Finding Me (13 page)

“Shut up!” he yelled.

“Just let me go! Let me see my son!” I cried.

“Why should I do anything for your kid?” he said, holding me down.

“Because I’m your daughter’s friend!” I said, trying to get him to listen to me.

“She’ll hate me if she finds out what I’ve done,” he said. Then he put his big hand over my mouth and kept abusing me. He was so heavy and I was so small; I didn’t stand a chance of pushing him off of me.

When it was over, he started talking—a whole lot more than he ever talked down in the basement. He laid his heavy body across the mattress and got so close to me, I could feel his bad breath on my face. I was thinking,
Dude—I’m not your woman!
That was the craziest thing about the idiot: one minute he was smacking me in the head or forcing me to do horrible things; the next minute he was acting like we were great friends or I was his girlfriend or something.

“You know, I used to get beat up by black kids all the time,” he told me. I tried to tune him out, but it was kinda hard to do when he was two inches from my face. “They made fun of me because I was chunky. A group of them beat me up and dunked my face in the toilet.”

He went on and on about how much he couldn’t stand black people. How he used to have a girlfriend after his wife left him. How people had done all this horrible sexual stuff to him when he was young. How much he loved to watch porn whenever he got the chance. How he loved looking at blonde girls.

“I wish I had gotten to that little JonBenet Ramsey first,” he said. “If some other bastard didn’t get her first, that coulda been me.” He smiled, and I wanted to punch him right in the teeth.

Another time he made the same kind of nasty comment about Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted just two months before I was, in the summer of 2002. “I know—I’m a sick man,” he said. “I hate the way I am.”

“Then why are you doing what you’re doing?” My voice was shaky. “Just because somebody did something bad to you doesn’t mean you can turn around and do bad things to other people.”

He was quiet for a minute before he said, “I can’t help myself. I have to hurt you.”

“You are sick,” I said. Seeing him frown, I added, “But there’s help for people like you. Why don’t you let me go so you can get some help? I won’t tell anyone you took me. Just let me go, and we can forget this ever happened.”

For a minute he seemed to be thinking about it. I held my breath. Then he frowned, and my heart sank. “I can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re gonna have to stay with me for a while.”

I began to cry. “All I want to do is go back to Joey!” I begged him. “He’s only two years old—I know he’s missing me! Can’t you just let me go?”

He paused for a long time, and I hoped against hope that he had a shred of humanity in him. “Don’t cry,” he said finally. “You’re not supposed to be sad. I want you to be happy here with me. We’re supposed to be a family.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This warped dude had kidnapped me, beat me, and raped me every day—and he expected us to be a
family?
I knew he wasn’t just sick; he was a total psycho. He was living in his own fantasy world—and I had to find a way out of it. I tried to pretend like I was falling asleep so he would leave the room. He passed out with his heavy, hairy arm draped across my middle and started snoring. Slowly I tried to wiggle the chains to see if they’d give a little, but every time I moved an inch, he’d grunt and grip me tighter.

Finally, in the afternoon, he woke up. “Don’t even think about screaming, or I will come up here and shoot you,” he said as he walked out.

Oh my God—he has a gun
. He slammed the door, and after a while I heard his truck leaving.

I sat up on the mattress and looked at the two locks on my chains. One was a combination lock, and the other one was a padlock that opened with a key. I’d tried many times before in the basement, but I thought maybe today I could get the combination lock open. I twisted the knob, trying different combinations of numbers: Joey’s birthday. My birthday. Random numbers. I pulled real hard on the handle each time, but nothing worked.

After another hour of fiddling with the lock, I looked out the window to see the sun going down. That’s when I started praying—and I prayed harder than I have ever prayed in my life. “God, please help me to get away from this nut,” I said with tears running down my face. “I really need you to get me out of this house. I need to see my son again. Please, God. Please.” I said that same prayer over and over again until the sky went pitch-black, and finally I fell asleep.

In the morning the sound of the dude’s boots on the stairs woke me up. When he opened the door, he was holding a hammer and some nails. He pulled a sandwich in a yellow wrapper from his pocket. Then he handed me the sandwich and stomped back downstairs. I gobbled it down, dreading whatever he was planning next. What was he going to do with the tools? Did he have some new torture planned for me? I heard him coming back up the stairs, more slowly this time. He grunted and pushed into the room holding a stack of boards, which he dumped onto the floor. Something was making his back pocket bulge. Suddenly I was covered in cold sweat.

“What are those for?” I asked in a wobbly voice.
Is he building a coffin for me?
Is that bulge in his back pocket the gun?

He smiled a sick smile at me and reached his hand back to his pocket. Right then and there, I knew I was going to die.

Please God, let Joey know that I loved him. Let him know I never stopped thinking about him. That he was the light of my life …

The dude pulled something out of his pocket; I saw the flash of gunmetal in his hand.
Oh my God, here it comes … God, I’m going to die …

He pointed the gun right at me. It took a full minute before I realized that it was a cordless drill.

“You’re gonna help me board up all these windows,” he said. “Pick up one of them boards and hold it so I can make some holes.”

I was weak with relief that he wasn’t planning to shoot me. He unlocked the chains, then made me help him board up all the windows on the second floor. There was the pink room where he’d first hung me up, and the white room through a connecting door. There were also two other rooms across the hall: another pink room, and a blue one. In each room he forced me to hold up the boards while he drilled holes in them and hammered them in place with long nails. After it was all done, he moved me into the blue room. With a sinking heart I realized he was building a prison—and he was making extra sure I could never get out of it.

