Nine Lives (5 page)

Chapter Five

Multitude Of Sins

Tom

It’s easy to say you wouldn’t feel the way I do when you aren’t in my shoes. My shoes are plastic sandals. Prison issued. I can’t even get sneakers here. They say they are too dangerous. They worry we’ll use the laces to hang ourselves. This isn’t a silly worry to have. If I didn’t know I’d wind up in hell for taking my own life, I would have done that before I ever got sentenced. I keep telling myself that prison is bad, but hell is unimaginable.

I guess there are other things that keep me going too. Visits with Heather, Jeremiah and Mary are a big part of that. I worry that Heather won’t be strong enough to hang in there. But she’s a really strong woman. Nine kids. She pretty much raised them single-handedly. I was out trying to provide for the family. And, of course, there’s my faith. I know there has to be a reason for this. God is testing us. He tests the strong and they come out stronger. I know that this will be okay, somehow, and I’ll get out of here and finally be able to help out again. I feel so useless.

I spend my days trying to survive. The other guys know why I’m here. That’s not a good thing. They don’t care that I didn’t do this. They, frankly, don’t believe it. It’s a rare man in prison who doesn’t say he’s innocent. So I don’t really bother to explain my story. It’d just make me more of a target. I could go back to fulltime protective custody, but it would mean no visits with Heather and the kids. I refuse to do that. If I just stay aware, I can survive in here for the most part. For now, I’m stuck with the sex offenders. Most aren’t that violent, at least with each other. We get called awful names, but names aren’t going to hurt me. Heather would freak out if she knew how bad it gets in here. I hate keeping secrets from her, but she has enough to worry about.

Names are one thing, but what does hurt are the beatings; something that can’t be avoided, not on this unit. And then seeing Heather with the stains of them—the worst. I try to downplay it for her. I don’t want to add another thing for her to worry about. But can you really avoid it? I wish the people in here had known me before. Everyone from the church, my customers, people in town. They all know. They’ve seen Laina and Faith and their antics. They know me as a solid guy. They know those two are trouble.

It makes me appreciate my other kids more, that’s for sure. And yes, I do feel bad about Laina and Faith. I don’t want to hate my own kids. But it’s harder than you think. Love and hate walk a fine line. Hell, it’s the reason they put me in here. They hate me. They hate me for trying to do my job and protect them and keep those guys away from them. That’s who should be in jail, the men who think my daughters are for sale.

The only times I’ve ever been in trouble with the law—if you don’t count being out past curfew as a high school kid—have involved my daughters. When Sadie ran away with Slash, I got charges for assault. I hit him once. It wasn’t like I beat him down. Not how they do in here. What father would have been okay with a grown man taking his minor daughter out of the house? And the police? Well, they wanted to help. One of them even said he didn’t blame me. He said he would have killed the guy. But what could they do? Sixteen is age of consent. It’s disgusting. I don’t understand what a man would want with a kid. Ironic, huh?

I don’t claim to be perfect and neither does Heather. We each have our own multitude of sins that we will have to carry with us to judgment day. Like my own children, I’ve had trouble with honoring my parents. I’ve struggled with honesty, doing the right thing, and following the rules. I hate authority just as much as the rest of them. But I’ve never killed, never touched anyone inappropriately, and never stolen a thing in my life. Even when we had money trouble and were looking at losing the house, I picked up a third job. I stocked shelves at night. Never did I cross that line. Because I want to live a good life. I want to be a good person.

When Heather came to me and told me she was pregnant, I wanted to run. Of course I did. But I loved her, and I wanted to do the right thing. Every time she got pregnant, there was a huge piece of me that instantly began running numbers: We can’t afford this, how did it happen again? I’d ask myself why God kept giving us kids. I even considered a vasectomy. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children—every one of them. It’s just not realistic trying to support a family that big in this economy. At least not with Heather home, which is where we both wanted her. Instead, I let faith guide us. Maybe it was a mistake, but I doubt it. You can’t go wrong when you let God steer the ship. This will work out too, I feel it.

Our priest, Father Patrick, visits once a week. He says I need to find a way to use this time productively. My plan is to introduce as many of the guys in here as I can to God. I’m just not sure how receptive they will be to anything a registered sex offender has to say. Guys with my charges don’t last long in general population and usually spend more time listening—to insults—than being listened to. At least we have services here. The problem is that they land on visiting day. I don’t like choosing between God and my family. I try to do both. Eventually, I’ll find my balance.

