by Donna Hylton
When I bring my attention back to my immediate surroundings, perched across from us is a woman whose figure weighs down her cot, which is constructed of milk crates supporting a yellow padded foam mattress. In all of my life, I’ve never seen anyone of such colossal size.
With a small TV set up next her, it appears this living area has been made into a makeshift bedroom to accommodate her size. My senses take in her features at turbo-speed: her lips collapsed around bare gums; her short, spiky braids; the hairs that stick out from her chin. She reminds me of one of the Obeah witches my mother might have worshiped with in Jamaica.
Placed around the room are three plain wooden chairs, bare minimum, like everything in this apartment… including the cleaning job. “What’s your name, sweetie? Sweetie!” she hollers. Rita and Theresa nudge me to speak. “I’m Selma, and I want to know, what is your name?”
It takes everything inside of me not to turn and run… but then Maria and Woody emerge. “Sit down,” Woody says. Maria moves in beside him.
Seeing no option but to comply, Rita, Theresa, and I take seats in the empty wood chairs. Maria steps up in front of us—now with the gun again. “My godfather’s on his way,” she says. “He’ll tell you the plan.”
Rita, Theresa, and I sit in petrified silence.
Minutes later when Miranda walks in, he keeps his eye on us three girls as he speaks quietly with Maria and Woody. “This is what you do,” he finally says to Rita, Theresa, and me. “Maria’s going to get a rental car, and you—” he looks at me—“you’re going to drive it. You two,” he says to Rita and Theresa, “you’re going to stay here and help take care of him. You do whatever these three tell you, you understand?” Woody stands over us in a way so menacing that I turn my face down, waiting for him to hit me.
“Just so it’s clear,” Miranda says, “this is not a joke. And this motherfucker in there, he owes me money. I’m going to get my money, see. That’s all I care about.” He turns to Maria. “Did you tell them what would happen?”
“I told them,” she says.
“I’m gonna tell them again.” Miranda goes on to repeat what Woody and Maria have already stated: if we don’t do anything that they tell us to do, they’ll kill my daughter. Then he turns to Rita and Theresa. “And trust me, we know all about your families, too.” He mentions Rita’s mother, referring to her by her first name. It’s obvious they’ve done some research about each of our families.
From this moment, I am numb, in autopilot just to try to make it through. For the next ten days, Rita and Theresa don’t leave the apartment.
I stay there with them almost constantly, but because I can drive, I leave only when I’m directed to pick up Miranda at a building he owns in midtown Manhattan. I transport him all over the city to various destinations at all hours of the day and night, sometimes with Maria or Woody accompanying him. In these cases, they tell me where to drive, always to buildings on Long Island, Staten Island, Queens, and Manhattan, often in Chinatown or a building that Miranda owns on the east side of midtown, very close to where Paul Castellano will later be murdered. On occasion, Maria takes the wheel as Miranda directs me to the passenger seat while he goes in the back. I sit in silence when they climb out of the car to tour buildings in all these different locations. When they return, I hear phrases like doing business with the Chinese and We have to make it look like the Asians did this. I do what I can to tune my mind out. I don’t want to know anything more about them or what they do, but I can’t help but pick up on the fact that Woody and the big woman, Selma, seem to be a couple who have worked for Miranda for years. They’re accustomed to going after people to settle bad deals on behalf of “the Boss Man.”
This continues for more than a week. Not a single minute passes when I don’t ask myself if Adrienne is alright with Roy and Daphne. Every time I return to the apartment, I can see that Rita and Theresa are unraveling—drained, numb, exhausted like me. “Are you OK?” one will ask the other on occasion. We nod curtly to each other in response, not wanting to discuss what each of us is experiencing or witnessing.
One day when I go to pick up Miranda at one of his buildings in midtown, he tells me: “Go into the bedroom.” I enter as he instructs me, believing that maybe he needs me to get something for him—but at once he closes the door and charges at me. He puts his hand on my throat and shoves me onto the bed, where it takes me a few seconds to realize what’s happening before I can begin to fight back. He braces one arm over my neck and props himself up with the other arm. I contest him, but ultimately, he gets what he wants.
This act of rape becomes yet another prison for my soul, just like what happened with Alvin, with the detective… and just like what happened when I became a Hylton. But with Miranda, with all the other circumstances happening and his business partner who’s fighting for his life, the abuse is more than just traumatic. There’s no way that I can even figure out a healthy way of getting out of the situation. I notice that I don’t feel ashamed. I’m disgusted—disgusted with myself because I don’t know what to do.
When he’s finished with me, Miranda says, “Let’s go.” Angry and repulsed—at him, at life, but most of all, at myself—I drive him back to Harlem, where for the first time, the victim is sitting up with the gag from his mouth removed. Woody’s holding a knife to his throat and a tape recorder next to his mouth with a piece of paper on it. “You read exactly what’s written here,” Woody says through gritted teeth. “Do you understand me?”
