Cellar Girl

by Josefina Rivera

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. Everything was happening so fast. ‘What about my apartment?’

  ‘That’s gone.’ He shook his head. ‘When you didn’t show up for a few weeks, the landlord got rid of your stuff and rented it out again. It’s not yours anymore.’

  ‘Oh.’ A part of me felt very sad at this news. It was meant to be a new start for me, that apartment. A new life. Now it was gone and it dawned on me that I was starting a new life now, but one very different from that I’d imagined for myself.

  Suddenly I was consumed with fury at Heidnik – he’d changed everything. I’d had a plan. I wanted to get my life on track. He’d taken that from me. But there was no time to think about this.

  ‘You want to speak to your mom?’ Gallagher asked gently. ‘She’s eager to hear your voice.’

  I almost cried with happiness. My mom! So much time had passed and for so long I’d wondered if I’d ever see her again. I nodded, holding my hand to my mouth to stifle a small sob.

  Gallagher led me into his office – he was a small, intent-looking man, only around forty, but inside you could tell he was driven, he was someone with strong and deep convictions.

  He sat me down at his desk and minutes later they’d patched my mom through on his line.

  ‘Josie?’ Just hearing her voice made me weep.

  For a few seconds I couldn’t speak.

  Then: ‘Mom. It’s me – I’m okay.’

  ‘Well, this is some mess you’ve got yourself into!’

  I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You’re telling me!’

  ‘We didn’t know what had happened to you. You missed Thanksgiving and then Christmas and LaToya’s birthday. I knew you wouldn’t have missed her birthday so I went to the apartment looking for you and nobody said they’d seen you. I went to your friends. I said to them, “You don’t have to tell me where she is but just let me know if she’s okay.” They said, “Honestly, Mrs Patterson. We’re real worried. We ain’t seen her either.” So that’s when I reported you to the police. But nobody had any idea where you were.

  ‘I only knew they’d found you when I saw the reports on the news. I was in the kitchen washing up and there’s this helicopter following a police car and the news reporter is saying: “Josefina Rivera is leading the cops to the victim’s body.”

  ‘That’s when they cut to a picture of you sat in the back of the police car and I nearly drop the dishes I’m drying! Oh baby! I’m so pleased you’re okay!’

  ‘Can you come and see me, Mom?’ I asked in a small voice. I just needed to see her and hold her again.

  ‘I’m coming, honey. Don’t you worry, Momma’s coming.’

  * * *

  The next few hours passed by in a blur – someone brought me toast. I talked to Mary, who worked for Victims’ Compensation, and she took me out to buy clothes. When we returned to the DS’s office, Charles Gallagher was smiling at me.

  ‘We got your family coming,’ he said.

  I was so excited, I could hardly sit still. I paced back and forth in the office. Then the door opened and Billy came in, Toya trailing behind him.

  Her face lit up when she saw me and she ran into my arms.

  ‘Oh Bookie, Bookie!’ I said, using my pet name for her, and breathed into her neck, squeezing her hard and letting the tears fall freely.

  She just went right on hugging me, unwilling to let me go.

  Eventually I unhooked her little fingers from round my neck and took her by the hand to sit next to me on the couch.

  ‘Are you okay, Bookie?’

  She nodded. ‘Mmm. I’m fine. I had some strange dreams, Mom. I dreamt you were in a hole somewhere surrounded by money. And you couldn’t get out.’

  I stared at her in disbelief. How could she know that? Nobody knew that.

  But I didn’t tell her anything – she was just a child. She didn’t need to know what had happened to me.

  ‘Well, Mommy’s back now and she’s fine. I’m so sorry I missed your birthday honey. Are you okay? You doing okay in school? Are you being a good girl for your daddy?’

  I drilled her, all the while stroking her hair and trying to keep the tears at bay.

  Next, a Hispanic couple I’d not seen before came in. They were accompanied by a woman who identified herself as Ricky and Zornae’s social worker.

