felt we were beginning a new and perhaps better life. We would no longer be isolated. Brian bought a new trailer that was a little bigger, and we packed everything inside.
On the day before we were to leave, we came back to the trailer and found it had been broken into. Brian became angry, grabbed his pistol out of the truck and ran up into the thick manzanita brush. He came back with a teenage boy. He had the gun pressed to the kid’s head. Brian yelled at the boy to tell him where our stuff was or, he said, he would kill him. I remember standing in front of them, frozen, unable to move, and thinking that if he shot and missed, I was in the direct line of fire. The teenager was screaming, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Your stuff is up in the brush.”
Brian laughed and said, “I should just shoot you anyway.”
But he finally let the boy go and chased after him, firing the gun in the air. I will never forget that day. It is etched into my mind forever. I was so scared; Brian seemed so cold and dangerous.
We left a few hours later and hit the road for Washington. Brian seemed to be in a lighter mood as we traveled, and he told us stories of growing up in the Evergreen State. It took us about three days to reach Seattle. Sometimes, Samantha and I got to sit in the cab rather than the canopy covered truck bed. I would stick my head out the window and feel the wind whip through my hair as I smelled the new scent of the ocean. My sister and I pointed out exciting new sights to each other, although we were careful not to make a sound.
As we traveled during the day and camped by night, things seemed nicer. Mamma and Brian were preoccupied and did not feel the need to beat us so much. For those few days, I told myself that things might not be so bad and that everything was going to get better. Little did I know that a dark cloud was looming in front of me, the extent of which I could not comprehend as a child. It was a dark and ominous cloud that threatened to engulf me, not even leaving a trace.
The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and
the feeling of being unloved.
—Mother Teresa
We arrived in Washington one sunny day in June. I was six-and-a-half years old, and my sister would turn five in August. Our journey came to an end at Brian’s dad’s bicycle and locksmith shop in a little town not far from Seattle. It was a small shop that they had worked in together when Brian was a teenager. After Brian left, his father continued focusing most of his attention on the locksmith part of the business before eventually retiring. When we arrived, the lower part of the building was being rented out to small business tenants, and the upper level was where Grandpa lived.
As we drove up in the back alley behind the shop, I watched curiously as Grandpa came out to greet us. He was a kind, older gentleman and I was surprised when I met him. I had expected an older version of Brian, but Grandpa was just the opposite. While Brian was loud, chubby and plain mean most of the time, Grandpa was gaunt and quiet. He gave Samantha and me each a big hug. We instantly loved this seventy-seven-year-old man. Samantha and I each grabbed one of his hands and followed him upstairs.
The loft was quite spacious with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a large bathroom. We moved into the bedrooms, and Grandpa said he would sleep on a foldout bed in his living room.
That afternoon, Brian’s older sister came by to visit. She seemed angry that she had not seen Brian for nearly ten years. She was dressed in a suit and had short, stylish hair. She walked with an air of confidence, and I could feel that Brian resented her.
Aunty Laura owned a small, successful business just a few blocks away, and when I asked her if she could stop by every day and visit us, she laughed and said she would try. I was so excited that I clapped my hands happily, but when I turned around I saw my mother’s face glaring at me. After Aunt Laura left, Mamma and Brian cornered me in my new room and began slapping me and backing me into a corner.
“Don’t you ever talk out of turn like that again!” Brian yelled at me. “In fact, do not talk to her at all! She is only here to see what kind of bad things she can find out about me through you girls.”
I felt my heart sink—maybe there was no new life; maybe it was the same game with only a few extra innocent players. Mamma and Brian brought my sister into the room, sat us both down on the bed and began laying out the rules. We were not to make any noise when we were being punished. We were not to tell anyone when they had punished us. We should always appear to be happy when around others. If we were caught pouting or complaining for any reason, we would be punished again. We were also not to disturb Grandpa or go anywhere with him.
That was how our new life began. Brian joined the union and worked local construction jobs; Mamma stayed at home with us and took care of the house. Sometimes, after the work was done, we would walk to the park only a few blocks away. Samantha and I liked these outings, but we were awkward around other children and usually just played with each other. We would stay for about half an hour, then walk back to the apartment above the shop. I always dreaded it when I would see the shop in the distance. It was like a prison and my heart would always flip flop as my feet crossed the threshold. Sometimes, I wondered if the other kids I saw at the park were scared to go home. In the afternoons, we were allowed to go outside and play in the alley behind the shop. We loved playing in that alley; it was a great place to escape. When Brian came home in the evening, it was even worse. He always found a reason to beat us and he always used the full force of his strength.
They beat us without mercy or would make us stand in the corner for hours at a time, but it was usually in their bedroom, out of sight. Since we were not allowed to cry when we were being belted or beaten with a stick, Grandpa usually did not know what was going on, but sometimes we could not help it and cried anyway. Grandpa pretended he did not notice our tear-streaked faces, but sometimes I could see a disturbed look on his face.
That summer, I learned to read. Some people were wondering why I was not yet in school since I was nearly seven, so Mamma began pretending I was being homeschooled. The lessons were done at random and I understood very little, but I picked up on the reading part, and soon, I was borrowing books from Grandpa and losing my sad self in his western novels and historical books.
As I skipped over the big words, I would imagine myself as the hero in the book, and I could forget for an instant that I was imprisoned by two people whose only joy in life seemed to be to inflict pain on others. I was being held hostage in front of people who could have saved me, had they known. My sister and I were captives in plain sight, yearning for a rescuer that would never come.
As the summer progressed, Brian began to act even stranger than usual; he ordered a bunch of books on a group of people called the Amish.
One morning during breakfast, Brian announced that we were going to become God-fearing people and obey the Bible in its entirety. He had Mamma take Samantha and me to a local class on crocheting so we could learn something that would keep us busy, like the good little Amish girls we supposedly were. We learned how to crochet in just a few days.
After we had learned to crochet, my mother took us to the local thrift store and started buying a bunch of dresses for us. We were not used to wearing dresses, or anything nice for that matter. Being the little girls that we were, we had fun twirling around in our new full-skirted dresses. Brian came home a few days later with some plain, white muslin dinner napkins. Mamma tied them around our heads and put one on hers as well. Brian stepped back to look at us and smiled.
“Not quite Amish yet,” he said, “but pretty close.”
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