“Well, we’re talking about Gabriella, who’s been missing since forever. It was hard trying to find a good way to talk to you about it. It’s been almost thirty years.”
The reverend looked away from him, drank all of the milk in his glass, before pouring another. A white milk mustache sat upon his upper lip and he wiped it off.
“You know she told me her last name was Holmes.” He laughed.
“Oh really,” Terrell scanned the paperwork he gathered and some old newspaper articles he’d pulled from the archive files at the library, “cause I don’t remember you telling the police about that last name.”
“You don’t remember ‘cause I didn’t tell them. Them police officers had no intentions of finding the little black girl. It wasn’t until the ransom we raised that people started taking it seriously.”
“Why not? It could’ve possibly helped in the investigation.”
“No it couldn’t. Holmes was my son’s last name anyway. He took his mother’s last name. Gabriella started calling herself that because she liked him that much. We all thought it was puppy love but now I can’t be sure. It was rather obsessive.”
“You have a son? Where is he?” Terrell asked looking around. “I’d like to meet him especially if he has more information on Gabriella.”
“Uh…I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? This will help me out a lot.”
The pastor sighed and said, “He lives in Simple City, a project in D.C., but I must warn you, he’s not going to tell you anything without some money and I’m not talking about a couple of bucks. Lately if he’s not getting paid, he doesn’t show up for anything and that includes family functions.
“Anyway, when the police came, they questioned him about Gabriella everyday for two weeks. He was the last person who saw her but he never gave up any information. I started to believe he did know more than he was saying.”
“What’s his name?”
“Dmitry,” he said clearing his throat. “He…he has a lot of resentment in his heart.” He stuttered. “I ‘spose it’s partly my fault. He learned about love and loss quite young.” He looked into his glass. “I had another son too. His name was Baker. He died with a bullet to his head.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. I didn’t mean to make you relive the memories.”
“No…it’s been some time now. His mother was so overprotective and she still couldn’t save him from himself. Dmitry was the oldest of the two.”
“Did Baker and Dmitry have the same mother?”
“No. Baker’s mother and me separated a long…long time ago. She was a mean woman. One of the meanest you’d ever meet, I promise you. I did allow Dmitry to go with Baker and his mother when she picked him up sometimes, but Dmitry always seemed detached when he came back. It would take weeks for Dmitry to get back to normal. Now Baker was another conversation all together.”
“What was Baker’s mother’s name?”
Estelle Hightower,” he smiled reminiscing, “but I called her Penny. She was always so tight when it came to our budget. If there was a bargain to be gained, Estelle would find it down to the Penny.” He chuckled at his own humor.
“Did you say, Penny?”
“Yes, son. Why?”
“’Cause the name sounds familiar. Really familiar.”
“Yeah well she was something else. I never married her, I was going to because of Baker and I had just started my ministry here at the church. I wanted to set an example for my sons. But when Baker died, my reason to be with her died along with him. Baker was a disappointment to Penny. I’ve never seen a woman so obsessed with having a baby girl. That’s all she wanted…truly. A daughter. But the way Baker was born scarred any chances of her having another. I think she resented it. We didn’t have no health care in them days and the doctor ripped up her womb to pull Baker out. He was a big baby. But I think God was saving the world by making her barren. Penny is pure evil. Now I don’t believe in astrology, but there’s something to be said about that Gemini sign. She could make you think she loved you one minute and you’d see the hate the next.”
“Thank you so much, Pastor Robinson. Can I have your son’s number?”
“Sure.” He said grabbing a pen from inside his suit jacket pocket along with a small pad that he used to write down the notes from his sermons. “And, son, be careful. Some folks don’t like people digging up the earth.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I hope so.”
“Sir, do you mind if I return here if I have any more questions? As I mentioned on the phone, this case is really important to me and a few others who haven’t given up the hope to at least find Gabriella’s body.”
“You’re welcome anytime.”
Terrell got up to leave, drank the milk and frowned. It was sour. At first he thought it was spoiled until he remembered the reverend downed it like it was fresh off the milk truck.
Picking up the gallon to examine it Terrell said, “This is past its due date sir. You have to throw it away or you’ll get sick.”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with this milk,” he said slowly. “It’s an acquired taste. Some people adopt evil tastes in life; I just like old milk,”
Terrell didn’t know what the hell the pastor meant but he left with more information than he knew what to do with. And, on top of that he left with a whole lot of mystery.
Recollection
Terrell was surprised that Dmitry was prompt, because when he made it to Busboy and Poets, a restaurant on 14th street in Washington D.C., he was already into his second drink, all on Terrell’s dime. Terrell knew it was Dmitry the moment he saw him, because he looked strikingly like his father and was looking around the restaurant when he walked through the door.
“Thanks for meeting me, Terrell said scooting in a seat across from him. He extended his hand but Dmitry didn’t take it.
