Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

by Amanda Berry

  He comes to sit on the end of my bed, watching with me.

  “They ain’t gonna find you,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “No kidding.”

  “What a waste of taxpayers’ money.” He thinks it’s funny that the cops are looking in the wrong place.

  It’s bad for me because it means they have no idea where I actually am. They’re so close! The house is on West 50th Street. I could easily walk there in maybe ten minutes.

  I watch the live news coverage all day long. Hundreds of people are on the street watching. They say Hurayt served time for molesting two little boys. The concrete floor in his garage is new, so the reporters are saying they think maybe he put it in to hide my body. They’re even digging up under a doghouse.

  What if they do find a body under there? Maybe they’ll tell my parents it’s me, just to keep them quiet. If they say it’s me, then they won’t have to look for me anymore, and it’ll get my mom off their backs. No more vigils, no more explaining why the police haven’t found me yet. I think they could do that.

  At about eight o’clock the police announce they didn’t find a body.

  My mom is on the TV again and she’s crying. “I know deep in my heart that my baby’s still out there,” she says. “I just want whoever has her to let her go. Just let her go so she can come home.”

  October: Third Trimester

  Amanda

  “My ears are ringing,” he says, like it’s a national tragedy.

  I’m six months pregnant, my breasts and legs are sore, I can’t sleep because of the chains, I’m getting more and more scared about delivering a baby alone in this house, and he thinks I care that his ears are ringing?

  “So why don’t you go to a doctor?” I tell him. “Maybe you should take me to the doctor, too. Pregnant women are supposed to go to the doctor.”

  That came out a little sassy, but I’m so miserable that I don’t care.

  He ignores me, thank goodness, and says, “I’m going to the library.”

  An hour later he’s back with a thick medical encyclopedia and starts reading all the reasons that his ears might be ringing. We’re sitting in the living room, and I wait until I think he might be done worrying about himself.

  “Can I look at that?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he says. “But only down here. You can’t take it upstairs.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just do it.”

  I know exactly why he won’t let me take it upstairs. Somehow he figured out my plan to leave “Help me!” notes in his library books. I dreamed of doing that when I first saw that he was borrowing books. I thought about writing on a page inside, “This is Amanda Berry. Please call the police. I am being held hostage by Ariel Castro at 2207 Seymour Avenue.” Then I would wait until the next person checked out the book and found the note. I imagined the cops bursting through the door to rescue us, saying they got my message.

  But he thought of that, too, and now makes a big point of showing me how he checks every page of a library book before he returns it. He does the same thing with the movies he borrows, giving us the disc but always keeping the case. He doesn’t want us to slip a note inside the cover.

  I take the medical encyclopedia and look up pregnancy. It says that at six months the baby is already more than a foot long. Amazing.

  I’d love to know if I am having a girl or a boy. I’d love to have a sonogram. I’d love to hear my baby’s heartbeat, and have a doctor tell me everything is going to be okay.

  I keep thinking about Beth being in labor for eighteen hours with her first baby. She was in so much pain, but she was in the hospital. What will it be like for me in here? Is he going to help me deliver the baby? Do I have to ask Gina or Michelle?

  One good thing is that he seems interested in the baby. I still can’t tell what he’s planning to do when it’s born, but for now he’s less mean to me. I told him yesterday I was craving butter pecan ice cream, so he went out and bought some. That’s something.

  “I think you’re going to have this baby on Christmas,” he says. “It will be like a Christmas miracle.”

  December 19

  Until today I haven’t written a word about being pregnant in my diary. I’ve been too scared. If I write down that I’m having a baby and then he takes the baby away, somehow I think it will be sadder. I want this child.

  Hi Mommy! I guess I should tell you—I’m pregnant! Like 8 months or 9! I should be having the baby anytime. He says I can’t keep it—because of “the situation.” I’m not really ready, but I don’t want the baby out in this cruel world without me.

  I keep writing to my mom. It’s like talking to her. I tell her that this baby is part of me, living and growing inside me, not him. I used to worry that if I had the baby it would remind me of him for the rest of my life. But I don’t anymore. This is my baby.

  I’m so close now. I am still pretty small, maybe a hundred fifteen pounds, less than when I arrived here, but my stomach looks huge to me. I already feel more like “we” than “I.” Whenever I’m sadder or more depressed than usual, or when he does something especially mean and my hope starts slipping away, I rub my belly and talk to my baby.

  Christmas Day 2006: New Life

  Amanda

  The pains started a few hours ago and they’re getting stronger. I wish I was in a hospital. I’ve been trying to get myself mentally ready for weeks, but I’m still so worried.

  It’s 12:30—after midnight, so it’s now officially Christmas. I’ve been watching TV while he’s asleep next to me in his bed in the dining room. Lately I’ve been sleeping down here most nights. He wants me to, and it’s easier just to do what he wants. Sometimes it’s even comforting to sleep beside him because it makes me feel less alone and less scared about being pregnant in this house.

  The bathroom is right next door, which is an even bigger deal now that I’m pregnant and have to pee all the time. But most nights he still makes me go in a bucket so he doesn’t have to get up to unchain me.