Miranda walks in the bedroom ahead of me then approaches his business partner. He grabs the man by the back of his hair and then begins to slap him. “You thought you were going to take my money, you stupid son of a bitch?” he says. “Nobody takes my money!”
I stay outside the room, my stomach tight with emotion. I know what it feels like to be constrained, abused, trapped and held with no dignity, to be the one hurting, while others stand by. Maria lights a cigarette and takes a puff, then, when the ash glows orange with heat, she squeezes the butt of the cigarette between her fingers and carefully holds the hot tip to the man’s leg. When he cries out in response, I can literally feel his pain. The smell of singed flesh takes me back to when Alvin used to do that very same thing to me. Every moment is an overload to my senses. “Read this!” Woody tells the man, the edge of the knife making a crease across the skin of the Bird’s throat.
“Why are you doing this?” the man weeps.
Woody and Miranda react in violent agitation. “Read what’s on the fucking paper!”
He blinks hard to focus his eyes and finds strength enough to read steadily. After they finally get the recording they want, they stick the tape inside a manila envelope. “You’re coming with me,” Maria tells me as she and Miranda see me out of the apartment. On the street, she gets into the driver’s seat of Miranda’s car. “Get in,” she says. “You’re going to drop that off.”
“No,” Miranda says, as if it’s just occurred to him that they can’t trust me. “Maria, you take it in. You,” he says to me. He never calls me by name. “You go in with her.” We drive through Queens toward Long Island, arriving at a small office building in a suburban area.
“Come on,” says Maria.
“Hey!” Miranda calls. I stop from exiting the passenger side to turn to him. “Don’t you say a word to these guys,” he says. “Do you hear me?”
Slowly, I nod and exit the car. Inside the office, I stay quiet while Maria has a very brief conversation and hands off the envelope. This exchange will be a turning point in this whole saga, but I don’t know that just yet.
When we return to the apartment later that morning, I ask Rita and Theresa: “Is he eating? Has anybody fed him?”
Sad, they both shake their heads: No.
“He has to eat,” I say, my urgency quickly building. “He has to eat. He can’t not eat!” I tell Maria: “This man has to eat!”
“I’m not going to feed him,” she grunts.
Woody comes in. “Feed him?
What the fuck are you talking about, ‘feeding him’?”
I know my life is on the line, but I can’t watch this for another second. This man hasn’t eaten for at least two days. I have nothing to lose anymore, and I can’t continue to witness this torture and suffering. “He has to eat,” I say. “I said HE HAS TO EAT!”
“Who’s going to feed him?” Woody grabs me and yanks me into the living room. “Are you going to be here to feed him?”
My emotion continues to rise; it’s as if my own survival is dependent on his. “He has to eat—he can’t be here without eating! We have to feed him!”
Maria grabs me. “She’s losing it,” she tells Woody. “Let’s go.” Together we walk downstairs to the bodega that occupies the ground level of the apartment building. “Get him something,” she tells me, out of the clerk’s earshot. “Just nothing he has to chew.”
I take off down the aisle. Maria stands back impatiently while I storm through the store, ultimately choosing cherry Kool-Aid and some soup broth in a can.
Back in Selma’s dingy kitchen I find a pan to warm the broth and a plastic cup that I rinse out and try to scrub clean with hot water and my bare hands. Then I switch on the faucet to let the cold water run from the sink, pouring the Kool-Aid mix into the cup and stirring the pink powder so it dissolves bright red into the liquid.
Inside the bedroom, the man holds his head up weakly, not having eaten or drunk in days. I remove his gag, and as I place the cup to his lips to drink, I have to move away out of fear he might choke, as he gulps out of thirst. As we develop a rhythm to this exchange—me, serving small sips; him, swallowing with grateful relief—I alternate feeding him tastes of each to allow him some degree of the feeling that he’s having an actual meal.
Angry, Woody tramps into the doorway. “Who’s going to take him to the bathroom?” he says. As though I can’t hear him, I continue to feed the man.
“Can I please have a cigarette?” he whispers to me. His head is tilted up toward me, but with the blindfold on, he’s not entirely sure of where my face is in relation to his own. It strikes at my heart to realize that there is something so deeply disempowering about not being able to see what’s happening around you. It would be easier to excuse myself and step away from the pain of witnessing his vulnerability in this moment—but I refuse to leave him by himself. “Please?” His voice cracks with physical weakness.
I turn to look at Maria, who’s heard the exchange from where she’s taken Woody’s place in the doorway. “Go ahead,” she says, disgusted with my concern for this man. I go to his raincoat, fumbling past the London Fog tag to find Pall Mall cigarettes inside the inner pocket. I put a cigarette to his mouth, and Maria gives me a lighter. “Just for a minute,” she says. The flame catches on the cigarette and he sucks it with a hunger that is different, more needy than that for drink or food. Again, we establish a rhythm while I try to give him as much of the cigarette as Maria will allow. This moment is the first time in days that I have felt any sense of personal strength—that I can provide him with some comfort; some sense of kindness or humanity.
