But is that enough? It’s hard not to be angry with Allison. Every day, a reminder of what she did creeps across my mind. When she’s angry at me, and the fight escalates beyond the issue from which the fight began, she occasionally says, “We wouldn’t be having this fight if you hadn’t come to get me.” Because she can be as mean and hurtful as her father in these moments, it takes a huge amount of self-control to remind myself she is a child, and one who I must love unconditionally.
Sometimes, my anger is directed towards Frank. If he had allowed himself to be loved and had been a better dad, would Allison have felt the need to find love from strangers? Why won’t he get his head out of his ass long enough to see how his children miss him and want his involvement in their lives? Or, more importantly, why won’t he just be honest with them? Tell them why he left. Tell them why he doesn’t call them. Tell them why he doesn’t want to be their dad.
For all the hours of counseling Allison and I sat through after April 2009, no one ever helped me figure out how to talk about Allison’s running away. I told my mom and sister that night, and cried. I told Officer Richards, Stan, and Frank the next day, and remained stoic. But that was it, for a long time. In spite of going to a church and having a few friends in various states, I didn’t like to talk about it. It took me a whole year to tell my pastor. I still haven’t told most of my family. Part of me is frozen by the thought of people judging me. Judging my parenting. Judging my daughter.
When I did finally tell my pastor, she listened, but offered no advice. She gave me a hug, told me I knew who I was, as a child of God, but left it at that. We’ve never spoken about it since.
It’s hard not to take people’s silence as judgment.
The days I struggle with the memories, the frustrations, or the emotions the most, I turn to God for help and guidance.
There is a song I remember from childhood with lyrics that speak about being a member in God’s army. Perhaps our names were penned onto the roles when we are circumcised or baptized, just as young men in our country must register with the Selective Service when they turn eighteen. Some may ignore the letter when they are called up for active duty, some have been killed for announcing their membership, some will be seduced to follow another kind of “leader” because the demands of spirituality seem too high, and some, like my ex-husband Frank, will simply live hypocritical lives. I, on the other hand, will be the woman you see who practices the “pay it forward” approach to life the best that I can. I won’t preach to you about how my religion is the best, I won’t use God’s name in every other sentence that comes out of my mouth, and I won’t judge you for the choices you make in your life. I will be a contented disciple in God’s army, though, and I will work for justice in everything I do, even when it seems like I’m waging an uphill battle.
Most importantly, though, I will work hard to forgive those who have hurt me. Allison is still my daughter, and I love her. I always will. As parents, that is the greatest job we are commissioned with: to love them in spite of what they do. I will pray for Allison to get ahead of whatever demons she is wrestling with. I will pray for peace, love, and contentment for each of us.
My faith has been tested. My faith helps me get out of bed every day. My faith keeps me moving.
11. Moving Forward
Since Allison ran away, I’ve noticed myself paying more attention to the news stories about missing young women. Every month, some young woman is reported as missing. Follow-up stories seem rare, though. I can’t help think about how these events have changed people’s lives.
“‘I’m so happy to be back,’” screamed the headline of the October 26, 2009, issue of People magazine, with Jaycee Dugard’s “then” and “now” pictures on the front cover. By February of 2010, her story had been reduced to the occasional news story, such as “Dugard diary shows conflicted emotion on captivity,” written by an Associated Press writer on February 11. Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped June 10, 1991. She wouldn’t be found for eighteen years. On August 26, 2009, she was discovered living in the back of Phillip Garrido’s property. He had a history of sexual assault dating back to 1972. It took authorities eighteen years to find Jaycee Dugard, but her story faded from our attention in less than eighteen months. Though court sessions are currently taking place, as far as the public is concerned, the case is closed.
“Elizabeth Smart on her abduction: ‘I never let it hold me back,’” a follow-up news story to another high-profile story from almost a decade ago, reported on in October 2009. On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped. Fortunately, the authorities were able to catch up to her abductor nine months later, returning her to her family home only eighteen miles away. In October, 2009, nearly nine years after she was kidnapped, Elizabeth Smart got her day in court. The news media had to remind people of her very public case, because it happened almost a decade earlier.
On July 22, 2010, I woke up to the news item that Facebook had reached a user volume of 500,000 active account-holders. The reporter continued with the information that, “during the time it took to make that announcement, another fifty-seven users joined Facebook.” I don’t have an account, in part because of Allison’s history with online networking sites, but I wonder how many predators have networking accounts.
An hour later, a local news program aired an alert: “Fourteen-year-old Alexis Tschida, from Cottage Grove, has been missing for three weeks. She is believed to be with Alexius McMullin, a thirty-six-year-old known sexual predator.” I was sad that they placed the girl’s photo right next to the man’s—I think they should separate the victim from the criminal.
