Scared Selfless

by Michelle Stevens, PhD

  The décor, however, was curious. A stuffed deer head hung over the fireplace, and a Confederate flag covered the dining-room wall. Neon beer signs cast gloomy light in the hallway. On every surface in the house, there was some kind of baseball card or bottle cap or military memento. And there was lots and lots of political memorabilia, particularly pictures of President Carter’s young daughter, Amy.

  Walking into the den, I noticed a wall of bookcases lined with photo albums. Lots of them. “What’re those?” I asked.

  “Take a look,” he said, moving past me. At six feet two, he easily plucked a few albums off the top shelf. He plopped them on the coffee table then plopped himself on the couch. He patted the cushion next to him, beckoning me over. Once I was seated, he opened the first book. There on the page were pictures. Pictures of children. Maybe thirty of them. Their hair all nicely combed, they were staring at the camera and smiling in that dorky way kids smile for their school portrait.

  On the next page, there was one big photo of a class. The same thirty kids all dressed nicely and standing on risers. Next to them stood Gary. The print on the bottom said, MR. LUNDQUIST’S 5TH GRADE CLASS—1969.

  Gary explained that he was a schoolteacher and had been one for more than ten years. This particular photo was of a class early in his career, when he still taught in Kansas. He talked about going to college in Kansas and how the co-eds there were frigid bitches. Of course, being eight years old, I had no idea what he was talking about. Clueless. Like those kids on the page. Page after page. First, the official school shots. Then the official class shots. Then Polaroids—candids of just certain kids. “The special ones,” he said.

  They were laughing or hugging one another or goofing around the way kids do. Just normal pictures. But so many of them. The kids in his classes, the kids in his drama club, the kids in the gifted and talented group he mentored after school. Neighbor kids. Kids he hired to work with him on weekends. Kids who traveled with him in the summer. Kids he took in for a while when their parents couldn’t care for them. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids.

  But not one of his own, he said.

  He wanted one all his own.

  So I guess that’s why I was there. To audition. In the few weeks that he’d been dating my mom, Gary had already made it clear he was willing to play a major role in my life. This was a relief to my mom, who’d given up hope of meeting a guy willing to take on responsibility for her illegitimate daughter. And what a guy! Educated. Solid job. Respectable house. Successful small business. For my mother—a young woman from an impoverished family with no education, no job skills, no future—Gary was a serious catch.

  —

  AFTER A FEW more photo albums, Gary announced that it was time for bed. I got my nightgown and went into the bathroom to change. When I came out, I found Gary in a bedroom at the end of the hall. It was sparse, with a simple twin bed. Gary had already turned down the sheets, so I crawled in and pulled up the covers. Gary suddenly looked sad.

  “You know,” he said. “I’m very unhappy. For years, I’ve had to live in this big house all by myself. I’ve been so lonely. But now you can be my daughter!” He stated it brightly, as if it were that simple. But I wasn’t so sure. I barely knew this man. And for all of his attempts to ingratiate himself, I really didn’t think I liked him. The idea of having a father, of living in a real house, of having my own bedroom certainly appealed to me. But there was something about Gary that seemed phony. Scary even.

  “Let me see your nightgown,” he suddenly exclaimed, as he yanked off my covers. This made me excited, because I was wearing my absolute favorite: a long-sleeved pink flannel with ruffles at the bottom and a pretty lady on the front. She was holding flowers and wearing a bonnet. Santa gave it to me for Christmas.

  “Wow, that is so pretty,” he cooed, picking up on my obvious pride. “Would you like a picture of yourself in that pretty nightgown?”

  I nodded.

  He left the room for a second then came back with a Polaroid camera. He positioned himself at the foot of the bed and proceeded to pull down the remaining covers before aiming his lens. I asked him to wait a minute so I could smooth out my nightgown. I wanted to be sure he had a good view of the lady on the front. Then he snapped the shot. Two times. One for him, and one for me. I still have mine. It shows a petite girl with long brown hair and bangs lying flat on a bed, engulfed in a sea of baby-pink ruffles. She has milky white skin and thin pink lips set in a shy smile. Her big strikingly blue eyes are open wide, staring straight into the camera. There is an innocence to this small child, a trusting vulnerability that pains me today.

