Not Without My Sister by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones, Juliana Buhring Page B

caring for Victor. It took two weeks for him to stop crying, and by six weeks he showed no signs of missing his former foster family.

For the first time I began to sympathize with Serena, who had struggled for many years with a debilitating condition that made it very painful for her to walk, especially when she was pregnant, which she was at the time with her third child by Dad. Her knees swelled up to twice their normal size and this crippled her ability to help in the Home. Then Victor contracted tuberculosis, which was endemic in many parts of the East. Medical care was expensive. Finally, it was decided that they both had to go to Germany to get proper medical attention. Being sent back to the West was a mark of dishonor, and to have to resort to doctors meant she was weak in faith and had spiritual problems. Everything was hush, hush, and Serena never said goodbye. The day she left, Tina asked me to distract Juliana.

"She's not going with them?" I asked.
    "No. It would be too much for Serena. She's eight months pregnant, and Victor is sick. Mariana is the oldest so she'll be able to help with Victor." Mariana was only five.

I felt terrible for Juliana, the middle child, who was now left without a mother just like me, only Dad wasn't here either. Immediately I felt I had to try and protect her and be a "mother" to her. Dan and Tina were appointed our legal guardians. I was ten and Juliana was four. I didn't mind Tina, but I was afraid of Dan and tried my best to stay out of his way. He beat his boys with a metal flyswatter, sometimes a hundred swats at a time. Their shrieks made my blood run cold. After a beating, their bottoms would be bloody and swollen for days.
There was always the fear hanging over me that one day he would beat me too, but I was lucky he never did. It was his two younger boys that were beaten the most, and they often behaved violently themselves, attacking me as if passing on their pain. Once they even tried to strangle me. That scared me even more and I began to withdraw into myself. Juliana moved in with Joseph and Talitha, but, unlike me, she did not escape Dan's violent outbursts. There was little I could do to prevent the beatings he inflicted on her every day, mostly for wetting her bed, something I thought was completely unfair. When anyone would get a beating, the screams would resound through the house and a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach would grip me until it was finally over.

I'd close my eyes and grit my teeth and mentally beg,
Dad—please come, please come
. The hope that he would somehow hear my silent prayers and come to take us away soon kept me going through the days.
    It was one long year later, when I was eleven, that without warning, Dad arrived suddenly at the doorstep of our home with Jeremy Spencer. Now I knew how Serena had felt when she'd seen baby Victor again. I screamed, "Dad!" and flung my arms tightly about him.

He gave me a big hug. "How's my girl?"

"Oh Dad--I missed you."

"Well, we're together now We're going to live on a farm!" he said.
"A farm? Where?"

"In Macau."

"Where's Macau, Dad?"

"It's a Portuguese colony near Hong Kong. We're going to live on Hosea's farm. You know who Hosea is, don't you?" He didn't wait for me to say that I did. Everyone knew who the entire Royal Family was by heart.

There was a part of me that was curious to meet Hosea Mo's youngest son. I had read about him in the Mo Letters, but even more, I didn't care where we were as long as I stayed with Dad.

Hosea's farm was located in a little Chinese village called Hac Sa. The property included a fifteen-room cottage, two smaller cottages, stables, and farmland, where some forty-five members lived. Hosea had two wives, Esther and Ruth, with seven children--two girls and five boys—between them. The evening we arrived, I was unwell and had been throwing up all day. The temperature was 10 degrees--and that was cold compared to the Philippines where it is hot all year round.