by Amanda Berry
He sits on my bed to watch the news and after a while says, “This is crazy.”
He usually laughs when the police are chasing the wrong lead, but this time he is nervous and fidgety because they are so close by. I think it also scares him that my disappearance is still such big news nine years later. He keeps hoping people will forget about me.
He gets in his car and leaves, making sure to lock us in our rooms.
There’s live coverage on every channel and I watch all day. They have the whole search area covered with a big tent and cadaver dogs sniffing for my body. The streets are filled with people who have come to watch, and I scan the crowd looking for my family. Channel 19 shows a photo of the guy who gave the tip, Robert Wolford. I stare at his face, trying to remember if I’ve ever seen him. I’m sure I’ve never met him. I wonder why he’s making this all up.
The helicopters are still hovering, so loud, right over my head.
He comes back from the scene and says he stood watching them dig for my body with the rest of the crowd, trying to blend in, to see what was happening and to hear what the neighbors were saying.
“It’s right down the street. It’s right there!” he says, pointing in that direction.
At seven p.m. channels 3 and 8 are still airing it. Aunt Susie, my mom’s sister, is there, only a couple of blocks from me. They play old interviews with Mom, and it’s good to hear her voice. I miss her so much. I’m happy to see Gina’s mom, Nancy Ruiz, out there talking on the news, too. She’s a fighter like Mom, and it’s nice she’s supporting my family. That means a lot.
A few reporters have gone back to our old house, which looks vacant, and the grass is kind of tall. It’s sad to see it empty, but I know Beth must have a nice new place somewhere.
They’re interviewing some guy who says we all grew up together, but I don’t remember him. They say Beth is too upset about the dig to go on camera, and that makes me cry.
Now they have my mom’s friend Terry talking about the family. She brought a pretty paper butterfly to leave there in case they find my body.
July 20
It’s day 2 of the dig and I’m still on the news all the time. A police officer just told reporters that they’re 95 percent done but haven’t found anything. They brought Wolford to the site to point out where he buried me, but now they suspect he’s been lying. I’m glad they’re figuring that out.
They interview my mom’s sister Theresa at the Burger King where I used to work. She’s crying and upset, which makes me cry more, and she says the whole family is watching on TV but that they just can’t bear to go down there. The newscaster reports that Beth is so stressed that she’s in the hospital. Oh, no!
Gina’s mom is still there watching them dig and saying, “I am hoping it is false.”
He’s watching the TV with me and suddenly says, “Hey, there’s Pedro!”
His brother Pedro is on the Channel 8 news. He’s wearing a flowered shirt and sunglasses, shorts, and a straw hat, pointing at the dig site and saying, “That’s a waste of money.”
His brothers have been to this house a few times, but they have no idea we are here. I think Pedro is just one of those guys who likes to complain, so he’s mad that the city is spending money digging for a lost girl. But what a weird coincidence that he’s picked out of the crowd to interview about the case.
Finally, they call off the search. There’s a press conference and a police officer says that everybody wants closure, wants to know what happened to Amanda Berry, and the good news now is that there’s still a chance she will come home: “There is still hope that maybe somewhere, there is a girl still alive.”
I waited all day to see Beth, and now she’s on, saying, “I’ll wait forever for Amanda to come home.” On the news I see Marissa and Devon playing on the couch at Beth’s house. And I see Beth has a new tattoo on her right arm—it looks like an RIP for Mom. Someday when I’m out of here, I’m going to get a tattoo for my mom, too.
So many tears are running down my cheeks—happy and sad ones at the same time. But now there’s more bad news: my grandma Diane, my mom’s mom, died. And my dad’s in the hospital in critical condition, but they don’t say why. I had no idea.
“Well, it’s about time he croaked, right?” he says when he hears the report about my dad.
He knows just what to say to hurt me the most.
“That’s just wrong,” I answer. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“I’m just telling you the facts,” he says.
“Oh, are you going to say that about your brothers when they die young? Because they’re drunks!”
He thinks about that for a minute.
“You’re right,” he says. “I guess maybe I’m coldhearted.”
He has been talking more and more lately about being “coldhearted,” like it’s some medical condition that excuses whatever horrible things he says or does.
• • •
Gina has been especially kind through these two strange days of watching police dig for my body. She drew a yellow cross and wrote on it: “Always believe in hope. Even through the hardest times.”
And tonight we all held hands—me and Joce, Gina, and Michelle—and prayed for my dad. Then before I put Joce to bed, she and I prayed again for him and the whole family.
I’m scared that this bizarre dig is the closest the police will ever come to finding me. I force myself to stop thinking that way and decide that this whole thing is a message from God. Some guy in prison makes up a story, and it leads the police to within two blocks of me. I have to believe it’s a sign that the end is near.*
July 30, 2012: Searching for Jaycee
Amanda
Joce and I are sitting here in our room playing Grand Theft Auto on the TV. She likes to drive around in the cars, but I don’t allow her to do the violent stuff, like shooting people.
He comes in and asks me to go on the Internet with him. We got Internet access in the house a few months ago, but the only way I can use it is with him, since he never lets the keyboard out of his sight, even taking it with him when he leaves the house.
