Brave Read online

  When that woman or another woman or another man, all strangers, returned the next night and the night after, I always had the same response: “No, no, I have not let God into my heart.”

  Slap.

  One night I could hear the woman’s German whispers and her feet doing a quiet kind of stomp on the floor. I knew I was going to get hurt again.

  “No.”

  Slap.

  When she was gone, I saw that she left her Bible on my sleep mat—all the kids slept on flimsy orange or blue plastic mats. I hid her Bible behind a cabinet. Each day I’d tear out a new page, put a small piece in my mouth, work it around, add more, and spit it out, turning it into little mush blobs. Then I would take the Bible blobs and form them into tiny animals. I hid them behind the cabinet and would visit them now and then when I could steal a moment. They were my toys, one part saliva, one part Jesus.

  I figured if I literally ingested their God, maybe I could answer, Yes, I have let him in. Maybe they’d stop punishing me.

  The smacks, the pushes, enforced the message that you were not allowed to be imperfect. When I was about four, I had a wart on my thumb. I was toddling down this long hallway when one of the doors opened. I remember the shaft of light and all the dust motes dancing. A man with shaggy blond hair picked me up, looked at my hand, and said, “Perfection in all things.” He held up a razor blade and sliced my hand with one swipe, winking at me as he sat me back down. “Perfection in all things,” he said again before shutting the door and leaving me in the hallway. I didn’t cry, I was too stunned. Blood ran over my hand and I made a dripping mess of the hallway. The blood coursed over my fingers, the red strangely pretty. Like my hand, I was numb. I knew not to react because, one, that was something they wanted from me, and, two, I thought maybe there was something to this perfection thing. I walked on.

  The hallway assault is what started a narrative that fucked with my head for years, that of perfection as self-protection. I told myself if I were just perfect enough, I’d be okay. If I were just perfect enough, I’d be left alone and no one would want to hurt me.

  From then on, I willed myself to be as perfect as possible because I didn’t know what would happen to me if I wasn’t. I was terrified of having an aberration in any way. I was sure that having any kind of flaw would spell doom. But first I had to figure out what all my flaws were. And so began a habit of being extremely hard on myself, seeing myself from the outside in. I started to look at my hands and feet daily to make sure I didn’t have any bumps growing. There were no mirrors that I can remember in the cult. When I would later arrive in a culture that was so externally focused—America, and then Hollywood—this caused a tear in the fabric of my being.

  The funny thing was that in almost direct opposition to the message the cult sent us about perfection, my father was preaching to me and my siblings that we were not, under any circumstances, to develop an ego. Our focus was to be on our internal development, the development of our souls and our intellects. I suppose we were supposed to be perfect physically, but remain humble in the face of our perfection? I was never really sure. All I knew was that I was not supposed to think good thoughts about myself. That God would punish me for thinking that I was awesome.

  Never once growing up was I told that I was intelligent, smart, or beautiful. I don’t know what that feels like. I was never told I could do anything I wanted if I set my mind to it. I was told I was worth nothing in the eyes of God. I was told I was going to be a whore. I was told I was dirty. And the thing is, I knew they were wrong, but the words still stung.

  From an early age, I remember being furious that nobody would listen to me just because I was a child. It was so unfair. I hated being little and powerless. I would look at the people in Children of God and think, But all these things you’re all talking about, I could solve them in two easy steps if you adults would just listen to what I am saying, but nobody would listen to me. Because I was a girl. That set a real pattern for my life. I was a born dissenter—not for the sake of being contrary, but because if you could see things for what they were, identify the source of a problem and the solution, why wouldn’t you want to fix it? But nobody would listen to me. They just sat me at the little kids’ table. Not unlike later in Hollywood. Just a girl, after all.

  My only friends during my time in Children of God were my older brother, Nat; my pet lamb, Agnello; and an old gray-haired farmer named Stinky Fernando. Stinky Fernando was deeply suspicious of bathing. You could almost chew his smell, it was so thick. I had to breathe through my mouth whenever he was around. One day I heard Stinky Fernando screaming. My father and some of the other members took him by his arms and ankles and threw him in a river. Much to Stinky Fernando’s surprise, his skin did not melt off.

