Gitchie Girl: The Survivor's Inside Story of the Mass Murders that Shocked the Heartland (15 page)

At about the same time, the hassle of trying to meet Sandra secretly combined with not being allowed to be seen with her put too much of a strain on the friendship with the two girls who’d reached out to her. The friendship among them slowly fizzled out. But Sandra desperately needed to talk to someone. A nauseating dread sickened her thoughts with fear and apprehension each time she prepared to leave the safety of her house. Even the solace of her room no longer offered comfort. The emptiness of the nights filled her with the nagging feeling that something bad was about to happen. Sandra didn’t realize that professional counseling was even an option, and no one offered it to her. Ever. Her own family avoided the topic of what she had lived through. Her brothers, who wanted to help their sister but weren’t sure how, felt it was best for Sandra if she didn’t dredge up details about “that night.” It was typical of the time to simply not talk about uncomfortable topics in the belief that the pain would eventually go away on its own.

“It doesn’t do any good to bring up all the ugliness.”

“It’s over and done with.”

“It’s time to move on with your life.”

She wasn’t even sure who’d told her those things, but she heard the platitudes each time she dared to broach the subject of “that night.” She grasped at anything that would help ease the pain, including her love of music. She would climb the stairs to her room, shut out the world, and play a song by the Grassroots over and over on the record player while lying on her bed sobbing. She tried to move on, to forget about what happened. She tried to ignore the snide comments. She tried to pretend the whispers and disgusted voices weren’t about her, the “Gitchie Girl.”

But it was no use. She no longer fit in. Sandra felt twenty years older than the other girls. She’d grown up beyond her years while they were still able to giggle about first kisses and the school dance next weekend. But no one wanted to dance with the “Gitchie Girl.” People she’d thought were her friends had disappeared. Her brother Jim went off to the Marines and Bob left for college. As soon as she was able, Sandra dropped out of school and soon after her brother Bill followed. Her downward spiral escalated.

The anniversary of the murders each year was especially difficult for Sandra. She soon found that she could cope with the unbearable pain of the day by partying and drinking away the bad thoughts in the evenings with friends. It was a method she turned to when she could no longer handle the horrendous emotions that clouded her life. At fifteen Sandra was already showing classic signs of survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress, although the diagnosis itself had not yet been coined. She still dreaded leaving the house and spent hours tucked away in her darkened bedroom with the covers pulled tight around her, crying until her mind went numb. She’d beg God to make it all go away and prayed that He could make it all be a bad dream so she could wake up and go on with her old life. Yet it seemed to her that God wasn’t listening anymore. She began to grow angry with Him. How could He have let this happen?

For the past two years, she had refused to sleep unless her mom was next to her for comfort when Sandra would wake up screaming. Before bed, she’d pray to God to let her dream about Roger and the boys so she could be with them again. But those dreams never came. It was always the nightmares instead. When it seemed God did not hear her, she started to doubt and question whether there even was a God. There were blocks of time when Sandra was able to shut out the pain and to others she appeared to be functioning very well. She landed a job and performed the tasks as required. Throughout her life, she’d proved herself to be a hard worker.

Lolo was working long hours and seldom home. Her brothers for the most part were out of the house and on their own. Evenings were the worst. The daylight would fade into the darkness that frequently sent Sandra into a panic or depression. She would lie curled up on her bed and cry uncontrollably. Often, she’d turn to music to hear the comforting sound of another human voice. Inevitably, a song would come on the radio that reminded her of Roger or one of the other boys and this would leave her devastated. She couldn’t shake the feeling of lethargy that had come to control her life. Sleep would eventually enter her anguished mind only to have her startle awake in the middle of the night screaming from the relentless nightmares.

Morning, which no longer held any possibility of hope, bled into evening as she plodded through each day, having been driven to the point of emotional despair. Her eyes betrayed the dark signs of sleepless nights. Sandra trudged from bed, pulled the curtains together tighter, and crumpled back onto the mattress while waves of anxiety washed over her. She couldn’t fight the hopelessness much longer. She dug her fingernails into the waning meat of her forearm to transfer her mental pain into physical pain if only for a moment.

