A Stolen Life (12 page)

The driving seems endless. How long have we been driving? What time is it? When we left it was just getting dark, but now it’s completely dark especially under the seat. I must have fallen asleep, for when I wake the van has stopped. He helps me to get out. He has to pull me out a bit because I am so stiff from being in the same position for so long. What a relief it is to be out from under the seat. It’s still dark out. We are standing in front of a house trailer. I keep my head down as we go in. The steps are
really steep. There is a couch in the living room he says I can sit there. I sit and he and Nancy check out the rest of the place. He comes back and asks if I need anything. I ask where we are. And he says this trailer used to belong to a friend named Virginia. She died and left it to him. I say I really need to use the bathroom. My bladder can’t hold much since I’ve been pregnant. I follow him to an actual bathroom! What joy! I haven’t used an actually flushing toilet in so long! And a sink with running water to wash my hands! I come out and he says I should go back to the couch. I want to explore! Explore an actual house—it’s been so long! I can see a kitchen and there are bedrooms in the back. But I go sit on the couch. I ask for some water and Nancy gets it for me. Phillip says that we are going to stay the night here because the house isn’t safe. I wonder what’s going on in the house. Are there people in the back going through my stuff? I wonder what’s going on. Phillip locks the front door and says I can sleep on the couch and he and Nancy will be in the back bedroom. It takes a while to fall asleep with all the questions in my head, but I must eventually because when I wake it is morning and Phillip and Nancy are talking in the kitchen. They must have been waiting for me to get up. When I do, they say they are going to leave me here for a few hours so that they can check out the house and get some food for me. He says I can get up to go to the bathroom, but it would be much better for me to just stay on the couch and sleep. He told me that everything would be okay and for me not to be scared because he would come back. I was so scared he wouldn’t return for me and just leave me here forever by myself. What would I do all by myself and pregnant? I start to cry. I tell him I don’t want to stay alone, that I am scared something would
happen. He continued to say he had to go make sure the house was okay and he and Nancy would be back with something good to eat. So he and Nancy left and I heard the click of the lock. I tried to fall asleep but sleep would not come. I finally got up to go to the bathroom. I thought to myself, Since I’m up I might as well check out the rest of the place. I know he told me not to, but what harm could a little peek make? I tiptoe down the hall and think to myself, What if he finds out? He knows so many things. What if he knows I looked around? Curiosity has gotten the better of me. The first room all the way down the hall is a pretty good size, but all that it contains is a mattress on the floor. There’s another room across from the bathroom. It looks like a screened-in porch. It would be so nice to have this as a room for me and the baby one day. Phillip says he is going to try to find a way to get this into the backyard so we can use it. We would have a bathroom and a full kitchen! Oh my God, it would be so wonderful. I hope he can find a way to do it. I walk back into the living room. All the furniture in here looks so old and dusty. The kitchen is pretty nice, though. I open the refrigerator and dream about actually being able to use this every day. Always to have food available, what a joy that would be! I finally settle back on the couch and fall asleep. When I wake it is to the sound of the door opening. I get scared for a minute. What if it’s not them? But it is and I am so happy to see them. They have brought chili beans. Nancy heats them up on the stove and fixes me a bowl with a flour tortilla to go with it. Phillip says that it is now safe to go back home but not until it gets dark outside. They go in the back to take a nap and I stay on the couch and wait. I’m in my mind, thinking about what my life used to be like. Reliving
memories is one of the ways I keep my past alive inside. I don’t want to forget my family back home. I fear that one day I won’t remember what my mom looks like. Already her image is fading from my mind. Soon night comes and Phil is ready to go but seems on edge again. He says he thinks it best if we drive around some more before we go home. I just want to go home. What’s going on that he thinks we can’t? Again he doesn’t answer. I get back in the van and under the seat. After the first time I know what to expect down here, but that doesn’t make it any easier. After a while of driving I start to feel really sick. I call out to them and tell them I feel like I’m going to throw up. Phillip pulls over, and Nancy comes to the back with a plastic bag. They tell me to hold on awhile longer. I try but the movement of the car brings my lunch of beans right up. The bag is too small to contain all the beans. I’m at a very bad angle to be throwing up and I don’t have much room to maneuver. Throwing up does make me feel better, but now I have to lay in this awful disgusting mess. Finally Phillip announces that we are home. Nancy comes to the back and takes the bag and cleans up the rest of the puke from the carpet. Then I come out with a sheepish grin on my face and say, “I’m really sorry.” I am thinking, Hey, it’s not my fault. I don’t see why we were driving in the first place. But of course I say nothing of the sort, I wouldn’t talk back to him like that. I am glad we are home. I get cleaned up and change my clothes and go to bed in my own bed. Phillip says that whatever was going on has passed and there’s nothing to worry about for now.

