Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (26 page)

Every so often he gives me money. Sometimes when he is in a good mood, and after I wash the floor or do other housework, he hands me cash, usually $5, saying, “You’re going to need money when you get out.”

I think it makes him feel less guilty. Some years I get more than others, but usually I end up with about $50, and spend it on special things like take-out Mexican from Chipotle or poster board. Sometimes he says no when I ask him to buy me something with that money, and sometimes he takes it and buys nothing.

The dresses were supposed to be a surprise, but I was too excited to keep them a secret, since I don’t get the chance to share good news very often. I wanted to make sure I got ones they liked, too, so I asked Amanda what color she wanted. She said there was no way he’d actually get us something brand-new.

Of course, he got the wrong sizes, so the dresses were way too big for all of us. I hemmed them and made matching headbands with the extra material and elastic waistbands from his old underwear.

Today it feels good to wear something new as I say my Easter prayers. Every day my prayers are the same: I ask God to give my parents a sign that I am alive and to please, please, please give someone a sign that we are right here inside 2207 Seymour Avenue.

April 2012: Nine Years Gone

April 11

Amanda

“Daddy, I want you to take me and Mommy to Titi Beth’s house.”

I’m floored. Out of nowhere, Joce tells him she wants to visit Beth. Puerto Ricans say
titi
for “aunt,” which she’s learned from him.

“I don’t know where they live,” he says, dodging her question.

“Mommy, do you know where they live?” she asks.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I tell her gently. “They moved, and I don’t know where they live now.”

“But I really want to go to Titi Beth’s!” she says. “I want to play with Mariyah and Marissa and Devon!”

“You’re just going to have to wait,” he tells her.

He goes in the other room, and Joce starts grilling me.

“Mommy, where did you live before I was born?” she asks.

“I lived in a nice house with Beth and Mamaw.”

“Do you remember what it looked like?”

“I do. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I had a pretty room, just like we have here.”

She’s been asking more and more questions like this lately, and I’m sure it’s because she’s tired of being in this house. She goes out with him a lot, but she knows that other kids do more things. She sees it on TV and at the park. Other mothers come outside and play, but hers can never go with her. She’s beginning to figure out that this is not normal.

April 21

He says he wants this all to end in a shootout with the police. He knows someday he’ll have to pay for our kidnappings, but he’s so afraid of going to prison that he would rather be shot dead by cops. He says he has his gun ready. I hope someday that the cops do find us, and he gets his wish.

I’m watching the morning news because it’s the ninth anniversary of my kidnapping, and there’s a story about me and Gina. Lately she, Michelle, and I have been talking more, and we’ve drawn a lot of pictures together. Last year, when he cut off my hair, Gina really helped me through it, and we’ve been getting along better since then.

I let Joce stay in the room when news about me is on. Beth comes on, talking to a reporter, and she looks skinny.

“Is that Titi Beth?” Joce asks.

“Yes, that’s her. Wave to her!” I say, and we both wave at the TV.

Joce steps right up to the screen and talks to Beth.

“God bless you, Titi Beth, and one day we’ll get to see you and be with our family,” she tells her. Then she turns to me and says, “Don’t worry, Mommy, we’ll see them soon.”

My sweet child. I’ve never explained the whole situation to her, but she knows enough to want to comfort me.

 • • • 

It’s Saturday, so he’s not working. He comes up to our room at about noon.

“They showed my nieces and nephew on TV today,” I tell him. “I love seeing them. They are growing so much.”

“Yeah, Daddy, they’re looking for Mommy,” Joce says.

He looks at me, furious. He points a finger right in my face and says, “You’re in trouble! Stay in this room! Don’t come downstairs!”

He slams the door and leaves. I’m not supposed to tell Jocelyn what’s going on here, but as she’s gotten older, it’s become harder to hide things from her. I probably shouldn’t have let her watch the news reports about me and Gina, since she’s not even supposed to know our real names, but I was too excited to see everybody on TV. I wait all year for the news on April 21, and I always record it on my VCR so I can watch the tapes of my family when things get really miserable.

