All this time, we hadn't told any of my father's family that we had moved. I'm sure they wondered where we were. Being the clueless sort of person I really was, I decided to write a letter to my beloved uncle Charlie and get back in touch with him, because I was truly beginning to miss my old family. Idaho was great, he animals were great, our newfound relationship with Jesus was fantastic, but things with my Mom and Dennis weren't all they were cracked up to be. My mom was supposed to be on thyroid medicine, but, convinced that the Lord had healed her of that, she quit taking it before the move. Maybe that could explain part of her increasing mood swings and what I can only describe fairly as paranoia.
Example:

Like me, George had a penchant for drawing. He brought over almost all of his art one day to show me (much of it was pretty good) and he forgot to take it back home with him. Big mistake. My mom and Dennis, convinced that George was "possessed" decided to have a look at George's work. Some of it they didn't like...they declared it to be inspired by Satan, and they burned it in the sink. I watched them wash the ashes of a good portrait of George's sister down the drain while they stood by self-righteously. My heart contracted in my chest, wondering how in the hell I was going to explain what had happened to his cherished masterpieces. They burnt about half of his work and had absolutely no qualms or twinges of regret in doing so.

I became secretive, as Dennis became more and more intrusive. He accused George of trying to get into my pants (never came close, however much I would have liked that) and they made all kinds of outlandish accusations about my dad's side of the family. Nothing, it seemed, was safe from his prying eye or mind, and I began to write my diary in the code I had developed in 7th grade. My art took on a lot of symbolism. He tried in vain to decipher it, while I sneered at him inwardly. We had become enemies, and Dennis was a very uncomfortable enemy to have. I started hiding behind large trees or building when he was around, becoming invisible, avoiding him whenever possible- and denying doing so, because then he'd demand to know what I was up to, what dastardly activity I was concealing from him. I built a lot of forts and huts- some of them on the neighbor's land (the notion of private property hadn't yet sunk into my thick skull).

Charlie wrote me back. He thanked me for "trusting him" enough to tell him where we were, and allowed that the entire family had been concerned about us, and asked me to keep in touch. I didn't see it as a matter of trust (it was a given for me that I trusted my uncle, probably my favorite person in the world at the time)...I just missed them all but was too proud to outright admit it, not after they'd told me that I'd see how rotten my Mom and Dennis would turn out to be. And honestly, if they hadn't done that, I think I would have turned around right then and flown back east, in a heartbeat.

Dennis still wasn't working. Finances and sources of income weren't discussed with the children, but it was plain to us that things were getting tight. We started receiving donations of food from the church. At first, they gave us some venison and elk meat. I wasn't keen on either one. They both had a gamey taste. A neighbor with dairy cattle and draft horses (I think they were Percherons) sold us fresh milk in big glass gallon jars. We were supposed to return the jars, as I know now from the farmer's names on the lids and having sold milk myself, but my mother kept them and used them to store and display dry goods such as beans and flour and rice.

Arthur and Caroline, an older Jewish couple who lived near the Weavers, generously gifted us with a LOT of food, including five gallons of honey, some granola, dried fruit, sorghum, and several bars of Caroline's own homemade soap. I'm ashamed to say that we thought her homemade soap was "strange" and "looked funny" because it wasn't storebought. We were so incredibly ignorant of country life that we didn't even have enough sense to appreciate the magnitude of the gift we'd received from these people.

They also included some white liquid in a recycled brown prune juice bottle. I couldn't understand anyone reusing a prune juice bottle. It looked icky before I even knew what it was. My mother declared that it was goat's milk, and very good. That was enough for me to decide that I didn't want anything to do with it, but Denis, seeing our reluctance, forced us to pour some onto our granola. Then we had to sit down and eat it all in front of him, to make sure we didn't waste any. Well, that milk was one of the worst things I've ever had to put into my mouth. It tasted exactly like a buck goat smelled, as though a buck in rut had swished his dirty, smelly beard in the bucket of milk. We made faces and protested, in vain. Denis insisted that we had to eat all the granola and milk. We gagged, we sputtered and groaned. Mike let it dribble down his face. But it was to no avail, we were forced to eat it all while Denis sat with crossed arms, glaring at us, growling at our pleas and complaints.