I still don’t know what to make of that day. I was just glad when it was over. I’ve always thought I am a go-with-the-flow kind of person. My mom says that my nickname was “the Bull” when I was little, but I don’t remember that. She says I was real stubborn when it came to something I really wanted; that I would dig my heels in and be very persistent about whatever it was. I never thought of myself as stubborn, but looking back I can see some instances where that would fit me. In the beginning I asked a lot of questions about everything. I think I was always an inquisitive person. I learned when to back off with the questioning early on with Phillip. Sometimes not asking questions made things easier. Phillip’s verbal abuse was very effective. Although I would have liked some direct answers to my questions, I learned to not question too much because the answer I got would be lengthy and in the end make me forget the question in the first place. The fact is, I do have many questions such as: Whose trailer were we using that night? What did he think he was hearing? What really happened to the person that lived there? I might never know the answers to these questions.

I
’m watching many baby shows to prepare myself to take care of a baby. Phillip started watching a lot of child care shows, too. He especially likes a gentleman on TLC; I can’t remember his name, though. He has rented birthing videos from the library and watched them with me. It looks pretty scary, but he said he could do it and nothing would go wrong.

Every day seems to melt into the next. I don’t know what is going to happen. All the preparation seems to melt away and I have no recollection of the day-to-day activities I did to prepare for an infant’s arrival. Phillip moved me next door to what he calls “next door.” I have a bed and dresser and my own TV. This afternoon as I was watching
Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman
—it’s one of my favorite shows to watch—I have been having sharp pains all day, but I didn’t really think anything of it
this morning; I have been in pain before. But this pain seemed different and started to get so severe by afternoon I couldn’t even move. Is this what it feels like to have a baby? I wish I wasn’t alone. I am so scared! No one has come to check on me all day and the door was still locked, so I have to wait until someone comes.

Nancy finally comes in around five p.m. She sees me hunched over in pain. She goes to get Phillip and he asks me all kinds of questions like, how long do the contractions last and that sort of thing while Nancy goes to get all the stuff they need, like towels and hot water. Phillip reminds me about the birthing videos and reassures me that he knows what to do. Nancy is a nurse’s aide. I don’t have anyone else.

The contractions last into the night. I twist and turn and try to find a comfortable position, but nothing helps. It is late by the time my water finally breaks. At first I thought I had peed myself. I tell Phillip and he thinks it won’t be long now. When my water broke I felt an instant of relief from the constant pressure I had been feeling for months as the baby grew inside of me. The pressure returned after that when it was time for me to push. I have never been in so much pain in my life. Phillip tells me I need to push now. It seems like it is taking forever and the baby is still not coming. He feels inside and discovers the cord is around the baby’s neck and is preventing the baby from coming out. He uses his finger to pull the cord away slightly and the next push is successful! Nancy takes her and gets her cleaned up. I still had the placenta to push out. That seems to take forever, too. After that they gave her to me to hold for the first time and cleaned up all the mess and changed
my sheets. I am exhausted and all I want to do is go to sleep. I nurse her for the first time, which feels very strange to me and then we both went to sleep. My baby girl came into the world at 4:35 a.m., August 18, 1994. I am fourteen years old and very, very scared.

Recounting that day, I can’t believe that was me that went through this. I can’t imagine ever going through something like this again by myself. Obviously, I didn’t have a choice with the second pregnancy either. How did I not just go insane with worry? How do you get through things you don’t want to do? You just do. I did it because that was the only thing I could do. I would do it all again. The most precious thing in the world came out of it … my daughters.

I’m not sure why Phillip chose the name he did for my first daughter, which later in his delusional thinking began to symbolize the powerful spirit forces that controlled his mind. I have my own reason for not protesting the name she was given. To me her name symbolizes everything good in the universe. It encompasses my old beliefs and helped me hold on to those beliefs even when I was hit the hardest with his “angel theory.” I don’t think of myself as a religious person. Even with all the many hours Phillip insisted we sit and listen to his interpretation of the Bible, I still don’t really know if I believe in the Bible at all. When I was little, before I was taken away by Phillip, one of my favorite things to collect were these figures called “Precious Moments.” They came in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and each one had a unique quote on a locket necklace. I received a Guardian Angel Precious Moment for my ninth birthday. I kept it in its stand atop my dresser.