Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

by Amanda Berry

  He tells me when he was young he got hooked on porn, obsessed by it. He also says that he was molested by a neighbor when he was a little boy.

  “That must have been hard,” I say, trying to act sympathetic.

  “I’ve never told this to anybody else,” he adds.

  “Why are you telling me?” I ask. Of course, he’s told me all this before—I guess he forgot.

  “I just wanted you to understand,” he says.

  I’ve never seen him this emotional. He’s not crying but he’s choked up. He’s saying everything very softly, like it’s painful for him to get the words out. I don’t know what to think.

  “I’m going to resign from my job. It’s too stressful. And I want to spend more time with Pretty before I take you both back home,” he says. “I don’t know how or when this is all going to end. Maybe in a few years.”

  He talks for more than an hour, until it starts to get light outside. He’s never spoken to me for this long, and he doesn’t seem like he’s ready to stop. He does seem depressed and says that he’s getting more and more headaches from the stress of leading this double life. He loves his grown daughters and doesn’t get to see them that often. I know he and his son have never gotten along. He talks about his ex, Nilda, and how he beat her.

  “She didn’t know when to shut up,” he says.

  “That’s no excuse for hitting her,” I tell him. “You could have walked away.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he says. “She would piss me off so bad.”

  That poor woman.

  He has been acting different lately, talking more and buying more food and clothes for us. It’s been a long time since he’s hit me, but he’s still rude and punishes me, like a few days ago when he wouldn’t let me use the bathroom for two days because I was annoying him. It was back to using the trash can. He claimed I had started it because I wouldn’t talk to him. I was mad because he keeps taking Gina downstairs to “clean” when Jocelyn wants to play with him. He should have been talking to her, reading to her, taking her out of the house, helping her have a bit more of a regular childhood. He should be acting like a parent, not a pig.

  But right now I can’t be too mad at him. He seems so sad and lost.

  “You know,” he says, “sometimes I don’t even have feelings. I think I’m coldhearted. I don’t care how people feel.”

  I have known that about him for years, but it’s odd to hear him actually admit it.

  “Well,” I answer, “I don’t know how you can do this to me and my family. I mean, you see my sister crying on TV. You see what this has done to my family and Gina’s. Could you imagine going through that with your kids? What if your kids were missing?”

  “You know what?” he says. “Sometimes I look at your family and I have no feelings about them at all. I know they’re hurt. But it doesn’t bother me. Like I said, I don’t have feelings.”

  How can I respond to that?

  I remember one day I heard people on TV talking about sociopaths. I had never heard that word before, but the description fit him so perfectly that I wrote the word down and later looked it up in the dictionary: a person whose behavior lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. And I thought: That’s him! I started going through the whole dictionary to find other words to describe him and wrote some of them in my diary:

  Censorious: Always finding fault, criticizing.

  Despot: Person who treats those under his control in any way he cares to, cruel or unjust.

  Fastidious: Not easy to please. Very particular.

  Impenitent: Not feeling shame or regret. Not sorry for what he’s done.

  Imperious: Like a dictator, arrogant. Impolite.

  Impudent: Not showing respect, shamelessly rude.

  Sadist.

  He is all those things.

  “When are you going to let us go home?” I finally ask him after he goes on talking for another half hour.

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “I don’t have a date yet. But soon.”

  “You’ve been saying that for years.”

  I get up to leave and am actually looking forward to going back upstairs to Joce and having him lock us in. At least in my room nobody’s crazy.

  April 29, 2011: Royal Wedding

  Amanda

  Joce and I are watching the royal wedding. Prince William is so handsome, he looks like a king! And Kate is so beautiful. I’m not wild about her dress, though. I think it’s too simple for such a fairy-tale wedding. I wish she were wearing something fancier, more amazing. But I love her tiara and how happy she looks.

  I want a fairy tale. After this is over, I hope I can find a man who loves me and looks at me like I’m the only woman he ever wants to be with. I want a man who is kind and gentle. I want a husband who is my best friend and adores Jocelyn. I hope I will find my own prince someday.

  May 2011: Haircuts

  Amanda

  He asks me to trim his hair. I don’t know why, because Gina usually does it for him.

  “I’m not a hairdresser,” I tell him. “I don’t know how to cut hair.”

  “Do it anyway,” he says. “And don’t mess it up.”

  He’s obsessed with his appearance, always primping in the mirror. He asks me if this shirt goes with these pants, are these shoes okay, how does this outfit look? He has shoes and socks in red, white, and blue, like the Puerto Rican flag. He thinks they are stylish, but to me they’re just silly. Sometimes he wears eyeliner to make himself look like a cool rocker guy. He must have ten black leather jackets hanging up in the kitchen, and a whole collection of hats because they cover up his receding hairline. Like anybody cares.

  He lies down on the bed on his stomach, with his head up. It’s an awkward position for a haircut, and I’m having trouble. I don’t know why he doesn’t just sit in a chair. It’s also hard because he makes us use the tiny kiddie scissors we have for our artwork—nothing sharp enough to hurt him.

  As I’m trimming the back I accidentally cut a little bare spot, which I hope he won’t notice. But as he checks the back of his head with a small mirror he starts screaming at me.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, looking like he’s going to explode. “Why did you do that? You did it on purpose!”

