Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

by Amanda Berry

  After I finish eating, he tells me to strip, and he does it again.

  When I’ve been here four days he asks, “Do you want to come downstairs and watch TV?”

  The last thing I want to do is spend more time with him. But I’d love to get out of this room and away from the smell and these chains, even for a few minutes.

  “Okay,” I say, trying not to look at him.

  He unlocks the chain and walks me downstairs. The door to his roommate’s bedroom is closed.

  We sit on the couch and he turns on the news. My mom and Beth are on Channel 5, being interviewed in our house.

  “It’s been a hard week, and it’s getting harder,” my mom tells the reporter, wiping her eyes with a tissue. She’s sitting on the couch, where I used to cuddle up beside her. “She never made it home. Somewhere between there and here, something happened, and nobody can figure it out.”

  Beth is crying. “I’m hoping she’s out there somewhere,” she says. “I hope nothing happened to her. Maybe somebody’s got her, drugged her or something. Just bring her home.”

  I’m crying, too, but glad I’m on the news, because that means people are looking for me. Maybe somebody will see this interview and remember something.

  “Your mom looks really upset,” he says. There’s no sympathy in his voice, it’s just an observation, as if he had nothing to do with her misery. He flips around the channels looking for other news reports about me and finds them on Channel 8 and Channel 3. He can’t take his eyes off the TV.

  I look at him. He has an odd expression on his face, and then I realize what it is: He’s proud. He’s admiring his work, he feels like he’s done something big.

  This makes him feel important.

  April 27

  It’s Sunday. I’ve been gone six days. And so far, he’s raped me at least twenty-five times. It’s been four or five times every day.

  He’s out the door at five a.m. to go to work. Then he’s back around eight or nine and strips off his bus driver’s uniform—black jeans and a burgundy shirt with a little yellow logo for Cleveland Public Schools. After he’s done with me, he goes back to work and drives little kids until lunchtime, when he comes home and forces himself on me again.

  Then in the evening, he does it again—sometimes several times. He always leaves my chains on.

  He slobbers on my face and is obsessed with my breasts. He’s always touching my chest and telling me, “These boobs are mine.”

  I am learning that the more it hurts me, the more he likes it, and that it’s over quicker when I don’t fight. What would be the point, anyway? I’m chained to a radiator, so where could I go?

  I told him I would like something to write on, and he asked if I wanted a journal. I said yes, and he came home today with a blue diary with flowers on its cover.

  “You can write what you want,” he says, “but don’t write any names.”

  I know he might read this, so I have to be careful about what I say. But I’m going to write to my family. Maybe that will feel like talking to them on the phone or sending them a letter. I miss them so much. I want to let them know I’m alive.

  When he leaves I begin my first entry, by the light of the TV:

  4/27/03. Sunday. One week.

  I never thought I would miss my mom sooooo much! But it’s sooo true. You never know what you got ’til it’s gone! I just can’t wait to go home. I’m 17 now, but don’t have a life. But he told me I’m young and will go home before summer. Another two months! Tomorrow it will be a week I’ve been here—so I’ve survived this long. I’ll just try not to think about it. But it’s hard.

  I saw my mom and Beth crying on TV. My mom said, “Mandy I love you” and I started bawling. I love you Mom. See ya sooooon!

  Love, Amanda.

  It feels good to write that. I am glad they don’t know how horrible it is here.

  Eminem’s new song, “Sing for the Moment,” is on the radio. I can’t believe it has some of Aerosmith’s music in it, the chorus from “Dream On,” my mom’s favorite. As I listen to it I get lost in the music, and it takes me back home for a few minutes. I can picture myself there with my mom, safe and free.

  I know I haven’t always been the best daughter. Sometimes I would argue with her over some pretty stupid stuff. I wish I hadn’t. When I get out of here, I won’t do that anymore.

  He controls when I eat, what I see, what I hear. But he cannot control what I think, so I am going to take my mind somewhere else when he climbs on me.

  I have almost nothing in this room, but I have an idea. I have a few pictures of my mom, dad, and nieces in my purse, and I’m going to make a family album. To make a frame I carefully rip apart an empty box of Crunch ’n Munch that he got me. I chew a piece of gum and then separate it into tiny pieces that I stick on the back of the pictures and press them into the cardboard from the box. Then I prop it up on the table next to my bed.

  When he is doing horrible things to my body, I look at my mom’s face. I imagine her laughing. I picture her smoking her cigarettes and gabbing on the phone, or cooking in the kitchen. I look into her eyes and lose myself in her.

  And my mom and I get through it.

  April 28

  I see my mom on the noon news. She is showing a reporter my bedroom and the pink box where I keep my money, insisting that there’s no way I could have run away from home. Who would run away in a Burger King uniform, leaving all her clothes at home and a hundred dollars in her dresser? She says I’m not the runaway kind of kid, anyway. And I’m not.

  It’s so weird to see pictures of myself on the news, and my mom giving strangers a tour of my room. I never thought I’d ever be on TV. We’re a normal, nothing-special family, kind of messed up like everybody, no different from all the other families around here just struggling to get by.