People who don’t believe the girls—most of them—and know me, often asked me why I thought they did this. They’d ask with eyebrows raised and fear in the creases around their mouths, like they were worried it could happen to them too. They saw our lives and know that Heather and I did everything we could to give all nine of the children safe, healthy, wholesome childhoods. I can’t even really be sure why they did this. I never knew how to answer those questions. At least in here, I don’t get asked that sort of thing. I do know the girls wanted more freedom. I was the same was when I was their age. But look what freedom did for Heather and I? We’ve been struggling to make it ever since she turned up pregnant at seventeen…just a few months older than Laina is now. We wanted better for them. We wanted to protect them. No one wants to see their kid growing vegetables in the backyard because they have to. Gardening should be for fun, not out of necessity.

Lately, I do have another theory on why they did this. Heather thinks it’s because they needed me out of the picture and her distracted so they could get that freedom. Now, I think she’s wrong. I think it’s even simpler than that and sometimes the most simple things are the hardest to see. I think they did this because they could. Because Laina had the idea. A few months before Sadie left, Laina was taking guitar lessons with a girl from another town. The girl was living with her grandmother because she’d been raped by her father and brother for years. The girl wasn’t lying. But Laina watched it all play out, watched the girl’s father and brother locked up. She wanted the same to happen to me. Faith probably didn’t have the heart to argue with her sister. She’s not the strongest of my children. The smartest, maybe, but not the bravest.

I run it over and over in my mind. I’d drive Laina to guitar lessons and all she would talk about was this girl—Harley—and why couldn’t she live with her grandmother too? She hated my rules and knew that if she moved in with her grandmother, things would slacken. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I wish I’d have let her. I was distracted by Sadie’s sneaking out—almost nightly and going missing just long enough but returning before a missing person’s report could be filed—to be with Slash. It made me even more protective of my other girls. I didn’t want them being stolen away like Sadie by some hoodlum with no respect for anyone.

Faith and Laina spent a lot of time with Harley. They became great friends to her, even attending counseling sessions with her “to help her work through her trauma, Dad.” So, for a long time, I was pretty proud of my daughters. I could overlook Harley’s cursing and other influences on the girls because I figured she needed the help. You don’t walk by Jesus when he’s hungry on the side of the road. You shouldn’t do it when someone else is either, right?

Heather says Laina’s quit guitar and never hangs out with Harley anymore. She says she doesn’t speak of her. And once, Faith told Heather that Harley “probably made the whole story up just to live with her grandmother.” Talk about a case of projection. This poor girl really was hurt by the people she trusted most. And then again by my daughters. It’s so shameful. I pray for Harley, every night.

You see, this isn’t just about me. This is about so many people. My daughters don’t realize how many lives they have impacted. The entire church community doesn’t know what to think. Half the women in the choir have quit. There’s no one to run the seventh grade CCD group. And now, there are those who give Heather sideways looks. I think about all the other real victims out there too—the kids who actually do go through this. Now that I know the process, I can’t imagine putting a child through the kind of interviews my daughters lied their way through. Something is wrong with this world. A lot of somethings. I wonder why it is that many of these victims’ fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins walk free, yet I’m in here. Is it because we ran out of money for the lawyers? Is God angry at me? What do I and my family need to learn?

I think I’d be more accepting of being in here if I didn’t know that there are real sickos—Slash, Tyler, Hunter, to name a few—on the street. I tell myself that God will handle this—all of it—come judgment day. It makes things easier. In fact, I’m starting to settle into the day- to-day life of prison. It’s really the same thing every day, wash, rinse, repeat. I stick to myself for the most part. The only guys who will really talk to me are the other sex offenders, and I can’t say I don’t feel the way about them that the others feel about me. I remind myself that God is the only judge. And maybe they are as innocent as I am. I’ve made one friend, Nick, who is also my cellmate. I’m trying to get him into the Bible, but so far it hasn’t worked. He’s not much of a reader. I tell him stories from the Bible using sports analogies to help him understand.

If I weren’t here on these charges, I think the guards would like me. They know I’m not going to be any trouble, and I never argue with them. I don’t see the point in making more trouble for myself, and I can’t imagine doing their jobs. It’s got to be difficult to voluntarily go to work every day in a place like this. We are really nothing but animals in cages. At least animals don’t insult you or each other. The things I hear guys here saying to the correctional officers are almost unforgivable.