I’ve been hearing a lot on TV about Jaycee Dugard, the girl who was kidnapped for a long time in California. She’s written a book and she’s doing interviews. I want to know how she’s coping now that she’s free. How are her kids doing?
“Let’s search Jaycee Dugard,” I say.
He says okay, but tells Jocelyn she has to go in the dining room and play because he doesn’t want her to see it. She answers in pretend Spanish—she hears him speaking Spanish all the time, especially when he’s on the phone, and she tries to imitate him—and skips off into the dining room.
As he and I read about how Jaycee was taken by a guy who was doing meth and who heard voices of demons, he says, “That guy was crazy.”
Jaycee was held captive in a shed in the guy’s backyard and she had two kids with him. It was hard for her to talk to the police after they found her, because he made her so afraid for so many years. I know that feeling. There have been times when I thought about screaming for help, like when the police were raiding the house next door a couple of summers ago. But I felt so beaten down and frightened that I couldn’t open my mouth.
Jaycee says she was scared of the outside world. I know that I’m frightened that something will happen to Jocelyn when we get out of here. Will I ever be able to let her have a sleepover at a friend’s house or go shopping?
Even he has warned her about strangers. “Never get in a car with somebody you don’t know,” he tells her. He says that when they go out, she’s friendly with everybody. I guess that’s good, but it makes me worry, like Jaycee worries about her kids.
We read more about Jaycee and I say, “This is just like what happened to me.”
“It is similar, because she had the kids,” he agrees. Then he looks at me and as
ks, “Are you going to write a book about this?”
“I’m not sure,” I answer. “Do I want to write a book and relive all this?”
Someday, when I get out of here, I know some people won’t be able to understand why I didn’t figure out how to kill him or escape. It’s going to be hard to explain how fear paralyzes you. And I have Joce to worry about. If I fought back and he killed me, she would have only him to raise her, and I can’t let that happen. People are also going to say there was something wrong with me because I allowed myself to get close to him. I can’t help what people say, but I’m the one who went through this, and only I know what I’ve had to do to survive and to create the best possible life for Jocelyn.
“If you write a book, are you going to tell the truth? Are you going to say that you had feelings for me?” he asks. “’Cause if you don’t, you shouldn’t even write it. It won’t be true.”
“I am going to tell the truth,” I say. “I’m going to tell people what you did to me. I will tell them about all the rapes.”
“I never raped you,” he says.
I hate it when he says that. Does he really think that because I’m not screaming and hitting him every time, it’s “consensual”? He loves that word.
“Yes, you did,” I tell him. “You rape me all the time.”
He knows what he’s doing is wrong; that’s why he locks us up and keeps us hidden. But I don’t want to get him mad, so I drop it. Sometimes he is kind to me, and I do feel close to him.
“If I write a book, I’m not going to lie,” I say. “If you want people to know I care for you, fine. I’ll say that. But it was only like that after I had a kid with you. It wasn’t like I got here and said, ‘Oh, I’m so in love with you and I want to be here.’”
He turns off the computer and tells me, “You got in my car willingly. You got into bed with me because you wanted to. I never raped you. It was always consensual. I never did anything wrong.”
“I’m going to tell the truth,” I say again.
August 30, 2012: Bedbugs
Gina
I wake up itching. My arms and legs are covered with little red bites, which is weird because I don’t know how mosquitoes could possibly get in the house. The bites are incredibly annoying and are driving me crazy. Michelle and Amanda haven’t been bitten at all.
“I think you have chicken pox,” Amanda says.
“No, I had chicken pox when I was nine,” I tell her. “I definitely remember that. I missed a lot of school.”
“Maybe the measles?” she wonders.
She says I should stay away from Jocelyn in case I’m contagious.
Over the years we have all had colds, fevers, and stomachaches. He is around schoolkids all the time and gets sick, and then his germs race around the house. But I often wonder what he would do if one of us got seriously ill, or broke a bone or had an appendix attack? Even if he found an emergency room far from Cleveland and the doctors didn’t recognize us, he knows we would tell people and he would go to jail. Getting sick is just not an option. He would let us die.
In the heat this summer I had a lot of breathing problems and was making a scary wheezing sound. I have allergies and told him I thought it was from the mold and dust in my room. I was suffocating and needed some fresh air, and though he wouldn’t open the boarded-up window in my room, he cut a round hole in the ceiling to the attic and opened the windows up there. He rigged up a fan that was supposed to suck the hot air out of our room, and it did help a bit.
When I show him the spots all over my legs and arms, he goes to the drugstore and buys some skin cream. It calms the itching enough for me to sleep, but when I wake up, I freak. Now my face, neck, back—every inch of me—has red dots. And then I spot the problem: a plump little bug crawling on the bed. Bedbugs! So gross! I just saw on TV that there are tons of them these days.
I show the bug to Michelle, and she jumps off the bed. I trap it on a piece of tape so I can show it to Amanda and him.
“I can’t sleep on this bed anymore!” I tell him, showing him the dead bug.
