Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (27 page)

I’m so proud of her. She has worked hard all year. We had school five days a week, following the Cleveland Public Schools calendar exactly. We took vacations when real school was out for Thanksgiving and Christmas and spring break.

She has learned so many words and numbers and studied all kinds of practical things, like healthy eating. I tried to make it fun. I’d say, “
A
is for alligator,” and bounce a little plastic ball to Joce. She would say, “
B
is for balloon,” and bounce it back. We would try to get through the whole alphabet without missing a word or dropping the ball.

It wasn’t always easy. There were plenty of days when she was sick of me, sick of school, sick of the same old everything every day, and it was hard to hold her attention.

One day in November he brought her home a lunch from school, a little brown paper bag with a sandwich. I guess they were giving away extras, and she was so excited that it came from a real school.

“I want to go to real school now. Can I, please?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, but she kept begging him and asking him why not.

“It’s not time yet,” he told her.

“When is it time?” she asked.

“I don’t know. You just have to be patient.”

We have lots of nice food for the graduation ceremony. He had a year-end party at work yesterday, and he brought us a big dish of leftover pasta and some pop.

He also found hundreds of pages of first-grade worksheets that were being thrown away, which will be a big help when we start school again in August. Oh, God, I can’t believe I’m just assuming that we’ll still be here in August. Will this never end?

But for the moment I try to make sure Joce enjoys her big day, and I tape her graduation certificate to the wall.

He opens the pop, and we eat the pasta. We’re all so proud of Jocelyn and happy for her. I can’t remember another time when we were all in one room eating, talking, and laughing.

July 6, 2012: Pool Time

Amanda

I’ve been getting more and more upset about not being able to go outside with Jocelyn. He sees me quietly crying when they come back all excited about their latest adventure. So maybe because of that, and maybe because Jocelyn is asking why Mommy never goes outside, he says we are all going swimming today!

He gets the plastic pool—the same one I sat in when I gave birth to Jocelyn five and a half years ago—from the attic, drags it out the back door, and puts it in the bed of his pickup truck. With poles and a blue tarp he builds a screen around it and then fills the pool with water from the garden hose. He comes back inside and tells me to put on a wig and sunglasses. I stand at the door while he checks again that no neighbors are outside, and motions for me to dart out.

“Mommy’s coming outside. Yay! Mommy’s coming outside!”

He tells her to quiet down. Jocelyn loves playing dress-up with the wigs, and my long black hair only adds to her glee that I am outside playing with her.

I sink into the pool, wearing a T-shirt and a secondhand bikini bottom he bought at a thrift shop. He probably paid fifty cents for it, since there was no matching top. I begin splashing around with Jocelyn in her cute little two-piece suit and don’t know what feels better, sitting in cool water on a blistering July day or looking up at the blue sky instead of the moldy ceiling of my room.

Jocelyn is happy and she sees that I am, too.

For hours, she pretends to fish with her plastic rod and sprays me with her squirt toys. “Look at me, Mommy!” she says, pretending she’s swimming.

He fires up his little grill, the kind you can set on a table, and cooks hamburgers and hot dogs. He is in an unusually good mood and puts some chairs in the garage so we can stay outside and eat. He even hands me a beer after he’s had a few himself. After a while he goes inside and lets Gina and Michelle out of their locked room, gives them wigs and hats, and they join us. We all fit in the pool if we fold our legs just right.

I don’t mind the itchy, hot wig. I don’t mind that he keeps telling Jocelyn to keep her voice down. I don’t mind that he doesn’t let us stand up in the pool because we are taller than the tarp and someone might see us. I’ve learned to try to make any comfort last. For five hours I have been out in the fresh air. For years I have been inside dreaming about coming outside, hopping the fence and screaming for help, and now that I’m here I don’t do a thing but breathe the air and play with my daughter. I am not going to do anything to make him change his mind and take away this tiny bit of happiness.

 • • • 

It’s been a good few days. On the Fourth of July he blew off some firecrackers in the backyard, and Joce loved that. He got sparklers, and he and Joce ran around with them in the dark while Gina, Michelle, and I watched from inside the house.

