Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (23 page)

May 28, 2010: Ice Cream Truck

Amanda

We hear the ice cream truck again.

“I want to go get ice cream! Please! I want to go see the ice cream truck!” Joce keeps asking over and over.

“You have to ask Daddy,” I tell her quietly.

Joce had been with him in the living room last summer when she asked him about the music she heard outside. He pulled back the curtain and pointed to the brightly colored truck and told her about the man who sells ice cream cones and Popsicles. But he didn’t take her out to get one because he didn’t want the neighbors asking questions.

So she stood inside watching a girl get ice cream until he closed the curtains. Then she gave a little wave and said, “Bye-bye, little girl! Bye-bye, ice cream truck!”

She never forgot that music and now, whenever she hears it, she starts jumping around and begging to go out. But he always has an excuse.

She’s starting to get restless in this house. He began taking her outside last year when the next-door neighbors moved away. He told me I could watch from inside the back door when he took her onto the driveway. I cried as I saw the sun touch my baby’s face for the first time. She was two and a half years old.

Now she’s always asking to go outside. Sometimes he lets her ride her tricycle or run around near him when he works on his cars in the backyard. She copies everything he does, even pretending to shave. I’m worried about her copying too much from him and tell him not to say bad words around her. And I want to make sure that she says “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me,” things he never does.

She’s learned that if she wants to go out she has to get his permission, not mine. Even if she wants to leave our bedroom and go downstairs, she knows we have to wait for Daddy to unlock our door.

Now she’s trying to be patient, waiting for him to come upstairs so she can ask him about the ice cream truck. It’s probably on the other side of Cleveland by the time he finally climbs the stairs and unlocks our door. As soon as she hears his footsteps, she starts jumping around the room.

“Daddy, Daddy, I want to go out and get some ice cream!” She’s begging him.

“No, Pretty,” he says. “We can’t go out right now. Maybe later.”

June 18, 2010: Emily’s Baby

Amanda

He’s taking a bath when he says he wants to tell me something.

“Is it bad?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, “and you have to promise not to hold it against me.”

This can’t be good. He’s never said anything like that before. And what could he possibly tell me that I would hold against him more than kidnapping me for seven years?

“Okay, I promise. What is it?”

“It’s my daughter Emily,” he says. “She sliced her baby’s neck and tried to kill herself.”

“Is the baby alive?” I ask. How could Emily have done that?

“Yeah,” he answers. “She’s okay. It happened a while ago, but now Emily is going to prison for twenty-five years.”
*

He’s told me before that Emily’s had lots of problems with depression and mental illness. But I can’t believe she would do something like this.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I can’t think of anything else.

“Maybe this is God’s way of punishing me for doing this to you guys,” he says.

He thinks everything is about him.

August 4, 2010: Police Next Door

Amanda

It’s ninety degrees. He’s outside working on his motorcycles, and Jocelyn is next to him playing with the dogs. Gina and Michelle and I are sitting in the little room off the kitchen, near the back door, which is open. This is as close as he’ll let us get to fresh air on this hot day. Even though we’re inside, he still makes us wear disguises—hats and wigs and sunglasses—just in case someone can see us in the doorway.

Suddenly he’s hurrying back in with Jocelyn, warning us, “Be quiet!”

Over his shoulder, in the yard next door, I can see a bunch of cops with their guns drawn. It looks like they’re raiding the neighbor’s house.

Standing in the doorway, blocking us with his body, he calls out, “What’s going on, Officer?” He wants to seem like he has nothing to hide. He’s too smart to rush inside and shut the door, in case that looks suspicious.

We’re so close to the police. They’re just over the fence. I think about screaming, but he’s right next to me. I’ve never seen him so nervous, and it terrifies me. I’m paralyzed.

Gina

I’m in a long black wig and sunglasses when he comes in and tells us all to be quiet. From where I’m sitting, I can’t make out what’s going on out in the yard, but I can see that he looks scared.