  Stinky Fernando took Nat and me into an old barn and showed us faded Playboy magazines while feeding us stale Kit Kats. A real treat. I wondered about the women in the magazines. They didn’t have hairy legs. It was confusing. I loved the rancid Kit Kats, though. I loved candy way more than I loved their God.

  I bottle-fed my friend, the little lamb Agnello, and helped take care of her. My first pet. One night at the long dinner table I took a bite of food, and a thin woman with a mean face and center-parted hair started to laugh. Others joined in, and soon everyone was laughing. I didn’t understand what was funny until they told me it was Agnello being served. And so I realized my pet was being fed to me for dinner. I sat stunned while everyone at the long table laughed. I pushed my tears down and felt a coldness wall off my heart toward these people, something crystallizing into a stone of pure hatred as I looked at their monster faces. They had a particularly cruel streak, and they liked to destabilize the younger members. These were lovers of Christ, right? To this day, I’ve never eaten lamb again.

  I started to become angry. Angry at the injustices that were adding up. Angry at the rules that seemed, and were, so arbitrary. I decided the best course of action was to light it up. And so, one day my older brother decided to light a stable on fire. He was mad, too. I for sure wanted to be there for that, so I ran after him to help. We were in the barn when my brother pulled out a book of matches. He started lighting them and flicking them at the hay on the stone floor. Whoosh. The fire leaped up the side of the walls and onto the ceiling. The roof was thatched hay and started popping above us. I tried stamping out the flaming pieces with my feet, but I was too little and it was too late. I stamped and stamped, but I couldn’t put them out. If I had known how to say fuck, I am sure I would have. The roof crackled more and it was getting very hot. I knew we were in big, big trouble if we went outside and were caught by the adults. But everything was on fire.

  We chose to run.

  This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you some hideous story of punishment for lighting it up, but I really can’t remember. I do remember the terror of being found out. It made me feel like my skin was about to fall off with fear. The movie scene of this would be:

  A sturdy blond boy and an elfin girl are hiding from their father. Suddenly four hands grab them by the shirt collars, dragging them off. Turning down a path in a maze, the children are paraded past a gauntlet of leering cult members. The members drag the children to the Judge of All. The Judge of All is on a throne made of soft wood. There are young nude women, heavy breasted and round bottomed, on their knees, gazing up adoringly and reverentially at the dynamically dangerous leader. The leader tilts his head back, eyes shut. He’s being worshipped. He’s in heaven on earth. The women work oils and lotions into the leader’s skin, their hands using a feathering touch as they go, chanting with intention. The leader, the Judge of All, opens his eyes and points at the boy and girl. The shaming begins.

  Sounds like a Hollywood film, right? Maybe it’s not too far off. In fact, my life as a performer began there in the cult. We were made to go out in groups to sing at local orphanages and hospitals, or on the streets, to perform. Singing Jesus songs on the streets of Rome with a hat in front of me, stre
et busking. After the coins would stack up in the hat, a hand would come over my shoulder to take all the coins I’d earned. They let me carry the empty hat. Gee, thanks. It was my work that was bringing the money in and I was pissed at the injustice of having to give it up. I’d see regular families with the kids walking around with gelatos and candy and I’d wonder about their lives at home. Did they have a bed? We had plastic mats and I got cold at night. The girls wore pretty dresses; I had faded brown overalls and Jesus sandals. My hands and feet would get dirty and I’d try to hide them when other, cleaner children looked at me. For hours we would stand and sing those damned songs, under hot sun, in the rain, it didn’t matter. I was five or so. My little legs would get so sore from standing, but I knew I couldn’t sit or there’d be trouble.

