I slowed down once we got to my parking lot and rolled down my window.
“You can park right in there,” I said, motioning toward my stall. I wanted them to feel like they belonged here, so I drove on and searched for an empty visitor spot.
They followed me slowly up the concrete stairs to my apartment, their three pairs of high heels clicking on each step like a drum line.
I unlocked the front door and walked in, waving them inside, where we stood, looking at one another uncomfortably.
“This is it,” I said, smiling. “Make yourselves at home.”
Cosmo trotted over and gazed up at the new faces.
“This is my ferret, Cosmo,” I said, swooping him up, which broke the ice. “Cosmo, these are your new roommates.”
Cosmo inspected Elizabeth first, then Rosie, then Kiani. You could tell he didn’t know what to think. He wasn’t the only one.
THE WESSONS STAYED for about an hour, until I had to leave for work. They were able to stay with a relative two more nights, so they showed up at my place with their bags that Tuesday.
At first, they huddled together between my small kitchen and dining area, whispering among themselves. I felt like a stranger in my own apartment, as if I were at a party where I didn’t know anyone. I tried to make everyone feel more at ease by striking up a conversation, but Kiani was the only one who would respond. Rosie wouldn’t say a word to me—she would whisper to Kiani, and Kiani would speak for her. Elizabeth said a few words here and there, but her voice was so quiet I couldn’t understand her.
Elizabeth and Rosie hid in their room that night, while Kiani and I sat on the living room floor, talking about music. She told me how her father would spend hours mixing house and trance tracks together on tapes, to which the family would dance until 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. every Friday night, each girl competing to be the last one standing.
In turn, I told her about my experiences at raves in London and Athens during college. Kiani and I were less than a year apart in age, but our experiences couldn’t have been more different. That night, we traded stories about anything but the murders that had brought us together.
I DIDN’T SLEEP well and woke up around 8:00 the next morning to the soft hum of voices on the other side of the door. It was strange to hear other people moving around in my apartment. I got up and searched for something civilized to put on for company.
I can’t walk around naked anymore.
I looked for some conservative pajamas at the bottom of my drawer but, finding none, settled for a pair of nylon running pants and a cotton T-shirt.
They would never wear something like this.
It was my birthday, and I had planned to have a Cinco de Mayo party that night but had canceled it because of my new living situation. Of course, I couldn’t tell my friends why.
The bag of balloons, sombreros, and colorful leis I’d bought for the occasion were still in a box in a corner of my room so, laughing, I wrapped a red lei around my neck.
“Happy birthday,” I whispered to myself.
I took off the lei, inhaled deeply, and opened my bedroom door to see what my houseguests were up to.
Elizabeth, Kiani, and Rosie were all showered and dressed, sporting their usual dark shirts, skirts, and high heels, and sitting side by side on my long red couch in front of the TV. Only the screen was black.
“Good morning,” I said, looking down the line.
Kiani grinned as she handed me a birthday card.
“Thank you,” I said, surprised.
I tore open the envelope, which read “Happy Birthday” in beautiful gold and silver embossed letters. Inside was a hand written note, signed by all three of them.
With everything that has happened to our family, you have been our only blessing through this. Thank you so much for taking us into your home. God Bless You and we wish you the happiest of birthdays.
They must have bought it after I mentioned my birthday would be the day after they moved in. “That was so nice of you,” I said, genuinely moved by the thoughtful gesture. Pointing toward the television, I said, “You can turn on the TV, you know.”
I snatched up the remote and sat down on a chair. I always sat on the red couch; the black and silver armchairs, which I’d bought for style over comfort, normally were for guests. I hit the power button and glanced over at the girls. Despite their brave faces, they looked so sad. Their eyes were red from crying.
I wonder if I’ve ever seen anyone so sad before.
I heard a strange rustling noise coming from outside. It was growing louder.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I think it’s just those birds,” Elizabeth said.
