Cruel Harvest (2 page)

Mary Anne screamed again, louder this time. Her little voice echoed harshly through the night. It tore at my heart. A part of me regretted running off because I knew I was leaving that little girl behind. I could only hope that her mother would take care of her. For me, it was too late. I had to do it now. The decision had been made, and there was no turning back.

As her mother dragged Mary Anne back to the car where she had left the baby, I heard Daddy running behind me. I did not dare turn around but I was sure he was way too close. If he got his hands on me, I was finished. He was not a big man, but he was strong, especially when he was in a rage.

I was young enough to stay just ahead of him, jumping through the high snow. The muscles in my legs were burning like fire. As I finally reached the tree line and dove into the woods, the pine branches raked against my already cut forehead and arms. My blood left a faint red trail behind. I could only hope he couldn't see it.

Once in the shadows of the pine trees, I slowed down to catch my breath. My chest heaved, and I doubled over, trying to listen above the sound of my own breathing. My heart pounded in my ears. I couldn't hear him, but when I straightened up and looked through the canopy, I could see him. He stalked back and forth through the heavy drifts. When he got near the tree line, though, he hesitated. For some reason he did not plunge into the woods behind me. I don't know what made him stop, even to this day.

Standing still, staring out at him as he paced like a hungry lion, the cold seeped into my bones. I had to start moving, or I'd be in trouble. As quietly and as carefully as I could, I inched along the edge of the woods in what I hoped was the direction of the main road.

I stumbled. My foot hit something big buried in the snow, and I fell across a huge, old, hollowed tree lying on its side. The front of my dress ripped, and the splintered wood tore holes in my knees. To my ears, my fall sounded like an avalanche crashing down the side of a mountain. I was so sure he'd heard; I froze in my tracks. My exposed skin was pressed against the ice and the bark of the fallen tree. I listened, and what I heard froze me far deeper than any snow could.

“Get out here,
now
, or I'm gonna kill you,” he hollered.

He continued to pace. “Frances! I'm coming in there, and I'll find you! You hear me?”

I held my hand over my mouth, trying to hide the sound of my breathing. My entire body was shaking. I knew he was telling the truth.

Through the pine branches, by the rays of moonlight striking the side yard, I saw him stop his pacing. His arms hung by his side, limp. I swore he was looking right at me. I clenched my teeth together so they wouldn't chatter.

When he called out again, his voice had changed.

“Come on out now, Frances.” He spoke the way a man is supposed to speak to a child, maybe even a little too sweet. “Nothing is going to happen. Come on out now.”

That tone of voice made me feel the pain. My body was dangerously near frostbite already. My calf was stuck to the frozen wood and my heart could not stop hammering in my chest.

At the same time, that tone made me remember. He had made promises before. I thought about Mary Anne. She had changed so much since her mother had married him. When I first met her she was a funny, happy little girl, laughing and playful. Now, she barely spoke. I was leaving her behind, possibly to share in the terrors I had experienced in the past. I knew that, and I felt awful about it. But my choice had been made, no matter what voice he used. I knew it would only be worse if I turned back now.

As I watched, my eyes wide and brimming with freezing tears, he lunged toward the woods. Something kept him back. Lurching like a crazed animal, he started his pacing again. I could see his body tensing up, his hands balled into hard, pain-dealing fists. The past crashed down on me like a tidal wave. My doubts shattered.

Millie called out. “Come on, leave her out there. We gotta get going before somebody hears us.”

Then, while he continued to holler at me, he unbuckled his belt. Pulling it free from the loops, he lashed at the frozen tree branches.

“I'll kill you! I'll find you, just like I did last time. But this time I'll kill you! So help me God, you won't get away from me!”

It wasn't an idle threat. No matter how much I had hoped for help, it was not on the way. I was a migrant child, alone. I could disappear, and no one would know the difference. The rest of my family had escaped. I was the last one under Daddy's power. And no matter what, I would break free or die trying.

Chapter 1
Family

When I was
nine years old, Daddy abducted me from an orphanage in South Carolina. It was 1958, and he had just escaped from a California prison where he had been serving a sentence for raping my oldest sister, Brenda, and attempting to murder my mother. For years he abused me in every way he could. At one point, my family consisted of two parents, three sisters, and two brothers. By the time I was fourteen years old, they had all escaped one way or another. Everyone but me.

My decision to write down my story began with my husband's encouragement. He felt I could help others as well as myself by public speaking. I started slowly, revealing intimate details at speaking engagements with the hope that my life would help others. I was amazed when hundreds of people, every place I went, wanted to hear more. After a few years of traveling, speaking at churches, prisons, women's meetings, rehabilitation clinics, and orphanages, sharing my story with the audience and talking to men and women who had gone through similar experiences, I was certain he was right. Many men, women, and even children had never discussed their abuse before. I experienced how hearing what I went through helped people work out the troubles in their own lives. This is why I want to tell about these events in such detail—why I don't want to hold back. It's the beginning of healing for others.

One day, my husband, Wayne, drove me to a doctor's appointment. It was a nice spring day, so he decided to sit in the car and wait for me. When we left the house, he had grabbed my writings off the table and brought them with him to read. Why he chose to do that, I am not sure, but I found it touching that he cared enough to read my words again for at least the third time. He's a quiet man, polite and gentle in his ways, tall and handsome in my eyes. Meeting him is one of the many amazing blessings I have been awarded in my life.

Wayne began to read when I got out of the car.

“Wow, Honey. Are you going to read that again?” I asked, smiling down at him.

“It'll give me something to do while I wait,” he said, glancing through it and smiling as I shut the door.

