smaller population of Portuguese government officials sent over to govern this neglected colony) occupy a considerable amount of cubed space by standing on each otherās heads in their six-hundred-square-foot apartments. My family rents one of these on Rua Central, right off the main shopping area, hardly big enough for our family of ten and various other helpers who live with us.
In ten minutes, weāre on the mile-long bridge that links the peninsula city of Macau to Taipa, the first island. A three-foot-tall white statue of the Virgin Mary sits at the bridge intersectionāthe Catholic protector for bad drivers. We continue around Taipa and over the causeway to the next island of Coloane, traveling over pitch-black water until the bridge releases us into the dark countryside. The only sounds I hear are the thrum of the old V8 engine and our overnight bags rattling around in the rear cargo area.
Finally, my father breaks the silence. āWeāre moving to a new home,ā he announces.
āIsnāt it exciting?ā Mommy Ruthie adds, squeezing me reassuringly.
She is answered with a soft snore; my siblings have passed out on top of each other in a tangle of small arms and legs. I donāt know what to say, so I say nothing.
Even with my eyes closed, I hear the crunch of dirt under our tires as we leave the paved road. When we finally stop, my mother grabs my hand, and we march into the darkness to a chorus of chirping crickets. I feel my way through a doorway but trip on the raised stone lintel, hurtling into emptiness until Iām lifted off my feet and hustled onto a hard mattress.
The next time I open my eyes, the morning sun is leaking in through a dirt-streaked skylight. I am in a big room with newly plastered white walls and a cold concrete floor hastily covered with beige linoleum.
I roll off my mattress to find myself sandwiched between two very tall beds of unpainted pine, three and four bunks high, where my siblings are sleeping. Mary, three years older than I and closest to me in age, is on the other bottom bunk. Our older brothers are like stair steps, all one year apart. Aaron (or Bones, because heās so skinny) is sleeping above me, the goofy clown still for once. Standing on my toes, I try to make out Josh and Caleb, identical twins, curled up on the two bunks above Mary. Everyone has trouble telling them apart, but Caleb has crossed eyes, wears glasses, and rarely brushes his hair, so that helps distinguish him from Josh, who always has a comb in his pocket. Mary, Caleb, and Josh all have white-blond angelic hair that belies their naughtiness. For the rest of us, our hair has darkened from a reddish-gold when we were toddlers to a nondescript brown. I canāt see Hobo until he pops his messy head over the bunk rail. Iām the youngest, and at four, Iām still too short to see the tops of things.
Nehi is still fast asleep. Heās in the highest bunk because at eleven heās the oldest. I like him well enough, but heād rather clean his Nikon or play guitar than pay attention to the rest of us. āHead in the clouds,ā my parents say. āNose in the air,ā counters Josh.
Hobo is the second eldest and my favorite because he watches out for me and stops the twins from picking on me. He thinks heās cool, and Josh, unable to pass up a taunt, calls him a Goody-Two-Shoes. Josh is the instigator and Caleb his loyal shadow. The twins fight with all of us, like itās them against the world.
Mary is the only other girl and my nemesis, and we bicker like breathing. Sheās just jealous that sheās no longer the youngest and only girl anymore. Mommy Esther told us she chose the name Mary Blessing because after five boys, it was such a blessing to have a girl. We donāt buy it. Maryās a tattle and a pain in the neck, so we call her Burden. This, of course, sends her running to the grown-ups and gets us red bottoms, so now we just say, āMary B,ā and look at her meaningfully. She still cries to the adults, but we can honestly and righteously defend ourselves: thereās nothing wrong with calling her by her initial. The adults know what weāre up to, but they havenāt figured out how to punish us, so they just tell her to be quiet.
My siblings came from Mommy Esther, and I came from Mommy Ruthie, but they always tell us it doesnāt matter, that they are both our mommies.
Iāve had two mommies since I can remember. They are almost opposites in looksāMommy Estherās face is angular with a straight, aquiline nose, blue eyes, and straight hair, while Mommy Ruthie has a rounded face, slightly olive skin, dark brown eyes, and frizzy hair. My coloring is closer to Mommy Estherās than to my blood motherās because I also take after my father, with his white Swedish German skin and light brown hair that we see less of each day. He claims his fast-growing bald patch is from an excess of manly energy.
When my siblings and I talk together, we often interrupt each other to ask, āWhich mommy, Ruthie or Esther?ā The confusion is normal to us. But when other kids taunt, āSheās just your half sister,ā we are all very fierce in our defense of each other. āSheās my sister!ā my brothers shout.
A couple of my friends in Macau have two mommies as well, but most have only one. Iām glad my mommies donāt fight like the mommies in those other families do. Mommy Esther says she and Ruthie are friends, and she is grateful to have help with all the kids.
I know that Systemite men are not allowed to have more than one wife, but we live by Godās rules, not the Worldās. Many of the biblical patriarchs had more than one wifeāAbraham, Isaac, King David, and King Solomonāthough I think King Solomon had way too many: three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines. He wouldnāt be able to sleep with them all in a year! My father has only two, and he can alternate whose bed he sleeps in each night to keep it fair. I feel sorry for Solomonās wives.