We’re hungry, but I don’t dare go downstairs to make us lunch. He’s too unpredictable when he’s this mad, and now I hear him coming back.

“Go downstairs!” he says to Joce, and she does what she’s told.

“Why are you letting her watch those videos?” he yells.

“It was nothing. I couldn’t help it,” I answer. “She heard it on the news. If I wanted to tell her something, I would have done it a long time ago.”

“Shut up,” he says, pushing me across the room. “Show me your tape!”

He sits there as I push the Play button and watches the recording I just made of the news, with Beth and her kids, and all the people looking for me and Gina.

“Give me the tape,” he says.

“No! I want to watch it later, and I want to record the news tonight.”

“You’re done recording,” he says, pulling the tape out of the VCR and throwing it into the closet so hard that it smashes against the wall and cracks at the corner.

“You bastard!” I scream at him.

“If I take her out and she says anything to anybody, you’re in for it,” he warns me and then storms out again.

I grab the tape and check to make sure it still plays. It does, thank God. He always does things like this. I was feeling good watching Beth on the news, then he ruins my day again. And he scared Joce half to death.

She comes back up after he leaves, and I hug her for a long time.

I’m so afraid that one of these days he’s going to kill me. Then what will happen to Joce?

April 22

My family had a vigil for me last night, and I record the coverage of it on the news this morning. I am sure he’ll check to make sure I didn’t disobey him and record anything new, so I have a plan: If he asks, I’ll show him the smashed cassette and hide this one.

When the news comes on, I make Joce close her eyes and turn around, and I put the TV on mute. I have to make sure she doesn’t see or hear any more of this.

“Okay,” I tell her. “It’s over now, so you can open your eyes.”

“Was our family on TV?” she asks.

“No, not this time. Maybe they’ll be on another time.”

I hate lying to her, but I’m afraid of what he might do.

She reaches into her little bag and pulls out her last piece of gum. She almost never gets gum, so it’s a special treat.

She holds it out to me and says, “You don’t have anything to celebrate your birthday, so this is for you.”

 • • • 

“Time stands still for me—it seems like yesterday, but then it seems like forever.”

That’s what Beth said at my vigil, the night before my twenty-sixth birthday. I keep hearing her words in my head and I write a poem for her:

It seems like time stands still.

I feel like the world is turning and leaving me behind.

Sometimes it feels like Day One because I remember it all.

Sometimes it seems like an eternity, because my heart misses them so much.

For me, time stands still. I didn’t even get to see my nieces grow into young girls.

I hear people outside laughing, kids playing and cars driving by.

Everyone else is living their lives while I’m just stuck here waiting to be by your side.

Every day I wonder, what’s it going to be like for us.

All I know is I’m ready for a new life.

Castro’s Story: Burying Nilda

On the evening of Sunday, April 29, 2012, family and friends gathered for a wake for Nilda Figueroa at the Walter Martens & Sons Funeral Home on Denison Avenue.

Nilda had died four days earlier of complications from her brain tumor while she was visiting her daughter Arlene in Fort Wayne. The official cause of death was an overdose of oxycodone for the chronic pain. She was forty-eight.

When Castro entered the funeral home, he was met with whispers and angry stares. Nilda’s family blamed him for her death. Her male relatives wanted to take him outside and show him what a beating felt like, but Nilda’s sister Elida and some of the other women persuaded them to stay calm. Nilda’s and Castro’s children were there, and nobody wanted violence at the funeral of a woman who had endured so much of it.

Castro’s daughter Angie greeted him. She believed he was sorry for the way he had treated her mother. But Nilda’s side of the family didn’t say a word to him and stared angrily as he approached the open casket.

As he stood over Nilda’s body, he said, loud enough for Elida and others to hear: “Man, she was a good cook.”

Elida found his comment inappropriate, one final slight from the man who had brutalized Nilda for so long. But she swallowed her anger to keep the peace.

Castro didn’t kneel or say a prayer, or show any sign of emotion, but did manage to take a cell phone photo of Nilda’s body without anyone noticing.