Church bells chimed in the distance, and it occurred to Sandra that today was Sunday. She’d lost track. With every chime, she covered her ears tighter. The cheerful toll of the bells only served as a reminder that God had abandoned her.
Why? Why am I alive? Why did the boys have to die when they loved life so much? Why didn’t I die with them?
But she didn’t feel even a whisper of an answer. The bells chimed again. The sound filled her with a sudden fury. She bolted up in bed and threw her pillow at the wall toward the mocking sound and let out a rolling scream. “WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?” she shouted over and over until her strength was sapped and she collapsed, once again pulling the covers over her snarled hair and feeling hot tears slide down her face in the stifling darkness.

Sandra was a survivor. It was in her nature to help, to heal, to make the world a better place whether that meant helping a struggling animal or a stranger in need. An unfamiliar feeling had begun to haunt her during these long stretches of self-imposed solitary confinement. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to have lived. Maybe Allen was supposed to have killed her, too, and by some huge cosmic mistake she was still here. Maybe the only solution was...

She cut off the thought before it went any further this time. Sandra the survivor had met her challenge. She stood in the kitchen staring into an open cupboard. She removed a box of crackers, but put it back and moved on to the next cupboard. She felt she should eat but had no appetite. Finally settling on a vanilla wafer, she headed back upstairs to the bathroom, intending to brush her hair if she still had the strength by the time she got there.

Sandra stood before the mirror and gazed with disgust at her reflection. She was wearing a wrinkled, oversized T-shirt and hadn’t shaven her legs in days. She pulled down the edge of one eye and recoiled at the grayish, bloodshot eyes then took a step back. Who was this pathetic stranger? When had she given up and not even realized it? Something invisible was destroying her from the inside out. No one saw it, so it was allowed to go unchecked, slowly eating away whatever parts of her it desired. The despair rendered her powerless. The life she’d once hoped for now seemed out of reach. The image in the mirror was a different Sandra. She wasn’t sure if the two of them could co-exist in the same body. And again the thought that she should not be alive slipped into her mind.

Through some unseen force, Sandra found herself at the doorstep of Roger’s house day after day. Roger’s older brother, the one who’d driven her to the police station the morning after the murders, had taken Sandra under his wing. He understood her pain because he felt it, too. She emptied her emotions at his feet, and he never complained about it, never told her to move on. Not once did he say he was too busy or that he didn’t have time to listen to her. Most days she just hung out there, feeling welcome and knowing that his family didn’t blame her for what happened. That alone eased her grief. She’d play foosball with Roger’s siblings. They also had a dog that Sandra adored who had been trained to take unlit cigarettes out of people’s mouths because Roger’s brother didn’t like smoking. It was one of the few things that made Sandra laugh at the time. She discovered that when the dog was lying on her lap, a peace wafted through her. She would vigorously scratch his ears or pull his head next to hers and sing winsome songs softly into his ears. The dog never tired of the attention, of course, and Sandra longed for a dog of her own.

Roger’s mother was supportive even though her own pain was excruciating. For almost a year, Sandra would arrive at their house nearly every day feeling that life was unbearable. His family had crutched her through each day, and she knew that without them she couldn’t have found the strength to go on. But the strain of losing a son in such a horrible manner took its toll on Roger’s mother, too. By the year’s end, she passed away. Sandra, along with the Essem family, was devastated. Soon after that, the Essem family began to head in different directions. They were older now, getting married and moving off on their own. The security she’d once had in their home had run its course.

An indescribable hurt returned that festered inside Sandra, spreading to her edges and forming to the shape of her body like a toxic gas inside a bottle. She couldn’t escape the emotional pain. And if she somehow managed to erase the garbled memories through partying and alcohol, it simply rippled back during her sickened slumber and she awoke to a fresh round of anguish. Her instinct for survival was so fierce that she tried various methods to right her life again. When she had nowhere else to put the pain, she would go to Roger’s grave and sing to him. She’d let the words and rhythms gently shake the worst of the hurt from the weary fibers of her body.