His face was stern and silver hairs were sprinkled throughout his head. He figured he was about forty and he was dressed simply in a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He didn’t look like he’d be living in Simple City.
“I already had two drinks, thank you,” Dmitry said making it known that Terrell was paying for them, not him. “You got my money?”
“Yes. But before I give you anything, I need to see what you know. So talk.”
Dmitry placed his right arm up on the bench behind him and twirled the drink in his cup with his straw. Something Terrell had seen the reverend do.
“Sometimes, I use to go with my brother Baker on weekends and Penny, his mother, didn’t mind. I remember thinking she was so cool, you know, to let me come with her even though I wasn’t her child. At first we’d just go to her house, but after while, she started taking us to work with her.”
“Where did she work?”
Dmitry looked up at Terrell with horror in his eyes and Terrell was immediately uncomfortable. He looked around the restaurant and when he was sure no one was watching he said, “I can never tell you that. What I will say is, on the outside it looked like one thing, but when you went on the inside it was something totally different. I called it ‘The Place’.”
“You gotta tell me the name at least.”
“I don’t gotta tell you shit!” He yelled with an attitude, “all I gotta do is survive.” He stared him down coldly. “But…downstairs there was this girl, Gabriella, the one you asked me about on the phone. She was as young as the rest of them, but in charge. I guess you could say she was the one keeping the other kids together. But she was so thin,” he said shaking his head. “I…I can’t understand some things about life you know? Like…how can people be so fuckin’ cruel. To kids at that.
“But even though she wasn’t being taken care of, she was alive with life. To me she was older than her years and had a spirit about her nobody else had. I’ve never met a person like her and still haven’t to this day.” He said shaking his head. “I think I was like sixteen or seventeen and she was ‘bout nine or ten
back then but I really can’t remember.”
“Did you say anything to Penny about the kids you saw? And the fact that they weren’t eating?”
“No. I wasn’t supposed to be down there,” he said softly, “I wasn’t supposed to know about any of that. She made it clear to us the moment we got there that downstairs was off limits. Upstairs and downstairs were like two different worlds. But me and my brother Baker was kids, so we roamed around and we got into shit. And on the weekends I wasn’t with my brother, he’d actually stayed with Penny there sometimes when she had nightshifts, and that’s when he found the world downstairs and told me about it.”
“Look…when you were there, do you remember someone by the name of Yvonna?”
He looked directly into his eyes and said, “Yes. Gabriella and Yvonna were very close. Best friends I think. When Gabriella used to find rats to eat, she’d share them with Yvonna first and the others second.”
“Rats?!” Terrell screamed. “How would children know to eat them let alone cook ‘em?”
“You’d be surprised at what you would learn to do if you was hungry. They’d make little barnyard fires in the back of the area and cook their food off of makeshift pans. Since the people who kept the place often gave them old milk, they’d make cheese with it using the cloth from their dresses. They knew how to survive.”
Terrell couldn’t help but remember the old milk the reverend drank as if it were nothing.
“The point is, Gabriella cared for all the kids. When they were hungry, it was her who snuck into the alley, to bring in thrown out food from the dumpster of the restaurant that was across the street. And if she couldn’t get some food, she’d kill another rat.”
“I wonder why she didn’t tell someone.”
“It’s not that easy,” he said irritated with Terrell. “They would threaten to hurt these kids, and Gabriella had every reason to believe that they would.”
“Please continue.”
“Well when the restaurant closed, and the garbage wasn’t as plentiful anymore, I decided to steal my father’s car and meet her around the back of the place. He didn’t even know I could drive but I’d been stealing his car for two years by then. I could only do it on Sundays though because he’d be in church all day with no use for his car.
“Anyway, when I would pick her up, I’d bring her to the church after the members would bring over their cooked dishes. My father’s church always made large dinners on Sundays so the food she’d take would be enough to last the rest of the kids for a week.”
“How many kids were there?”
“They’d come and go. But for the most part, there appeared to be about ten downstairs and fifteen upstairs at any given time. The ones upstairs were always so neat and clean but the ones downstairs were a different story. I got the impression that the ones downstairs weren’t wanted, for whatever reason. I think they wouldn’t conform. They were the rebellious ones.”
“Why didn’t you just tell your father?”
Dmitry laminated for a few seconds and said, “Because Gabriella, asked me not to. I was too young to understand what was happening so I respected her wishes. An even now, I still don’t understand why I never told, I was real naïve.” He swallowed hard. “The church thing worked and she was never supposed to get caught, but eventually she did. Luckily for Gabriella my father ended up liking her and they had her back every Sunday. Things were going good until…until…”
His pause irritated Terrell, as he felt closer to knowing all of the things he ever wanted to know.
“Until Penny found out, that we’d been downstairs.”
“How did it happen?”