  Still, it is a picture I cherish, for it’s the last one where I ever looked directly at a camera with those bright untroubled eyes. A strange sort of gift, the first of many profound gifts I would receive from the man who would also shatter my life. A treasure, really. I mean, how many people can say they know exactly how they looked at the last moment of their childhood?

  —

  LATER THAT NIGHT. A basement. I am naked and locked in a cage.

  I can no longer remember how I got there.

  There are a lot of things I can’t remember about my life.

  This is probably a good time to stop and explain that I suffer from amnesia. I’ve had it since I was a kid. Everyone with multiple personalities has memory loss for the traumas we sustained in childhood. I, for instance, had completely forgotten that I’d been raped and tortured as a little girl. I didn’t recover those memories—the memories I’m about to share—until I was an adult.

  The idea that someone can forget something as important as being raped—or can develop more than one personality—is hard for many people to fathom. As a result, there are some who say recovered memories and multiple personalities aren’t real. Of course, those people didn’t have to live through the torture I endured. If they did, I bet they’d understand why my mind worked so hard to forget.

  There’s a saying: Never judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Yet we live in a society where victims of violence are condemned all the time. Battered wives are dubbed “weak” when they can’t leave their husbands. Rape victims are criticized for the way they dressed. Even innocent children get criticized for failing to flee their kidnappers!

  For the most part, this happens because people make judgments based on what they know. But what bystanders know about a crime is usually very limited. Think about it. Most perpetrators don’t abuse their victims in the middle of a mall. Unless they’re total idiots, they do their beating and raping and threatening in private. This keeps the rest of us from knowing what really goes on.

  That’s why others are often skeptical of victims and their strange symptoms like amnesia, recovered memories, and multiple personalities—because they have no idea what terrifying things had to happen to create such disorders. The only way bystanders can ever know what victims go through is if victims share. But victims rarely talk about their shameful ordeals, creating a vacuum of information that leads to a lot of misunderstanding, insensitivity, and ignorance.

  One of my goals is to clear up the misunderstandings. But, in order to do this, I’m going to have to share details about the abuse I suffered in childhood. I realize it may be hard to read. However, if people want to understand a victim’s complicated responses to violence, they have to walk in the victim’s shoes. They have to experience violence—at least on the page.

  And so I will tell my story exactly as I remember it. Sometimes those memories are as lucid and colorful as a Hollywood movie. Other times they are as dark, murky, and disjointed as the pages of a fading photo album. Whether the bits are vivid or foggy, they’ve all been pieced back together over the years to become a single, true story. It is the story of my enslavement, and it begins in a basement.

  —

  A COLD, DARK BASEMENT with a cement floor and cinder-block walls. It s
eems huge. From where I sit, the shadows go on forever.

  I am naked and locked in a cage: three feet by three feet probably. Just big enough to sit up with my legs stretched out or lie down in a fetal position. It’s made of thin metal bars with a metal tray on the floor. A tiny padlock secures the clasp on the door. It’s a dog cage. The kind they use to crate puppies. At eight years old, I don’t know that yet, though. We can’t have a puppy in our one-bedroom apartment. The closest thing I’ve ever had to a pet is the gerbil my mom bought at Woolworth’s. It lives in a glass cage in our living room and bites me every time I try to touch it.

  I want to be home now with my gerbil and my Snoopy pillow and my Raggedy Ann. I want to lie on the carpet in the bedroom and watch Sesame Street on my little black-and-white TV. I want my mom to warm up frozen fish sticks and Tater Tots, then sit with me on the couch so we can both watch Archie Bunker.

  I’m hungry.

  When was the last time I ate anything?

  What day is it?

  When is Mommy coming back?

  A sudden noise.

  The front door opening? Mommy’s here! Relief. Only for a moment.

  Then I hear the heavy thud of male feet. He’s back. My tummy hurts. I have to pee.

