Finding Me (14 page)

O
NE
EVENING
A
FEW
MONTHS
after I got Lobo, the dude came shuffling upstairs. The minute he came through the door, I knew he was drunk. He was slurring his words and falling all over the place, and he reeked of rum. He didn’t take Lobo downstairs before he tried to get on top of me.

“Bring your ass over here,” he told me. Before I could move, he grabbed me by my hair and dragged me, still in chains, to the edge of the mattress. “You’re gonna do everything I tell you to do tonight.”

When Lobo saw the dude roughing me up, he went crazy, barking.

“Shut up, you stupid dog!” he yelled.

But Lobo kept right on barking. The dude slapped me in the face and yelled, “Make him stop!” My cheek felt like somebody had just set it on fire. A second later Lobo ran at his leg and tried to bite him, but before he could sink in his teeth, the dude picked him up.

Without blinking an eye, he used his big hands to break the dog’s neck. Lobo let out one last yelp, and then his body went limp. The dude threw my puppy’s broken body right onto the mattress.

“You killed my baby!” I screamed. “Get out! Get out right now!” I beat at him with my fists. I didn’t care what he did to me now.

He did get out—but he took me and Lobo’s body with him. He unchained me from the bed and dumped the dog in his cardboard box. Then, carrying the box in one arm, he dragged me downstairs. At the back door he warned me, “I dare you to move from this spot.” Then he walked outside and threw Lobo’s body over the back fence. I knew he would knock the piss out of me later, but I sobbed and screamed as loud as I could from the open door, and not just because my little sweetie was gone. I also wanted someone—
anyone
—to hear me. But apparently no one did.

12
______________

The Backyard

W
ITHOUT
MY
LITTLE
LOBO
, the days went back to endless hours of boredom. I still had the radio, but I missed my puppy with all my heart. I talked to Joey every day, and sometimes I talked to Lobo too.

“You’re a good boy,” I’d tell him. I’d shut my eyes and pretend I was holding him in my lap, stroking his soft puppy fur. “You’re my sweet little dog. We’ll always be together.” Sometimes I wondered if I’d join him in death, my neck broken too by the insane man who kept me captive.

One afternoon the dude came upstairs and unchained me. “I’m going to let you sit on the back porch,” he said.

That was the crazy thing about him: you could never tell what he was going to do next. Some days he would bring you a radio and a puppy; other days he was a violent storm—a raging drunk who raped you and then snapped your puppy’s neck. The man who’d abused me for years in my parents’ house never did anything close to nice, but at least I always knew what to expect from that prick. But this dude was so twisted that it was hard to figure out how to deal with him. Even when it seemed like he might be doing something that was good for me—such as letting me go outdoors—I knew I couldn’t trust him.

But I
did
want to fool him into thinking he could trust
me
. I had been working on that for a while. Sometimes he would slam the back door like he was going to work, and then he would come back fifteen minutes later to see if I had moved. He tried to be real quiet when he came up the stairs so I wouldn’t know he was spying on me. But not only could I hear him, I knew he hadn’t left in the first place. He probably didn’t realize I could hear the van coming in and out of the driveway. When he sneaked upstairs and peeked in my room, I just laid on the mattress like I was asleep and played along with him. I could feel him staring at me through a crack in the door.

I don’t know why he thought I could get out.
Seriously, dude. I’m chained up with two huge locks
.
Where in the hell do you think I’m going?
I figured it was just more of his craziness. And I’m pretty sure he was trying to scare me by testing me. He was playing a mental game, wanting me to think that if I ever tried to escape, he would catch me. One time, when he brought me down to the kitchen with him, I noticed he left the back door open just a little bit, I think on purpose. I didn’t try to go out the door. I knew I wouldn’t have made it off the porch before he would have grabbed me by the back of my hair. So I just sat at the kitchen table and pretended like I didn’t see that the door was open.

On the afternoon he took me out to the porch, he threw a large green T-shirt and some gray sweatpants onto the bed. “Put these on,” he said. The green shirt was covered with oil stains. The pants were way too long for me. Both of the clothes smelled like him—horrible. But believe it or not, they still smelled less foul than I did! While he was standing there, I took off my own T-shirt and put on his green one. I kept on my butterfly underwear and put the sweatpants over them.

“Follow me,” he said. We went downstairs and stopped in the kitchen. He started searching for something. That’s when I got my first real good look at where the dude must have slept. Not too far from the kitchen I saw a tiny room. It didn’t have a door, so I could see right inside. There was a TV with a VCR and a queen-size bed. A guitar was in the corner.
That must be the one he plays in his band
, I thought. That’s about all that could fit in there. It was really just a cubbyhole without a door.

From a kitchen drawer he pulled out a wig and some huge sunglasses. The wig had long brown hair that was matted up and ugly. He shoved the glasses onto my face and put the wig on my head. The strands of fake hair were bristly; they felt like little pieces of wire hitting the back of my neck. The sunglasses were so big that they covered most of my face. I wondered if anyone else had worn the wig, and who it belonged to.

He opened another drawer and got something out of it. When he turned around, I saw what he was holding: a handgun.

“If you try anything stupid when we get outside, I’ll shoot you,” he said. He waved the gun in front of my face and let out the little evil laugh that I’d gotten used to. “Don’t think I won’t kill you, because I will. This thing is loaded.” If he was trying to scare the bejesus outta me, it worked. I was quaking behind the sunglasses. He put the gun in the back pocket of his jeans.

