The Book of Atlantis Black

by Betsy Bonner

  Was she once a promising songwriter? Ultimately, why does that matter? If Atlantis was her best self when she was writing, practicing, performing, and recording music, wasn’t that of value? I was afraid of what might happen to her if she stopped playing. And I was right. It was better, for both of us, when the worst she might do was sing as if she were dying.

  ·

  In June 2013—five years after Atlantis’s disappearance—I discovered that I had become Facebook friends with “Maggie.” She hadn’t sent me a friend request—somehow she’d just appeared among my other friends. She had the generic blue-and-white identification image of someone who’d put her account on hold or was just starting out.

  I clicked on the profile icon. “Maggie’s” page turned out to be Atlantis’s old page, exhumed and subtly altered. Whoever “Maggie” was, she had reposted Atlantis’s final, alarming updates. “Atlantis has relocated once again because she’s sick of being followed.” I checked Atlantis’s Gmail account. Sure enough, Gretchen’s address had hacked it at last, and had used it to resurrect my sister’s disabled Facebook page.

  I clicked “unfriend.”

  On the Fourth of July—the date on Atlantis’s death certificate—a new fan page on Facebook appeared in her memory, with photographs lifted from both my personal Facebook account and Atlantis’s old Myspace page. I jumped back from the screen when I saw family pictures taken at our house in Chadds Ford: Atlantis at age two, in footed pajamas, playing her rainbow-striped toy guitar; Atlantis smiling shyly at age nine, in an oversized red T-shirt, cradling Tyger, our first cat, in her thin arms. My mother and I had snapped those photographs. I had put them up myself, back when people didn’t worry about Facebook’s owning everything they posted. Seeing my family’s photographs used in this way felt like Zersetzung—the Stalinist terror practice of secretly rearranging your furniture and private things when you weren’t at home to make you fear you’d lost your mind.

  Though the host of this new page did not provide her name or contact information anywhere, she claimed she was “Atlantis’s best friend, from 2005 until the day before she disappeared—June 23, 2008.” That was the day Gretchen had taken control of Atlantis’s cell phone account. The host said that the best way to describe their relationship was “folie a deux.” And the host mentioned that after Atlantis disappeared, she spoke “everyday [sic]” with Atlantis’s mother until she died. Atlantis’s mother, the host wrote, was “fascinating.”

  I owed my sister’s and my mother’s ghosts an intervention.

  I cyberstalked Gretchen and discovered that she kept a blog that linked to an “Atlantis Black” channel on YouTube. The channel contained a few videos of Atlantis’s live shows and a link to a collection of photographs called “The Homeless of New York”: images of street people and their pets. These images were for sale on eBay, and the seller’s bio said that she was a forensic psychologist. I did some more digging and saw that on Amazon, Gretchen had given high praise to a product called Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Kitchen and Dish Scrubber.

  I wrote to Facebook, explained who I was, and asked them to remove Gretchen’s fan page. After a few days, someone made it disappear.

  ·

  In May 2015, when I’d finished my first collection of poems—mostly elegies for my family—and had begun writing this book, I reached out for the first time to Gretchen.

  When she called me back, she sounded breathless and rushed in to fill my silences. She started in about the rights to Atlantis’s music. Before I could respond, she asked me if my mother had really committed suicide. I told her that was what the death certificate said.

  “That’s what I thought.” I could have sworn that she sounded pleased.

  She said that she’d talked to my mother on the phone nearly every day toward the end of her life, and that my mother had seemed especially depressed because she hadn’t had plans for the holiday.

  I said that Mom was depressed, but not about not having Thanksgiving plans.

  I asked how she and Atlantis had met; she said she first heard Atlantis on the radio—then corrected herself, saying that she never listened to the radio—and that after hearing a particular lyric—she didn’t say which one—she had her “producer” get in touch with Atlantis. It was Gretchen’s own idea, Gretchen claimed, for Atlantis to do a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire.”

  I said I thought she’d first reached out to Atlantis as a documentary filmmaker; she said no, she really only had “that one thing on the web,” and she thought of herself as “more of a writer.”

  Why had she changed Atlantis’s Verizon password, I asked her, and taken responsibility for her cell phone bill? Because Atlantis had no money, she said, and she herself was rich. She’d have happily bailed Atlantis out of jail, she said, but she’d been in rehab at the time. But she now had a wonderful therapist, who’d helped her survive her own childhood trauma: she’d been gang-raped at the age of six, then forced into prostitution by her father.

  I said I was sorry that had happened to her.

  She told me that she knew Atlantis hadn’t died in Tijuana the way the reports said. And she had a “big, fat file” of information about the prescription drug case against Atlantis—information she wasn’t “even supposed to have.” Might she be willing to share it? Sure, she said. I asked if we could meet. Yes, she said, but could she call me back? Her four-year-old niece was at the door—it was the little girl’s birthday.

  ·

  A couple of weeks later, in June 2015, I visited my aunt Tina in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She still had a few boxes of documents and papers from my mother’s house stored in her basement. I’d never sorted through them all. I opened one box on my aunt’s dining room table; multiple copies of what looked like brochures advertising Atlantis’s funeral home were crammed in at the top. They were written in Spanish. A FedEx cardboard box labeled “human ashes” had been postmarked in San Ysidro in July 2008. Had my mother really saved all of this stuff? She’d wanted nothing to do with those ashes.