Next week, I’ll have my law library pass. That means I’ll be able to start researching to help my lawyer find loopholes in this thing. I mean, there was no DNA evidence, so I still don’t understand how the jury could have convicted me. I want to get to work as soon as possible so we’re ready for the appeal. Had it not been for the girls’ convincing interviews with the forensic people, there’s no way I’d even be thinking about an appeal.

Heather and I spend a lot of time talking about what will happen when I get out of here. I just know that the appeal will work and that means I could be home by next year. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to parent Laina and Faith, knowing, but worse, them knowing, that at any moment they could scream “he touched me!” and start this process all over again. When I think of a kid like Harley, I understand why they have to be careful and take a child at his or her word. But I’m not sure how that translates legally. Because Laina and Faith are good actresses I get to rot in prison indefinitely?

I worry about how Heather’s going to keep up with bills without my income. I know there’s something she’s not telling me. It’s not like I’m not doing the same thing. She probably knows I don’t tell her everything that happens around here either. You can’t be married over thirty years and not notice when a person’s hiding something. Heather’s not one to hide things from me, but this is different. She probably doesn’t want to add stress to my already stressful situation. I would have to be in a coma not to realize that she’s not going to be able to hang on to the house for long. Sure, we have family and friends and people from the church helping. But you can’t take handouts forever. Once I get out, I’ll spend the rest of my life paying off every cent. If I get out. If there’s anything left.

For now, my job is mopping floors at night. They try to keep the sex offenders on different schedules than the rest of the population. It’s less risky, the less contact we have. I still have trouble calling myself that; sex offender. I also have to be realistic, though. It is what I’ve been convicted of. If this weren’t happening to me, I’d almost find it funny. Of my multitude of sins, this is one of the few I haven’t committed. Yet I’m here, doing time for it. It will follow me for the rest of my days. There’s not much I can do about it except try to find a way out of this, and more importantly, to forgive.

Chapter Six

Peace Offerings

Juliet

Maybe I watch too much TV. I mean, it’s always on in the background as I write my nightly case notes. The Learning Channel has had that show—
Breaking Amish
—or something like that, on for a couple of years now. If you know the show, you know exactly what I pictured when I first heard of the Nelson family. The referral made it sounds like there was this massive family, living high on a hill in this ridiculously remote town. I pictured no running water and children with dirty faces taking turns milking cows. In my mind, they wore long dresses and stopped their chores, including working an old-fashioned butter churn and working together to prepare meals, only long enough for prayer. There was no way these people had electricity and their religion had to be as far out there as those cults you hear about in Utah. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be assigned a case with nine—count them!—nine children. I wondered, had these people never heard of birth control? Or was it too far of a ride for the horse to make it to town to do anything close to family planning?

It’s funny now, and I’ve shared my first impressions with Heather since. “Oh, sure, you thought we were up here on the hill with our heads covered, avoiding mirrors,” she joked when I first confessed. For as much as the Nelson family is nothing like what I anticipated, it’s also a family like nothing I’ve ever experienced either. After nearly six months of working with them, I’m still learning new things and am a bit perplexed on how everything went down. I mean, it’s clear that something happened to those girls, but I don’t think any of us will ever understand exactly what.

I’m not new to this. I’ve been lied to, played with, even threatened. It goes with the territory, being a caseworker subcontracted through the Department of Youth and Family Services (DCYF). It’s gotten to the point where I barely talk about my job when I come home for Thanksgiving and other holidays. My mother can’t stomach the work I do and thinks I should wear a bulletproof vest to work every day. Every time she suggests it, I laugh inside. I can’t imagine showing up to clients’ houses with a bulky shield under my t-shirt. She’d be appalled that I wear a t-shirt to work, but might forgive me if it was covering that vest she’s sure I need. Maybe I shouldn’t laugh about it. A social worker in Vermont was killed just last week. She’d just taken a kid from the mother. I don’t know much about it. I try to avoid the news. What it means to me is more safety trainings and phone calls from Mom asking me when I’m going to quit my day job. The question’s always the same, just like its answer. “Julie, when are you finally going to let other people figure out their own problems and find yourself some peace?” she asks. “I find peace in helping other people, Mom,” I say.

What Mom—who only knows so much about the details of my job—also doesn’t understand is that after ten years in the field, the Nelson case is a new one on pretty much every level. Until I figure it out, I won’t have any peace at all. While I’m positive I won’t be needing a bulletproof vest for this case, I do wish I could bring a polygraph machine. This is the first time, in all my years helping kids who’ve survived sexual abuse, where I doubt the kids are telling me the truth in their allegations about Tom Nelson. Frankly, I don’t think anything happened between him and them at all—nothing inappropriate, I mean. This makes things a lot more complicated and challenging than I ever expected. They don’t teach you what to do if the kid is lying. So I’ve been winging it, and not particularly well.