  ‘These people here are the little ones’ foster parents – Mr and Mrs Sepulveda,’ she said. ‘They’re gonna bring the kids in to see you.’

  I nodded, mutely. It was all so much to take in.

  The wife disappeared into the lobby again and when she returned she was holding a chubby baby in one arm and a small, scared-looking girl toddled next to her.

  ‘Oh my babies!’ I exclaimed. The lady handed me the baby – it was Ricky, although I hardly recognized him now. The last time I’d seen him he was just a few weeks old, an infant, now he was a proper little baby. Five months old.

  Before, he was light caramel and now he was a deep rich brown, a whole different color! I was shocked. The last time I’d seen him I’d changed his clothes, stroked his head and whispered to him about how I was going to make a great life for us. We were mother and son, bonded.

  I wanted to feel that love again, that connection, but I couldn’t. Too much had happened and I wasn’t the same woman.

  And he didn’t seem like my baby anymore.

  All I wanted to say was ‘Are you sure this is my baby?’ as I cradled him.

  Zornae, dressed in a blue and white spotty playsuit, huddled behind the Hispanic lady she’d clearly got used to calling Mom, too scared to come out and greet me.

  ‘Go say hi to your momma!’ the lady instructed her. ‘That’s your mom.’

  But the girl just retreated even further behind the lady’s legs. Now she was completely enveloped in her skirts and I was struck with sadness.

  She didn’t recognize me. She didn’t even know who I was. This baby, who I’d loved and nurtured and cared for, who’d shared a bed with Toya and amused us for hours with her giggling and gurgling, was a stranger to me now.

  It was a blow to my heart. My anger towards Heidnik returned – he’s done this to me. He’s taken my children away.

  I hated it. Hated it. But I understood why Zornae reacted like this – I remembered the same feeling I’d had when my dad came to see me as a child.

  ‘Come on now, little one,’ the lady bent down to Zornae, switching into fluent Spanish that I didn’t understand, urging her towards me. I tried to catch a little of what she was saying but with my schoolgirl Spanish, I felt cut out of their exchange.

  The little girl put her arms out to the lady and she lifted her up – she was clearly besotted with the little girl and I felt like an outsider looking in on a happy family scene.

  My family, these children were my family and yet they were reaching for the arms of a stranger.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t pressure her.’

  Why should these children suffer anymore? I had already brought them enough pain and confusion – they didn’t need any more pressure in their lives. I ached with guilt and remorse.

  I turned my attention back to LaToya and we started to play a game she had brought along. Ten minutes later my mom opened the door.

  I raced into her arms and she whispered in my ear, ‘I love you, honey.’

  Suddenly I could give way to all the confused feelings of the past hour and let my mom hold me.

  I wept like a child and we stood there in an embrace for a while before my mom pulled back to give me a quick appraisal.

  ‘You look fine, just fine,’ she said as I wiped away the tears, whether to reassure her or myself I couldn’t tell.

  ‘I’m doing okay, Mom,’ I said, though I wasn’t really sure if that was true.

  I wanted to tell her everything – all about the pain, the torture, the rapes and the deaths. But I didn’t – with the kids there it wouldn’t have been right to go into any details of what happened.


  We played with the kids for a while and Mom told me all about the news I’d missed out on.

  Then she asked, ‘You got somewhere to go?’

  ‘They’re putting us in hotels,’ I said.

  She nodded with approval. ‘You get yourself some sleep now, you hear? You look like you could do with some good rest.’

  I smiled, gratefully. An hour later, the cops returned to say they’d got the welfare lady in to see me. I said a hurried goodbye to everyone and then I was back in the hands of the police.

  I barely had time to think about what had just happened with the kids – it was confusing and upsetting but I put it to the back of my mind. No time now, I told myself. Just keep yourself together Josefina. You’re free. There’ll be time to come.