Nilda was buried the next day under sunny skies at Riverside Cemetery, less than a mile from her old house on Seymour Avenue. Wearing his black leather motorcycle jacket, Castro stood alone behind the mourners.

May 3, 2012: His Ex

Amanda

Tonight we’re sitting in the garage. It’s been 90 degrees and hotter in the house, but it’s a little cooler in the garage, even with the hats and wigs he’s making us wear. Jocelyn is watching kid movies on a TV that he plugged in out here, and he and I are talking about Nilda.

He says he still can’t believe that she’s gone. He woke me up early the morning it happened to tell me. He was upset, but I’m not sure why, because he always told me he hated her. He was so frazzled the morning she died that he burned the bacon and filled the house with smoke.

He abused Nilda in this very same house. I guess after she left, he missed having a woman to treat like his property, so he started kidnapping other women.

I feel bad for his kids, because their mother is gone. I know what that’s like. He complained that her family bought her a cheap casket. That’s pretty ironic, coming from the cheapest person I know. But he seemed genuinely sad as he showed me her memorial card and a weird cell phone picture he took of her body in the coffin.

May 5, 2012: Flyer

Gina

He’s wearing his tight
BE MY VALENTINE
underwear again. Gross.

Whenever it’s hot, he hangs around the house in a tank top and his underwear. And his favorite pair are the Valentine’s Day ones, red bikinis. Whatever, dude.

“Gimme a massage,” he says, lying on the couch in the living room.

He makes me do this for hours, rubbing his shoulders and his back and his stinky feet, like I’m his slave. But at least it puts him in a good mood, so it’s not worth fighting about.

“Oh,” he says casually, “I saw your mother a little while ago.”

“Really?” I say, startled. “Where?”

“She was out on Lorain and 105th passing out flyers,” he says. “I asked her for one.”

He says that he was driving by on his motorcycle when he saw her, so he stopped and asked if there was anything new on my case.

I’m so mad that he was out there talking to my mom. That’s like laughing in her face. I want to strangle him, but I just keep rubbing his shoulders.

“Where is it?” I ask. “Can I have it?”

“Sure, I don’t care,” he says. “It’s in my jeans pocket in the kitchen.”

I find his pants folded over the back of a chair. I reach into the pocket and find a piece of folded-up paper. I open it and I see in big letters,
MISSING
PERSON
:
GEORG
INA
“
GINA
”
DEJESUS
,
and six little pictures of me at different ages.

I start crying. An hour ago, this paper was in my mom’s hands.

I finish massaging him and then go upstairs. I’m going to decorate my flyer, and I hope someday I can show it to my mom.

I cut out little paper hearts, cover them with red glitter, and glue them to the flyer. I carefully cut out one of the little photos of me. I’m going to put it in a pretty picture frame I made.

I’m so, so hungry all the time. I must weigh under a hundred pounds now, probably thirty less than when I got here. I take some grocery-store ads from the newspaper and cut out pictures of food I dream about: a strawberry ice cream sundae, a thick ham-and-cheese sandwich, a pile of onion rings, and a Hershey’s chocolate bar. I glue the pictures of food to the bottom of the flyer and tuck it away in the little blue backpack where I keep my most precious things. I’d love to hang the artwork up on my wall, but Jocelyn can read now, so she would ask too many questions about why it says I’m missing, and he would go crazy.

Jocelyn doesn’t even know my real name. To her, I’m Chelsea.

But I know who I am.

I am Georgina DeJesus. And my family loves me.

June 2, 2012: Graduation

Amanda

Yesterday was Jocelyn’s last day of kindergarten classes, so today we’re having a graduation ceremony.

I made her a black graduation hat out of construction paper and a “certificate of graduation” that was very formal and fancy. Where it said “teacher,” I signed my name.

We all get together in our room: me and him, Jocelyn, Gina, and Michelle. I ask Jocelyn to stand up, and I read the certificate out loud: “This is to certify that Jocelyn Jade Berry has graduated from kindergarten.”

She stands up wearing her hat and steps forward to get her certificate. We all applaud, and she says, “Thank you.”