Finding Me (20 page)

E
VEN
BEFORE
THE
DUDE
brought Gina to my room, getting over to the pot to pee was hard. I had to stretch to reach it. But after Gina and I were chained up together, it became even harder. If one of us got up, the other one had to move too. From the minute she came to the room we learned to depend on each other for everything, even going to the bathroom.

“He hardly ever empties it,” I warned her. But I’m sure the gross smell told her that already. Our pot often got so full that it overflowed. One time I peed into a beer bottle. Gina was like, “How in the world did you do
that?
” It was very weird doing such private stuff in front of each other. But we got used to it. We didn’t have a choice.

In the mornings the dude came upstairs and gave us something to eat, usually still an egg sandwich from a fast food restaurant. For the first couple of weeks he didn’t have sex with me in the room, and he didn’t hit me. I think it was because he didn’t want to scare Gina. Matter of fact, I don’t even think he meant to kidnap Gina in the first place.

One time, when he took me downstairs to his cubbyhole, he was drunk as hell on rum. He tried to get me to drink some shots too, but I said no. He was almost passed out on his bed when he started telling me a lot more about how he picked Gina.

“Every day when she left school, I followed her,” he said. “I followed all three of you.” When he said that, it really gave me the creeps. He also told me there was another girl in Gina’s school who looked exactly like her, and he got the two of them confused. He said he didn’t know that he’d kidnapped his daughter’s friend until he saw Gina’s name on the news. Then again, he didn’t feel too bad about it. He also told me that later on he even helped Gina’s parents search for her. The whole time he knew exactly where she was, but while they prayed and cried and looked all over the city, he played along like he was a friend. He really got off on it—that’s how evil and twisted this man was.

Another time when we were in his room a report came on about Gina’s disappearance. “They’re looking for her, but they’ll never find her,” he laughed. And of course he had to remind me again, “No one was ever looking for you. That’s why I hate you the most. You ain’t nothin’ to nobody. Nobody loves you, and nobody misses you.” I tried not to show it, but that really hurt. It made me wonder yet again if anyone in my family had ever tried to find me or even missed me. It gave me such a hopeless, hollow feeling inside.

I didn’t tell Gina any of this; I thought it might make her even more sad. When you’re the oldest one, you have to watch out for the younger ones. That’s just what big sisters do.

We both knew he was out of his mind, but at first Gina didn’t believe he was as mean as I knew he was. That was because he really didn’t abuse her that much in the beginning. For a while he wouldn’t hit me in the head if she was in the room.

“He’s being fake right now,” I told her. “Just watch yourself around him. He’s a psycho.”

Sure enough, things got bad after about a month. One night he raped me while I was chained to Gina. She sat in the corner of the mattress and tried to look the other way. After it was over, we just sat there and cried.

Throughout the next many months and years the same thing would happen over and over again. The dude would take either me or Gina off to the side of the bed; the other one would sit there feeling helpless to stop it. If I tried to say anything, he’d just reach over and punch me in the face, and then take it out on Gina more. Sometimes we would reach out and touch each other’s hand and say, “It’s going to be okay.” He didn’t try to stop us from doing that. Other times, if the dude started in with Gina, I would beg for him to stop.

“Please, take me instead,” I said. “I’m the one you hate.”

It’s one thing to have someone break your own heart; it can be even more painful to watch another person’s heart get crushed. During all the time I shared a room with Gina my heart was smashed in half too many different times to count. I don’t think I can ever really get over what both of us went through.

W
E
STILL
DIDN
’
T
SEE
A
MANDA
very much in the months after Gina arrived in April. The dude started letting us shower downstairs every once in a while, so we just said hi when we passed each other. Gina and Amanda kind of stared at each other, because they had never had a conversation. Sometimes when we were chained together upstairs on the mattress, we could hear him taking Amanda down the stairs to his cubbyhole. It was weird knowing that another girl was probably going through all the horrible stuff I was going through, but we never had the chance to sit down and talk. I didn’t know it then, but a number of months would go by before Amanda and I would finally get that chance.

Over the first few months I told Gina everything I had learned about the dude. “He’s got two sides to his personality,” I warned her. “You never know which one you’re gonna get.” I also explained what all the sounds meant—like the voices that meant his band had come over for the weekend. The scared look on Gina’s face said it all:
Am I going to be here so long that I need to know all this?
When I saw how frightened she seemed, I held back some things. I knew she was scared enough already, but I also wanted her to have some information that might protect her.

To make the days go by faster, Gina and I watched a lot of TV together. “The volume doesn’t work very well,” I told her the first time she turned it on. “And whatever you do, don’t let the dude catch you watching black people on TV. He hates black folks.” We loved to watch shows about celebrities because it took our minds off of our situation to keep up with the latest gossip. It kind of made me feel human again. And we liked
The Parkers
,
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
, and
Friends
. At least we were looking at the same things the rest of the world was looking at, even if we were locked up in a prison.

