This is the story I was told never to speak of-and I didn't-until now!
We were a seemingly perfect family. With a mom, a dad, and five beautiful little girls. But behind closed doors it was anything but. He wasn't our dad, and she wasn't our mom-or...
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1972 Riverside County, California
As I sat at the table in a small room at the police station listening to the officer address my savagely beaten, bruised, and battered mother, my mind took a hesitant, ghastly stroll down hell's memory lane. Our seven-year imprisonment was finally over, the monster was finally in custody, and my sisters and I were finally safe from his wrath! Was she going to tell the police about all of it? All the secrets that had been hiding in the walls of every dwelling we had lived in since this entire nightmare began? The confinement and the dastardly deeds that had been carried out by this madman? Or as usual, was she simply going to make it about only herself and her own injuries?
What was my mother trying to say to the officer through her broken jaw? She wasn't sure if she wanted to press charges? This could not be happening! Not again! How many times had we almost escaped? How many times had we almost been rescued only to have her take him back again? Too many times to count. Yet here she was again, hesitating to put him away forever because why? Oh, that's right! Because she loved him!
He had nearly killed her this time, but I didn't feel sorry for her. Sadly, I just couldn't. For too many nights I had sat with my sisters in the dark, quietly and secretly nursing their wounds, which looked a far cry worse than hers did at that moment. I had no sympathy for her while she sat crying as the officer tried to explain to her that placing him in jail would give us time to escape, to move to another town, another state. "He won't be held forever," the officer said, almost pleading now. "Just long enough for you and your girls to find safety."
Safety? Not from him! Monsters always come back, and they never die.
"He has been charged only with a misdemeanor," the officer continued as I glanced at my big sis, Jodie, standing in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest, more than a little irritated. I think if she could have, she would have spit fire through her mouth and nostrils. She had escaped our prison only two years before that. Yet it seemed like she had been gone for an eternity. Two years with that beast was indeed an eternity. Hell, two minutes was unbearable.
Our mother was still trying to decide whether to sign the papers, and Jodie had simply had enough. She shot me a look with her teeth gritted so tightly I thought she just might break them! I knew that look very well. I had seen it many times before. It was the look that said all hell is about to break loose! She knew our mother was never going to sign those papers. Of course, I knew it as well. Nothing was going to change, and something had to be done before he hurt or killed again.
That was when Jodie mouthed to me, You have to tell!
Tell? Oh Lord, why? No one had ever believed me before! I had told and told and told again and again, but no one ever did anything to help us! No one ever believed me! And no one ever believed Jodie, either! Even after she had fled our prison. However, on this day, I somehow knew Jodie was right because on this day that I speak of, something felt quite different. Perhaps it was because we knew the monster was locked up in a cage somewhere being treated like the beast he really was, or perhaps it was because our mother was too beaten and weak to fight, or perhaps, just perhaps it was both. I may never know.
The officer, obviously irritated and short on patience, asked our mother if there was anything else they could help her with. He knew darn well that she was not going to sign those papers.
So I spoke. And when I did, I'd like to think I pioneered the Me Too movement, although it would not be recognized as a movement until forty-six years later.
There would be no more torture, no more rape, no more beatings, no more brainwashing, no more bruises, no more broken bones, no more brutality, no more missing children, and most importantly, no more murder under the wrath of that beast ever again. It was about to come to a screeching halt once and for all. I would be damned if he was coming back to terrorize or end the life of anyone or anything again! Little did I know at that time, but I myself would be the one to finally slay the monster!
"I have something to report," I said to the officer. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, my mother's foot gouged deeply into mine underneath the table.
I pulled my foot out from under hers and scooted-or more like jerked my chair sideways away from her as the officer looked at me with raised eyebrows. He glanced over at Jodie and then again at me, and with pen and pad in hand, he said, "Go ahead. I'm listening."
