Cellar Girl

by Josefina Rivera

  I’d spend hours wandering up and down the beach, just watching the white crest of the waves wash up and down the shore. That great expanse of ocean made me feel safe, reassured. It was a world away from the darkness and confinement of the basement, the hole, which still haunted my dreams.

  Freedom – I treasured that above all things. Once you’ve been locked up and kept away from the world the fear of it happening again is strong and real. Out by the sea, I felt I could always be free.

  And it was here, in Atlantic City, I finally started getting the right kind of professional help. I met DJ, who also happened to be a pastor at my church, and with his amazing help I started to really tackle the demons that had haunted me all these years.

  For so long I’d continuously blocked out what happened and put it on the back burner.

  Deborah’s death had haunted me for years – she came to me in my dreams a lot and I agonized over whether I did the right thing by her.

  It always ate at me that I never took the time to talk to her a little more or get her to understand – then maybe she would have calmed down and it wouldn’t have got to the point it did.

  It was DJ who helped me get the correct diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it was him who helped me to realize that the situation was really out of my hands: I had to stay focused or I would never have survived.

  And there were other questions about Heidnik that I needed answers to, like who was responsible for the way he was?

  If I ever met a member of the military, I’d always quiz them about getting disability benefit from the army. How difficult is it to get an honorary discharge with 100 per cent disability pension?

  The answer was always the same: near impossible!

  You could serve for forty years and get your legs and arms blown off and still not receive 100 per cent disability. It never came out in the trial because the judge refused to admit any speculative evidence without proof but I am convinced Gary was right about one thing: they must have done something to him in the army or why give him 100 per cent disability after just four months? It didn’t stack up.

  And yet without that money, Gary would never have been able to operate in the way that he did. It enabled him to enact his sick ideas.

  After that all the agencies failed – the justice system, the mental health system and the military too. He slipped through the cracks, and it worries me that there are probably others out there today who may have slipped through too.

  For the first time I was tackling these questions head-on instead of running away from them. It had taken over two decades but I was finally ready to sit down and analyze my time in the cellar, tackle my feelings of guilt and pain and make peace with the past.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Reunion

  ‘Mom, Mom!’ LaToya’s voice was breathless, excited. I took the call on my cellphone as I was coming home from one of my appointments with DJ and had chosen to walk along the beach. But I could barely hear her over the roar of the waves.

  ‘Yeah, honey. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s big, Mom, real big!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, my stomach flipping over. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  I ran over the dunes and onto the boardwalk then dashed behind one of the casinos to shelter from the wind.

  ‘Okay, I can hear you. What is it?’

  ‘Mom, it’s Ricky. He got in touch with me. He found me on Facebook.’

  ‘What? Our Ricky? My Ricky?’ I was stunned.

  ‘Yes!’ She was laughing now. ‘Can you believe it? We’ve been looking for them all this time and they’ve been looking for us too! He sent me a message. I’ll read it to you. Listen to this: “Hey, my name is Ricky Sepulveda, formerly known as Ricardo Rivera. I think you might be my sister. My mom’s name was Josefina.” Can you believe that? Ricky’s with Zornae and they want to meet us!’

  I couldn’t help it, I started to weep. It was the answer to our prayers.

  For so long Toya and I had been searching for Ricky and Zornae but we had no way to trace them and when we talked to child protective services they told us they couldn’t help.

  Toya was desperate to meet her brother and sister – she had such clear memories of Zornae: pushing her along in her stroller, feeding her yoghurt. And it was Toya who had given Ricky his name.

  We’d been watching an episode of I Love Lucy one day when she’d turned to me and asked me to name the little boy Ricardo.

  Now, in November 2010 they had found us!

  ‘Oh Toya, that’s wonderful!’ I said. ‘Where are they? What are they doing?’

  ‘They’re out in Florida. They want to meet us.’

  My heart was now going a million beats a minute and something occurred to me.

  ‘Do they know, Toya? I mean, have they been told?’

  ‘Don’t worry. They know everything, Mom. Ricky told me their parents kept a cuttings file on Heidnik and the trial. They figured one day they’d need to know. So it’s okay, they know everything.’

  I clutched at my chest in relief. I’d always hoped one day I could meet my two children but the thought of telling them how we came to be separated was terrifying. Thank God they already knew.

  That night I went home and told Chris everything. We both sat there afterwards, in shock, the silence occasionally broken by one of us exclaiming: ‘I can’t believe it. It’s unbelievable.’

  I didn’t sleep a wink that night, too excited and too full of questions.

  The next day we went to an Internet cafe and I looked at all the messages from Ricky and Zornae on Toya’s Facebook page.

  Zornae had written: ‘I’m so excited to meet you at last. I just hope we can find a way to be together.’

  My heart swelled with sadness. I’d missed so many years with my children – who were they? What were they like? I didn’t know.

  Toya seemed overwhelmed – by now she had settled down into a very secure and happy home life with her husband Russell, who owned his own property business and was a deacon at his church.

  They lived in Texas and had four beautiful children all doing well at school – now, to learn that Zornae also had a little boy was thrilling. Toya was an aunt and she couldn’t wait to meet her nephew.