“Birds?” I asked in disbelief. “There aren’t any birds over here.”
The only birds I’d ever seen flocked to the trees with the red berries on the other side of the apartment complex.
“Yeah, right there,” Kiani said, pointing to my patio.
I stood up and was amazed to see a group of mourning doves gathered outside my floor-to-ceiling window.
“They’re nice, Alysia,” Rosie said, uttering her first words to me since she’d moved in.
I peered out the window and counted them.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and, oh my God, nine. No way!
Nine mourning doves were at my window, one for each dead child. I knew it had to mean something.
THE FOUR OF us quickly fell into a routine. The three Wessons would wake up around 7:00 A.M., get dressed in their skirts and high heels—the only shoes the girls owned—then Elizabeth would begin her crying jag in the living room while Kiani and Rosie read and wrote in their diaries in the bedroom. I would get up around 10:00 and join Elizabeth on the couch, where she would tell me stories about her children and how much she missed them for a couple of hours before I got ready for work. She’d spend the rest of the day sitting on the couch, with her heels on, weeping.
“My babies are gone,” she’d say. “My babies are gone.” There was nothing I could say to console her. Meanwhile, the doves returned to my deck each morning. They were building a nest now in the wooden rafters overhead. The red roses Juan had sent me for my birthday were wilting, so I pulled back the sliding glass door and placed the vase outside for the birds to use as nesting material. I put the vase of wildflowers from my friend Jon out there, too.
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Elizabeth said, taking a break from crying to gaze out the window.
“I’m telling you, they only started coming around when you guys moved in,” I said.
“You know, Sebhrenah loved doves,” Elizabeth said quietly. “She drew them all the time.”
Did Sebhrenah send the doves to comfort her loved ones?
“Yeah, Bhrenah made me a birdhouse not too long ago,” she said. “She painted doves just like that all over it.”
After a couple of weeks, Elizabeth opened up more and more, revealing details about her life with Marcus. I had so many questions about what he was like and how he controlled them, but I held back. Oftentimes, I was too nauseated by the information to say a word anyway, so at the beginning, I just sat there and listened.
Seven
Elizabeth’s family life with Marcus grew out of her own unstable beginnings.
Her mother, Rosa “Rose” Maytorena, dropped out of school after the sixth grade to work the fields around Brawley, a small California town just north of the Mexican border. Rose was nineteen when she began dating Mike Solorio, who was working at the Pepsi factory there.
The couple had four children before they got married in July 1959, two weeks before their fifth child, Elizabeth, was born in Baja California. The family subsequently returned to California, where Elizabeth grew up thinking she was born in the United States—only to find out that Baja California was actually part of Mexico.
Rose and Mike Solorio had four more children, but their marriage didn’t last long. When Elizabeth was seven, Mike told the kids he was going on a
trip and drove away.
Twenty-one-year-old Marcus Wesson moved into Elizabeth’s neighborhood in San Jose in 1968, after having been stationed for almost two years in the U.S. Army’s 695th Medical Ambulance Company in Europe. His mother lived two doors down from Elizabeth.
One summer night, Marcus and his sister came over to Elizabeth’s house so he could protect Rose and her family from a violent neighbor. Marcus was the first black adult Elizabeth had ever talked to, and she was fascinated by the darkness of his skin. He endeared himself to her by saying hello and smiling at her.
Rose had long since quit her job at a cannery to take care of the kids. And now that her family had no man at its helm, Marcus was soon able to work his way in. Before long, he’d struck up a romantic relationship with Rose, thirteen years his senior.
When his own mother learned about this, she warned Rose to leave Marcus alone.
“You’re too old for my Marcus,” Carrie Wesson, a nurse and a devout Seventh-day Adventist, told her. “What do you think you’re doing with my son?”
Rose cried all day after the confrontation, but nothing changed. Marcus wasn’t going anywhere.
