Now the hole seemed to be growing and Deborah’s voice was coming from further and further away as I sank deeper into the earth. The walls crawled with maggots now, creeping out of the dank soil, falling on top of me. The light disappeared as Deborah’s dark form retreated and I fell down now, the bottom of the hole disappearing beneath me, enveloping me, burying me. I could barely breathe. I tried scrambling up the walls, which climbed ever higher, but with every movement I sank lower and lower.
‘HELP,’ I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. I couldn’t hear my own voice, it was drowning in the vast cavern that had opened up above me. Now I couldn’t even see the top anymore and still I was falling further and further. Desperate now, I clawed at the walls but the earth just came away in my hands, landing in soft lumps on my head, arms and legs. Soon I was swimming in a sea of earth and slipping down and down and down. The earth surrounded me now, up to my neck, soon it would cover me completely…
‘I’M SORRY!’ I tried to scream again. ‘DEBORAH!! I’M SORRY!! DEBORAH!! DEBORAHHHH!”
* * *
I woke with a start, my heart pounding – every inch of me bathed in sweat. My sheets were sticky, my neck ached. I heard myself panting.
My hands flew up to my face, my cheeks were damp too, but these were tears.
I was rigid with fear. Too scared to move.
I turned my head slowly to look over to my clock – it was 3:34 a.m. Now I was coming back into the present, reorientating my mind, replacing the nightmare with the reality of the here and now. Here was my chest of drawers with a picture of my mom and Toya lit by the bright overhead light that stayed on all night. Over there was my wardrobe, crumpled clothes spilling out the bottom, my shoes and sneakers lined up neatly by the door, my black jacket hung on the wooden chair next to my bed. I breathed slowly, trying to calm myself down.
You’re not there anymore, Josefina. It’s over.
The sweat was drying now, cooling my skin and tiny goose bumps broke out on my arms and legs.
For a moment I just held myself. It was the same nightmare I’d had since my escape from North Marshall Street. Always the same.
‘Damn!’ I said to nobody. It was a relief to hear my own voice. I tried to shake the fear out of myself, unsticking my body from the wet sheets. I tiptoed quietly to the bathroom and washed myself down, splashing cold water on my face over and over again, trying to erase the horrible memory of the nightmare.
I made myself a piece of toast and waited until it was light enough to take myself for a walk to clear my head.
I avoided the park, I still couldn’t hear the sound of leaves or twigs crunching under my feet without the fear of being out in the Pine Barrens with Heidnik rushing back.
At 7 a.m. the morning commuters were beginning to emerge on the streets, all brushed, washed and fresh for a new day. They looked determined, purposeful, as if everything in their life had meaning.
They walked briskly past me, sucking the wind along my body, reminding me of my crumpled, unkempt state. I wore just a grey, loose-fitting tracksuit, my hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, my fists dug into my black leather coat for warmth.
Eight years had passed since my escape from North Marshall Street and Deborah still came to me in my dreams.
I was haunted by the memories and nightmares of what happened to me in that cellar.
Night-times were the worst – mainly, I tried to avoid falling asleep at night so I stayed awake watching TV and caught my sleep in the daytime.
Thank God for Toya, who had started living with me again. Her presence injected normality into my life. I couldn’t afford to lose it completely because I needed to be together enough to look after her. She was used to my strange sleeping habits. For the most part I was awake when she went to school and asleep when she came home.
If I got up and left the house early she knew why.
Toya and I had seen each other regularly since I returned from Heidnik’s basement, then, when she was thirteen, I snatched her back from her dad. I had a feeling something wasn’t right with her and when I insisted Ronnie take me over there to see her, I found out her father was planning to put her in a mental institution because she had memories of him snatching her the first time.
‘There’s nothing wrong with our child!’ I shouted at him. ‘How can you think to put her in one of those places? I’ve been inside a mental institution and it is the worst place you can imagine.’
With that I grabbed Toya and told her: ‘Come back with me. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about anything.’
Since then we’d lived together happily. I wasn’t interested in having a relationship with a man. I couldn’t even contemplate it. I was already dealing with so much.
The panic attacks were the worst. During lightning storms I became overwhelmed and couldn’t calm myself down.
Nothing that anybody said got through. I shook and sweated, my heart zoomed and my mind raced at a thousand miles a minute.
I had no sense of reality and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was like a ball of pure energy, unable to walk, sit or stand in one place for even a few seconds.
I couldn’t calm down. I was just out of it.
In those situations the only thing that worked was Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.
The depression tended to come out of nowhere.
Suddenly, for no reason at all that I could work out, I wouldn’t want to go on anymore.
I didn’t see the point of getting up out of the bed, taking a shower or watching TV, cooking, eating or even drinking water. I didn’t want to do nothing except hide in the corner or stay in the bed.
I felt hopeless and helpless. Is this it? I wondered. Is anything ever going to get any better? The world is so full of nuts out to do harm. Am I ever going to have a normal life?