  In the same box were Mom’s receipts for legitimate-looking prescriptions for lithium, Zoloft, Seroquel, and Klonopin, purchased at her local pharmacy, and six unsealed envelopes containing prescription drugs, some of which were benzodiazepines, each one labeled in what was unmistakably Atlantis’s handwriting: “Valium (weakest),” a two-milligram pill; “Valium (strongest),” a ten-milligram pill; “Ativan (strongest),” two two-milligram pills, one partly crumbled; “Klonopin (strongest),” three two-milligram pills; and one milligram of “Xanax (very strong).”

  ·

  I drove out to visit the Lancaster County Forensic Center on Spring Valley Road, whose staff redirected me to the city’s Government Center on Queen Street. There I was able to access the police and toxicology reports of my mother’s death. I’d never had any desire to see these reports before. I wanted to find out exactly what combination of drugs had killed my mother. The drug-filled envelopes I’d found suggested that my sister—or someone—might have made it easier for my mother to commit suicide by sharing drugs that she hadn’t been prescribed and giving her instructions.

  My mother’s toxicology reports had been done twice: once in December, and again in February. Lithium, Seroquel, Klonopin, and benzodiazepines were among the drugs found in her blood. I remembered the care she used to take in applying her lipstick and blue eyeliner. Sometimes medication made her hands tremble, and when my sister and I were teenagers, Nancy called her the Clown.

  ·

  I also reached out to the German Gentleman and told him I was writing a book about Atlantis. I asked if he had any memories of her that he’d be willing to share. “I remember your sister well,” he wrote back.

  I knew her only for a very short time, but she was very dear to my heart. She visit me in Mexico and she wanted to move together with me. We called each other Bonny and Clyde for fun, we both understood each other very well.

  I am traveling right now in Europe, but soon I will write a
little more.

  I didn’t doubt Atlantis’s charisma, her secret power: she’d managed to become Gretchen’s “muse” after just one in-person meeting, BFFs with Guitar Girl, dear to the German Gentleman’s heart after one weekend together when she was going through hell. Misfits tended to be in love with Atlantis.

  ·

  Then I heard from him again:

  I believe I told you about your sister wanting to move to Mexico with me. We called each other Bonnie and Clyde, understanding each other very well. What I didn’t tell you, was things Atlantis were worry about. Not knowing your sistier well enough, how much truth or what real reason were behind it and how much drugs were part of it, you probably know this better, what to make out of it and most of it you most likely know any way.

  Atlantis told me, that she was in trouble, something with description of drugs, going to court and that she was worry about here life. It sounded like the possibility being killed. She said I have to take care of few things in the US and in few weeks she will be back in Mexico with me. She said, don’t be surprise to hear about my death. I ask her to stay, not knowing what was really going on, but she left.

  After that I received only few emails from Atlantis. So more I was shocked to hear from you months later, that Atlantis died. I am sorry, it must be still so hard to think about your sister. Her music had so much feelings, including the deep sadness.

  I hope I will have the chance to read your book about Atlantis.

  The very best,

  [Name redacted]

  I asked if he’d ever heard of death certificates or autopsy reports in Tijuana being forged, or of a different person’s IDs left with an unidentified body. He wrote back the next day:

  I didn’t know that about your sister and that she was back in Mexico. I do remember her saying, don’t be surprise, if you do hear, I am dead. It seems to me, she was worry about her life and the charges made agains her in the US. Also she was talking about to disappear, Mexico or further south. With all the info you may could be right, that she is in hiding and living a new life under a different name. Also she was talking about false passports. Somehow I like to believe, with all the sadness and worries, she was to much into life.

  I placed an order on Amazon for an anthology of poetry that the German Gentleman had edited and published. It included a poem he’d written for Atlantis.

  ·

  I called First Adult Therapist and introduced myself as the sister of her former patient Atlantis Black. I told her that I was writing a book and asked if she might be willing to meet and talk to me.

  “Where is Atlantis?” she asked.

  I told her the story. I was aware, I said, that my sister had harassed her, and that Atlantis’s last phone calls had been to her and her husband. Did she remember listening to those messages?

  She said that this was the first she’d heard about the disappearance, and that under the circumstances she didn’t think she could talk to me. Would I send her a letter formally requesting an interview? “You know,” she said, “you’re just a voice at the end of the line.”

  I wrote the letter, but I never heard back from her.

  ·

  The next time I called Gretchen, I left her a voicemail saying that I realized I’d been asking the wrong questions. I said I didn’t believe that Atlantis died the way the Tijuana reports said, either; and I wanted to know if Atlantis was still alive, and if so, if Gretchen knew how to be in touch with her.

  She called me back immediately—from a different number than the one I’d called—and we talked for nearly two hours. She was adamant about not being recorded, and said that if I was recording the call, nothing she said would be admissible in “a court of law.” I told her I wasn’t recording her, which was the truth. I never wanted to hear that voice again.