  Now everybody knows my name, and they’re all looking for me. I’m in a big city, close to downtown and the crowds at the Indians baseball games and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Didn’t anybody see me getting into his van? Maybe a neighbor on Seymour saw me come in here? Someone has to rescue me.

  The news says it’s nice outside today, but there could be a tornado and I wouldn’t know. The only light comes from the screen of the little black-and-white TV, the one I had in the basement. It’s maybe twelve inches and has rabbit-ears antenna. I have it on a little chair at the foot of the bed and watch Maury and other shows my mom likes. It’s comforting to think that we might be seeing the same shows at the same time.

  All day long all I can hear is that annoying radio in the hall. When he’s home in the evening, he turns it off, and then I can hear lawn mowers and cars going by. I keep trying to make my mind wander away when he forces himself on me, but it’s hard.

  “You said you’d take me home—when are you going to do that?” I ask as he gets dressed.

  “You’re young. You have plenty of time. What’s a few months?”

  I am furious but I reply quietly, “Maybe it’s nothing to you, but it’s a lot to me. This is my life you have taken.”

  “Maybe the last week of June,” he says. “You just gotta be patient.”

  Another two months, if he’s not lying. I don’t trust anything he says, but it helps me to think it will be over in two months. I can make it that long. I choose to believe him.

  I never went to church much, but I know there is a God and I know he must have a different plan for me than this.

  • • •

  One day he comes in at midnight and sits at the end of the bed, holding my cell phone.

  “I called your mother,” he says. “I told her that we are in love, and that you are my wife now.”

  Shocked, I start crying and ask, “You talked to my mom?”

  “Yeah, I called her with your phone,” he says. “She asked when you would be home, and I told her I didn’t know.
I told her you were safe.”

  “Can I talk to her?” I ask. “I want her to know that I’m okay.”

  He ignores me. “I talked to your sister, Beth, too. I told them you were okay. I said you were with me now.”

  Maybe this is good; they know I’m alive. Or maybe it’s bad, because they’ll think I’ve been taken by some crazy guy and are scared about what he’s doing to me. Why did he call them? Does he think that if they believe that I ran away, they won’t search for me? He doesn’t know my family. They’ll never stop looking for me. But he’s such a liar. I bet he didn’t even call them.

  He lets me listen to a couple of the voice messages on my phone. One is from my little niece Mariyah, telling me, “Please come home.” Another one is from my friend Mary from Burger King. I guess she didn’t know I was missing, because she left a message saying, “Which one is your house? I’m trying to find it for your birthday party.”

  Hearing their voices makes me cry so hard I can barely breathe.

  “Can I please call them and tell them I’m alive?” I ask, begging him.

  “You can write to them,” he says. “But there are rules. You have to tell them that you ran away. You left on your own and you’re okay, so they shouldn’t worry about you.”

  “I won’t do that,” I tell him. “I’ll never tell my family that I ran away. That would hurt them so much. I would rather have them wondering what happened to me than think that I would leave them.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  He rapes me again.

  April 29

  They haven’t shown me on the news at all today. Over and over they run a story about bad lettuce making people sick. I don’t think he actually called my mom. If he did, that would be bigger news than lettuce.

  I heard on the news about Elizabeth Smart, the girl in Utah who was kidnapped and released last month. The lunatic who took her also said she was his wife. He kept her nine months! If she can survive for that long, I know I can, too.

  He’s back and he says he wants to stay with me all night long. He keeps calling me his “temporary wife.”

  I move over to the very edge of the bed, as far away from him as I can get. But he cuddles up behind me and reaches around and takes my hand. It’s like he thinks we’re a couple.

  I lie still until he falls asleep, then I slip my hand out of his.

  He has ruined my life and my body. I’m filthy. My toilet is a trash can. I’m hungry and cold and chained up.

  And he wants to hold my hand.

  April 30

  Getting to go downstairs to the bathroom is what I look forward to most. That crummy little bathroom has become the highlight of my week. I miss feeling clean. Today I finally get to shower and brush my teeth—it’s been days. It feels good.

  I just start to feel the water wash him off me when he steps into the shower.

  I think about killing myself. But if I do, he wins.

  I have to keep it together until I can figure out how to escape. To keep from sliding into complete sadness I try to focus on anything good. I felt hot water today. I heard Eminem on the radio. I found a penny in the pocket of his old sweatpants and decide it’s my lucky penny. I have pictures of my mom and dad, and they remind me that I need to stay strong so I can see them again.

  But it’s hard. These chains are so tight that even with the socks wrapped around them they cut into my stomach. It’s impossible to sleep, because I keep rolling over onto the padlock. But even worse than the physical pain is the mental torture of never knowing what’s next.

  I’m learning that they have TV shows that teach everything—cooking, dance, languages. I saw one that teaches meditation, how to relax, how to rid your mind of what’s bothering you. I am going to look for that one. I have to get better at making my mind fly away from this place.

  I close my eyes.

  “Please, Lord, make this end. Please let me go home to my family. Please keep them safe and bring me home soon,” I say over and over.

