One night in September, I walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and saw something shiny and metal on the counter.
“Did somebody leave their jewelry in here?” I yelled out, picking up the delicate gold necklace and dull gold band.
Kiani ran down the hallway and took them from me. “Oh, sorry, Alysia. Those are mine. I don’t know what I’d do without them,” she said, pulling them to her chest. She clasped the gold chain around her neck and slipped the band onto her ring finger.
Oh my God! That’s her wedding ring from her father.
I wondered how Kiani could be so different from Gypsy.
Gypsy was coming over at least twice a week now, and when I was home, her visits were very refreshing for me, because I knew how much she hated Marcus and everything he stood for. She didn’t verbalize her feelings in front of her relatives, but I’d learned about her opposing viewpoints during the preliminary hearing, when the prosecutor repeated some of the comments Gypsy had made to investigators.
We had an unspoken bond, going back to the first time she’d visited, when I’d caught her rolling her eyes at the girls’ glowing remarks about Marcus. When they weren’t looking, I made sure she saw me smile with approval.
It was the glimmer of hope I had needed to get me through the next months of listening to them talk about their “great” husband and father. I could tell Gypsy wanted to set the record straight about their warped perceptions, but she seemed to understand that they weren’t ready to hear the truth. So, rather than confront the others about their delusions, we kept our frustration to ourselves.
One day, Elizabeth pulled me aside and told me Marcus would like me. I tried not to laugh out loud, but I couldn’t help it. We both knew it wasn’t true. I wondered what it would be like to meet him and what I would say.
After months of hearing about his good qualities and gentle nature, I still saw Marcus the same way I had that hot March night on TV: as a monster. As holy and powerful as he believed he was, I knew he was truly a selfish and lazy coward. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell he had actually pulled the trigger that day. It wasn’t in his character. He used religion to intimidate and manipulate everyone in his path, even to the point of murder. He lived out his illegal sexual fantasies, and may have ruined dozens of lives by doing so. There was nothing I could do to save the nine innocent victims who had died that day, but I was determined to do everything in my power to save the ones he’d left behind.
For whatever reason, silently ranting in my head made me feel better. It didn’t make me hate Marcus any less, but it helped me deal with the girls who still loved him. Despite his hold on them, I felt good about the new world I was opening up for Elizabeth, Kiani, and Rosie, and although I hadn’t anticipated it, they were teaching me things, too.
I had never been much for cooking, cleaning, or children. I loved watching the Food Network, but that’s about as close as I came to a recipe. The girls were just the opposite: Rosie worked wonders in the kitchen, Kiani practically walked around with a duster in her hand, and Elizabeth went absolutely gaga over babies.
When I knew the girls’ limited cash had run out, I began taking them to the grocery store to stock up on food they could eat when I wasn’t around. Before they’d arrived, I had shopped at the high-end grocery store nearby, the one with the best cuts of meat and largest selection of vegetables. But now that I was shopping for four, I switched to the discount store where Marcus had taken the girls.
The first time we went, I engaged in my normal routine of rushing down the aisles, slowing just long enough to toss an item into my cart. The girls looked at me like I was crazy.
“What, you don’t like chips?” I asked, throwing a familysize bag of Lay’s into the squeaky metal cart.
“No, I love chips,” Kiani said, laughing.
“Then what’s wrong?” I asked, as I tossed in a bag of pretzels.
“Like that right there,” she said, pointing to the pretzels. Looking at Rosie, who was also shaking her head, she said, “I just can’t believe she’s shopping like that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Aren’t you going to check the price? Look,” she said, stopping my cart and grabbing two jars of salsa for comparison. “You have to look at the unit price down here, then see which one is a better deal.”
Rosie chimed in. “We would spend all day at the store when we went grocery shopping.”
“Yeah, but you were feeding an army!” I said. “Now, which one of those is a better deal?”
Kiani raised the jar in her right hand, so I snatched it from her and placed it in the cart. “Better?” I asked.
“Alysia, you’re not going to eat that, are you?”
The girls made the best homemade salsa I’d ever eaten— a mixture of tomatoes, green and white onions, jalapeños, cheese, avocados, and an assortment of spices. Whenever they made some, I poured it on everything.
“I would never cheat on your salsa with this stuff,” I said, returning the jar to the shelf. “Go get what you need to make a huge batch.”
As the girls went off giggling toward the produce section, I mowed my way through the store, picking out household essentials and the ingredients to make a Greek dish called pastitsio, similar to lasagna, which I knew they’d never tried. I also grabbed a Rachael Ray cookbook from the magazine section and hid it on the side of the cart so I could give it to Rosie for her upcoming birthday. I couldn’t wait for her to try out some of the recipes.
ROSIE’S BIRTHDAY WAS October 21, and I wanted to plan something with my roommates that they could all enjoy. Marcus didn’t “believe” in birthdays, so Rosie had never really celebrated hers before. There was a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant nearby, where the chefs chopped and cooked tableside and calculatedly tossed food into the air. I knew it would impress the girls, so I decided to take them there for an early dinner. Gypsy, who was busy with school, didn’t join us that night.