I
HAD
BEEN
LOCKED
UP
in the blue room for couple of weeks when I started talking to Joey again. By my count, I was pretty sure it was at least Thanksgiving, and maybe even early December; that meant Christmas was just around the corner. It didn’t seem like the bastard was anywhere close to letting me go like he said he would; as a matter of fact, he had never brought that up again. Instead, one day he told me, “I’ll let you go after I get two other girls.” He checked my chains and went down the stairs.

Oh my God,
I thought.
He’s planning to kidnap someone else!
I hoped he’d get caught in the act, arrested, and locked away. But then the thought occurred to me: Would anyone ever find me if he got put in prison? Would I die here, wasting away in this upstairs bedroom? Would they find me a year from now, a decaying carcass wrapped in chains? Would they ever figure out who I was? I wondered what he’d done with my bag. Would they even be able to identify my body? I was sure he’d gotten rid of my wallet with my ID and the baby picture of Joey in it.

I tried to get myself together. Because it didn’t look like I was going to be set free anytime soon, I tried to do whatever I could to fill the hours. I thought about the day I saw Joey take his first steps. At eleven months, he’d been toddling around the house holding onto the edges of tables and chairs, and I’d walk him around and around holding onto his hand. He’d sit on the floor and bounce on his bottom, like he was practicing standing up. One afternoon I was sitting in a chair as he was bouncing like that.

“Come on, Joey! You can do it! Come to Mommy!” I called out.

With a big smile, his two little front teeth showing, he stood up and took a step toward me. Then another. I held my breath, not wanting to say anything that would distract him. He took two more fast steps, and then he sat down on his bottom, padded by his diaper. His little face looked surprised, then he burst into tears.

I scooped him up into my arms. “You did it, huggy bear! You took your first steps!” I said as I hugged him. He stopped crying and looked at me, his eyelashes wet from his tears. His big brown eyes were such a beautiful color.

“That was great!” I said. “You know what, you’re gonna be an incredible soccer player! I’m gonna get you a soccer ball this year!”

Suddenly a shadow filled the doorway. The dude walked in, and I realized I’d been speaking out loud. “Who the hell are you talking to?” he shouted.

“Joey,” I said. “I talk to him every day.”

He looked at me like I was out of my mind. “You’re a crazy little slut, aren’t you?” he said.
If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black,
I thought. “Stop talking to people who ain’t there,” he added.

That’s when an idea popped into my head. “Well, if you finally got me the puppy you promised me,” I told him, “I wouldn’t have to talk to Joey.”

Every chance I got I reminded him that he’d brought me to his house the first time because he said he had a puppy. I thought that at least if I had a dog, it would help me pass the endless hours I spent chained up with just the four blue walls for company, the windows boarded up so I couldn’t even see a bird flying or clouds drifting past outside.

My little trick worked—in two ways. A few days later the dude put a small, old radio on the mattress and plugged it into the wall. “I know you get bored,” he said, “so you can listen to this thing sometimes. But don’t play it too loud, or I’ll take it away. And no listening to music from niggers.”

I was almost too excited to pay attention to his stupid rules—I had my own radio! Do you know what it’s like not to hear music for months? Or human voices, other than the dude’s—and he didn’t really count as a human being. I turned the volume real low and went through every station. I finally got it on the one that was always my favorite—97.1 FM. The only thing I wished was that I could dance around the room for exercise. But the chains were too tight for that. It was even hard to use the bucket that was right next to the mattress.

Not even a whole week after that I got another huge surprise. The dude showed up in my room with a cardboard box. In it I heard whimpering. It was a puppy!

“Here. He’s yours,” he told me as he set the box on the floor next to the mattress. He actually seemed happy when he gave it to me—like he was giving a dog to his daughter or something. A little brown and white pit bull jumped up onto the side of the cardboard. “Just make sure you only let him take a dump inside the box,” he said.

I fell for that little dog from his very first yip. I named him Lobo, because he was low to the ground. He was a little shorty like me! I taught him how to go potty right in the box. Whenever the dude came upstairs, he brought a plastic bag with him so he could scoop up some of Lobo’s poop and take it outside. A lot of times he took Lobo out to let him poop and then left him chained in the yard while he came back in and raped me. To be honest, he cleaned up after the dog more than he cleaned up after me—he hardly ever even took out my bucket! The room smelled like a cesspool. But once I had the puppy, I didn’t notice it as much. Every night Lobo curled up right beside me and we fell asleep together.

I loved that dog with all of my heart. Having him in that room with me brightened up my days so much. He’d snuffle in my ear and lick my face in the morning when he woke up, and I’d put him in his box so he could pee. Then I’d take him out and hold him in my lap, rubbing his silky ears as he stared up at me, like he adored me. I’d tell Lobo everything we were going to do that day; it didn’t matter to him if we never actually got to do any of it.

“Hey, Lobo,” I’d whisper, not wanting the dude to hear me from downstairs. “We’re finally gonna go for a walk today! I’m going to take you out for a nice stroll around the neighborhood. I’ll put you on a leash so you don’t chase any squirrels or get hit by a car. I’m going to teach you how to walk proper on a leash. Then we’ll stop by my cousin Lisa’s …”

Here, I paused. Was my family looking for me, or had they given up? What were Eddie and Freddie doing now? They had moved out of my mother’s house by the time I left; I wondered if they were still even in Cleveland at this point. Wherever they were, I felt sure they must miss me. Lobo gazed up into my face, looking worried. I swear that dog knew everything I was feeling. I could tell he felt sad when I cried and happy when I smiled.

“It’s okay, boy,” I said, stroking his head. “I’m all right. We’ll go for that walk a little bit later,” I said as I heard footsteps stomping up the steps. “You’d better go back in now,” I said, quickly lifting him and putting him in the box.