In these bleak moments, I’d considered suicide but then there weren’t any guarantees the next life would be any better than this one. Besides, Toya needed me. She was always in the back of my mind and then the inevitable sense of unworthiness descended. She deserved better than this. I wept for long periods. I didn’t know if I’d ever stop.
Sleep came and went. No dreams now, no nightmares. No happiness, no sadness, just oblivion. I felt like I was nothing, worthless, weightless, pointless.
At some point during these periods, my therapist would be called. Somebody would dress me and next thing I knew I’d be sat in his office weeping again.
Then, through the talking, the cause of the depression would be discovered. I had been in a basement and that sparked it off. But now it was months down the line and I hadn’t made it into work. So I would lose another job.
I was trying to get on benefits to cover my bills but welfare fought me all the way.
There’s nothing wrong with you, they’d say. You could go out to work.
And it’s true, for days or even weeks at a time, I could be fine and then bang, out of nowhere, the darkness would descend and I’d be in bed crying again.
‘It’s hard to explain,’ I told Mom after I lost another job.
‘What’s so hard?’ she chastised. ‘You survived Heidnik, you can survive anything.’
That was always her response. But it wasn’t that simple. My year was now dictated by a calendar that I was always fighting and trying to ignore, but which engulfed me like a black cloud whenever November approached.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year – usually such happy festivals for everyone else, but always for me, the anniversary of my capture.
One on top of the other, the seasonal holidays tumbled around me, a carnival of tinsel, carols and feasting. I didn’t go out, I didn’t celebrate. I stayed home and shut myself away.
The only place I felt safe was at church – there I was cocooned from the fears, the bad memories. I was comforted by God’s presence. My faith was strong, I know that, but prayer didn’t always bring the peace and serenity I sought.
The drugs had gone now. As soon as Toya came ba
ck to live with me I knew I no longer wanted crack in my life. For a long time it had helped me to forget, to bury all the bad stuff, but I knew that it couldn’t go on forever. And once I’d made the decision it was, strangely, easy to stop. It was making the decision that was hardest. It took me a long time to find a place where I felt ready to let go of my crutch. I moved away from my old neighborhood, stopped associating with the old crowd and settled into making a life for us.
Toya and I had rebuilt our relationship and though I’d missed so much of her early life, I was determined to put things right and be the best mom I could be from now on.
I had lost Ricky and Zornae since their adoptive parents had moved out of the state but I had a chance with Toya now and I didn’t want to screw that up.
Meanwhile, Heidnik sat on death row, awaiting the outcome of his appeals.
After all the fighting and the wrangling through the courts us girls got $30,000 apiece from Heidnik’s estate. Most of the rest of the money went to the government.
Being out of work most of the time due to my depression and anxiety, I got through it pretty quickly – three years after the settlement there was nothing left.
I saw one psychiatrist after another – I was taught breathing techniques, prescribed tranquilizers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t.
It was Mom who was most concerned about me.
I went to see her once a week and, though now in her late eighties, she was still as vigorous and active as ever. Last year she’d been awarded the honor of Volunteer of the Year. Today she was making cakes for the senior citizens she visits.
‘Are you happy, Josefina?’ she asked, whisking a large bowl of gooey dough.
‘I’m happy enough, Mom,’ I said. ‘Who’s happy these days?’
‘I’m happy,’ she replied, pouring the mixture into one of her large baking tins. Then she put the cake in the oven, banged the door shut, and went over to feed her little potbelly stove with wood.
She was always busy, always on the go.
‘I don’t know, honey,’ she said, poking at the logs. ‘I worry about you. Am I ever going to stop worrying about you? You need to settle down, put down some roots.’
‘Yeah, Mom, but I got to meet someone first!’
‘You meet people all the time,’ she said. ‘You just don’t want to get into it with anyone.’
She was right. How could I explain the nightmares, the depression, the strange fears to someone I’d just met? Who would want to put up with that? It was hard enough trying to deal with it all on my own.
Mom had now straightened up, putting her hand against the flat of her back where it ached, and letting out a quiet ‘ooof’, her eyes shut against the pain.
She walked slowly over to the porch and pulled out a couple of pairs of shoes, one pair in each hand. She was wearing a cotton peach dress with sunny yellow blooms and wanted to know if either her red shoes or black shoes went best.
‘Mom, you’re eighty-seven!’ I burst out laughing. ‘No one cares if your shoes match your dress.’
‘Yes, well I care,’ she replied prissily. ‘Now, you tell me – red or black?’
Later, as I was leaving she took me in a tight embrace.
‘I don’t want to worry about you forever,’ she whispered. ‘Find someone nice. It’s time.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Recovery
In 1998 I met Theron. He was kind and funny and he offered me a new life in Absecon. Now I was ready to move away from Philadelphia, to try to put the past behind me. Mom seemed happy when I told her I was to marry again.
‘At last I can stop worrying about you!’ she smiled.
Theron and I moved into a hotel in Absecon – it was meant to be temporary accommodation but we ended up living there full time. It was a cheap way to live – for $150 a week everything was included, electricity and towels and housekeeping.