“You know this is the place where Scott Peterson took Amber Frey on their first date,” I said, feeling like a tour guide as we walked through the wooden doors, which must have been ten feet tall.
“Really? Wow,” Elizabeth said, surprisingly impressed.
“Table for four,” I said to the hostess, scanning the restaurant for familiar faces and hoping I wouldn’t see any.
It wasn’t very busy at 5:00 P.M. on a Thursday, so we had an entire table, set for twenty people, to ourselves. I sat down, unrolled my linen napkin, laid it on my lap, and opened the menu. The girls watched me nervously, then followed suit.
“You guys have been to a restaurant before, right?” I asked, confused by their copycat routine.
Kiani and Rosie looked at each other and laughed.
“You haven’t been to a restaurant before?” I asked loudly.
Rosie shushed me. “We used to work banquets a lot, but we were always serving,” she said quietly.
“Stop it!” I said, shocked. “I can not believe this.”
A Japanese man the size of a sumo wrestler, wearing a tall white hat, pulled up a two-level metal cart, interrupting our conversation. He nodded, muttered something unintelligible in his thick accent, then went to work heating the rectangular table grill in front of us. When he poured hot oil on the surface, it made an intense sizzling sound and sent up a white puff of smoke that made the skittish girls jump in their seats.
“It’s okay, it’s just smoke,” I said. “He’s going to cook everything right here.”
“Really, Alysia?” Kiani asked. “This is so neat.”
The girls flinched as the chef pulled out two massive knives, one in each hand. He vigorously chopped the vegetables, then threw them down on the scalding hot grill. Halfway into his tableside show, he juggled the salt and pepper shakers and sent a lone shrimp spiraling off his spatula so it landed in the middle of Elizabeth’s plate. She was too bashful to acknowledge the gesture, so I clapped for her.
By the end of the entrée, we were al
l stuffed, but we still managed to eat the vanilla ice cream that came with the meal. Rosie leaned back in her chair and looked past Kiani at me gratefully.
“Thank you, Alysia,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Happy birthday.”
ALTHOUGH ROSIE HAD started out as the shy, silent one, she had turned into quite the practical joker. A few days after her birthday, the four of us watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre together before I went to sleep. The girls had already seen it on video, so they spoke up right before the last scene, which was billed as authentic news footage of Leatherface attacking two police officers, then escaping.
“Alysia, you have to watch this part carefully,” Rosie said insistently. “This really happened. They showed it on the news and everything. It’s coming up right here, watch.”
I stared at the TV in horror. My heart skipped a beat during the last frames of the movie, when it turned to static, à la Poltergeist.
“Tell me that wasn’t real,” I said, my voice growing louder. “Please tell me that wasn’t real.”
“It is real,” Rosie said. “That was video from the police.”
“That is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe you guys made me watch that before I have to go to sleep. That’s so mean.”
I loved watching horror movies, but I hated the nightmares they gave me. That night was no exception. I went to bed around 8:00 P.M., but I kept tossing and turning, thinking about Leatherface still being on the loose. I finally drifted off for a couple hours, but when I woke up, I immediately flashed on the masked man with the chain saw and wondered if he might be hiding in my walk-in closet.
If I could only get to the living room, where Kiani was brewing a fresh pot of coffee, I knew I’d be safe. I decided to jump out of bed and simultaneously reach for the light switch, so I reluctantly hopped onto the floor, and that’s when it happened.
Someone—or something—latched on to both of my ankles.
I screamed louder than I’d ever screamed before. I couldn’t move. It was pitch-black in my room, so I couldn’t see a thing.
Leatherface is in my apartment and he’s going to kill me!
Then, I heard laughter. Hysterical laughter. It was Rosie. She’d been hiding under my bed for an hour, waiting for me to wake up. It was the cruelest prank I could imagine, but frankly, I was a bit upset that I hadn’t thought of it myself.
APPROPRIATELY, HALLOWEEN WAS coming up that weekend. A fellow TV reporter was having a party at her new house, and I needed a costume.
“Want to go to the Halloween shop?” I asked the Wessons, who jumped at the opportunity.
There were four Halloween stores within half a mile of my apartment. I pulled into the closest one, and we filed through the fake cobwebs that hung across the front door, which set off a wicked-witch cackle. Starting on the right side of the store, we worked our way through the hundreds of costumes, stopping near the section with the French-maid outfits.
“This would look good on Kiani,” I said, holding one of them against her toned body. Marcus may have been out of shape and overweight, but he had kept the girls on a strict exercise regimen. Kiani had stuck faithfully to hers, doing hundreds of sit-ups and push-ups every day.
Kiani pointed at a revealing bunny getup and blushed. She picked it up and lunged at Rosie. “Here’s you, Rosie,” she said, chasing her cousin three steps with it.
I glanced ahead.
Uh-oh. Is that what I think it is? Fangs, fake blood, and black capes. Yep! It’s the vampire aisle.
My father had always dressed up as Dracula to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. “I’m coming to suck your blood, ha, ha, ha,” he would bellow in a scary voice, flashing his plastic fangs at me and my sister, who were immune to the threat after the first year.
I won’t be making any vampire jokes today.