  I turn to my photo of Mom, kiss it, and tell her good night.

  Tomorrow is May 1. A new month.

  This is how I’m going to think about time: Every day that passes means I’m a day closer to this being over, a day closer to being home.

  Hope is my only option.

  May 2003: The Woman in the Other Room

  May 1

  Amanda

  “Do you want to help me with the laundry?”

  No, I don’t want to do his laundry. But I do want to get out of this room, even for a few minutes, even to wash his filthy clothes. “Okay, sure,” I tell him, and he takes a key off the keychain on his belt and opens the padlock on my stomach. The chains fall to the ground, and I feel fifty pounds lighter.

  We walk into the hallway, and he points at the closed door of the bedroom where I saw that girl sleeping ten days ago.

  “We have to clean up this room,” he says, unlocking the door.

  I’ve been thinking about her. Why does he call her his roommate? Could she be part of this somehow? I thought about yelling out to her, in case she’s still here, but I never know when he’s home or not. Sometimes he pretends to leave, then creeps back up and opens my door. He tells me he’s testing me and says, “I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”

  I notice now that her door is also locked from the outside. Oh, no. She must be another prisoner.

  I step inside and see her sitting on the bed. We look at each other, and I can’t read her expression or tell what she’s thinking. She seems in a daze. I can’t see if she’s chained because she’s sitting under a blanket. She’s tiny and looks older than me.

  “This is my roommate,” he says, but doesn’t tell me her name. “This is Amanda,” he tells her.

  We both say hi. Neither of us says another word.

  He hands me a plastic garbage bag and orders, “Pick up the trash.”

  The room is a mess. I start stuffing pizza boxes and old bags from McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King into the bag. Pizza crusts and dirty napkins are everywhere and look like they’ve been piling up for weeks. How long has she been here?

  “It smells like a hamster cage in here,” I say.

  I’m not trying to be funny, but that makes him laugh. She just watches and doesn’t say anything.

  She has a TV. I’ve been on the news lately—my face, my name. She must know who I am. She seems as afraid of him as I am. Who is she?

  “Okay, that’s enough, let’s go,” he says when I finish filling the trash bag.

  I look at the girl again, but she doesn’t look back. He leads me into the hallway, locks her in her room, and stays close behind me as we go down the stairs. At the door to the basement, I stop. I haven’t been down there since those first two horrible nights. I hope this isn’t some kind of trick or new punishment. But I have no choice because he tells me to keep going.

  “Start with these,” he says, pointing to a huge pile of dirty clothes.

  I guess he really does want to do laundry.

  I start sorting whites and colors. As I put the first load into the machine, something catches my eye amid all the junk in the basement: on top of a stack of photos is a picture of Jesus, with light radiating from around his head and his heart wrapped in thorns. He has beautiful eyes that seem to stare directly at me. There are some prayers in Spanish on the back: Novena al Sagrado Corazón de Jesús.

  “Can I have this?” I ask him.

  “Sure,” he says. “Why not?”

  After he orders me back up to my room, chains me, locks my door, and leaves, I set the Jesus picture against the rabbit ears on top of the TV. Now I have my mom watching over me from the bedside table, and Jesus doing the same from the TV.

  I decide to write in my diary every time he attacks me. I won’t use the word “rape” in case he ever reads it. But I need a r
ecord of what he is doing to me. I want him someday, somehow, to be held responsible for every single time he steals a piece of me. I can’t let him get away with this.

  It was three times today—morning, lunchtime, and when he came home from work—so in the corner of my diary page, I mark 3x. He’ll never know what it means. I’ll never forget.

  May 2

  I’m crying, blaming myself for being so stupid for getting in that van. I was minutes away from home. It wasn’t that cold; why didn’t I just walk? Did I bring this on myself?

  The FBI is on the news, announcing that there’s a reward of up to $10,000 for information about me—that makes me feel a little better. Maybe if somebody thinks there’s money in it, they’ll report something. I have to believe somebody saw me get in the van with him.

  Help me, somebody, please.

  4x.

  May 3

  The hours go so slowly, and I’ve told him how depressed I am. Today he brings me a coloring book and crossword puzzles, saying that they’ll help pass the time. It’s so dark, and I’m so hungry. A little after five, after I haven’t eaten all day, he brings me Pringles and gross little frozen pizza rolls.

  DJ was on the news. He tells a reporter I called him twice for a ride when I was leaving Burger King, but he doesn’t say why he didn’t answer. I guess he just didn’t hear the phone. If he had picked up, I wouldn’t be here.

  The news report also says that the police think I was taken by somebody I knew. They think I got into a white car with some guys. Who told them that? It wasn’t a white car!

  He keeps coming in here. It never stops.

  4x.

  May 4

  It’s late, and I finally get to eat—a burger and fries from Wendy’s. By now they’re just cold grease, but I’m so hungry.

  3x.

  I realize that he thinks if he feeds me, or gives me anything at all that I want, even a sheet of paper, he’s entitled to do whatever he wants with me. In his warped mind, he’s providing for me, so my body belongs to him.