“Shut up and go upstairs—NOW!” he orders. “And don’t make any noise!”

As we run upstairs to our rooms I ask Amanda, “What’s going on?”

“There are police in the yard,” she says.

I wish I had known. Maybe I would have screamed. But then again, maybe not. If I had tried to yell and it didn’t work, I don’t know what he might have done. I don’t need any more punishment from him.

November 19, 2010: Slap

Gina

He brings home a couple of packages of sliced ham from his mother’s house. The expiration date has passed, and she told him it was too old to eat, but of course he thinks it’s fine for us. I heat up the meat in one of the bags, and it’s actually okay.

When he comes back into the kitchen I ask him, “Do you want me to cook the second bag?”

“Where’s the first bag, dumbass?”

I’m sick of being called “dumbass” and “retard.” I’m sick of him calling me
prima
, which means “cousin” in Spanish, because I’m not related to him. And he’s always pushing and poking me, shoving me and touching me. He loves to smack me with whatever’s in his hand, like a newspaper or the cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper. He’s like a fly that keeps landing on me that I’m not allowed to swat. He thinks it’s funny, but he’s pushing me over the edge. Being called “dumbass” again finally makes me snap.

“I cooked it, dumbass!” I shout at him, surprising even myself.

He slaps me in the face. And then I shock myself at what I do next: I smack him hard in the face with the bag of ham, and the slices fly all over the floor. He grabs my wrist and slaps me harder in the face. This time it really hurts.

“You have to learn not to talk back to your elders,” he says.

“I don’t care how old you are,” I answer.

“The next time you do that,” he warns me, “I’m going to punch you in the face. Now pick up that ham and cook it.”

I take the ham from the floor and wipe away the dirt before I throw it in the pan. I’m smiling to myself. My face stings, but it felt so good to hit him. I’ve been dreaming about doing that for six years.

Christmas 2010: Nothing Normal

Amanda

“Look at the camera, Pretty. Over here!”

He’s standing in the corner of the living room shooting video. On special occasions when Jocelyn is all dressed up, like today, he gets out his old video camera and films her.

Joce is a little confused about where she is supposed to look, then covers the lens with her fingers, and we both laugh.

The living room is usually dark, but he put up a six-foot white artificial Christmas tree with blinking white lights, and a disco ball that casts multicolor reflections all over the room. He brought Joce a birthday cake with coconut frosting, and we decorated it with little candy canes and four candles on top. He went crazy buying candy and snacks. We put Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Tic Tacs, Oreos, and cheese puffs out beside the cake.

I’ve tried to focus on making this the best birthday party ever for Jocelyn and I have to admit, he has been a big help. He bought her a lot of toys and even got me wrapping paper.

We sing “Happy Birthday” to her, and she blows out the candles.

“Are you ready to open your presents?” I ask her as he keeps filming.

“Yes!” she says, and runs over to start ripping the wrapping paper off the old cardboard box that we filled with presents. She pulls out a big coloring book.

“Look, Daddy!” she says, walking it over to him and holding it up for the camera.

Then she takes out a box of graham cracker treats.

“Look, Daddy!”

She likes this game of showing all her presents to the camera and finds some Barbie clothes, a paint set, and some treats.

“What do you have there, my love?” he asks her. “What is that, strawberry granola bars?”

She walks back and forth from the present box to the camera, showing him her Elmo book, and her VTech V reader, a small toy computer that helps kids learn to read.

“Put on your Santa hat,” he says, and she does.

Gina and Michelle are watching from behind him. He doesn’t allow them to be on camera, and he usually doesn’t allow my face to be on, either, but he’s in such a good mood today I guess he doesn’t care.

“Pretty! I love you, my love!” he says. “Birthday girl!”

He walks around with the camera and focuses in on family photos on the walls. There’s one of his four kids, and another one of his grandkids.

I get a knife to cut the cake, but I should have known better.

“Go put that knife away,” he snaps.

He is obsessive about knives—but does he really think I’m going to stab him in front of Jocelyn? There have been so many times when I’ve wanted to kill him, but right now is not one of those moments.

