“It just took some time for our neighbors to get used to the idea of change and learn to walk around the wall, instead of through it,” my father explains with a big smile.
Most of the villagers appreciate the work we’ve done to clean up the neighborhood, and we are slowly forming friendships. Lok Keen’s kids, Ah Gong and Amy, are about my brothers’ age, and we have started having them over to our house to learn English and play.
Each time we see our neighbors, they greet us with “Sik fan,” which means “Eat rice” or “Did you eat yet?” But I prefer to say, “Jo san!” for good morning, instead of answering truthfully (usually “no”), because then they will immediately invite me into their yard for a bite of food. This can be dangerous, as I can never be sure what they might stuff in my mouth with their chopsticks!
I learned this the hard way. Lok Keen had a new black puppy that was a big fluff ball we called Fluffy. All of us kids would sneak over to his yard any chance we got to play with roly-poly Fluffy. One day, Lok Keen’s wife saw me walking by and called out, “Sik fan le mei ou?” Have you eaten? I shook my head no, so she fed me some chunks of meat and rice from her bowl. It was a bit chewy but tasted okay. When I was done eating, I looked around for my playmate and asked, “Where is Fluffy?”
She laughed and pointed to her bowl.
“No!!!”
For weeks after, I wouldn’t walk by Lok Keen’s house and felt tears prick my eyes when I thought of the quiet, empty yard.
The summer heat is cooling into fall when one afternoon Caleb spots someone wandering up the driveway. Six feet tall and stocky, the brown-haired, pale-skinned, shirtless British man dripping in sweat stands out like a lighthouse. The man spots us and waves his arms over his head.
“Hey,” Hobo shouts. “Look, it’s Uncle Michael!”
We run to him, excited to see one of our Family caregivers from Macau. My father waits at the door, his mouth a flat line.
“I was doing a bit o’ exploring, and who should I happen on but a group of blond kiddies in the middle of a Chinese village.” He winks at us, tousling the boys’ sweaty hair, passing it off as a chance discovery. But my father is not fooled. We are living a secret adventure, and Michael wants in. While my parents no longer hold top leadership roles, Family people still want to be around Grandpa’s flesh and blood.
Since arriving in Hac Sa, we’ve been trying to prevent those left behind in Macau from learning our location and tipping off reporters. “Loose lips sink ships” is one of my father’s favorite sayings, and other Family members can be the worst security leaks. My father is concerned that if the other Family members know where we are, he won’t be able to keep them from visiting and perhaps being followed by reporters on the hunt for a good story.
But his annoyance with Michael’s unannounced visit is pushed aside by Mommy Esther’s relief. As the main caregiver, she is exhausted. My brothers are perpetual-motion machines, running, fighting, and arguing, getting into dirt and scrapes, and she’s at her wit’s end. This is the first time she hasn’t had full-time helpers to care for them.
Our father will watch the boys only when he feels like it, taking them outside to burn off energy for a few hours. Unlike other Family men, he doesn’t cook, do cleanup, or take care of kids, unless he chooses to. Gender roles aren’t distinct, and no one says you can’t do a particular thing because you are a woman. After all, the Bible says, “There is no male or female in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3:28). Men are supposed to be willing to do any work around the home, same as the women, although I never see a woman drive, do construction work, or handle the home finances. Male guitarists lead our inspirations, as well as witnessing and provisioning teams (because they drive), so women must do more housework and childcare.
As far as my father is concerned, the tough stuff, like making the kids sit still for meals, school, or cleanup, falls to the other adults in the household. Mommy Ruthie helps, but she also has the responsibility of editing the Mo Letters. Grace is busy with baby Colum, though she helps with cleaning and cooking when she can, and Daniel lends a hand when he’s not working with my father on a building project. That leaves the lion’s share to Mommy Esther, who is not shy about her need for help.
Uncle Michael is a calm, patient presence, she insists, convincing my father to allow him to stay. So, Uncle Michael joins our hideout band as our new caregiver, “You can call me ‘governor,’” he says with a jolly smile. “That’s what we call a male nanny in England, where I come from, governors and governesses.”
With Uncle Michael here and the weather finally cooling off, Mommy Esther declares we must organize some sort of schooling again. The Family is proud of its early-education focus, using Montessori and Glenn Doman methods to teach children to read starting at one year old. At four and a half, I’m a late learner. Mommy Ruthie has tried to teach me a few times, but it’s ended in tears of frustration for both of us, as it does when she tries to teach me almost anything. So, I color quietly with Patrick while my older siblings sit with Uncle Michael for two hours of homeschool a few times a week.
Back in the city, my siblings attended the Catholic Santa Rosa Elementary School, which was the only school in the city that taught in English. My parents decided to send them there after Grandpa had released the Mo Letter Becoming One, which encouraged missionaries to become one with the locals by participating in local Christian schools. But after two years, my parents were not pleased with the education. “We thought it would be a chance for you kids to pick up the local language from your Chinese classmates, but instead the only thing you seemed to learn was to lie and swear in Cantonese,” Mommy Esther often laments.