I find my mother and tell her I need to go to the bathroom. She leads me outside, where the sun is shining bright. We walk along a dirt path to a small, rough wood-plank shack about ten feet from the house. Our Doberman Sheba is there, getting acquainted with her new home, sniffing some garbage near the outhouse. The door whines on its rusted hinges as my mother pulls it open, and the droning buzz of flies get louder just before the smell smacks me in the face. Inside itās just big enough for a hole in the ground with two concrete blocks on the sides for your feetāa traditional Chinese squat toilet. No seat, no flusher. Just a long, dark drop. āAlways check for spiders and snakes,ā my mother tells me. āAnd make sure to look up. They can fall from the ceiling.ā I squirm at the idea of snakes or spiders dropping on me from above.
My stomach clenches into a fist as I tiptoe over the shadows, my eyes darting to the walls, the corners, my feet. I glance fearfully at the spiderwebs covering the corrugated metal roof while trying to keep my flip-flops from slipping on the concrete blocks. There is no light bulb. Iām in almost complete darkness when the door shuts. The sharp stench of years of other peopleās poop burns my nose as I squat. I finish as quickly as possible and dash back into the bright sunlight. As I gulp down fresh air, tears leak from my stinging eyes. Will I have to risk my life every time I go to the bathroom? I want to go home, back to a real toilet, back to our apartment with a balcony and tiled floors and street noise.
The red dirt gets between my toes, and I try to shake the pebbles out of my flip-flops as I trail my mother back inside. She is chatting brightly.
Although Coloane Island is part of the tiny country of Macau, twenty minutes outside the city, it feels like another world. Our new home is a traditional Chinese farmhouse, a hundred-year-old granite-block and adobe structure with pine tree trunks as roof beams and a white-and-black clay tile roof. The front door is two pieces of roughhewn wood on hinges that open inward and lock with a handmade sliding iron bolt. The house is shaped like a C, made up of two rectangular forty-by-ten rooms connected by a ten-foot-square living room/entryway with a large round metal folding table and stools for dining. Only one of the long rooms is habitable, our bedroom with a small wooden loft in the back.
A small three-by-five-foot lean-to on the outside of the house is the ākitchen,ā with a built-in concrete countertop and a portable camping stove connected to a big tank of gas. There is no electricity or plumbing, so any washing will have to be done in the red plastic dish basin filled with water from the hose outside. The rest of the house is in disrepair, with dirt floors, crumbling adobe brick walls, and countless roof leaks, as we discover during the first rainstorm. My father says the place has stood empty for seven years, ever since its owner abandoned it to move to the two-story-house he built just behind this one. Itās no wonder heās renting it to us for cheapā500 patacas a month, the equivalent of about $80.
As Mommy Ruthie brings me back inside, she points to the loft at the back of the bedroom. āIām sleeping up there, but I donāt want you climbing the ladder; itās not safe,ā she tells me. A tall bamboo ladder leans shakily against the edge of an open loft platform. There is no railing.
āMommy Estherās bed is behind that curtain,ā she explains, pointing to a makeshift privacy screen my father has created by tacking a king-size flowered sheet to the edge of my motherās loft platform, so it hangs down, curtaining the area just beneath it.
āBreakfast is ready!ā I hear Mommy Esther call from the other room, and I run to join the others. She is carrying in a large steaming pot of plain oats from the outside kitchen as we all jostle for stools around the folding table. Josh elbows Nehi in the ribs, and Iām about to āaccidentallyā stamp on Calebās foot when my father walks in from outside.
My fatherās bounding energy and booming preacherās voice make a far more imposing man than his wiry one-hundred-nineteen-pound frame suggests. At five-four, he fits right in with the smaller Chinese population. His blue eyes are deep-set, and when he smiles, his lips pull back until every tooth in his mouth is visible, top and bottom. With no fat on his face, he resembles a grinning skeletonāwhich makes people nervous even when heās smiling.
But now his brow wrinkles into a stern frown.
āBoys,ā he says, āitās time for a serious talk.ā His serious voice is a deep growl, three octaves below his peppy āpraise the Lordā voice.
Mary and I are assumed in the word āboysā most of the time, unless itās something fun. Heās always mixing up our names, calling me Mary and my sister Faithy, but he doesnāt like it if we correct him, so weāve learned to just go along with it.
Elbows drop into place, and we sit on our stools, silent as the boiled oats.
āWeāre hiding from bad people,ā he begins. āThey want to stop us from doing the Lordās work. We canāt let them find us, so itās very important that nobody, including your friends in the city, know where we are. Itās absolutely Selah.ā
The silence makes my nose itch, but as I wiggle around to scratch it, my father rumbles, āFaithy?ā
I freeze.
āDo you know what āSelahā means?ā
My gaze flicks to Hobo for salvation, but heās staring in his bowl. My head gives a faint shake n...