* * *
These stories captured my attention during the year following Allison’s attempt to run away. What we, the public, don’t see, are the private struggles and adjustments these young women—and their families—have to go through to heal. Allison and I each quietly counted the days to our one-year anniversary. That year was one of mourning, new beginnings, and many, many moments of looking back. It was sometimes equally frightening to worry about the future.
I can’t help but wonder about the young women who didn’t survive. On November 22, 2003, Dru Sjodin was abducted from the parking lot of the mall where she worked in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Her body was finally found April 17, 2004, and Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., a registered level-three sexual predator, was convicted of the crime on August 30, 2006. He was sentenced to death on September 22, 2006, almost three years to the day of Ms. Sjodin’s murder. Although it still gives me the chills, Allison and I have to count ourselves among the lucky—the man who lured her onto that bus in April 2009 was arrested and pled guilty to a lesser charge of “enticing a child under the age of sixteen.” He was sentenced to thirty months in prison, and had to register as a sexual predator. Allison is with me, though our scars will never disappear.
* * *
While I consider myself blessed to have Allison back home with me, I lived on egg-shells for most of the first year after she ran away. Life was no longer the same, and the children no longer seemed innocent. I wondered whether I would be able to trust Allison again. I wondered when the next wave was going to hit my home. My friend Sara said those feelings were only natural, but Allison still didn’t seem to understand why I lived on the edge of fear with every knock on the door or ring of the telephone.
After we returned from Chicago, I instructed the children that, for a while, no one was to answer the phone except me. In the beginning, it was because Nicholas kept checking to see if Allison would answer the phone. After his arrest, I was afraid one of Nicholas’s friends might call to harass or threaten Allison. I also wanted to see if there were other strangers she might have been talking to. I viewed the phone as a link to the outside world and wanted to protect the children from the criticisms I was hearing and reading at every turn. But this new arrangement only lasted about a week. The children forgot,
and I didn’t want to scare them anymore with my own anxieties. The children trusted the security of caller ID to tell them which calls are “safe” versus calls that might be “risky” to answer.
Another new behavior that began for me after Allison’s run was that I would keep my cell phone turned on and close by. Before that weekend in April, I was almost reluctant to give my cell phone number out to anyone, other than to the schools the kids attended or to my mother and sister, and I would only turn it on when the children weren’t with me. When I was at work, my phone usually sat in my purse, locked away in a file cabinet drawer, ignored. As a teacher, I was rigid about cell phones being in the classroom, and wasn’t willing to be a hypocrite of my own rule just because I was in charge.
Keeping my cell phone on made it easier for Allison to text me from the swing in the backyard on May 29, 2009. “Okay,” the message began. “So I feel like I have enough strength to tell you this now. The reason Gregory told the police that we had sex is because he took advantage of me. In other words, he raped me. It wasn’t consensual.”
On April 24, 2009, when Allison left the high school with Alex, she needed to kill a few hours before the bus would leave town. Since Alex had to work, she asked to be dropped off at Gregory’s house. Two hours later, Gregory and his dad drove her to the bus station across town.
Reading the text message that May day was like being hit right between the eyes. I took a deep breath before responding, then another breath, and then another.
I realized that Allison was probably nervously sitting on her swing, awaiting my response. If I took too long to answer, she would read that as a sign that I was mad at her. But how was I supposed to respond?
“When did this happen?” I sent back to Allison, after about a half an hour contemplating the news.
“Day I left,” she quickly sent back.
I released a deep sigh. That awful April 24. “Condom?” I typed and sent back. It was all I could get out. My hands were already shaking.
“No,” came another quick response.
My heart dropped into my stomach. All I could think about were AIDS and pregnancy. My brain wasn’t even thinking about whether or not it had been consensual.
But I guess I knew that. If Gregory had raped her, he would not have used a condom. Maybe the lack of a condom was an explanation for the pregnancy test debacle the month before. Her earlier story, that a friend had slipped it into her shoulder bag without her knowing it, had always seemed somewhat thin.
I consoled myself, then, with the fact that Allison had had her period since our return from Chicago, so we didn’t have to add pregnancy to what we were already dealing with. But I didn’t know if she had been tested for STDs and AIDS when she was in that emergency room in Chicago in April. I remembered my mother saying that the hospital had checked her for drugs and alcohol as part of their runaway protocol, but had no way of knowing about other tests, or if STDs would even have shown up as positive test results twelve hours later. I added getting an STD test to my mental checklist of things that would have to be tended to during our summer vacation. It was already so close to the end of the school year that pulling her out of school for a trip to the doctor didn’t seem necessary at that moment.
* * *
On Sunday, June 7, 2009, I experienced my first battle with what I think of as PTSD. Allison asked to spend the night over at the house of a new friend. They had just met less than a week before. This was a girl Allison felt knew nothing about her running away weekend in April. I was nervous about the request, having only allowed Allison on a handful of sleepovers in her life, and only then with people I had met and felt comfortable with. On the other hand, she had been ostracized by former friends, and friends’ parents, since running away. This new friend attended a different school in town, Allison explained, which meant there was no way she or her mom knew about Allison’s running away. Ignoring the suspicion that something was going to go wrong, I admitted to myself that I wanted to encourage any social opportunities extended her way.