  We had to return with money or else there would be sanctions and punishments against our family. I could feel the stress of the adult members as the “Systemites” (that’s what they called people outside the cult) turned away and ignored us and the pamphlets we were selling. Little incoming money equals not much food. Not surprisingly, there was often hunger. Our food was rationed. If we returned with not enough money, the rationed food was given to another family as punishment. If potential new members or press were coming to visit, they’d put us kids on a white rice, milk, and sugar diet to fatten us up. We’d stuff ourselves with it until we gagged, but I loved it because at least there was something to keep me full. Plus, sugar, which I loved.

  Sometimes the local press would be invited to come and cover our good deeds: “To see what great work we’re doing in the Children of God community, join us.” See, we’re not a bunch of freaky hippies, what kind of freak could sing a Jesus song this well?

  I was sent to entertain sick children in hospitals. I remember thinking: Kid, if this is your last day on earth, I’m really sorry that we’re forcing you to listen to little me singing about Jesus. I don’t want to be here, either. I apologize.

  But even though it was awkward performing in hospitals—and this may sound weird—I always knew I was going to be famous, even before I understood what fame was. It was kind of a foregone conclusion. I don’t know how to explain it.

  At some point in my childhood I remember being taken to see a film. It had a great impact on me. I don’t know what it was called. It was Italian. The lead actress had short raven hair and was a nurse. She wore a crisp white uniform and a little white hat. She was in a phone booth, crying and screaming at her married doctor lover, who was throwing her aside. She took the back of her hand and smeared her lipstick across her face. She ripped her shirt open, popping its buttons. Her chest exposed, she took lipstick out of her purse and drew all over her breasts like a wild woman. I was captivated. It was fabulous. I wanted her lipstick and her hair. I finally got to see some glamour in my young life and I knew it was for me. My feelings of being in the wrong life intensified.

  At some point my father found a Brownie, a vintage camera, so the few photos that exist from my childhood look like they’re super old and are largely black and white. I watched my father as he captured objects and people with the camera. Then I got to play with it myself. I learned to see things through a frame. Looking through that crappy lens, I felt as if I could see more and that everything I looked at told a story. Soon I was nearly always outside of myself, watching and filming and documenting everything that was going on, taking note of everything: smells, sounds, tastes, situations, people. Only now can I see that this was early disassociation to deal with trauma. Looking through a lens has been a coping mechanism I have employed throughout my life. It had a silver lining: my falling in love with photography and cameras. But more than that, it gave me a way of putting something between me and the world, and a different way of looking at it. Every detail as seen through a lens. Because it’s not really happening if I’m once removed, right?

  I also used books as an escape. Words were my solace and my saviors when I was small and have remained so to this day. Words, different lives, different centuries, that was how I survived.

  Books also furthered my training for being an actor because I took on the persona of whichever character I was reading. It could be a serf, it could be a queen. I would mimic the posture, everything about that character, while I was reading his or her story. When I finished a book, I went into mourning for that character because it was a death. I took books very seriously. But not the Children of God books. I could not understand how anyone could believe them. Those Mo Letters were just so . . . well, stupid. It’s so hard to understand how so many have fallen for it.

  Meanwhile, the beliefs and practices of Children of God started getting more and more dangerous. Moses David, our leader, made the young women members do this thing called “flirty fishing.” He sent them out—and these were little more than girls, really—to seduce men at bars or cafés. The men would wake up in the cult. Moses David christened the girls “Hookers for Jesus.” Hookers for Jesus? Fuck you, Moses David, you piece of shit. Fuck you for all the pain you caused. At the end of the day, it was all about male dominance, and using sex as a weapon for mind control. Beautiful women were major targets, not unlike what I would later see in Hollywood. And, like in Hollywood, there were women who helped Moses David do bad things to others.

  The cult was a highly sexualized environment, run by men, to benefit men. My father loved it, I could tell. I remember standing in a corner, watching my father preach, as he sat on a thronelike rattan chair. Women—girls—were on their knees staring up at him with dreamy expressions. Women literally worshipped at his feet. I remember looking at the women on their knees. Then my father on his throne. I’ll never be like those women, I thought. Never. It grossed me out. Looking back, it was the time of my father’s life when he was at his most radiant. Abuse of power was inevitable, and he certainly abused his position.