  ‘Mom, all this time we had family and we didn’t know them,’ she said on the phone that night. ‘Now we’ve got a chance and we’ve got to take it.’

  But how?

  We couldn’t afford the airfare to fly out to Florida to meet them and Zornae and Ricky weren’t rich either.

  In the end it was Zornae who came up with the idea of taking our story to a local radio station that ran a special Christmas Wishes Competitions. She called the station and explained our story – would they help us to come together for the holidays?

  The station thankfully agreed to make us their special story for the Christmas holidays and provided the airfares so that Ricky and Zornae could fly from Florida to Texas and fly Chris and me from Atlantic City to meet them there.

  We were all due to be reunited on Christmas Eve. It seemed so appropriate. Now, for the first time in twenty-five years I was excited about Christmas. It would be the best Christmas ever, in fact.

  * * *

  Sitting on the plane, sipping my water, I let my eyes roam over the clouds below. I was so excited, I could hardly sit still. I’d seen their pictures, I’d spoken to them on the phone and now it was time to meet them in person. Ricky and Zornae – the two children I’d given up over twenty years ago.

  I recalled the moments I’d shared with them two decades earlier – the hugs, the kisses, the warmth. Did they remember any of that? I hoped they’d had a good life. I’d trusted the couple who’d adopted them – I wondered what I could offer them now.

  I turned to Chris. I didn’t need to say a word – he could see my anxiety, my worries.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘It’ll be fine. Just try and relax.’

  Chris knew me so well – he knew exactly what
to say and how to handle my volatile moods.

  DJ was there for me too – he’d given me his home number over the holidays, in case I needed to call him. He knew this was the right thing, a way to heal the parts of my past I never could on my own. But how could I tell them why I’d given them up? They understood what they’d read about me but they didn’t know anything about the real Josefina Rivera. I was just a dream for them. An idea. A fantasy. It was like the first time I’d met my own father. I had prepared myself for the worst so it was a nice surprise to find him alive and well. But after that I had to adjust to the fact that he was a real person, with flaws and problems just like anyone else. I knew I could never match up to the fantasy these kids had built in their heads about me but I hoped that we could accept each other on new terms, as adults. As real people.

  Chris and I came off the plane and he held my hand tightly as we walked through the Arrivals doors. My heart was zipping along at a million beats a minute. They had arrived three days before and were already staying with Toya and her family. Now it was my turn to meet them.

  The first person I saw was Zornae – she was the spitting image of me!

  At first I could hardly believe it was her – I’d left a tiny, skinny toddler who was struggling to get her weight up. Here was a fully grown woman with curves and full sensual lips, like my own. She was clutching the hand of a little boy, Gary, her son. It was ironic that was the name she had chosen, but this little boy was nothing like his namesake – he was a complete angel.

  Behind Zornae was Ricky, a tall, thin handsome man wearing a sky blue bandana. I could see his high cheekbones matched my own while designer stubble outlined the contours of his chin and lips. His eyes were deep and soulful.

  ‘Oh my God!’ I exclaimed, clasping my hands to my mouth, tears freely running down my cheeks.

  ‘Mommy!’ Zornae reached out towards me and we fell into each other’s arms. Ricky then came up beside me, a shy smile playing on his lips.

  ‘Mom?’ Now I flung one free arm around his neck and the three of us stood there like that, hugging and crying for I don’t know how long.

  After all these years and all this time I felt truly blessed to have my children back in my life.

  But right behind them a camera crew jostled to get the shot of us together.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ I turned to Chris. He shrugged.

  Zornae spoke. ‘They’re from the station. They wanted to get the whole story.’

  It put me on edge – although I was grateful to the station for bringing us together, I didn’t want them to capture my most intimate moments of reconnecting with my children.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I told Toya and she nodded, picking up my suitcase. We all piled into her car with myself, Zornae and Ricky on the back seat, little Gary sitting on his mom’s lap.

  He was just eighteen months old at the time and he kept looking between the two of us with a mixture of confusion and curiosity.

  ‘He can see we’re related!’ I laughed. ‘Smart boy!’

  When we got into Toya’s house, her kids were all there – LaQuoia, Bryahna, Jaaqwan and Sean – and we all hugged and kissed. The place was decorated like a winter wonderland for the holidays with tinsel everywhere, spray-on snow frosting up the windows and a great big tree with sparkling lights and dozens of presents underneath. I’d never seen so many gifts!

  ‘Have you gone crazy?’ I joked with Toya and Russell. ‘Them kids are going to be so spoilt!’

  ‘It wasn’t us, Mom.’ Toya shook her head. ‘The station gave us a ton of presents for the children. We’ve been completely overwhelmed by their generosity.’

  We enjoyed a noisy, boisterous meal with all the kids competing to fill us in on all their latest achievements but after we’d settled them down for bed it was finally time to talk with Ricky and Zornae.

  ‘We have so many questions, Mom,’ started Ricky.

  ‘Well, shoot!’ I said. ‘I don’t have any secrets. You know all about what happened to me with Heidnik.’