  As his feet move across the floor above me, I become paralyzed. My breathing shallows. My arms and legs go weak. I have lost all control of my body, but my mind is sharp and focused. All attention is fixed on the sound of the feet. Every step—farther, closer—is life. Maybe death.

  This is terror. Absolute terror. The kind most people will only ever experience in their dreams. But even after the worst nightmare, a person can wake up. Jump out of bed. Throw open a curtain. Try to shake off the horrible feeling.

  I want to shake off this feeling. This awful, awful terror. I want to forget it somehow and feel anything else. It is unbearable to be this scared. Unbearable even for a minute, much less an hour. Or a day.

  Two days maybe? How long has it been now?

  When is my mother coming?

  What’s that sound?

  Men are talking.

  Oh, God, there must be two of them!

  The door at the top of the stairs creaks open. Gary comes down, followed by another man. I can’t see him very well—he’s covered in shadows—but I can already tell he’s going to be mean. He’s tall, like Gary, with black hair and a black moustache. He kind of looks like the villain in some old-time silent movie.

  Someday, not today, I will learn that this man’s name is Joe. He’s a friend of Gary’s who shares his interests in political history, antique collectibles, and sadistic pedophilia.

  Just as the man hits the last step, Gary starts to walk toward me. They both have stern looks on their faces and neither one is talking, which only makes the whole scene feel more like a nightmare. If I have a body, a mind, a name, I’m not aware of it right now. All I know is paralysis. Of my limbs, my brain, my self. Time is standing still; every step that Gary takes toward me takes an hour. I don’t feel fear, exactly. In this moment, I don’t feel anything.

  The black-haired man is carrying something, some kind of ropes. He stops a few feet away from the stairs and starts to hang them on the beams of the basement ceiling. Gary keeps walking all the way to my cage. He is standing over it now, peering down at me.

  “It’s time to start your training, Slave,” he says. His voice is low and forceful, not the way it usually sounds. His face is different too. It’s got no expression. Just blank. Except for the eyes. The eyes stare down with a coldness that I have never seen before. Not on anybody. The coldness, the blankness, is so inhuman, so weird, that it makes me feel confused.

  Maybe Gary is just playing with me—doing that scary fake-mad act that grown-ups do just before they make a funny face and start to laugh.

  “Get out of your cage, Slave,” Gary says, in that same fake-forceful voice. He bends over and undoes the latch.

  The door swings open a little bit.

  He waits.

  What’s he waiting for? I’m paralyzed. None of this makes sense.

  “I told you to get out of the cage, Slave. You will do as I say. You will learn to obey me!”

  He bends over again, sticks an arm through the cage opening, and grabs one of my legs. He yanks hard, starts to pull me out.

  I drag along helplessly. There’s a metal lip on the bottom of the cage, and as my back gets wrenched over it, I am aware of cold steel scraping my skin. Everything is happening so fast. I can’t really focus on anything.

  Suddenly, I am being lifted up. The man with black hair has me. He and Gary tie my arms and legs to the ropes hanging from the ceiling and stuff a bandanna in my mouth. It all happens so quickly, is so strange, that I have no idea what is going on. Abruptly, the men let go of me, and the full weight of my body hangs down, tightening the ropes around my wrists, my thighs, my knees. I am hanging there, naked and gagged, with my legs spread apart.

  “When you do not obey me, you will be punished,” Gary says. Then he holds up some kind of stick, probably the cut-off end of a broom handle. I am scared—sure I’m about to be hit. Instead, after a long threatening pause, Gary rams it between my legs.

  Pain. Shock. Panic. I have to get away. I fight. Struggle. But I am tied. Can’t move. Can’t run. Helpless. I try to scream. Must scream. Scream from the shock, the pain. Scream for help. For him to stop. “Stop! Stop!” I try to scream.

  But I’m gagged. Gagged and bound. Helpless to run or scream or shield myself from the pain. Suddenly, a horrible taste floods my mouth. I’m vomiting.