I also decided it was important to re-establish a sense of trust in Allison, for both of our sakes, and agreed to let her go. As I drove her over to the girl’s house, I asked Allison to write down the girl’s cell phone number, confirmed a time for the morning pick-up, and reluctantly listened while she excitedly shared with me their plans for the evening. Unfortunately, just over two hours later, I was flashing back to April 24 in a really bad way.
At 9:01 p.m., I sent Allison an innocent text message: “Doing okay?”
“Yep,” came the quick reply.
“Where?” I asked.
“Walking.”
“Want a ride?” I asked. Leaving my house to give her a ride was not unusual behavior for me, even though it seems weird to a lot of other parents. I guess because of what I went through when I was a teenage girl in Chicago, I would rather go out of my way to keep my own children safe than have them rely on other friends, parents, or strangers to give them rides.
“Nah,” came Allison’s reply to my ride offer.
“Headed where?” I continued.
“Her house.”
Realizing that this could potentially be our last communication of the evening, I sent her a simple “Love you” text message at 9:06 p.m..
Silence.
My heart skipped a beat. I told myself to breathe. Then I rationalized that maybe the message simply hadn’t sent. Allison knew how important it was to me to have the “love you” acknowledged. So I sent the message again at 9:10 p.m.
Nothing.
Sitting on my couch at home, my heart started to race, my hands started shaking, and my mouth went dry. Thoughts started spinning through my head in wild, random order. I couldn’t go through the silence of her cell phone again, like I had on April 24. I called her cell phone at 9:11, and got her answering machine.
Panic began to creep through my body. At 9:12 p.m., I tried calling her cell phone again, and again got her answering machine.
I tried to tell myself not to panic. I reminded myself how she had often told me sometimes it was easier to identify an in-bound text message vibration than a silent-mode phone call, so I sent her another text message at 9:13 p.m. which simply said, “Hello.”
Nothing.
My heartbeat was increasing and my hands were starting to shake. I tried calling her two more times, but only got her answering machine.
At 9:16 p.m., I sent Allison another text message: “I’m getting in the car.”
Tommy didn’t understand why I was so freaked out. I tried to rationalize with myself again. Just give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was just call-screening, trying to act all independent and grown up in front of this new friend. So at 9:17 p.m., I left a message on her answering machine, saying, “You had better answer me, because I’m getting into the car next.”
Receiving no response, I told Tommy to get into the car, and we headed up the road to find Allison. I told myself that everything would be all right once I saw her and spoke to her in person.
When Tommy and I got stuck at a stop light at 9:22 p.m., I tried calling Allison’s phone again. Again, I got her answering machine.
I didn’t want to text while driving, so I called her friend’s cell phone number instead. It was the only number Allison had given me as an emergency contact option.
“Hi, Allison please,” I said at 9:23 p.m..
“Um, she’s not here at the exact moment,” the girl replied, with some hesitation.
“Okay!” I tried to keep my voice calm and steady, but I wasn’t sure that it was either as I continued. “Where is she, at this exact moment?”
“She, um, went to the bathroom,” came the girl’s reply.
“Where I dropped you girls off?” I continued. Considering that I was only a few blocks away, my need for a face-to-face conversa
tion with Allison was becoming even more important.
“Sorry, I can’t really hear you, my phone is . . . you’re breaking up,” she said as the phone clicked off.
My mind screamed. Allison’s new friend had just intentionally hung up on me! Thankfully, my brain was able to disengage from the emotional turmoil raging through my body long enough to guide the car into the parking lot of the area where I had dropped the girls off just a few short hours ago. There was an outdoor all-day concert going on from noon to midnight for the kids, as part of a “school’s out” theme being sponsored by a local business. I told Tommy to get out of the car and look for Allison in the crowd, while I sat in the car holding my cell phone in one hand and scanning the crowd of kids from behind the steering wheel.
At 9:26 p.m., I tried calling Allison again—and again got the answering machine. “You better call me,” I said into her cell phone’s machine. “You are soooo busted.”
No reply. So I sent her another text message at 9:27 p.m. This time, I wrote, “The jig is up.”
After Tommy returned to the car with no news to report at 9:34 p.m., I tried calling her friend’s cell phone again. “Hello?” came the answer.
“Hello. Allison please,” I said.
[Click]
“She hung up on me!” I practically yelled at Tommy.
I called back three more times, but the friend wasn’t answering any more either.
Fine, I thought. I’ll just drive over to the friend’s house and get her parents involved.
I approached the front door and realized that my cell phone was still in my left hand. I recognized this as a flashback to the afternoon of April 24, when I walked into the high school hoping that Allison was still there, working with the teacher, but couldn’t take the phone back to the car.
Heart Scars Page 13