The more Joce goes out, the harder it is to keep her inside. She rides her white Little Tikes scooter with purple wheels around the backyard while he works on his cars. When he brings her to yard sales to buy toys and clothes, people sometimes ask who she is. He usually says that she’s his girlfriend’s daughter, but he’s careful not to go to the same park, McDonald’s, or library with her too many times. She loves to rent
Hannah Montana
, Looney Tunes, and
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
at the library and wants to watch them over and over again, but he told me he’s worried that a nosy librarian might ask her where she goes to school.

She will be six years old soon and she’s realizing more and more that there’s something wrong with the way we live. Whenever she goes out with him, the last thing she sees is him locking me, Gina, and Michelle in our rooms. He tries to hide his temper from her, but she’s seen how he can turn angry in a second and hit one of us. She knows that only she can go in Daddy’s car. The rest of us have to stay inside.

A few days ago she didn’t understand why she had to stay quiet upstairs in our room while Angie’s two little boys were playing downstairs. Angie’s husband had fallen off a roof and was in the hospital, so he was watching his grandkids. Joce could hear them and was desperate to play with other children. He’s shown her pictures of Angie’s kids, and even tried to explain that they’re actually her nephews, even though they’re all about the same age. But when they came over, he told Joce she had to stay upstairs.

“Maybe another time,” I told her when she kept asking why. “Daddy said not this time.”

It didn’t make sense, and she knew it.

July 19, 2012: Digging for Amanda

Amanda

I wake up and turn on the TV. Channel 3 has breaking news:

SEARCH
FOR
AMANDA
BERRY
.

Some guy in prison told the police that he killed me and buried me in an empty lot at West 30th Street and Wade Avenue. That’s two blocks from here! They’re showing footage from the news helicopters flying right over my head. I hear them!
Come get me! I’m alive! You are so close!
I wish I could smash a hole in the roof and signal to the helicopters. If only they could see me. There are swarms of police and men in FBI jackets watching the big backhoe digging for me. If I could bust out of here I could run over there in two minutes.

It’s making me insane that they are so close. But I’m going even crazier worrying about Beth. She thinks they are going to find my bones.

He sits on my bed to watch the news and after a while says, “This is crazy.”

He usually laughs when the police are chasing the wrong lead, but this time he is nervous and fidgety because they are so close by. I think it also scares him that my disappearance is still such big news nine years later. He keeps hoping people will forget about me.

He gets in his car and leaves, making sure to lock us in our rooms.

There’s live coverage on every channel and I watch all day. They have the whole search area covered with a big tent and cadaver dogs sniffing for my body. The streets are filled with people who have come to watch, and I scan the crowd looking for my family. Channel 19 shows a photo of the guy who gave the tip, Robert Wolford. I stare at his face, trying to remember if I’ve ever seen him. I’m sure I’ve never met him. I wonder why he’s making this all up.

The helicopters are still hovering, so loud, right over my head.

He comes back from the scene and says he stood watching them dig for my body with the rest of the crowd, trying to blend in, to see what was happening and to hear what the neighbors were saying.

“It’s right down the street. It’s right there!” he says, pointing in that direction.

At seven p.m. channels 3 and 8 are still airing it. Aunt Susie, my mom’s sister, is there, only a couple of blocks from me. They play old interviews with Mom, and it’s good to hear her voice. I miss her so much. I’m happy to see Gina’s mom, Nancy Ruiz, out there talking on the news, too. She’s a fighter like Mom, and it’s nice she’s supporting my family. That means a lot.

A few reporters have gone back to our old house, which looks vacant, and the grass is kind of tall. It’s sad to see it empty, but I know Beth must have a nice new place somewhere.

They’re interviewing some guy who says we all grew up together, but I don’t remember him. They say Beth is too upset about the dig to go on camera, and that makes me cry.

Now they have my mom’s friend Terry talking about the family. She brought a pretty paper butterfly to leave there in case they find my body.