  ‘I know. But there’s so much I don’t understand,’ he went on. ‘Like where we were in all of that and what happened with us?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, why couldn’t you come and get us after you got freed?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zornae chipped in. ‘At first they put me in this foster home and I hated it and I kept thinking that eventually you and Toya would come back and get me but you never did.’

  Oh God! The hurt went very deep here. For the first time I really began to see the reality of what these kids had been through and it made me feel so ashamed.

  ‘I’m so sorry about the past,’ I told them both. ‘I was a mess. The Heidnik thing wasn’t just like something that happened and then stopped. It gave me some serious issues to deal with, which I’m still dealing with now. I’m in therapy and it’s very good but at the time, they didn’t know how to help us girls. They just wanted to dope us up. The way I coped was the only way I knew how at the time: I took drugs. I’m not proud of that and in the end it hurt me more than it helped me but in the immediate aftermath, I had nothing else.

  ‘I’ve got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder you see – they didn’t even have a name for it back then. These days we know all about it because of the veterans coming back from war but it was pretty new in those days. I’m getting the right help now but I swear it’s only in the last few years, and with Chris’s help, that I’ve started to get things under control. I wasn’t in a fit state to be your mommy back then. But I wanted to do the right thing by you, give you the best chance possible, and that’s why I let the Sepulvedas adopt you.’

  There was silence.

  ‘But what about Toya?’ Zornae asked.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She got to stay with you.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ I was confused. ‘Toya didn’t come and live with me until she was thirteen. Until then she lived with her father.’

  ‘Well, why did she come and live with you then and we couldn’t?’

  ‘Zornae,’ I said slowly, trying to make this as easy as possible for her. ‘You were adopted by then. I didn’t have any say over your future. Toya and I have been looking for you for years but the child protective services refused to help because once you’ve given a child up for adoption, that is it. It is then the child’s decision if they want to know you. I couldn’t intrude or interrupt your life. That would have been wrong.’

  Ricky was looking thoughtful. I could see he had a lot of my strength and independence – yes, he was a Rivera, through and through.

  ‘What about our father?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, well your father had a lot of children,’ I said. I wasn’t going to sugar-coat the truth. They deserved to know everything. ‘He liked women, he liked to fight and drink and he wasn’t the greatest candidate for fatherhood either. By the time the question came up, he wasn’t really in the picture.’

  We talked for hours that first night. Nothing was off-limits. I wanted to be as open and honest as possible so we got off on the right foot. No secrets. They told me too about their upbringing – some good, some not so good.

  As the night drew to a close I wanted to say one final thing. ‘Look, I can’t change the past. It’s done with. We’ve got to start from here, move forward in a positive way and look to the future. Whatever hang-ups you have about the past, you got to try to let them go for all our sakes. I know it’s hard. I know I did things wrong and for that I’m truly sorry but I can’t undo what’s happened. I can only try my best from now on and if that’s okay with you then I’d really like to try.’

  Ricky nodded and then stood up to hug me. Zornae started to cry again and held my hand.

  ‘I just want to be close to you, Mom,’ she said in a little-girl voice. In that moment I saw them both as they used to be as little kids. I could see the babies I’d left behind.

  ‘I love you, Mommy,’ she said.

  ‘I love you, Mom,’ Rick
y echoed.

  ‘I love you too,’ I said, and then I pulled them both back to look at them. What beautiful young adults they’d grown up to be!

  ‘I’m here now,’ I told them. ‘I’ll always be your momma, no matter what. Now, kids, I think it’s time for bed!’

  They smiled a little then and we hugged and kissed goodnight. It had been a tiring day. Tiring but utterly beautiful.

  The next day was Christmas and the house buzzed with happiness and activity. Toya cooked up a fantastic turkey dinner and all the kids ripped into their gifts with breathless excitement. It was the best Christmas I’d ever had.

  There were snowstorms in Philly that year but in Texas we were all dressed in shorts and little T-shirts thanks to the warm desert air.

  Later we all went outside to play a family game of basketball.

  I got teamed up with all the grandkids while Zornae, Ricky and Toya played on the other side. I tried to rally my team but it was completely unfair and we laughed hysterically as the little ones tried unsuccessfully to get the ball off the other team.

  ‘Come on, Bryahna!’ I urged. ‘Get them!’

  The kids screamed and squealed with laughter. Toya, Ricky and Zornae’s faces shone with effort and exhilaration. We could have been any family, right then. Any ordinary, wholesome family just enjoying each other’s company for the holidays. It was the happiest I’d been in a very long time.

  We stayed just a week but it was long enough to get to know my kids a little – Zornae was basically a momma’s girl, just like I had been with my mom. She always wanted to be by my side and was even a little jealous if I showed the other kids more attention than her.

  Ricky was a headstrong, independent man with a fiercely ambitious spirit – he wanted to break into rapping and when he gave me a demonstration, I thought he was really good. He would succeed in whatever he chose to do, I could see that.

  When Chris and I got back to Atlantic City, Toya was thrilled to announce that Zornae wanted to come and live with her. For Toya, it was all her dreams come true.