  Instinctively, I turn my head and open my jaw to let the nasty liquid escape. But my mouth is covered. My screams are drowning in vomit. I’m choking. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.

  The ramming stops. Gary is at my head. Pulling at the bandanna. Fumbling to get it out of me. Groping, yanking, he shoves his fat fingers into my mouth, pulls out the crumpled wet cloth full of stench. Vomit pours out of my mouth onto my lips, my face, my neck. I keep gagging, coughing, trying to catch my breath. After a while, I am able to breathe again. I am aware of my burning throat, the putrid taste in my mouth, pain between my legs.

  Gary looks at the black-haired man. His face is serious but normal. He seems like a normal person again.

  “She could’ve choked,” he says quietly.

  Without further words, Gary lifts up my body while the black-haired man undoes the ropes. Gary carries me back to the cage, lowers me to the ground, and tells me to get in.

  Automatically, I obey. I crawl in, lie in the fetal position, close my eyes. I am too weak to fight, to scream, to think. I just want to sleep.

  —

  OTHER THINGS HAPPEN that weekend. At one point, Gary and the man come back, open the cage, tell me to get out. It’s time to start my training. I crawl out, so exhausted it doesn’t even occur to me not to do what they say. As I kneel on the floor, the black-haired man puts a leather collar and leash around my neck. He hands the leash to Gary, who forces me to walk back and forth on my hands and knees. I am taught how to heel, to sit, to stay. Through all of this, I am expected to be blindly obedient. I am a slave now, I am told. No better than a dog. I must learn to obey my master.

  I hate all of this, obviously. It’s physically uncomfortable to crawl on the hard cement floor. Even more uncomfortable to remain motionless in a stay for long periods of time. What bugs me most, though, is not the pain or the cold or even the fear. What bugs me most is having to do things I don’t want to do, things I find embarrassing. Mortifying. I don’t want to be naked. I don’t want to wear a dog collar. I don’t want to crawl on a leash. I don’t want to do any of it. I hate it. It makes me feel so mad. But I can’t say anything. What I want, think, feel doesn’t matter. I just have to do what they say.

  Eventually, my training session ends. I am told I’ve done well, that I’ve been a good
and obedient slave. For this, I will earn a reward. I will be allowed to eat. This is a relief. I’m starving. At the mention of food, my stomach instinctively growls. When the black-haired man brings over my dinner, though, I realize it is just a trick, a way to induce more shame. He places two dog bowls in front of me. One with water. The other with wet dog food. I am told to kneel over the bowls with my hands behind my back. I stay like that for a long moment. I know I am expected to eat the dog food, but the thought of it, the smell of it, makes me nauseated. I just can’t will myself to put it in my mouth.

  “What’s the matter, Slave? Don’t you like your dinner? You’re going to have to learn to appreciate everything I give you. And you’re gonna learn to like it. Now eat!”

  The tone of Gary’s voice tells me what I need to know—that eating the wretched food will surely be less painful than what he’ll do to me if I don’t.

  So I bow my head into the bowl, and I eat the dog food. Ignoring the smell. Ignoring the taste. Ignoring every urge in my body telling me to run away, spit it out, throw it up. I turn off my thoughts, my feelings, my senses, my body. I turn into a numb, mindless eating machine, impervious to the smell, the taste, the texture, to any of it. It is the only way to get through. The only way.

  —

  I AM ALONE AGAIN. In my cage. How long have I been here now? It’s surely been a few days already. I am somewhat aware of the passage of time; I’ve seen the light come and go through the high windows on the other side of the basement. I haven’t been counting, though. Don’t know how many times the sun has come around. But it must be time for Mommy to come. Right? When is she going to come get me?

  I am cold and cramped in this little cell. The dog collar is too tight. I have to pee. I’ve quickly come to appreciate being left alone in my cage, though. When they take me out, that’s when the bad things happen. So I kind of like it in here. Like being by myself and just letting my mind go. I think about nice things like kittens and toys and ice cream and the horse I’m going to get one day. I don’t have to think about being naked or hungry or tired or scared. I just pretend I’m somewhere nice and happy and safe.