  One day my father said to my very young mother: “Saffron [my mother’s name in the cult], I want to be married to this other woman as well.” Well, hell. That must have sucked. There have been lots of times I have wanted to go back in time and kick my father’s ass, this being one of them. My poor mother’s own mom, Sharon, had just died tragically. My mother’s dad was gone, too. She was alone in a cult in another country with a bunch of kids she was told to have and now this? It must have been crushing. She had no choice, and he took another wife. That’s how my four youngest siblings—two full and two half—are so close in age.

  Children of God next started advocating child-adult sex as a way to “live the law of love,” which is just beyond disgusting and criminal. I saw an eleven-year-old girl being forced to sit next to a naked man, with his floppy dick on his leg. They made her sit between his legs so he could “massage” her back. I saw her tears. Even then I knew none of it was “normal,” whatever normal was. I don’t think there really is such a thing as “normal,” but I knew that this was something deeply wrong, something to be avoided at all costs.

  I feel bad for that small child I was, who from age three or four already knew so much about surviving. I didn’t know what it was like to feel safe. In its place, there was stress and, underneath it all, a deep undercurrent of fear running through the commune. From a very early age, I realized kids were very far down the list on things to care about, which is lame when you’re the child on the bottom of that long list.

  An unfortunate necessity in this environment was being able to immediately pick up on danger. I excelled at it. One of my survival skills was, upon entering a room, to locate a weapon. I would do an immediate scan of the area to see what I could use to cause someone else the most damage and defend myself against attack. My quick mind and rapid thought processes have been my lifelong savior as much as my fight. I’ve always gone by the seat of my pants, and my intuition is damned good. It’s too bad I didn’t apply the same skills to Hollywood. It would have saved me a lot of heartache. It could have saved me from unspeakable trauma.

  In any case, my outwit-and-outlast mentality served me well
as a child. Thankfully, I was just young enough to escape getting molested, or maybe my penchant for always having very short hair and wearing my brother’s hand-me-downs helped save me. They thought I was a boy most of the time. Although the boys certainly got nailed, too. Fuck, maybe I was just too much of a troublemaker.

  It would only have been a matter of time, but luckily for us, my father drew the line at pedophilia, and he made secret plans to leave. We couldn’t just announce we were leaving and walk away, though. When the cult got wind of certain members wanting to leave, one of their children might disappear, or some family would get severe punishment meted out to them, as a way of teaching the others.

  And so one night, my father told us there was a man named Bepo and he was after us with a hammer. There was a car waiting for us, we got shoved in, and go go go.

  First we fled to a place called Munano, a small town in the Tuscany region of Italy. We lived in a centuries-old stone house where we boiled water and bathed in a round rusted metal tub. We were scraggly kids wearing hippie hand-me-downs. I was used to having many kids around me, so it was strange to share a room with only four other children, to be suddenly with so few people, even if they were my actual family instead of “The Family.”

  My father had left the Children of God physically, if not mentally, taking his other wife, Esther. As for my mother, all I know is that she was left behind. There were so many women in the cult that I didn’t have a firm grasp on my mother as an individual. It was just one more level of destabilization in what would be a pattern for me in my life.

  Now that we were in this small medieval town, I was sent to my first public school. It was very confusing. In the cult, we had worn whatever fit from the pile of donated and hand-me-down clothes, and I mostly wore my brother’s clothes. Now I was assigned to wear a pink button-down smock. I preferred the blue smock and asked why I couldn’t wear it instead. I asked the teacher about this logic, and she told me because I was a girl I had to wear pink. Only the boys wore blue. I thought that was some of the dumbest shit I had ever heard. I was furious that I was now different from my brother for an arbitrary reason. I didn’t understand why I now had to wear pink. I still don’t.