It was her season of loneliness. Lolo and her brothers, though largely absent for most of the day, loved Sandra. Her grandparents were dead, no one had heard from her father in years, friends had abandoned her. Yet when she thought of Roger and the perfect times they’d spent together, she felt a glimmer of hope that she could reclaim her life again someday. So she clung to his memory, sang to him, and let him know that he would live on forever in a special corner of her mind. And with this one optimistic thought, she cut away a sliver of the pain, allowing her to smooth its rough edges. It was a start. She kept Roger safe in her mind. She’d never again feel the tender kisses he’d once placed on her lips, but she felt his spirit whenever she succeeded in pushing the ugly emotions to the side through melody and music before the awful feelings returned and knocked her down as if hit by a loaded spring unleashed with a vengeance.

“Come shopping with me,” Debbie said, making a point of sounding upbeat. She was worried about Sandra. It had been two years since the murders at Gitchie Manitou, and she was never certain whether she’d call and discover that Sandra was in another one of her “dark” moods.

“No, I’m going to Roger’s grave.” She didn’t say it with any expectation of empathy. It was just a fact, and she wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed to let anyone know about one of the few things that relieved her pain. “There was a song on the radio this morning that reminded me of him, and I just want to sing to him.” It was true. For some reason the moment she’d heard the song it had reminded her of the day the two of them spent at Falls Park, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder. For whatever reason, she couldn’t get Roger out of her head today.

Debbie paused and twisted the phone cord around her finger. Her heart had broken for Sandra so many times since Roger had died. “Sandra, I’m just wondering...it’s just a thought. Um, do you think it might be better if you didn’t go? You know, maybe it’s harder to keep thinking about Roger, and if you just moved on...” Debbie knew Sandra still loved him but worried that her friend was holding onto a ghost out of guilt perhaps.

Sandra looked up at the ceiling and let out a sigh. She wasn’t mad at Debbie. It was just that no one seemed to understand. She couldn’t forget Roger. She couldn’t forget any of them, and she especially couldn’t forget that night. She tried, but the memories were right there, dancing at the corner of every thought. “I know everyone thinks that, but you don’t understand. When I go to his grave, I feel him. I mean I really feel
him
. Maybe it’s not like feeling his arms around me, but it’s like he knows I’m there. Like he can see me.”

She would talk to Roger. She confessed to him that she didn’t think she’d ever actually told him her age. She’d meant to after their first date. And once when Roger had come to pick her up she’d introduced him to Debbie and her sister. After a hurried conversation, it seemed he was left with the impression that Sandra was in the same grade as Debbie, who was actually three years older, rather than the intended message that they both went to school in Harrisburg. Sandra had let it slide, and then it just never came up again before the fateful night.

So she did go and sit by his grave for hours, singing to him and pleading with him to understand that he and the other boys were her heroes.

“We didn’t even get to say goodbye before you were gone. And in spite of terrible pain Mike and Stew remained strong. I think even Dana, who was so young, knew things were worse than I thought. You are my heroes, and I never had the chance to tell you.”

She talked and sang until finally the burden of pain lifted from her shoulders slightly. For the rest of the day, she waited for the horrible feelings to come back, but that didn’t happen. Instead, a strange sensation, as if a layer of pain had been rinsed away, left her with clarity and freshness, unfamiliar feelings that she hadn’t experienced for a long time. She felt almost, well, normal again.

She’d managed to push the darkness away but only for the time being. Sandra had gone back to a job during the day. Debbie worked at a truck stop just off the interstate that was close to both of their houses. The minimum age for employment there was sixteen, and Sandra was only fifteen, so she and Debbie cleverly modified Sandra’s birth certificate so she’d appear to be sixteen. Working gave Sandra an escape from the uncontrollable sadness that tainted her life. The job distracted her for hours at a time, allowing some semblance of a normal life to return.