It’s not exactly that I don’t believe Laina and Faith Nelson. It’s just that I’ve heard too much to believe them. There are no absolutes in this line of work, there just aren’t. I think one good way to explain it is like a trial. In human services, we don’t go in there with the idea of “innocent until proven guilty.” Truth be told, it’s more like “guilty until proven innocent.” If this was an actual trial and I were the judge, I’d throw the case out for lack of evidence. First of all, there is no DNA. Second, the kids are claiming Tom abused them years ago but are just coming forward now. This wouldn’t normally bother me. It happens all the time. We just put away a guy for fourteen years for sexual abuse he committed six years ago. Some kids take longer to come forward, that’s all. But in this case, I find it strange that the girls came forward after so long and claim that nothing recent has happened. It’s also odd that none of the other Nelson girls are afraid of Tom. Don’t you think? Sexual abuse doesn’t just stop out of the blue like that. Their stories would have a lot more credibility if they were saying something recent happened or other sisters were making similar allegations. More important than any of this, though, is that I’ve overheard things.

For example, last week, I was in the home, working overtime to convince Heather she has to take her daughters’ side, whether she believes them or not. Kids need to know their mother loves them; it’s that simple. She was talking about her anger and how it’s difficult to talk about a case that shouldn’t even exist. Because I’ve heard it all before, my mind started to drift and I could hear Laina and Faith in the other room. They were whispering. Now, you need to understand that the girls avoid me. They see me as authority and part of a system set up to make rules and keep them from their older boyfriends. I barely get a hello or goodbye from them during my weekly visits to the Nelson home. For this reason, their whispering intrigued me. I’ve been waiting months to get more out of them than mumbles. If this was how I had to get information, I figured, then this was good enough. The conversation went something like this, don’t quote me, it was garbled, and Jeremiah was running around like a maniac through most of it.

“You know there’s no way she’ll let you. She’s bitching about us right now to that lady again,” Faith said. “I wouldn’t even bother asking. Just do it and if you get caught, so what?”

“If I ask her, though, she can’t go calling—mumble, mumble—the stupid probation officer again. You know she looks for reasons to get us in trouble,” Laina responded.

“I hear ya, but if she does that, then fuck her. It’s not like we don’t have all the power here. What can she really do? Besides, your JPO loves you.”

Both girls giggled. “You’re—mumble—right. We just come up with more charges. And he did this—mumble, mumble—and this and this. She’ll never see him again.”

“Exactly! I’m sick of this,” Faith said.

That line, the one about power, still sticks with me. “It’s not like we don’t have all the power here.” Faith was the last one I’d have bet that would come from. Of the two of them, Faith is the one who looks most innocent. Laina makes her wild child side known, complete with piercings all over her face and burgundy purple hair. But Faith appears like a conservative, girl-next-door type. With her face always planted in a book, her silver wire reading glasses only add to the blameless appearance. Even now, I look at her, and think, she can’t be lying, can she?

The truth is that I want to believe them. It’s my job to help abused and neglected kids. But when you watch the other kids—Mary and Jeremiah, even Noelle and Jada—with their father, you know something is off. It’s not making my job or life very easy these days. In fact, my job would be a heck of a lot easier if I did believe them. I wish I could, really.

When Tom was charged and eventually found guilty, DCYF kept my agency on to work with the family. My assignment is to help Heather and the girls make peace with one another and finally figure out a way to work together as a family unit again. On the surface, it sounds easy. Normally it would be. A little family therapy, some role play activities, clear expectations and boundaries, a lot of talk therapy. A magic formula and presto, problem solved. Next? But this is different. This time, I can’t look myself in the mirror and look Heather in the eye with the things I’ve heard. Sure, I could pretend I thought he was guilty like everyone else, spread the magic potion, get in and get out. Trouble is, my heart won’t let me. How do you ask a mother to be okay with her daughters blatantly manipulating the system and destroying their own family for no other reason than to be “free” from typical—granted a little more strict than usual—parental rules? If you’re like me, you can’t.