“After I saw what kind of person Penny was, I didn’t want to be around her, so I would go to see Gabriella on my own without staying over Penny’s for the weekend. I wasn’t worried about Penny finding out I was bringing Gabriella because she shied away from the church. She pretended to be Christian and would even talk to the Lord, but it was as if something was in it for her, but that was the extent of her religion.
“Anyway, Gabriella could’ve escaped The Place because anyone of the congregation members would’ve loved to have her. She was cool that way.” He smiled for the first time since their meeting. “But there was a darker side to Gabriella. She would sometimes get into it with the adults if they hurt one of the other kids too badly. She set fires to their cars. Snuck upstairs and peed in their food, that kind of stuff. Those kids were her family. They would beat her but after awhile, it just didn’t work. She stopped being afraid.”
“What about the parents? Where were they?”
“I don’t think she had one. Any of them. They seemed to be dumped off or…born there.”
“Born there?”
“Yes,” he said looking around again, “sometimes there were babies in there too. They got a little more attention than the others but not much. I remember seeing a young girl, who was about thirteen years old, breast-feeding two babies that weren’t even hers. Her baby had been taken away from her recently but a new one had been born and placed downstairs in her care. And because her young body still produced milk, she had it to feed the babies. But when the babies were well enough, they were taken too. And if there wasn’t a baby to drink the milk, the baby-less mother would nurse the older kids to prevent them from starving.” A tear dropped down Dmitry’s face. Terrell was stunned silent.
“I…I can’t imagine you witnessing something so violent and holding it all on yourself.”
“Where’s my money?” Dmitry asked as if someone had flipped a switch. “I’m not tellin’ you nothin’ else ‘till you give me my money.”
Terrell was put off by his change in mood at first but gave him the three hundred dollars that he asked for over the phone. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“We were going to. Me and my brother. That’s when Penny found out. I remember being scared at first but Baker, man…he was real strong. He said if we didn’t tell someone, God wouldn’t protect us if we needed help,” he smiled again tucking the money into his pocket.
“But your father told me he killed himself. How could a kid so strong commit suicide?”
“That’s a lie.” Dmitry spat. “Don’t ever fuckin’ say that lie in my presence again!”
“Well…what did happen?”
“Penny found out that we was going downstairs, when one day she came to one of the rooms upstairs that we was supposed to be in and we weren’t there. We were downstairs as usual. But Baker made a mistake and left a letter in his dresser drawer that he was planning to give his teacher the next day at school. It listed everything he saw downstairs and he’d even counted all the kids that were present.
“When Penny found the letter, she started keeping my brother out of school and started medicating him. She claimed he was sick but Baker had always been in good health. She said he was seeing people and hearing things but I’m not surprised, she kept him doped up! Any one of us would’ve lost our minds!
“I would tell my father that I believed something was wrong with Penny’s story about Baker being sick, but he was so caught up in the church responsibilities that he didn’t listen. The only reason I didn’t tell him the exact details was because I was worried about my brother’s life. My father didn’t seem strong enough to take my word as fact, and investigate silently and I knew he’d tell Penny and that would further put my brother in danger.
“I remember sneaking my father’s car to see Baker one Sunday, when Penny wasn’t there. She used to run out all the time and leave him alone. Anyway, she had him so drugged up that he was like a zombie. He didn’t even know who I was. The next day, he was dead. Everybody believed her story that he killed himself because Penny was well liked. But I never bought the story that he shot himself in the head one bit. He was too much in love with life.
“Well…what about Gabriella?”
“Luckily Penny still didn’t know about me taking her out of ‘The Place’ on Sundays. So, I was still able
to pick her up once a week through the crawl space she created to come and go. But one day one of the other kids overheard Penny’s plan to kill Gabriella because she was much stronger than they were. The plan was to murder Gabriella the following day. So we knew we had to move quickly. I picked up Gabriella the next morning, gave her some money I had stolen from the collection plate at church, and dropped her off at the public train station. That was the last I saw of her.
“So…so…you…knew where she went?” he paused as he looked at him with hopeful eyes. “All this time people thought she was probably…”
“She was very much alive last I saw her.”
“But, so many people were looking for her, and could never find her. How is it possible for a child to disappear off the face of the earth?”
“That’s where the story is lost for me. Six months after she left, she wrote me a letter telling me how much she appreciated my help and that she was okay. It was the last time I ever heard from her.”
Terrell exhaled having felt like he had gotten so close, only to be so far away. His head dropped in defeat. “But my father…I’m sure he knows.”
Terrell looked up from the table and said, “How do you know?”
“I’m not sure, but something tells me she told him more than she let on. They were really close and he cared about her. He even has a non-profit organization to feed the children in her name. I don’t think he’d ever tell you anything, but I’m sure that at some point, when she left, she got in contact with him and told him she was okay. My father had a reward for any information leading to her whereabouts, but after awhile, it just went away. I asked him what made him cancel the reward and he said he had to move on with his life. But he was passionate about finding her before then so it didn’t make much sense.”
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