“Why are they only biting you?” he asks.
“I don’t know! Maybe they like my blood. But I can’t sleep here!”
Now I wish I hadn’t asked for a new bed. A few days ago I helped him carry a box spring and mattress upstairs. I had been begging him to get us a new bed because the one I had to share with Michelle was so miserable—an old mattress on the ground. It had been on a frame, but the wooden slats kept falling out, so finally we just put it on the floor. But the mattress was lumpy and even he didn’t like it.
After I told him I wanted a regular bed like Amanda’s, he found a queen-size one on a curb that somebody had thrown out. The mattress was so comfortable that when we brought it upstairs he hollered to Amanda to ask if she wanted it. She pretty much gets first choice of everything. She took it, but I didn’t care, because then we got her mattress on top of the new box spring from outside, so we were way better off than we had been.
But now, as I itch from head to toe, I realize the box spring must have been full of bedbugs. I sit on the little plastic portable toilet in our room, since the bed takes up most of the room, and there’s nowhere else to sit. I don’t want to be on that mattress. Last night I dreamed that a bug with a huge face was laughing at me.
I hate this place. Why is this happening?
He returns with rubbing alcohol and bleach-soaked rags and tells me to help him wash down the mattress and box spring.
When Amanda got her new mattress, before we even knew about the bedbugs, she asked for a sheet of plastic and duct tape to wrap it. She’s always so worried about germs, and Jocelyn sleeps in that bed, too. Now he realizes what a good idea that was, so he does the same thing to our mattress and box spring. Amanda keeps telling him to hurry, because bedbugs move fast.
“The bugs will never get out,” he says, putting more and more duct tape around the mattress. “They are locked inside.”
October 25, 2012: Encounter
Amanda
“I saw Beth and her daughters at McKinley School,” he tells me. “I looked at her, and she looked right back at me.”
This is just like last year when he saw Beth in line at Marc’s. It makes me think about what a small world Cleveland is. McKinley is just a few blocks from my old house, and I’m only a couple of miles away. We all live in one big neighborhood, so why can’t anyone find me?
I wonder if Beth feels anything when she’s close to him. Something strange, or maybe familiar?
November 6, 2012: Fired
Amanda
My mom would have been fifty today. I kissed her photo this morning fifty-one times: one for each birthday, plus one for luck.
Mom’s birthday is good luck for President Obama—he was reelected today! I’ve now missed the first three elections when I would’ve been old enough to vote. I can’t wait to vote someday.
It’s early evening and time to exercise. We jog every night now. He thinks he’s getting fat and the doctor told him he has high blood pressure, so he’s suddenly a lot more health-conscious.
We turn on the music and jog in circles from the living room to the dining room and into the kitchen, over and over for an hour, all of us in a line. He goes first, then me, Joce, and Gina. Michelle usually stays in her room, because whenever she’s with him they get into a fight. Gina and I have learned it’s easier if you don’t talk back to him.
We look ridiculous jogging, especially him. He likes to wear his sweatpants with the waist pulled way up high. He says that makes him sweat more, which makes no sense, but it sure makes him look funny.
Today he’s not wearing his old straw cowboy hat, just a bandanna around his head. The jogging feels good. Sometimes it’s so goofy that it’s fun. Gina and I pretend to kick each other as we run, and he mixes in salsa steps. We laugh at how idiotic he looks.
/> But then later it feels awful again, and the moments when we were smiling and pretending everything was okay are all gone. Gina has felt less and less like jogging lately.
She’s become more depressed these past few months, and sometimes she doesn’t even want to get out of bed. I really have to beg her to get up. Joce gets bored with the jogging, too, so she doesn’t want to do it for too long. But I think it’s helping me feel better. I’m trying to eat less junk, too, but it’s hard.
Ever since Joce was born, but especially in the last year or so, he’s been buying healthier food. His doctor told him to eat more fruits and vegetables, and while he still cooks a lot of rice and beans, he makes me steam broccoli or green beans or kale, something green every day. He read on the Internet that kale is good for you, so he has that a lot. He suddenly has cucumbers and carrots in the fridge, and fish. He’s started growing peppers and tomatoes in the backyard.
But it’s annoying, because the good food is only for him and Jocelyn. The rest of us still have to eat a lot of McDonald’s and other junk because it’s cheaper. He buys apples and oranges and bananas, but we’re only allowed to eat them if they start going bad.
He still has a sweet tooth, though, and loves chocolate so much that he keeps huge Hershey’s bars with almonds in the fridge. Mainly those are just for him, but sometimes he gives us a little.
I go into the kitchen to get a drink of water after jogging when he walks in looking happy.
“I finally got fired today,” he says with a smile, holding up a letter from the Cleveland Public Schools saying he’s been terminated. This has been his plan for a long time. He’s been more and more worried that driving a school bus was too risky, that he would make a mistake at work and the police would come here again.
One time in 2004, he left a kid alone on the bus while he went to have lunch. He got suspended and he said two cops knocked on the front door to talk to him, but he wasn’t home. I must have been upstairs, chained in my room, because I never heard anyone knocking.