I started noticing some odd things about the new girl and something wasn’t sitting right with me. It looked like she was flirting with my husband and she did it right in front of me. When I asked my husband about it he told me I was crazy and imagining things. Hmmm, not the first time I heard that. As time went by, I noticed they were going in his office and locking the door. After asking him several times about it, he finally admitted it and said yes, you’re right, something is going on between us and I want you to accept her as a co-wife. I can still remember word for word what I said to him with an eerily calm tone. I said, “one of us is crazy and I don’t think it’s me”. Never in my life could I have imagined that question being asked of me by my husband. Then, to further devastate me, he accused me of being the selfish one. That is typical narcissist behavior but since I didn’t even know what a narcissist was, I had no idea. I was in shock and completely crushed because it was then that I realized he loved her. I went to my room and thought about what I was going to do. I noticed that my husband’s office door was locked and that she was nowhere around. There was an eerie silence in the temple that I could feel. I needed to get in my husband’s office so I could use the phone. I was going to call Kirtananda Swami in New Vrindaban, who was in charge of all the temples and ask him about my cheating husband but first I had to get into his office where the phone was. Bobby asked the new guy who brought the guns there to get them out of the temple which I thought was interesting. Then, his mistress went missing too or so it seemed. Determined to get to the phone, I went downstairs and got a needle nose saw and used it to open the door of his office. When I called Kirtananda Swami, I expected him to say something about taking care of it or expressing disappointment in Bobby but instead he said, “well, I guess he has two wives now, doesn’t he”? I remember feeling angry and thinking the hell he does. Does he think that he can just control people’s lives and allow the men to take on more wives when they can’t even take care of the one that they have? At that time in the temple some men were trying to use our spiritual master’s wishes that the unmarried women be protected into selfish carnal desires.
I went back to the women’s quarters and my head was flooded with thoughts about what to do next. I had to go to the bathroom and when I did, there she was, sitting on the toilet. Our eyes met and locked like animals. I felt the strongest urge to strangle her and I felt electrical energy crawling up and down my arms into my hands which I could already see around her throat. As I looked into her wounded brown eyes, it was like a movie trailer went off in my head and I saw a preview of what would happen if I killed her. It showed me that I would go to jail for 30-40 years and that she and Bobby would get my girls. I knew I would never have seen them again and instantly something shifted in my mind and I snapped back to reality and I said to her, “you’re not worth it”. The electric energy that was rushing throughout my arms and hands was absorbed into my body making me numb. I was in shock and stunned that I just altered my life by choosing to walk away from her. Zombielike, I headed toward the room I slept in. I was in total shock and had just stopped myself from committing murder. I picked up my baby and held her in my arms. I was a mother and I had to protect my children’s mother. I was in a very fragile emotional state and needed a safe place to go. I didn’t know what to do but I knew I couldn’t stay there one more minute. I packed a few clothes for Brenda and with her in one arm and my sewing machine in the other, I walked out of the temple and left whatever other possessions I had. I knew I had to leave there immediately before I did something I would regret for the rest of my life. I had to remember that foremost. To this day, I consider it an extreme blessing from God that I had that vision.
Fortunately, I had been saving money to go to India to work with orphaned children and so I had about $700. I used it to fly to Texas where Lani was. My intent was to take her out of school immediately but instead I stayed there for a few days to reflect on what had happened before making any decisions. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t sabotaging Lani’s spiritual future and mine too by leaving the temple over Bobby’s immoral conduct and bad decisions. I heard through the temple grapevine that the day after I left, Bobby stole $700 from the petty cash box and they ran away together. Later I heard they went to Detroit and bought a car with the money he’d taken. For two weeks Brenda cried for her father. She loved him so much. She had no idea that the father she adored had run off with someone else and didn’t give a damn about us. It broke her heart because she was a daddy’s girl. I taped her crying for her father night after night and eventually sent it to him when I found out where he was.