  Mary had already notified welfare that I’d been kidnapped for the past four months so now they had to reinstate my claim. But I couldn’t go to the office so they sent someone round to the DA’s office to reopen my file.

  It was a small administrative task to get me a photo ID made up in order to get all my welfare back payments but important. At that stage I had no money at all, not one cent or possession to my name.

  In the early evening I was taken out the back door to where a police car was waiting to take me to a nearby hotel – every time I stepped outside it was astonishing to me. Just feeling the breeze on my face, seeing the setting sun light up an otherwise dull day with a warm amber glow. It was glorious. I was free! But not quite free enough. The police couldn’t risk letting me out the front where hundreds of reporters still gathered, waiting impatiently for the next development in the story. The police car wasted no time – we took off like a bullet, zooming through the busy rush hour streets, lights blazing, just in case we were being followed, until we came to a small hotel on the edge of town.

  We walked up a couple of flights and they let me into a large suite. I begged for some moments alone and the cops waited outside my room. I yearned for this, space and silence.

  I was alone for the first time in months. I was here, out, alive.

  For the first time since my escape, I took a shower. The warm water bounced off my skin. A million images swam through my mind – the Pine Barrens, Deborah’s body, my kids moving away from me, Mom’s face, concerned, but trying to hide it, the police, Gallagher, the helicopters…

  I stepped outside the shower and toweled myself down. I inspected my body – I still wore the scars of the chains on my ankles.

  Where is Heidnik now? I wondered. I hope that bastard is in chains.

  I dressed in the clothes I’d bought earlier with Mary.

  The cops knocked an hour later. ‘We’ve got your sister here to see you. She insisted on coming.’

  He’d hardly finished speaking when Iris barged her way past and we hugged each other.

  ‘Jesus girl!’ she said. ‘Are you okay? We all been so worried about you. Do you know what they’re saying? They’re saying you were beaten and tortured and made to eat other people and shit like that. Man, that’s so fucked up!’

  ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t have to eat it,’ I said. ‘He made the other girls. But yeah, all that other stuff is true. It’s too much, Iris. Too much.’

  ‘Look, you’re safe now. You’ll be okay.’

  I was relieved that she was there with me now, I felt stronger, safer in her presence.

  In truth, it made me feel a little bit normal – she was a physical reminder of my past and of who I was, or at least, who I used to be.

  At this moment I wasn’t sure how much of my past remained.

  ‘Stay the night with me?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight.’

  ‘Sure,’ she agreed.

  We sat on the bed in the room and I told her what had happened to me. At some point, we got room service delivered – burger and fries each – while the police came in and out to ask me questions.

  A detective was more or less permanently at my side, getting instructions from the station, taking notes.

  At 10 p.m. I switched on the TV to catch the news – I needed to know what they were saying about all of this.

  ‘… and now we can go to the hotel where we’re talking to one of the victims,’ the news anchor handed smoothly over to the reporter on the ground who I could clearly see was standing outside the ground floor of our very hotel.

  ‘What the fuck!’ I exclaimed. Now the detective next to me was also staring at the screen, his face contorted in anger.

  Agnes Adams – Vickie – stood at the window of her bedroom in the hotel, chatting away to the reporter outside.

  ‘How are they talking to her?’ I demanded. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a secret location!’

  ‘Yeah, it was!’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘What in the hell does she think she’s doing?’

  The camera panned around – you could clearly see there were dozens of other reporters crammed outside Agnes’s window.

  The detective got up off the bed and shifted my curtain aside a little way, just to get a look outside.

  ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘They’re down there. Listen, don’t worry, we won’t let any of them in. You’re on the third floor so you’ll be fine. Just stay here for tonight. We’ll have to move you in the morning.’

  If it wasn’t for Iris I don’t think I would have fallen asleep that night. Everything had happened so fast – the sheer volume and interest from the press was overwhelming. That first night they tracked us down. And they would do so time and time again in the many long, difficult months to come.

