Mom and Dennis set up a tent and tarp arrangement for a cooking and living area on the land adjoining Mark's place, and set up the two trailers as sleeping quarters. Before that, Mark and Elizabeth had walked out early one morning to take his big old truck for a drive and found me sleeping on the front seat. We had been sleeping more or less wherever there was a dry place to sleep. Some of us, including myself, slept in the little egg-shaped trailer. Mom, Denis, and Sarah slept in the big Silverstream. There would have been more space, but everything we owned was also crammed into the trailers from floor to ceiling. Sarah slept in the bed with Mom and Denis. Mom complained to me one day, out of their earshot, about this arrangement. She said that Sarah was sleeping between them and that wasn't comfortable with this. I don't remember if my sister was afraid or stressed by the change in our living situation, or if that was simply the only place for her to sleep. At any rate, Mom was unhappy about it and felt threatened. I didn't know what to say.
Meanwhile, cats got pregnant, had kittens, some of which died. We narrowed Sheba's puppies down to Bandit, Kodiak, a dominant male who was Denis' favorite, and Alaska, a narrow, yappy male with a Labrador's temperament.
We were constantly on the lookout for supernatural creatures and signs, both good and evil. I was standing in the driveway one day when I thought I saw something that looked like a big black sasquatch type creature. It vanished into the small trees in front of Mark's house. I ran to tell Denis, and he said he had already seen it cross his path near the house on its way to the forest behind the house. We saw basketball sized orbs of bright white light floating in the air outside the house we'd been kicked out of. Yahweh told us that it was a sign of judgement upon our former landlord for kicking us out. Everything we saw was good or evil, nothing was insignificant or too small to be submitted as a question to Yahweh. It was Ok to tie a ribbon in a bow around the neck of a stuffed animal (the ones we had left that weren't evil), because bows were not a bad symbol.
Also, we were given a new last name: Yehiel, which means "Yahweh lives". This was a clever move, because it transformed a divided family with three different last names into a cohesive unit with a single, powerful last name, given to us by Yahweh himself. We knew that we were special, more special than any other people on the face of the earth, that we were very important and had a singular purpose in his plan. We knew and believed these things, because Yahweh had told us so himself, over and over again, through the lips and pens of children.

We spent most of that summer spending our time trying to resolve a prophesy that had been given to us. It was more of a puzzle than a prophesy: it stated that Yahweh would give us a new home, and that the house and land he would give us would be on West Branch road. "West Branch" was supposed to have some kind of spiritual significance, because Yahshua/Jesus was called the branch in the scriptures (even the word "bible" was verboten in our family). We wasted countless gallons of gas (where on earth did we get the money to buy gas when we would have gone hungry without the food bank?) searching for West Branch road, going as far as Spokane and driving down street after street as Denis asked us to pray and ask Yahweh where the road was. Of course, these forays were fruitless, and I still don't comprehend how our parents thought we would buy a place, when we had been evicted for non-payment of rent and couldn't even afford campground fees or food. But, the prophesies stated that Yahweh would give it to us, so we had faith and kept looking, even as the pressure from our parents mounted. We children were all terrified of being labeled false prophets, yet the insistence for us to come up with answers from Yahweh was relentless. It was horrible.

As for our stay at Mark's house, the stress of the situation brought out the worst in Denis. He got a large liver from somewhere one day, presumably deer liver. I cannot and never have been able to eat liver, but he served us each a slice anyway. I tried swallowing the bites whole, but it wouldn't go down. As always, he sat and reveled in the spectacle of being able to force a child to eat something disgusting. Finally I smeared a large quantity of mustard on each bite and was able to keep it down. Heaving it would only have resulted in being forced to eat more of the stuff.

Then there was the time he sat luxuriantly in a chair with a little jar of small round, red bubble shaped objects that he appeared to be eating. He offered us each one, and said it was caviar. Of course, we refused, but this was futile. There was no offer, it was a demand. I swallowed mine whole, despite his orders to pop it. About fifteen years later, I was in the sporting goods section of a store when I realized that the jars of red fish bait were the exact same thing he had fed us years ago......

And there was also the day when for some inane reason, I was playing with a lighter, seeing it it would ignite the needles of a cedar tree, having no inkling whatsoever what an incredibly bad idea this was. Denis happened to catch me, confiscated the lighter, and said I was a baby who was playing with fire. Then he sat me in a chair in the center of our outdoor living area, and told everyone that I was a baby and they were not to talk to me except as to a baby. I was to sit in the chair while I was jeered at and ridiculed. Elizabeth happened to walk by and view this spectacle. I was probably crying and looking very dejected. Miek came by and asked questions. I was allowed to leave the chair, but my shoes were taken away so that I would have to stay nearby. This infuriated me. I wandered into the woods and pulled up kinnikinnic vines, the same type I'd used to make baskets, and coiled and wrapped them into crude sandals. I was nearly done with the second one when Denis caught me at this, laughed at me, called me rebellious, and took that away too. He gave me back my shoes, though.