Marcus, who was taking courses at the local community college, helped Rose get on welfare, and he encouraged her to take a more active role in raising and disciplining her children. Before Marcus came along, Rose used to yell at her children when she was angry, and sometimes she would just throw rocks or shoes at them. But under his influence, Rose began using more consistent, structured discipline on Elizabeth’s older siblings, taking them into a room and hitting them with a belt when they misbehaved. When Elizabeth later looked back on this period, she saw that her family had never seemed happier or functioned better as a cohesive unit.
For his part, Marcus made sure all the kids ate dinner together and also started “family nights,” when they would watch movies at home or at the drive-in. Marcus would pile them into his green Volkswagen bus, which they called the Jolly Green Giant, and have them hide under blankets so they wouldn’t get charged admission.
ALTHOUGH ELIZABETH ENJOYED having Marcus around, any outside observer would have questioned the playtime activities Marcus shared with her and her two sisters.
One night, Marcus asked his brother to officiate at a wedding ceremony between him and nine-year-old Elizabeth. Pretending the driveway was a chapel, Marcus took a Bible, placed Elizabeth’s hand on it, and covered hers with his own.
“Marcus,” his brother said. “Do you take Elizabeth to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
“I do,” he said.
“And Elizabeth, do you take Marcus to have and to hold till death do you part?”
The wide-eyed fourth-grader looked up and said, “I do.”
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Marcus bent down and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek, so she rose up on her tippy toes and did the same to him.
Playing house was fun, but Marcus looked so serious.
“You know, we swore over the Bible,” he said, staring at her intensely. “In God’s eyes, we are really married, Elizabeth. Don’t forget, you are my wife now.”
She was a little scared because he made it seem so real, but she was flattered, too. She knew Marcus was her mother’s boyfriend, but he also had become the only man who had any consistent fatherly role in her life. And she liked the way he made her feel that she was his.
* * *
A FEW MONTHS later, Rose and Marcus took Elizabeth to the pharmacy at the Pink Elephant market to get her some cold medicine. On the way back to their car, Elizabeth saw her real father waiting for them in the parking lot. She was excited to see Mike, but he looked angry and barely seemed to notice her. He was too busy grabbing Rose’s arm and confronting her about her new boyfriend.
“Stop it, Dad,” Elizabeth pleaded, crying. “Don’t do that to Mom. Please stop.”
Marcus pulled out a shiny silver knife and threatened Mike with it.
“Don’t, Marcus!” Rose screamed. “Run, just run away!”
Marcus took off, sprinting down the street, and didn’t look back. Elizabeth, scared and confused about the volatile situation, stood next to her mother, sobbing.
After her father calmed down, he drove Rose and Elizabeth home, then disappeared into Rose’s bedroom. Elizabeth hoped he was moving back in, but when she woke up the next morning, he was gone again.
AFTER THAT, MARCUS spent even more nights at the house, and Rose was soon pregnant with his child. Their son, Adair, was born in 1971.
That didn’t change anything for Elizabeth, however, who knew in her heart that Marcus would never marry Rose. He was going to marry her someday.
“You are mine, Elizabeth,” he’d remind her at least once a month.
Elizabeth’s house had four bedrooms, one for Rose and three for the nine kids, for whom Marcus had constructed queen-size bunk beds. Elizabeth shared one of them with her younger sister Deanna; Elizabeth had the lower bunk, and their older sister, Rosemary, had a single bed in the corner. In a separate room, Marcus shared a bunk bed with her two little brothers, with him sleeping in the bottom bunk and them above.
Elizabeth would often wait until her little brothers were asleep, then crawl into Marcus’s bed with him. Other times, Marcus would come to her bed, which made her feel special. He would reach under her T-shirt and shorts to touch her breasts and rub her genital area, but because they were “married,” it didn’t seem wrong.
Marcus even started getting jealous when she didn’t act like his wife.