  At least I escaped from Heidnik after four months – with the press, it went on for years.

  Chapter Twenty

  A New Reality

  I came to in darkness.

  Darkness and the faint buzzing of an air conditioner in the background. Where was I? I looked about me – an anonymous hotel room, a woman asleep in the twin bed next to mine, bland furnishings, crisp white sheets, the smell of air freshener and frying bacon from somewhere.

  Was this real? Was I still chained in Heidnik’s basement on North Marshall Street, asleep and dreaming this strange place? I was certain that at any moment now I’d wake up with chains around my ankles.

  My head returned to the pillow and I shut my eyes again. But the next time I woke up, I was in the same place, only now the sunlight streamed through the paper-thin curtains. Iris was already up, making an instant coffee from the tiny kettle in the corner of the room.

  Reality had been turned upside down. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing here. I let myself lie there for a while as it all slowly came back to me – escaping, the police station, finding Deborah, my family.

  The relief lasted only a few minutes as someone knocked loudly at the door. A confident, loud and insistent: Bang bang bang!

  The door shuddered with the impact. Iris looked back at me and I nodded: yes, I’m awake.

  She went to answer it. I heard the voice of the police officer faintly from the bed. ‘We’ll need to move her soon. Can you make sure she gets up and eats breakfast? We’ve only got half an hour.’

  I dragged my weary body to the bathroom – suddenly all the adrenaline of the past twenty-four hours had left me. Every part of me ached, I just wanted to go back to bed and sleep for a week, but I couldn’t.

  * * *

  I was free now but not in a way I could recognize. I was surrounded by people the whole time and my movements were restricted to the places the police wanted me to be.

  I was taken to the DA’s office for more admin, more questions, and then back to the station to give more statements. In the meantime I was moved to a different hotel. Now all the girls were being kept apart, just in case the media uncovered one of us. And there were gagging orders on us so we weren’t allowed to speak to the media.

  I was driven to a women’s mental health unit for psychological assessment. I saw two psychiatrists, who both wanted to admit me.

  But I’d had enough and insisted on speaking to G
allagher on the phone. I felt edgy, upset and impatient.

  ‘I’ve been chained up for four months,’ I railed at him. ‘How do you think locking me up in this place is going to help? I need some free time. I need some time to myself!’

  Gallagher agreed, the doctors conferred – they would let me out for a few hours before I was to return for further assessments.

  But I didn’t want to be probed or questioned any more, and I certainly didn’t want the meds they wanted to put me on.

  As I stepped outside for the first time on my own, I knew for certain I wasn’t going back. As I walked to the main road to hail a cab, I passed a newspaper stand. The headlines screamed out: HORROR ON MARSHALL STREET; MADMAN’S SEX ORGY WITH CHAINED WOMEN; SEX SLAVES AND MUTILATION IN PHILADELPHIA.

  My eyes flicked around the stand – Heidnik was leading on every single paper. I grabbed a copy of the New York Post and in the cab on the way to my old neighborhood, I skimmed the numerous pages devoted to our story.

  The press had fallen on the gruesome details with all the delight of a dog devouring a bone: ‘BODY PARTS FOUND IN PHILLY’S HOUSE OF HORROR’ ran the headline. There were pictures of all of us in it. They were calling Heidnik the ‘Rolls-Royce Reverend’, a man into ‘stocks and bondage’.

  I shook my head – no! That’s not how it was at all. He didn’t chain us up for kicks, it was to stop us getting away. I wanted to call someone up, tell them their mistake and get it changed. I was angry and confused – my name and face were everywhere. I was suddenly public property. All I wanted was to get away from all of this for a few hours, to forget it all, try to put it all behind me. I knew where I was going.

  We pulled up on the corner of Six and Gerard and I handed the cabbie a five-dollar bill, telling him to keep the change. On the corner was one of the dealers I was familiar with from my old life. I got a $100 bag of crack and headed to Marnie’s, an old friend of mine.