Rosie and Elizabeth were still wearing predominately black but, for once, they didn’t stand out, which was a nice break from the pointing and staring.
“What do you guys think about Wonder Woman?” I said, diverting their attention to the superhero aisle.
I’d been hooked on Wonder Woman ever since I first saw Lynda Carter in her shiny red, white, and blue outfit, deflecting bullets with her gold wristbands and taking on the bad guys in her invisible jet. Her combination of toughness and beauty made her my childhood hero, so I collected everything I could find with her image: comic books, clothing, and my favorite—a special-edition Wonder Woman Barbie. Even after my Maltese puppy chewed off the doll’s hands and feet when I was six, I proudly carried my wounded doll wherever I went. The costume was the perfect choice, and the girls loved it.
A clerk wearing a striped prison costume, complete with a ball and chain, was working the store’s only cash register.
Oh, God, this has to be a cosmic joke, but I bet it looks great on Marcus.
The girls got quiet. As I watched their faces fall, I could tell they were feeling guilty for having fun. Even behind bars, Marcus ruined everything.
I paid as quickly as possible and drove us home. I thought the Wessons could use a little inspiration from my favorite character, so I pulled one of my old comic books out of the patio storage unit and read some of her dialogue aloud.
“Listen to this one, you guys. You need to hear this,” I said, hoping Wonder Woman could make the point that I couldn’t. The girls gathered around as I read it slowly and deliberately.
“Some girls love to have a man stronger than they are to make them do things. Do I like it? I don’t know, it’s sort of thrilling. But isn’t it more fun to make the man obey?”
“It says that, Alysia?” Elizabeth asked.
I handed her the comic so she could see for herself. “This is who you should be listening to,” I said, satisfied.
GETTING ME READY Saturday night was a group project. Elizabeth sewed some extra padding into my starred headband, Rosie combed out the long black wig, which, coincidentally, looked exactly like her own hair, and Kiani painted my nails bright red to match my red and white pleather boots.
As usual, I was running late. Rosie straightened my red and blue satin cape as I dashed out the door like, well, Wonder Woman.
“Let us take a picture of you,” Elizabeth called out.
I didn’t have time to dig for the camera in my purse. “I’ll take some at the party,” I said, running down the stairs.
“Take lots of pictures.”
“I bet she’s going to have so much fun.”
I heard their voices growing fainter with each step I took. I wished they could go with me. I had no idea that even I wouldn’t make it to the party that night.
Thirteen
The Wessons often made the trip down the mountain to escape their everyday routine and spend the day in cooler climes, such as Twin Lakes State Beach in Santa Cruz. They also went to retrieve supplies from another used bus that Marcus had converted into a motor home, which they parked at a storage facility in a small town called Freedom, near Watsonville. Marcus, preparing for Armageddon, had stocked the vehicle with a year’s worth of powdered and canned food.
But on this particular morning in the spring of 1990, Marcus, Elizabeth, and their nine children and four nieces had come to town so Marcus could go to court to face welfare fraud and perjury charges stemming from his purchase of a boat called the Happy Bottom. The county of Santa Cruz contended that the Wessons had been overpaid by more than twenty thousand dollars in welfare benefits and food stamps, claiming that any family able to buy a boat didn’t need—or deserve—government assistance. What the county didn’t know, however, was that the family never had enough money for food, clothing, or other necessities, specifically because Marcus had been using the welfare payments to buy the boat and used buses.
Fancying himself above the law, Marcus shrugged off the charges, telling Elizabeth he thought they were bogus. He said he’d return in a few hours to take them back to the big army tent in which they’d been living for th
e past few years.
“See you soon,” he said nonchalantly just before he headed to the courthouse in Watsonville.
Elizabeth and the kids waited patiently in the motor home for Marcus to return and began to worry when he didn’t show up as expected.
That afternoon, they heard a knock on the door. It was the man from the front office.
“Elizabeth?” he asked.
“Yes?” she responded nervously.
“Sorry to tell you this, but your husband just called from jail.”
Her stomach dropped, and she couldn’t catch her breath enough to respond.
“Yeah,” the man went on, “he said they arrested him at the courthouse, and he’ll be locked up for a few months.”
Elizabeth collapsed, crying, which sent the kids into tears as well.
What were they going to do without Marcus?
At thirty, Elizabeth still didn’t have her driver’s license, so she was stuck with thirteen kids, ages four to fifteen, with no money and no way to get back up the mountain.
That night, Elizabeth called Linda, Illabelle’s friend, and asked for a ride into town to pick up the Travelall. Marcus always parked it in the same spot near his lawyer’s office, which was a couple of blocks from the courthouse; Elizabeth would often wait with the kids in it for hours.
Elizabeth felt lost and helpless without Marcus telling her what to do, but she came up with the best plan she could for the family to survive on its own. During the day, they hung out in the motor home at the storage facility, leaving each evening in the Travelall so the manager would think they had somewhere else to go for the night. Elizabeth used her limited driving skills to find a place to park a few miles away, where they would stay long enough for the manager to leave. Then they would return to the storage facility, park outside, and creep back into the motor home.
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