Sometimes, after a couple of hours of watching sitcoms or stupid reruns, I would get out my notebook. The dude had given Gina a notebook and a pencil too. We would draw and write until we ran out of pages. Believe it or not, if we asked him for more notebooks, sometimes he would give them to us. We both thought it was weird, but we were just glad to have them. At times we’d read what we’d written out loud
to each other. Gina liked to draw flowers and faces, and sometimes I’d help her out with the eyes in one of her pictures. She liked my drawings and said that I was good at art.

Once, I was writing about him in my notebook as he came through the door. He saw me push it under my pillow. “What are you writing?” he said.

Gina and I looked at each other out of the corner of our eyes. He was acting angry about something.

“You want to read it?” I said, trying to play it off.

He grabbed the notebook. On that page I had written about how he had treated me the Christmas before and how much I hated him for everything he did to me.

“Sometimes I cry so hard, and I just want to die,” I wrote. “All I want to do is go home. All I want to do is see Joey. I still can’t believe this monster had stolen away my life.”

After he read that, he stopped and looked at me for a long time. “So you’re trying to tell me I’m a bastard?” he said.

I stared down at the mattress. “I’m not saying anything to you,” I told him. “You’re the one who said you wanted to read the notebook—so read it.”

After I said that, I backed up a little on the bed because I knew what might come next: a smack in the jaw. But he didn’t hit me. Matter of fact, he seemed a little sad and weepy. In some strange way I really think the dude believed that his pretend world was real. He knew it was wrong to kidnap us, but he tried to convince himself that what he was doing to us was okay, because in his twisted mind he had turned us into his “family.” Every now and then, though, he got a huge reminder of how much I hated him. And the day he read my notebook he got one of those reminders. He never asked to see my journal again, and I was just grateful he didn’t take it away from me.

I am falling in the dark, falling so hard with these open scars and a bruised heart. I am paralyzed. How did I read the signs so wrong, and why couldn’t I figure it out before it was too late? Now it’s clear to me that everything you see ain’t always what it appears to be. I am paralyzed … God knows how I’ve tried to see the brighter side of this Hell, but now I am awake. The darkness doesn’t blind me … now the pain will fade away and never return.

18
______________

Voices

Being told to do things even though it hurts you. Feeling in life no one cares about you. Always feeling very tired and staying up for too many days feeling sick to my stomach. Having aches and pain all over, feels like my head is about to explode, screaming someone help me before it is too late. Tears always falling from my cheek, hoping this will end soon and someone will rescue me, but it feels like this will never end. I don’t understand why a person can be so heartless.

O
NE
WICKED HOT DAY
that summer Gina and I were both writing in our notebooks. We were dripping with sweat, wearing tank tops and shorts. Suddenly I heard voices downstairs. They sounded different from the guys in the band. For one thing, I could hear a little child say something.

“What was
that?
” I whispered to Gina. We stopped writing and put down our notebooks.

The dude came up the stairs and opened our door. “I’m going to let you meet my grandson,” he said.

Really? We’re meeting someone in your family? You really must have flipped out! Gina and I glanced at each other quickly, and then back at him.

“My daughter Angie’s son is here,” he said. “Hide your chains. He’s really young, so it’s okay for him to meet you.”

Without another word, we stuffed our chains behind the back of the mattress.

“If you try to yell,” he said with a menacing look, “I’ll run up here and shoot you both. And Amanda too. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

He walked out and went back down the stairs. This was unbelievably weird—the lunatic was going to let his grandson see us? What would happen? Would Angie come upstairs too, if she was here? Gina and I looked at each other, not believing this was happening.

“Do you think we’ll be able to get out?” she whispered.

“I hope so!” I said in a low voice. “But don’t let the dude see what we’re thinking. And we’d better not try to call out to anyone. He was serious about shooting us. He’s enough of a wacko to do it, even if his family is downstairs. Hopefully the kid will tell his mother we’re up here.”

A minute later we heard the dude’s boots on the stairs, and then I heard him introducing his grandson to Amanda. Right after that, the dude came through our door holding the hand of the boy. The little guy had dark hair and a cute, round face with chipmunk cheeks. He looked like he was around three or four years old. Seeing him immediately made me miss my Joey even more.

“This is my grandson,” he told us. He smiled and seemed very proud to be showing off the boy to us.

Gina and I waved to him, and I said, “Aw, you’re so cute.” I thought about trying to say something that would let the boy know we were being held against our will, but I couldn’t come up with anything fast enough. That kid took one long look at the two of us and got this very weird look on his face, like he just knew there was something wrong with us being up there.

All of sudden he started crying hysterically. “Mommy!” he yelled. “Mommy, come get me!”

The dude tried to shut him up. “Shhhh, you can’t do that!” he said. He put his huge, hairy hand over the boy’s mouth. It looked like the kid was trying to run back downstairs. I also heard other people, so I figured that some of the dude’s family was there. But before Angie or whoever was in the house could come up to see why the kid was crying, the dude rushed him back downstairs.