  “Wake up, I have to use the bathroom,” I tell him. “I’m in a lot of pain.” He grunts, sits up, and goes to the kitchen and reaches into the red Pringles can on the table where he keeps the keys to my chains. He unlocks the padlock on my ankle. The chain seems even heavier these days, and it drops to the floor with a thud.

  The heat is on, but because there’s no radiator in the kitchen, it’s freezing all winter. I hurry through it and into the bathroom. He’s standing there half-asleep, leaning against the sink, waiting. He looks worried. He’s already had four kids and he thinks I could be in labor.

  “Do you think you’re having the baby?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Then I hear something go “pop.” It startles me. He heard it, too, and I show him that there’s a little blood.

  “I think your water just broke,” he says.

  “But I didn’t feel any gush.”

  I’m starting to get more scared. What will I do if everything doesn’t go just right? He won’t take me to a hospital. I don’t want to die here.

  I have to stay calm.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but you might be having the baby,” he says. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  He wants me to have the baby in my room because the windows are so well covered there. It would be hard for anybody to hear me screaming while I’m in labor, or to hear a baby crying.

  He walks with me up the stairs, slowly. I sit on my bed as he opens the door to Gina and Michelle’s room.

  “I think Amanda’s water broke,” he tells Michelle.

  Michelle and I haven’t been getting along and I don’t want her near me, but I don’t think I can do this without help. He has no idea what to do. But Michelle had a baby before she was kidnapped, so she knows what to expect. And she said that she also helped deliver a
baby for somebody in her family. Besides, he told her she had to help me, so she has no choice.

  He keeps Gina locked in the room.

  He runs upstairs to the attic and comes back with a plastic wading pool that he sets on the bed. It’s white, with blue lines and a whole bunch of colorful fish, and nearly covers the whole queen-size bed.

  “Okay,” he says. “Get in here.”

  This is his idea for how to avoid making a huge mess because he doesn’t want me to ruin his mattress. It’s weird and uncomfortable, but I’m in pain and not arguing.

  I take off everything but my T-shirt. It’s cold, especially with my bare skin against the plastic. I’m shivering and feel helpless and exposed.

  “Can I have a sweater, please?” I ask.

  He goes into another room and comes back with a warm black sweater.

  The contractions have really started now, and the pains are sharper.

  “You’re not breathing right,” Michelle tells me.

  “I don’t know how to do it,” I say, wishing I had a nurse to show me.

  It really hurts, and Michelle takes my hand.

  “You’ve got to calm down,” she says gently. “You’ve got to breathe like this.”

  She’s shows me how—puff, puff, puff—and is being really nice.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she says.

  These pains are freaking me out and I start squeezing her hand so hard that she yells “Ouch!” She’s just teasing and trying to make me smile. It goes on like this for what seems like hours.

  He sits down in an old rocking chair that he brought into the room and is reading a medical book—the chapters about pregnancy and birth.

  I scream as the contractions come faster.

  “Be quiet!” he shouts. “Don’t be so loud!” Handing me a shirt he tells me, “Bite on this.”

  I ball it up and put it into my mouth to muffle the sound. It’s harder to breathe.

  The cloth is drying out my mouth, and I tell him, “I’m thirsty.”

  He says he read that ice chips are best, so he hurries down to the kitchen to get some.

  He’s barely out of the room when I push, and the baby slips out.

  The next few moments are a blur. I think I passed out.

  Gina

  I’m in my room listening and I hear Amanda scream, “The baby’s not breathing! The baby’s not breathing! Do something!”

  For a minute there’s no sound, and I’m so scared.

  Then I hear a baby crying.

  Amanda

  He comes back into the room, sees the baby. “It’s a girl,” he says, smiling. “Wow!”

  He seems so excited to be a father again. His eyes are wide as he gently takes her from Michelle and cradles her in his arms.

  “Let me hold her,” I say.

  He and Michelle wrap her in a towel, and he hands her to me.

  I hold my baby on my chest and touch her for the first time. I can’t believe her little face. Her eyes are wide open. She’s so cute. And so quiet. In the movies, new babies are always crying. She’s just lying here with me, so calm. I’m amazed.

  I stare into her eyes. She’s all I can see.

  “Cut the cord,” he tells me.

  He’s handing me my stubby little school scissors, the ones I use to cut pictures out of magazines.

  “No. I’m scared,” I tell him. I’m worried that I’ll do it wrong and hurt her.

  “No,” he insists. “You should do it.”

  Finally he sees that there’s no way I’m going to do it, so he takes the little scissors and snips the cord. Soon after that I push out the placenta.

  He says we should go downstairs and get everybody cleaned up. He turns up the radio in case the baby cries. It’s Christmas music.

  He carries the baby as we walk down to the bathroom. I’m sore and still sort of in shock. He wants me and the baby to get into the tub with him. It’s tight, but we figure out how to cross our legs so we all fit. He’s washing her tiny body.