He hands me the camera and he sits on the chair with Jocelyn in his lap eating an ice cream sandwich. He’s wearing a black fedora hat and the red long johns that he gave me to wear right after Jocelyn was born. He’s smiling and snapping his fingers to “Feliz Navidad” on the radio.

Then they both sing along with José Feliciano:
“I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart.”

There is nothing normal about this. But at least Jocelyn is happy.

February 9, 2011: A Talk

Amanda

He wakes me up before seven. He’s usually gone by now, but I guess there’s no school today or something—why is he still here?

“C’mon downstairs for a while so we can talk,” he says.

Jocelyn is still sleeping, so I pull the blanket up over her, put on my slippers, and follow him. It’s still dark out. He gets orange juice out of the fridge, puts some old doughnuts on the table, and tells me to sit. He has the strangest look on his face.

“I want to tell you why you’re in this situation,” he finally says. “I just want to explain it to you, so someday you won’t have to wonder why.” He pauses for a moment and then continues: “I have a sexual addiction. I’ve had it since I was a kid.”

He tells me when he was young he got hooked on porn, obsessed by it. He also says that he was molested by a neighbor when he was a little boy.

“That must have been hard,” I say, trying to act sympathetic.

“I’ve never told this to anybody else,” he adds.

“Why are you telling me?” I ask. Of course, he’s told me all this before—I guess he forgot.

“I just wanted you to understand,” he says.

I’ve never seen him this emotional. He’s not crying but he’s choked up. He’s saying everything very softly, like it’s painful for him to get the words out. I don’t know what to think.

“I’m going to resign from my job. It’s too stressful. And I want to spend more time with Pretty before I take you both back home,” he says. “I don’t know how or when this is all going to end. Maybe in a few years.”

He talks for more than an hour, until it starts to get light outside. He’s never spoken to me for this long, and he doesn’t seem like he’s ready to stop. He does seem depressed and says that he’s getting more and more headaches from the stress of leading this double life. He loves his grown daughters and doesn’t get to see them that often. I know he and his son have never gotten along. He talks about his ex, Nilda, and how he beat her.

“She didn’t know when to shut up,” he says.

“That’s no excuse for hitting her,” I tell him. “You could have walked away.”

“No, you don’t understand,” he says. “She would piss me off so bad.”

That poor woman.

He has been acting different lately, talking more and buying more food and clothes for us. It’s been a long time since he’s hit me, but he’s still rude and punishes me, like a few days ago when he wouldn’t let me use the bathroom for two days because I was annoying him. It was back to using the trash can. He claimed I had started it because I wouldn’t talk to him. I was mad because he keeps taking Gina downstairs to “clean” when Jocelyn wants to play with him. He should have been talking to her, reading to her, taking her out of the house, helping her have a bit more of a regular childhood. He should be acting like a parent, not a pig.

But right now I can’t be too mad at him. He seems so sad and lost.

“You know,” he says, “sometimes I don’t even have feelings. I think I’m coldhearted. I don’t care how people feel.”

I have known that about him for years, but it’s odd to hear him actually admit it.

“Well,” I answer, “I don’t know how you can do this to me and my family. I mean, you see my sister crying on TV. You see what this has done to my family and Gina’s. Could you imagine going through that with your kids? What if your kids were missing?”

“You know what?” he says. “Sometimes I look at your family and I have no feelings about them at all. I know they’re hurt. But it doesn’t bother me. Like I said, I don’t have feelings.”

How can I respond to that?

I remember one day I heard people on TV talking about sociopaths. I had never heard that word before, but the description fit him so perfectly that I wrote the word down and later looked it up in the dictionary:
a person whose behavior lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience
. And I thought:
That’s him!
I started going through the whole dictionary to find other words to describe him and wrote some of them in my diary:

Censorious: Always finding fault, criticizing.

Despot: Person who treats those under his control in any way he cares to, cruel or unjust.