Finding Me (19 page)

Right after I wrote that, I closed the notebook and held it up to my chest. Before long I was asleep. That night I dreamed the same dream I’d had before—my sweet Joey being dragged away from me and disappearing forever.

O
NE
MORNING
AROUND
the middle of May the dude came in with his drill and told me to get up. “You’re going to help me prepare the room,” he said, and he started drilling another hole in my wall. I was pretty sure I knew the reason why.

I had been wondering what was going on with Gina, although I hadn’t heard anything else from the basement. I hoped that she was surviving all right, but I knew what an animal he was. It tore me up inside to think of a fourteen-year-old girl going through what he’d put me through. At times I had wondered if she had survived
.

When he forced me to put a second set of chains through the wall, I begged him, “Please, don’t make me help you commit a crime!”

“You won’t get blamed for it,” he said. “It’s all on me.” By saying that, he admitted what I had already figured out: he had snatched Gina. He took out my bucket and returned with one of those little white portable toilets and put it next to the mattress. I assumed he was doing this because it was slightly bigger, and two people would now be using it.

I thought I would see Gina that day, but another couple of weeks went by. Then, out of nowhere, the dude brought her into my room. At first I wasn’t quite sure if it was really Gina DeJesus. She had on baggy sweatpants and a T-shirt. They looked like the same kind of stinky, dingy men’s clothes that he sometimes gave me. She was barefoot. Her long, thick, black hair went all the way down past her shoulders. She seemed so young; she had a baby face. She looked scared, almost like she was holding her breath. I was glad that at least I had on a tank top and underwear.

“This is my daughter,” he said, pushing her toward the mattress.

God, what a liar!
I thought.
I guess the idiot doesn’t remember he’d asked me to prepare those chains.

“Hi,” she finally said.

“Hi,” I said back. Gina’s eyes looked incredibly sad. Although I went to high school with Gina’s older sister, Mayra, I didn’t really know her that well. We weren’t really friends; we just saw each other around our neighborhood and at school. Sometimes she waved and said “Hi.” Once, Mayra had showed me a picture of her baby sister. Another time I saw her walking with Gina not too far from my house.

Now that I was seeing Gina again after all that time, I had to take a close look at her face to see if it was really her. From the pictures in the news reports, I was pretty sure it was. I was getting ready to ask her how she was doing. Before we could say another word, the dude turned her around and took her out of the room with him.

Why did he do that?
I wondered. I had no idea whether I’d ever see her again. If she had to be stuck in this house, I hoped at least we could be together. My heart went out to her; I knew how scared and lonely she must be feeling. I wanted to help her in any way I could. And after spending all those months by myself, I wanted to talk to someone—anyone other than the monster. Of course, I wished Gina wasn’t there, and the same thing with Amanda. Just thinking about someone else living in that hellhole made my stomach hurt. I laid back down, worrying about poor Gina and also wondering how Amanda was doing.
Maybe with three of us in the house, we’ll have a better chance of escaping,
I thought.
Maybe we can all team up and kick his butt, then make a break for it.

A few days later the dude unchained me and took me downstairs to the bathroom. When he opened the door, Gina was standing there. “She’s gonna do your hair,” he told me.

I thought,
Why on earth is he having Gina do my hair?
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then again, most of what he did made no sense. But I had learned how to play along with his weird ideas to avoid getting beaten.
Maybe I’ll get some time alone with Gina to ask her how she’s doing
, I thought. I went over to the toilet, closed the lid, and sat down. As before, the whole thing shook a little when I sat on it.

“Go ahead,” he said to Gina. “Do her hair.”

Gina took a couple of pieces of my hair, which was short from when I’d cut it, and started making a twist at the front of my head. A couple of seconds later the dude walked away. I motioned to Gina to put her head down toward me, and I put my mouth right up to her ear.

“I know who you are,” I said as softly as I could. “You’re Gina DeJesus.” I didn’t want him to hear me, come back in, and knock us both out.

She straightened up and looked me right in the eyes. “You
know
me?” she whispered. She seemed surprised. I nodded. She looked over her shoulder at the door, then she started twisting my hair again.

“Don’t tell him that I know who you are,” I warned her. “It might piss him off. When I get a chance to tell you more about him and the situation, I will.” Right then the dude came back inside. We both acted like we hadn’t been talking.
That was close
, I thought.

That first conversation with Gina had lasted less than thirty seconds. For the next five minutes the dude stood there and watched her twist my hair. When it was done, I got up and looked in the bathroom mirror. The twists were beautiful.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

The dude seemed annoyed at that. He yanked me over to the door, took us both back upstairs, and chained me to the bed. Then he went back downstairs with Gina. I don’t know where he took her. Maybe down to the basement. Maybe to his cubbyhole. I hoped it was out the front door and back to her life, but I knew better than that.

A few days later the dude brought Gina back into my room. She looked even more pale and wiped out than she did the first time I’d seen her.

“Get on the bed,” he told her. Without a word she sat down beside me. He chained me by the neck, and then he wrapped the same chains around her ankle. Gina asked him to switch the chains. “It’s not going to work if my leg is chained to her neck—how are we supposed to use the toilet?” she said. I was glad she had spoken up.

“Her ankle’s too small,” he said. “If I put it around her foot, she’ll get out.”

But Gina kept asking him, and I could hardly believe it when he actually listened to her. He took the chain off my neck and then chained us together by our feet. Of course, he made my foot chain very tight. After that, he tossed another pair of sweats and a couple of ugly T-shirts at me.