  “She’s so small,” he says. “You have to be really careful with her because she’s so fragile.”

  The look in his eyes is amazing. He’s so in love with this little girl already. He’s always telling me that his kids are the most important thing in the world. They are older now, and it’s been a long time since he’s had a little kid who depends on him for everything.

  There’s not a lot of good in his life. It’s his own fault, but sometimes I think he’s as stuck in this house as we are. He and Nilda split years ago, he hates his job, and he’s going to prison forever if the police find out what he’s done to us. Now he’s sitting here holding this beautiful baby who is nothing but pure goodness, and he’s happy. I think she gives him new meaning in his life.

  He gives me a pair of his one-piece red long johns to wear, and they’re soft and comfortable. It’s almost morning, and we’re all hungry, so we step into the kitchen. It’s so cold that Michelle holds the baby with a towel over her face to keep her warm.

  He starts frying eggs and sausages while I make toast. He tells me that it’s unbelievable that I’m standing up cooking breakfast just hours after giving birth, with no drugs or anything.

  I take the baby from Michelle, and she gets some food for her and Gina, and we all walk upstairs. He goes into their room and chains Michelle again.

  I crawl into bed with my new baby. As he fastens the chain around my ankle, I think about my daughter being born into this prison, and who her father is. But I try to focus on happier thoughts: She seems healthy and she’s beautiful. I am going to protect her, and the rest we will figure out as we go.

  He finds a brown cardboard box to use as a bassinet. We put some towels and a little pillow in it and set it on the bed, and he lies down next to it. He is smiling. I can’t remember ever seeing him this happy.

  “Oh, my God,” he says, a little awed. “I can’t believe I’m a dad again.”

  A couple of weeks ago, we had been watching The Polar Express on TV when the baby started kicking like crazy. I reached for his hand and placed it on my stomach, wanting him to feel connected to the baby. I knew my baby would be safer, and would have a better chance of staying with me, if he was excited about being a new father. I think it worked, because he seemed thrilled to feel the kicking in my belly.

  Then, one night when I was trying to sleep on my stomach because the padlock was hurting me, he told me, “You can’t sleep on your stomach because you’ll hurt the baby.”

  I guess he had been starting to care, but I don’t think he had ever been completely sure, right up to today, that he’d let me keep this baby.

  Now he can’t stop looking at his daughter.

  • • •

  I wake up a few hours later when I hear the baby crying. I try to get her to breastfeed, but no matter how hard I try, it’s not working.

  “Can you please go to the store and get some formula?” I ask him.

  “No,” he tells me. “You can feed her yourself.”

  He says he doesn’t want anyone to see him or risk that a store camera might film him buying baby things. We don’t have a blanket, or diapers, or formula—nothing.

  He tells me to watch a breastfeeding video. He didn’t have to get one for me, because he already had one in his porn stash. He is so obsessed by breasts that it even turns him on to watch breastfeeding.

  Hours pass, and the baby is not latching on, and she’s still crying but takes a few drops of water from a little spoon. What will I do if she gets sick in here? I’m just a few blocks from a big hospital, but I might as well be shipwrecked on a desert island, since I have no chance of getting her to a doctor.

  “She needs diapers,” I tell him.

  He leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later with scissors and a handful of old white athletic socks. He trims
the top off and then cuts two little holes in the toe for her legs. We slip her into it, and that’s her first diaper.

  Then he takes another sock and cuts a bigger hole in the toe for her head, and two little holes for her arms. We slip it over her head, and it’s like a little dress.

  It’s her first outfit.

  I want to call her Priscilla, but he hates that name. I don’t know why I care what he thinks about the name, but I do. I need him to feel like he’s a part of her life. I want him to feel invested in her, because I think that will keep her safe.

  I can’t think of too many other girls’ names that I like, so he gets a phone book, and we start going through it. He suggests some that I hate, mainly Spanish ones, and I like some others that he rejects. Finally I think, Jocelyn. When I was little I had a friend called Jocelyn, and I always loved that name. He’s not crazy about it, but he says okay.

  I want to give her a middle name to honor my mom. But there is no way I am calling her Jocelyn Louwana, because Mom never liked her name.

  But Mom loved Aerosmith, and one of the songs she always sang to me was called “Jaded.” So I decide: Jocelyn Jade.

  Jocelyn Jade Berry.

  • • •

  Jocelyn is three days old and has not eaten anything yet. All she’s had is water, and she has been crying a lot.

  I tell him I’m doing my best, but she’s a baby—she cries. He walks around with her to try to get her to quiet down. He goes kind of crazy when she wails, so he turns the radio up even louder. The neighbors won’t hear Jocelyn crying, but the loud music makes it harder for her to sleep.

  I have given up asking for formula. He says it’s expensive, and it never goes on sale. I keep trying to get her to breastfeed. C’mon, baby. We can do this. I start praying that my mom makes my little baby a fighter.

  After hours and hours she finally latches on and doesn’t let go. She’s drinking, and I know she’s going to make it.

  Someday I’m going to have a lot to explain to her.

  Part Three

  February 2007: Moving