I left Wayne and attended to my appointment. I cannot even remember what I was there for. What I can remember is walking back out to our car and finding Wayne, still sitting in the same place I had left him, with tears rolling down his cheeks. He turned and looked at me when I got in the car and closed the door.

“Are you crying because of what you read?” I asked.

Wayne didn't say anything. I slid into my seat and gave him a hug. We sat together in the parking lot as tears ran down his face.

“Don't worry about it, Honey,” I whispered softly. “That was a long time ago.”

Wayne smiled, but there was determination behind his eyes. I could tell he had made a decision, and that he was up to something.

I had lived
my adult life without any family other than my two children and Wayne. I remember wishing I could be like everyone else and have brothers and sisters and parents. I would have settled for a great aunt. When Christmas or other holidays came around, I celebrated, but there was always something missing. It was almost as if my family had not existed; as if they had become just what I feared they would—a story.

Wayne had siblings, aunts, uncles, and a mother and father, and they treated me with kindness. I was happy for him. Still it made me sad to see the family pictures he had hanging up all over our house. It was so different for me. I had forgotten what my sisters looked like.

Wayne knew how I felt, and on his own he decided to do something to grant my wish. He decided to find my family. A few weeks after my doctor's appointment, he came to me with a phone number for my sister Brenda. I had not seen her in almost forty years.

Making the call was very difficult. I didn't know what to expect. Maybe, I thought, she'd want to leave the past dead and buried. I couldn't blame her for that. But instead, she invited Wayne and me to her home for Thanksgiving dinner.

We arrived at
Brenda's home in Mobile, Alabama, and were welcomed with hugs and tears from her children and grandchildren. They had a beautiful home, full of laughter and life; Brenda was raising three of her grandchildren. When I first walked in the door, the aroma of turkey, stuffing, pies, and gingerbread was like a fantasy come true for me. I felt at home, as our childhood home should have been.

Her kitchen was warm and cozy even though it was open to the rest of the house. The cabinets were cherrywood, and she had white, starched-lace doilies on the top shelves. An antique butter churn stood beside an old milking stool, and a large Raggedy Ann doll sat on the stool. Brenda stood on the tile floor by the stove in her bare feet. When I walked into the kitchen and saw her for the first time in decades, she had a spatula in her hand and wore a wide, white apron, folded and tied around her middle. “Hello, Sissie.” I whispered the nickname I had grown up calling her. She crossed the kitchen floor in two strides and wrapped her arms around me. We hugged, and I felt I had found peace. It was what I dreamed coming home would feel like.

I stared at my sister, taking her in as if she were the embodiment of the years I'd lost. She hadn't changed that much. Her sweet face was still very pretty, but now she had gray hair with touches of silver. She had gained some weight, which made me think about our hunger as children.

We pulled up chairs to the kitchen table and began catching up with each other and sharing our life events. All around us, her children and their spouses, her grandchildren, my husband, and people I didn't know yet filed through a buffet line she had set up on her long kitchen counter, filling their plates with baked ham, roast turkey, cornbread stuffing, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, apple dumplings, and corn on the cob. Brenda loves to cook, and she loves to see people eat. Children crowded around the table with their plates filled, others wandered off to the dining room, and some took their food to the family room. All the while, Brenda waited to eat until everyone in the house had settled.

As we sat with our plates, talking just loud enough to be heard, a young man came to the back door of Brenda's house. He seemed to be in his early twenties—a good-looking boy. He walked right into the kitchen without knocking.

“Do you have any eggs we can borrow?” he asked. He opened her refrigerator and started gathering what he wanted as though it happened all the time.

Brenda stood up and introduced me to her young neighbor and invited him and his wife to come and eat with us. He politely declined, saying they would stop by later. She handed him a bowl for the eggs, they exchanged a few kind words, and the boy walked back out of the house. Awhile later, someone else came by to borrow another Thanksgiving ingredient. I leaned over to one of Brenda's daughters, my niece.

“It's like she's running a grocery store,” I said, smiling.

I laughed and chatted with my sister and her family, and Brenda held my hand, but I noticed she never laughed herself. Although she was kind, she didn't seem happy, and she never really smiled with her eyes. I was bubbling over with pure delight, but there was a somber air about Brenda, even as she served and comforted everyone else. I could tell she was happy to see me, but it never showed in her face. She just never let loose a single chuckle. I avoided the subject of the past; it seemed that she had been scarred so badly and affected in a way far deeper than I could ever know.

Still, watching Brenda share with everyone deeply touched me. Later that night, while I was still thinking about Brenda's kindness, I bumped into one of her sons while getting some tea from the refrigerator. After looking at me for a second, my nephew said, “I've never seen my mama smile the way you do. I've never seen her look happy.”

There was no way to tell how much he already knew. I determined that was up to his mom to decide, so I vaguely referred to the tough childhood she'd endured and led him back to the family. We talked the night away on happier subjects.

Time flew by. I can honestly say that up to that point, it was like nothing I had experienced before. On that night I felt the first inkling of being part of something bigger. The feeling only grew as family members sleepily peeled off to go to bed. In the end, it was just Brenda and me at the dining room table. Although her voice was gentle and sweet, she still did not smile.

“You remember that train?” Brenda asked.

I shuddered. The memory sent a chill through me. I shifted in my seat and nodded.

“You were so afraid of the trains.” Brenda almost whispered, as though unsure of how I would react.

I remembered. I did
not
want to talk about it, but I didn't want to interrupt or be disrespectful to my sister either. I had succeeded in shutting out many of the horrid, mind-numbing memories and could finally fall asleep without waking up screaming. Many of the memories had faded into the past; a part of my mind let me pretend it was a dream. I sure didn't want to bring them back up.