“What’s your name?” he asks me. His skin is gray with unrest, his lips are dry and cracking, beginning to peel. His voice is raspy, quiet in his understanding that he needs to keep our interaction private.
I hesitate for a moment to respond, not only because he’s putting us both in danger by chatting, but also because the thought of relating to him in conversation makes it all the more heartbreaking to see him bound and struggling for his life. Even if he did steal money from Miranda or anyone else, no one deserves to be treated like this for days that are now turning into more than a week. Face-to-face like this, I can’t find it in myself to dismiss or ignore him. I pull the cup of Kool-Aid away from his mouth and brace it between my hands. “Why do you want to know my name?”
“Because,” he says. “You’re different. You’re different than the others.”
I stare at him, his head cocked awkwardly toward me, as though I could feed him compassion just the way I’ve been feeding him food. You’re different.
You’re different.
That word he uses to describe me—“different”—is exactly the way I’ve felt all my life. However, it’s here, in the total gloom of this moment in the worst experience of my life, that I feel something for the first time in all my twenty years: he sees my being different in a way that’s positive. In this unlikely moment when we’re both at our weakest, we’re able to forgive each other for the mistakes we both made to end up here. In his request for kindness, he’s showing the same to me. This man has had a blindfold over his eyes every day since I’ve met him, but still, even he can see that there’s goodness in my character. He’s right, I think. I’m not like them.
And then my rational voice weighs in: But if you’re not like them, Donna, then how did you get here?
I continue to feed him, pushing the negativity out of my mind to be present for this man and feeling the rare fullness of myself, a sense of empowerment, in this moment. I’ve always been the one begging for help and mercy, never the one in a position to challenge what was happening around me and extend that help. When he finishes with the Kool-Aid and broth, I call Rita and Theresa in to help me guide him into the bathroom. We give him privacy as he uses the toilet, and together, we three young women wash him up. I sprinkle Shower to Shower on him from the shelf, knowing that forever from this day, the soap-clean scent of it will transport me back to this rusty bathroom with mold climbing the walls. “You’re different than the others,” he repeats as I prepare to stand him up. “Will you help me?”
I pause from leading him out of the bathroom and think for a moment about how I could get us both out of here. Finally, all I can give him is the truth. “How can I help you?” I ask him. “I can’t even help myself.”
Can’t you just get Miranda his money? I want to ask him as we walk back toward the bedroom. Then maybe we could all go home. I don’t realize yet that it’s not that simple, that by the time someone is being tortured for money, there’s not a quick phone call or visit to the bank teller that will make it all go away. I can already sense that this experience has been a defining point in my life—no matter how this ends, there will never be any going back.
As he takes his place back on the bed, I begin to rewind the events beginning from the very first step into Maria’s apartment. I’d agreed to witness a guy on a date with Maria. I did not know they were kidnapping him. When I said yes to this, I said yes as a young single mom, struggling for money and thinking some extra cash would help me start a life for my daughter and me to have a home together. I want to be present for her in the way my birth mother was not. I never imagined that one decision—one single agreement to enter a friend’s apartment—would completely change my life.
But when Friday night arrives, April 5, 1985, it’s been two weeks start to finish since this whole thing began. When Maria and I return to the apartment from a few errands she directed me to drive her on, we find Rita and Theresa sitting silently, spent, while Woody and Selma mouth off to each other over the volume of the TV. Seeking some way out, even just a few minutes alone, I take a Heineken beer that Woody has brought in. Their larger bedroom is lit only by a dull lamp when I enter and walk to the window. Outside, the city night seems extra dark. Would you help me? I hear him ask again. You’re different. You’re not like the others.
Help him, I tell myself. Help him. Help him!
I know what I can do: I can pray. I turn to the dresser, where I’ve noticed a Bible resting. I pick it up and sit on the edge of the bed, placing my beer on the nightstand.
But when I open the Bible, I don’t find what I’m looking for. Instead of pages, there’s the empty space of a hollow box. The only symbol of God in this entire place is fake. I lift its only contents—one tiny amber bottle with a cork top that I turn between my thumb and finger. I examine it, finding a white label that reads in black typed lettering: DEVIL’S ROOT.
I drop i
t back into the wooden Bible box and slam the top shut. I flash back, inside the stone cave, a little girl with chants and spells and burning herbs going up all around her. I look at the ceiling, wishing I could rise away from here the way I could back then. You are not here, I say to God. Just like my mother and anyone I’ve ever needed to help me… you’ve abandoned me, too.
I deserve this.
I wake up to the feeling of Maria shaking my leg while Rita stands next to her. Peeping through the window is the faintest gray of morning light. “What’s wrong?”
Rita seems to look past me with vacant eyes. “He’s not breathing,” she says.
“What?”
“He’s not breathing. He’s not breathing!”
“He’s not breathing.” Maria’s words are the same as Rita’s, but with a smirk of satisfaction, her reaction is very different.
I rise from the bed and race toward the other bedroom with Rita following on my heels. We both stand behind the width of Selma, who’s blocking the doorway. In two weeks, this is the first time I’ve seen her off of her makeshift cot.