“These are for you,” he said. I guess he wanted me to have more clothes because Gina was with me, but of course I wouldn’t be able to put on the sweatpants until he unchained us. After that, he left.

We heard his boots go down the stairs.
Pound. Pound. Pound
. We were together in chains. In tears. For a long time we sat and listened to the house get quiet. Then we began telling each other our whole stories.

17
______________

My New Little Sister

I can imagine the pain of having a missing child. To not know where they are at or what horrible things they are going through. Knowing you can’t be there to hold and protect her from the damage that’s being caused … I can imagine having the strength I do now to hold my head up high through this pain after all these years without falling on my knees. In my eyes I am amazing for having the courage to believe there’s something bigger than a life full of misery.

H
OW DO YOU START
telling another victim what it was like to be kidnapped off the street and turned into a prisoner in a strange man’s house? It’s overwhelming. And just going through the whole story makes you want to scream.

I had so many things I wanted to ask Gina, such as whether she knew there was a third girl in the house, how she was feeling, and if he had been feeding her enough. There were so many things I wanted to tell her and also to warn her about—like what made him mad and that he would pretend to go out but then sneak back in to see if you were trying to get loose.

For the first couple of minutes we didn’t say too much. I think we were both so stunned by the situation and also by finally having someone to talk to. It took a minute to get used to that idea. Then I picked up where we left off in the bathroom. I told her that I knew her older sister, Mayra, from school.

Gina’s pretty brown eyes got wide. “You did?” she said.

I nodded. After that, the words just started flowing between us. The first thing I asked her was, “How did he get you into the house?”

Gina cleared her throat and talked very softly. I scooted next to her so she wouldn’t have to speak any louder. Neither one of us wanted the dude to come running back upstairs. “I was walking down the street with Rosie,” Gina told me. I knew that Rosie was the dude’s daughter. Gina and Rosie were the best of friends; their families knew each other. Gina had spent the night at Rosie’s mother’s house, and Rosie had stayed at Gina’s. Around three o’clock the two of them were walking home from middle school.

“We stopped at a pay phone to call Rosie’s mom and asked if I could go over to her house that night,” Gina told me. The pay phone they used was close to 105th Street and Lorain Avenue, in the same area where both Amanda and I were taken. When Rosie’s mom said no, Gina and Rosie said good-bye to each other and walked in different directions.

While Gina was walking home, the dude pulled up next to her and told her he was looking for Rosie. Gina had seen the dude before and knew he was Rosie’s father. Gina wanted to help him find his daughter, so she got in the car and pointed him in the direction Rosie had been walking. But the dude started driving in a different direction, so she told him again which way Rosie had gone.

“I just gotta go back to my house and pick up something,” he told her. “Maybe you and my other daughter Emily can go to the mall together later.” Gina knew Emily, but she still thought saying that was kind of strange because he had just told her he was looking for Rosie. But just like me, she shrugged it off and trusted the dude because he was the father of her good friend.

When they pulled up at his house, he even handed her some cash. “Here’s some money for you and Emily to spend at the mall,” he told her. He then got her to come into the house and forced her down into the basement. Sitting on the mattress with our ankles chained together, I told Gina how the dude had tricked me into coming to the house and how it was like the way he’d lured her in. I told her how long I’d been chained up there. I told her I’d been there for two years and that my son wasn’t with me but, instead, was in foster care. But I didn’t tell her a lot about the horrible stuff he did to me after I got there because I thought it would scare her. She looked so innocent; I just wanted to protect her. Every time I looked at her sweet young face, her beautiful brown eyes, and long dark hair, it made me so mad and so angry. How could anyone take this girl away from her family? And what kind of father do you have to be to kidnap your daughter’s best friend? You have to be a demon—and that’s exactly what he was.

That night I told Gina that Amanda was also in the house. Gina replied that she had already seen her, but they hadn’t really talked yet.

“I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to her either,” I said. “She must be so scared.” We couldn’t believe this guy had gotten away with
three
kidnappings. All in the same neighborhood. And all three of us knew his children. Why wasn’t anyone putting all of this together?

“Do you think we will ever get out?” Gina asked me. I hesitated. Although I hoped this was true, by that point I wasn’t sure. I’d been either chained tightly to the wall or watched closely every minute of the almost two years I’d been in the house.

“Yes,” I finally said. I wanted Gina to have hope.

“Well, we just have to try,” she said. I knew she was right.

We started talking about our lives, and after we finished telling each other our stories, we just sat there and cried, holding onto each other.

“I never should have got in his truck,” I told her. “I never would have taken a ride from a total stranger. But I let down my guard because he was Emily’s dad.” Seeing a big fat tear rolling down Gina’s face, I wiped it away with my hand. “It’ll be okay, sweetie,” I told her. “We’ll get through this. Now that there are three of us in here, we’ll find a way out. We have to.”

Having Gina in the house meant that her life had been taken away too. But if she had to be locked in this monster’s hellhole, I was glad she wasn’t alone, shivering in the basement. If we were stuck here, at least we could be with each other. Maybe we really could escape if we put our heads together. All along it had been the thought of Joey that had kept me fighting to stay alive. And now I had a little sister to fight for too.

I’m just a girl hidden away from the rest of the world, not where I expected to be. Stuck in this nightmare, screaming, only to find out no one can hear me. All I ask in return is to be with my son, safe … but the reality is slipping from my grasp. I’m thinking that was too much to ask. Life goes past me so quickly, my health is fading fast, then I run away into my deepest sleep and dream of paradise.