Elizabeth and her siblings ran wild, spending days and sometimes weeks at friends’ houses without checking in with Rose, coming and going as they pleased.
When Elizabeth was ten, she came home from a neighbor’s house to find an agitated Marcus.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“At the neighbors’,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“You know what?You ignored me and you’re not my wife anymore,” Marcus said, pouting.
“Yes I am,” she cried. “Please don’t say that.”
“Nope, you’re not my wife.”
Elizabeth couldn’t stand to lose Marcus. “I’ll never leave again,” she said. “We are married.”
After about twenty minutes, Marcus caved in and embraced the young girl.
“Okay,” he said. “We are married. I forgive you.”
Elizabeth was still crying, but she felt safe.
* * *
BY THE TIME Elizabeth was twelve, she was sneaking into Marcus’s bed nearly every night. He was going through a black magic phase, and she noticed he had been collecting witchcraft paraphernalia and spell books. She was startled awake one night to hear Marcus groaning as if he were in pain, with his hand firmly on her bare breast.
“What’s wrong, Marcus?” Elizabeth whispered, trying not to wake her brothers in the top bunk.
“The Devil reached inside me and was trying to pull out my organs.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, frightened.
“I was putting a spell on you and God got upset. So the Devil took over. I’m praying to God now to forgive me. I’m never going to perform spells again.”
Elizabeth was almost afraid to ask. “What kind of spell did you put on me?”
“The spell was so you would be mine forever.”
When she saw him later that night, he told her he had burned all of his voodoo medallions and books.
IT WASN’T LONG before Marcus made good on his promise to legally marry Elizabeth. Two days before Christmas in 1973, the fourteen-year-old was washing the family’s dinner dishes and turned to find twenty-seven-year-old Marcus down on one knee. His dark skin was flushed with a red hue. She’d never seen him bashful before.
“Elizabeth, I’ve always loved you,” he said, smiling as he held out a thin gold band, engraved with sunflowers. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes, Marcus. I’ll marry you,” she said, overjoyed.
&n
bsp; Marcus slipped the ring on her finger and kissed her. “I told you,” he said. “You are mine forever.”
THREE MONTHS LATER, Elizabeth was pregnant. At five feet four inches, and only one hundred pounds, her protruding stomach became obvious almost immediately. Elizabeth knew that everyone, including her mother, noticed, but no one said a word about it.
Still, things weren’t as easy as Marcus had anticipated. When he went downtown to apply for a marriage license, he learned he had to overcome two obstacles before he could marry his child bride. Not only did he need one of her parents’ formal permission but he and Elizabeth had to get the consent of a court-appointed counselor, too.
Surprisingly, Rose’s approval came rather easily. She even bought a girdle for Elizabeth so she could conceal her pregnancy from the counselor. Elizabeth tried it on right before her eighth-grade graduation ceremony when she was only a couple of months along. Rose helped her squeeze into it again for the couple’s first counseling session. Although Elizabeth was very nervous, Marcus was cool and collected.
The counselor spent most of the first session speaking to Marcus. Elizabeth simply nodded periodically and let Marcus do the talking.
Everything seemed to go well until the third session, which took an unexpected turn. Halfway through, the counselor started pacing the room, shaking his head. Then he launched into her.
“That’s it,” he declared, looking straight at Elizabeth. “You never say anything! You don’t ever tell me how you feel. I don’t think you’re ready to get married.”
Elizabeth sat up, startled and angry. This time, she had no trouble speaking up.
“I want to marry him,” she said in an uncharacteristically assertive voice. “I don’t understand why you are doing this to me. I love him very much. This is what I want, and I don’t understand how you can stop it. It’s my life!”
“Finally!” the counselor exclaimed. “That is what I was waiting for. Why didn’t you say so? I just wanted to make sure that nobody was forcing you into this decision.”
A WEEK LATER, Elizabeth’s estranged father got wind of her engagement and pregnancy and came back to try to prevent the marriage.
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