Each week, I meet with Heather and try to be polite with the girls. I try to engage them in conversation and am generally met with cold stares or even dirty looks. Sometimes, when they are on their best behavior, they just ignore me. Faith sits with her battered arms crossed over her chest and Laina glares at me from across the kitchen table—one eye on the clock that Jeremiah made Heather for Christmas assisted by his father. Meetings usually consist of Heather eventually kicking the girls out of the kitchen and whispers of “how am I supposed to handle them?” and “they are so disrespectful to me, you should hear the names they called me today.” It’s taken time, but Heather and I have become unusually close. I love that she trusts me. I love that I can trust her too.

I thought I was making progress with Faith when she agreed to go to a private therapist. It took three months to set that appointment up. But on the day of the appointment, Faith told Heather that unless she allowed her to go visit Hunter at his mother’s house, she had zero intention of going to therapy at all. Laina hasn’t been different. With her, it was either Heather gave her $40 and a ride to the movies to meet undisclosed “they-aren’t-your-business” friends or there would be no more music lessons. I think we all can guess how that turned out. It’s too bad, really, because she was making great friends with a girl, Harley, who I know from another case. A girl who has real issues. But that’s another story. The only thing getting Laina to therapy now is a condition of probation for constantly sneaking out to meet her much older boyfriend. That guy reeks of trouble. I’m hoping it will help her, but I doubt it. I wish that therapist a lot of luck. She’ll need it.

I’ve tried to get them all around the same table. I’ve tried to do as DCYF workers are asking—“make the mother realize she needs to take her daughters’ side and defend them against their father”—and come up short every time. I can’t “make” someone believe something that I don’t believe myself. And I certainly can’t “talk sense into Mrs. Nelson, for God’s sake.” Frankly, I think Heather Nelson has more sense in her than all of the case managers combined. Had they taken the time to listen to her instead of making immediate judgment of her based on statistics, they might see what I’m seeing now. A little time in the Nelson house with Laina and Faith goes a long way in helping someone see the family dynamic.

At night, I try to put the case out of my mind. Most nights, it doesn’t work. Lately, I average three to four hours of sleep a night and that’s not helping my patience levels with the girls. I need to find a way to stay calm. I wish I could get into their heads and understand their thinking. There has to be some level of serious hurt or wound that would cause them to behave this way. If I could get at that, then we’d finally be getting somewhere.

I live in a tiny apartment with my cat, Oliver. I’m thankful for the silence when I get home at night. My biggest problem at home is keeping Oliver entertained. That, and how to pay my student loans. My current solution to this problem is to stack them—unopened—on the resin countertop. I’m thinking I won’t be able to do that for much longer. For now, it’s easier to be in denial than to face the credit dive, garnishments, and lawsuits certain to head my way. No one warned me that $77,000 in student loans would be virtually impossible to pay off in this line of work. There’s no rewinding. If I did have a remote control for my life, I’m not sure I’d hit the rewind button anyway. I try not to live with regrets.

I wonder if Laina and Faith regret what they’ve done. They aren’t sociopaths—at least, I hope not. I can’t say that diagnosis hasn’t been thrown around at clinical case meetings with my supervisors. I would imagine that when they are alone with their thoughts at night, there’s guilt there. They love their siblings. Anyone can see that. I sincerely enjoy watching Faith play quietly with Mary in the living room while Heather and I meet. I even saw Laina switch the rated R movie she was watching to a cartoon when Jeremiah walked in the room last week. What do they think about how their actions have impacted Jeremiah and Mary? Mary will barely remember life with a father. Jeremiah will continue to bounce off the walls, wondering if he’ll ever have his partner in crime back to shoot hoops in the driveway and build things with. He wasn’t able to do the cardboard boat race this year. He said it wasn’t the same without his dad. It’s disgusting.

People ask me all the time how I do the work I do. Normally, their disgust—and mine—comes from working with abusive parents. I spend my days driving from house to house, checking on parents who I know are guilty or who are covering up for the other parent, who is guilty. To me, that’s the same thing as being guilty. Some houses are better than others. I have a client, Sean, who I call “Face Plant.” I’ve named him this because nine times out of ten when I arrive at his house, he’s lying passed out with his face planted into the kitchen floor. He comes up with a variety of excuses for this behavior. My favorite is that he has to lie, passed out, on the floor at noon on a Monday because his back hurts. Lying this way and innocently falling asleep helps relieve the pressure on his back because “I’m staying sober, Julie, I swear.” I think it was 1998 the last time this guy passed a urine test. Contaminants from public restrooms, he swears. At least he’s not molesting children, I suppose. Regardless, he’ll never get his daughter back.