Then he pushed me out the back door and onto the porch.
Aah, fresh air!
Sunshine!
It was the first time in over three months that I’d been outdoors. It was pretty chilly that day, and I folded my arms around myself to get a little warmer. Then I took a look around the yard. It was just as junky as it had been the first day I got there back in August. There were rusty chains like the ones in the basement lying around everywhere.

Maxine, the dog, was chained to a pole. She barked a little when we came out, and then she settled down. I saw tools and car parts, old oily rags, and paper trash all over the place. It looked like he was building something on the porch. There was a long piece of wood and an electric saw on a table.

“I’m going to saw this wood in half, and you’re going to help me,” he said.

I held up one side of the board, and he cut through it with the noisy saw. The whole time he kept giving me this wicked grin, like he really wanted to cut
me
in half. The dust from the wood got underneath the big sunglasses and up into my nose. I started to cough and sneeze a little. “Go sit down over there,” he told me. He pointed to a dirty folding chair. I walked over and sat down. He didn’t take his eyeballs off of me the whole time.

In the backyard next door I suddenly saw an old white guy, but it wasn’t the same guy who waved to me the day I came into the house. He looked at both of us, but he didn’t say anything. I wanted to shout, “Please help me! Can’t you see I’m in trouble? Call the police!” But I was too afraid of what the nutjob would do.

When I looked back at the dude, he was staring me right in the face. He ran his hand over the gun in his back pocket, like he was reminding me, “If you make a move, I will shoot you.” I figured he was just crazy enough to do it, so I sat very still. When I saw the neighbor go back inside, I was hoping,
Maybe he knows this looks weird. Maybe he went to call the cops!
But if he did call, the cops never showed up. How could a man see a girl dressed in such a weird way, with no coat on a cold day, and not think something was off? I just didn’t understand that; it made me furious. It still does.

We stayed outside for about a half hour before he took me back to my blue prison. He made me give him back all of my clothes—not just the green shirt and sweats, but my T-shirt and underwear too. So now I was totally naked when he chained me up.

“I’m cold,” I told him. “I need those clothes!”

He shrugged. “You’re gonna stay naked as long as I want you to stay naked,” he said. Then he walked out.

I lay on the mattress with my teeth chattering. He didn’t give me any clothes for the next four months.

Looking back on it now, it seems like it was kind of stupid for him to take me outside—what if someone in the neighborhood thought I looked suspicious with the wig and glasses on? But then again, he already knew no one was looking for me. Just about every day he reminded me that he did not see one single thing on TV or any fliers in the neighborhood about my disappearance.

“You’re a nobody,” he always told me. I didn’t say anything back, but I wondered if he was lying. Surely someone in my family had notified the police that I was missing? I hoped to God that was true.

At least one sort of good thing came out of my afternoon on the back porch. Once again I had showed the dude that he could “trust” me to not try and get away. I figured if I kept doing that long enough, maybe he would relax and let down his guard. And then I could make a break for it.

A few weeks later it was Christmas. I knew that because I’d been listening to the radio. All that day I sat on the bed and cried. My eyes stung because I had rubbed them so hard. He showed up in my room with a white cake that had red and green sprinkles all over it. It looked like it came from the supermarket. “Here. Merry Christmas,” he said. He set the cake on the floor and stared at me from head to toe, like I was a piece of meat. My body was blue from the cold. “Now you know what you need to do if you want some of that,” he said. I didn’t even look at him.

While the dude raped me that night, I thought about everything I had missed.
September. October. November. December
. The year had gone away. My desire to live had almost gone with it. I felt so alone, depressed, and scared.
How could I still be here?
Only one thing kept me breathing—the thought of Joey.

I wondered how my huggy bear was spending his Christmas.
Who are his new foster parents? Is he as happy today as he was on the Christmas when we got up so early and sang together? Does he wonder where his mother has gone? Does he miss me every day?
I didn’t have any answers. All I had was a monster on top of me—and a grocery store cake that I refused to touch.

13
______________

TV & a Shower

D
ECEMBER
WAS
COLD
—but in January I almost froze. Every time he came up to my room, I pleaded for him to give me something to wear. But he wouldn’t give me anything.

“You’re not here to stay warm,” he told me. “You’re only here for one thing.”

By the end of February I swear to you that I couldn’t even feel my lips and toes anymore. I begged him again for a shirt, some gloves, a hat, some socks or sweats—
something
. He finally threw me a tiny piece of cotton material. It was like a torn piece of sheet. It was hardly big enough to cover my little body, but it was better than nothing.

There was a radiator near my bed, but whenever I stretched over to feel it, it was barely warm. The whole house was freezing. On a lot of days I could see my breath. All I could do was try to bury my body underneath my small pillow—I tried to turn that thing into an igloo. The only time I got warm is when the dude put himself inside of me, but honestly, I think I would have preferred to freeze to death.

Around March he came into my room with a small color TV. “I know you get bored,” he said. He set the TV on a little shelf next to the mattress. With my chains on, I could just reach it. “You won’t have this for very long, so don’t get used to it,” he said. “And don’t let me catch you watching any niggers either.”

He plugged it in and put the volume on low. It seemed weird to me that he would give a girl he kidnapped a TV, but nothing he did made sense. I thought,
Really? Now you care about me being bored, with all the disgusting stuff you do to me, and not giving me a shred of clothes for the past two months? And on top of that, you’re worried about me looking at black people?

That TV changed my life. All of a sudden I had a way to find out what was going on outside of that creepy house, the things that I couldn’t learn from just the radio. Not only could I hear the news; I could
see
the news and what was happening around the country. I could watch some TV shows instead of just hearing music. It really helped to pass the time—and all I had was time.