Theron was out of town a lot – he was a travelling salesman – and I worked in housekeeping at the Tradewinds hotel and also held down a job waitressing in Denny’s restaurant. Toya had grown up and moved out by now.
I couldn’t say I was happy exactly but I was content. I didn’t think about Heidnik much and out of town, people didn’t recognize me either. I was trying to make a life for myself. Theron didn’t want to know about the Heidnik thing so I didn’t talk about it much.
A year after we got together, in 1999, the state finally executed Heidnik. He didn’t want to appeal but his estranged daughter had put in one last appeal for a stay of execution. I heard on the news that morning he was due to be killed and by the time I got back in the evening, it was done. There was no resistance, no last statements. He’d spent the day listening to country music then his last meal had been two slices of cheese pizza and two cups of coffee. He went willingly, peacefully to his death. Deborah and Sandra’s sisters had attended, all dressed in white T-shirts with images of their dead sisters on them, and according to the news reports, they’d applauded when it was announced that the lethal injection had been successful. Well, that was their right. Neither Deborah nor Sandra had not gone willingly or peacefully. At 10:29 p.m. on July 6 Heidnik was pronounced dead. It was over. Well, it was over for him anyway.
If there was one thing I knew after all these years it was that it would never truly be over for me. I was bitter and angry about that. He’d got what he wanted all along – the oblivion of death. There was no sense of relief for me. From that night onwards I now feared his children would track me down one day – or perhaps that Heidnik himself would start haunting me.
My mom died a few years later – I’m glad she got to see me married because she always told me that she was tired of worrying about me. She was 92 and still her mind was as sharp as a knife when she died.
On my last visit I sat at her bedside with my adopted sister Althea and we all talked and joked together like old times.
Mom was so special – I worried I never told her enough. Through the years I’d often said to her: ‘Mom, I love you.’
And her reply was always the same: ‘Why, thank you!’
She was just so grateful be loved.
It makes me smile even today when I think about that.
But I don’t think she ever realized how attached I was to her. She was my whole world. It was just her and me. She taught me everything and I valued everything that she taught me.
My sister Iris passed away shortly after. The poor woman lost her ever-loving mind. For a while she had cleaned up – she’d contracted HIV through needles and I think that shocked her into turning her life around. She went through rehab, got into the church and became a ministry evangelist. She preached everywhere – rescue missions, shelters, and people’s homes. She really tried. Sadly, it didn’t last. She began to get the cravings again and in one conversation when she was really struggling she told me, ‘Honestly, Josie, I’m just sick of taking all them medications. It’s making me sick. I just want to go the way I want to go.’
I pleaded with her, tried to help and inspire her. By now I was running a daycare from her house in Absecon and I told her she could come and help out with the kids, teach them Bible study, but it was no good. The lure of the drugs was too strong.
The next time I saw her it was with a bottle of vodka in her hand. Next thing I knew she was inviting drug dealers into the house so I had to close the daycare.
From there on, it was a fast ride down for Iris.
I was still working two jobs but Iris just filled her home and life up with dealers, drink and drugs and stopped taking her meds.
In a matter of months she was in hospital and weeks later she passed away from pneumonia.
She didn’t care by the end – she knew she was going to die so she did everything she wanted to. It was sad, but it was also inevitable. I just hoped she enjoyed those last months because for us, her family, they were hell.
Theron and I didn’t last. I don’t think I was ever truly
in love with him – he had just offered me another kind of life and that suited me at the time. We didn’t share any special chemistry and as our marriage slid away from us, neither of us seemed willing to try and rescue it. We were married in name only – really, we were only just friends.
So it came as a complete surprise when I fell in love with my best friend. Chris and I had met through mutual friends in Absecon while he was going through a messy divorce. I suppose by now I had accepted my marriage was over but with Chris, he was all over the place.
We seemed to connect right from the start and I counseled him about handling his crumbling marriage.
They tried a reunion; it didn’t work. Chris and I took long walks and talked about everything. For the first time in my life I was talking to someone very openly about everything I’d gone through with Heidnik and all the stuff afterwards. Chris didn’t judge me, he didn’t try to get me off the subject, he just let me talk.
It felt like we’d known each other for years.
‘You know, I wish I’d met you a lot sooner,’ I told him one day.
‘Yeah, I think maybe that would have been best,’ he said.
We both knew where this was heading and for the first time, I felt confident and safe enough to let myself fall in love.
By now Toya had kids of her own and we saw them all the time – my grandkids were crazy about Chris and it made me happy to know I’d found a man who loved my family too.
The problem was his family wasn’t too keen on me – they didn’t like the fact that I was Hispanic since Chris was white.
It seemed amazing to us both that in this day and age racism could still influence people’s views and judgments, even when it came to their own family.
So in 2010 we moved away from Absecon and down to Atlantic City, near the sea. I loved the place right away – it was just the right size for me to walk around and being near to the water’s edge always made me feel connected to nature.
Cellar Girl Page 21