  Was it possible, I asked, that my sister might still be alive? She didn’t think so—but then, later in the conversation, she said that Atlantis might be living in the United States under another name. At any rate, she said that she knew that Atlantis hadn’t died the way the Tijuana reports had said, and that the body found in the hotel room hadn’t been hers. She said that anyone could buy anything in Tijuana, and that though the police report was real—someone had died in a hotel room, with “some guy lying on the floor”—she knew it wasn’t Atlantis or the truth about what happened. And even if it had been my sister’s body, the idea that her death had been caused by a heroin overdose was simply impossible. The toxicology report, she said, had shown only trace amounts of opiates, not enough to kill a person.

  So she had seen the reports.

  She claimed that she was frequently called in to court to give evidence as an “attorney,” and commented that if Atlantis had known her “rights,” she never would have gotten into that legal mess.

  She mentioned that she knew many people who’d committed suicide—she herself had “a room full of ashes”—but Atlantis was the only person she ever knew to “disappear.” She said that Atlantis hated Mexico—and I realized that nearly every other word out of her mouth was “hate.” She added that after Atlantis disappeared and was presumed dead, someone texted a message to her from Atlantis’s cell phone that said in Spanish: “Are you gay?” Gretchen said she’d called the person back and said that this was a cell phone that had been stolen from a dead American woman, and that the person had better “drop the phone.” Gretchen claimed that when she’d received that text, she’d wondered if Atlantis had really been the sender, and if she’d sent it to let Gretchen know—in secret code—that she was still alive. But Gretchen said she didn’t really believe this.

  She claimed that there never was any Report of Death of an American Abroad. I told her that, in fact, I’d filed one on Atlantis’s behalf the previous year, in 2014. (I’d filed it in order to use the Freedom of Information Act and get the DEA’s report on Atlantis.) This made her laugh. How had I managed that? I said I’d used the Mexican death certificate, which she also found funny. She volunteered that she knew that “ashes are white and powdery, not brown” the way Atlantis’s had appeared in a photo she’d somehow seen of Leah and me spreading them in the desert.

  I told her that I’d viewed autopsy photos and had identified Atlantis positively; she asked me how I’d seen them. I said the consulate had emailed them to me; she said no embassy would email autopsy photos, and that I must have been communicating with someone who wasn’t from the embassy at all, and that the reports my mother had received in the mail were absolutely wrong—she knew that as a fact—and that I was right not to trust any of the information coming out of Mexico.

  She volunteered that suicide notes “only happen in movies,” but she said that she knew that my mother had “killed herself” because she was very depressed, lived alone, was older, and it was a holiday. And she volunteered one more odd piece of information: that before my mother died, she had asked Gretchen about “a particular drug.” What drug? Gretchen wouldn’t say. Impulsively, I asked Gretchen if she had killed my mother. She laughed and said, “What, are you crazy, lady?”

  ·

  It was almost too much for me. I called the Ephrata police and told them about the conversation. I named Gretchen—and possibly Atlantis Black—as people who might have forged my mother’s suicide note. The police said they would re-examine my mother’s death for evidence of foul play. To my knowledge, nothing ever came of any investigation.

  I went so far as to tell my story to the FBI; they said that both my mother’s death and my sister’s disappearance were out of their jurisdiction.

  ·

  In September 2015, a friend introduced me over email to Dr. Jonathan Hayes, chief medical examiner of the City of New York, who’d spent eight months identifying bodies after the attacks on September 11. (In his spare time, he writes books about serial killers.) The friend who made the introduction felt that seven years was too long for me to be in uncertainty and denial. I’d avoided telling people I was still searching for evidence that the T
ijuana reports were wrong, but some of them knew anyway. The reports were sketchy, of course, riddled with mistakes and omissions, but I didn’t want people to worry about my state of mind, or to doubt my sanity. I was ashamed to have wasted years obsessing over details and typos, of doing everything I could to avoid the truth—if I could settle on what the truth was.

  I told Dr. Hayes that my sister had had a stalker who called herself a forensic psychologist, and that I doubted the veracity of at least some of the reports of my sister’s death. Dr. Hayes asked a colleague, Raphael, a forensics expert who’d done some of his medical training in Mexico, to make a full translation of the reports. And he offered to read them and help me to understand and accept them.

  It took Raphael a few weeks to complete the translation of one of Atlantis’s toxicology reports—a report that the Tijuana consulate had no record of having ever been done. Dr. Hayes forwarded me the completed translation. It stated that there hadn’t been any alcohol in Atlantis’s system when she died. The only substance for which her blood had tested positive was opiates. Dr. Hayes sent me this information with a message:

  I’m afraid there are no conclusions to be leaped to from it.

  And I saw that Dr. Hayes had copied me—deliberately or accidentally, I wasn’t sure—on his personal correspondence with Raphael:

  I’ve had a steady stream of emails from Betsy, and I think she may be a bit obsessive. I suspect she needs a therapist more than she needs a forensic pathologist. I think it might be better if I handle the direct dealing with her—I feel sorry for her, but I think she does need “handling.” I think it’s an example of the myth of “closure” in certain deaths.