July 20

It’s day 2 of the dig and I’m still on the news all the time. A police officer just told reporters that they’re 95 percent done but haven’t found anything. They brought Wolford to the site to point out where he buried me, but now they suspect he’s been lying. I’m glad they’re figuring that out.

They interview my mom’s sister Theresa at the Burger King where I used to work. She’s crying and upset, which makes me cry more, and she says the whole family is watching on TV but that they just can’t bear to go down there. The newscaster reports that Beth is so stressed that she’s in the hospital. Oh, no!

Gina’s mom is still there watching them dig and saying, “I am hoping it is false.”

He’s watching the TV with me and suddenly says, “Hey, there’s Pedro!”

His brother Pedro is on the Channel 8 news. He’s wearing a flowered shirt and sunglasses, shorts, and a straw hat, pointing at the dig site and saying, “That’s a waste of money.”

His brothers have been to this house a few times, but they have no idea we are here. I think Pedro is just one of those guys who likes to complain, so he’s mad that the city is spending money digging for a lost girl. But what a weird coincidence that he’s picked out of the crowd to interview about the case.

Finally, they call off the search. There’s a press conference and a police officer says that everybody wants closure, wants to know what happened to Amanda Berry, and the good news now is that there’s still a chance she will come home: “There is still hope that maybe somewhere, there is a girl still alive.”

I waited all day to see Beth, and now she’s on, saying, “I’ll wait forever for Amanda to come home.” On the news I see Marissa and Devon playing on the couch at Beth’s house. And I see Beth has a new tattoo on her right arm—it looks like an RIP for Mom. Someday when I’m out of here, I’m going to get a tattoo for my mom, too.

So many tears are running down my cheeks—happy and sad ones at the same time. But now there’s more bad news: my grandma Diane, my mom’s mom, died. And my dad’s in the hospital in critical condition, but they don’t say why. I had no idea.

“Well, it’s about time he croaked, right?” he says when he hears the report about my dad.

He knows just what to say to hurt me the most.

“That’s just wrong,” I answer. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I’m just telling you the facts,” he says.

“Oh, are you going to say that about your brothers when they die young? Because they’re drunks!”

He thinks about that for a minute.

“You’re right,” he says. “I guess maybe I’m coldhearted.”

He has been talking more and more lately about being “coldhearted,” like it’s some medical condition that excuses whatever horrible things he says or does.

 • • • 

Gina has been especially kind through these two strange days of watching police dig for my body. She drew a yellow cross and wrote on it: “Always believe in hope. Even through the hardest times.”

And tonight we all held hands—me and Joce, Gina, and Michelle—and prayed for my dad. Then before I put Joce to bed, she and I prayed again for him and the whole family.

I’m scared that this bizarre dig is the closest the police will ever come to finding me. I force myself to stop thinking that way and decide that this whole thing is a message from God. Some guy in prison makes up a story, and it leads the police to within two blocks of me. I have to believe it’s a sign that the end is near.
*

July 30, 2012: Searching for Jaycee

Amanda

Joce and I are sitting here in our room playing Grand Theft Auto on the TV. She likes to drive around in the cars, but I don’t allow her to do the violent stuff, like shooting people.

He comes in and asks me to go on the Internet with him. We got Internet access in the house a few months ago, but the only way I can use it is with him, since he never lets the keyboard out of his sight, even taking it with him when he leaves the house.

I’ve been hearing a lot on TV about Jaycee Dugard, the girl who was kidnapped for a long time in California. She’s written a book and she’s doing interviews. I want to know how she’s coping now that she’s free. How are her kids doing?

“Let’s search Jaycee Dugard,” I say.

He says okay, but tells Jocelyn she has to go in the dining room and play because he doesn’t want her to see it. She answers in pretend Spanish—she hears him speaking Spanish all the time, especially when he’s on the phone, and she tries to imitate him—and skips off into the dining room.

As he and I read about how Jaycee was taken by a guy who was doing meth and who heard voices of demons, he says, “That guy was crazy.”