  “I did not!” I say. “It’s nothing. If I did it on purpose, I would have made it a lot bigger.”

  “Get upstairs!” he yells.

  I run up the stairs to my room and sit with Joce. I’m worried about how he might react because he’s always unpredictable when he gets this mad. I know he’s going to come back and do something to me, because that’s the way he is. He’ll take his time and think of the perfect revenge.

  All I can do is sit and wait, so Joce and I flip on the TV.

  Three hours later I hear him stomping up the stairs. He barges in, wearing a hat to hide the bare spot. “It’s haircut time,” he says, with a crazy smile on his face. He’s holding a big pair of metal scissors with black handles that I’ve never seen before. “You messed up my hair,” he tells me, “so I’m going to get even.”

  “It was an accident!” I say. “Why do you have to do this?”

  “Turn away—look over there!” he tells Jocelyn. He always does that when he doesn’t want her to see what he’s really like. She does what she’s told.

  He steps toward me, and I can see he wants to make this hurt. He grabs me and cuts a big bald spot on the top of my head, right in front. He jabs the scissors into my hair and keeps snipping.

  “I know you did that to me on purpose,” he says. “So now you can look at this every day.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose!” I can’t believe he’s doing this with Joce in the room. “And yours is in the back and small. This is really big and right in the front.”

  “It looks really nice,” he says sarcasticall
y, obviously pleased with himself.

  I hate myself for ever getting close to him. I am so stupid. I can’t believe I got fooled by him. He’s standing there laughing at me. I grab my comb and try to push some hair over the bald spot. He takes his hand and messes it up again.

  “How do you like it?” he asks and then opens the door to Gina and Michelle’s room.

  “Hey,” he says, laughing. “You want to see her haircut?” They are trying not to look.

  When he messes up my hair again, I go to kick him in his junk, but I miss.

  “I’ll punch you,” he warns, holding up his fist. He looks at Jocelyn and leaves.

  I’m so humiliated. Hair is scattered all over the bed. I try to comb my hair over the bald spot again, but it doesn’t work. Joce is scared and hugging me.

  Gina comes in and sits next to me.

  “If it was me, I would go downstairs and look him straight in the face and say, ‘It doesn’t bother me,’” she tells me. “Don’t let him beat you. Be proud, keep your head up. Remember what your mom would say.”

  She’s right. Mom would tell me to quit crying and be stronger than he is.

  June

  Gina

  He’s cutting his hair again. He’s so in love with himself. He spends more time looking at himself in the mirror than any girl does. He’s always trimming his mustache and beard, cutting the little hairs out of his nose and ears, snipping his eyebrows.

  He thinks he’s so attractive. Dude, you’re old. And fat and nasty and hairy. Looking in the mirror’s not going to help! I wish I could say that to him, but I don’t want to get smacked.

  He usually makes me cut his hair. I bet I’ve done it fifty times, but today he’s doing it himself. That’s probably better, because we all remember what happened to Amanda a few weeks ago. She still has that bald spot, and it’s going to take a long time for her hair to grow back.

  Look at him. He’s buzzing up and down and side to side with his electric trimmer. He must be in a hurry, because he’s doing it way too fast. He can’t see it, but he just messed up and shaved a bare spot in the back of his head. It’s like the one Amanda gave him, except a lot bigger. When he realizes what he did, he turns to me.

  “This is your fault!” he shouts.

  “My fault?” I say. “I didn’t do that. I was sitting right here and watched you do it.”

  “My machine never did that before,” he says, furious. “You must have done something to it!”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  He’s trying to fix the spot with the trimmer, but he’s only making it worse. It kills him that his hair is going to look funny. But what’s the big deal? He has a bunch of hats, so he can just cover it up.

  “I’m going to jack you up like I did Amanda,” he yells.

  “I don’t care,” I tell him.

  And really, I don’t. I’ve already had my hair completely shaved in here. When Britney Spears shaved her head in 2007, right after my seventeenth birthday, I took his little electric trimmer and shaved my head too, hoping it would annoy him. And another time I gave myself a Mohawk, a little protest against him because he was always telling me that he liked my hair. The only problem with being bald was that he kept touching my head—not to hurt me, but just to feel the smoothness. It bugged me so much that I had to grow my hair back to get him to stop.

  So what do I care if he messes up my hair now?

  If I don’t let it bother me, he can’t hurt me.

  • • •

  Two days later he calls me into the kitchen and tells me he’s ready to “jack me up good.” “I’m going to chop you like I did Amanda,” he says, waving the big scissors. “You want a Mohawk or a shaved head?”

  He thinks he’s scaring me. He made Amanda cry for days when he did this to her, and now he wants me to cry, too. No way, dude.

  “Do what you want,” I say, trying to sound bored. “I’ve had a Mohawk. Everybody has already seen my bald head, so I don’t care.”

  He grabs my hair and chops a few pieces.

  I don’t move and look him right in the eye.

  “Is that it?” I ask.

  That pisses him off, so he starts cutting faster and makes a huge, ugly bald spot in the front of my head, just like Amanda’s.

  “That’s a nice haircut,” he says. “How do you like that?”

  “Oh, you’re done?” I say. “Good. Can I go play with Jocelyn now?”

  I walk into the living room and say to Amanda and Jocelyn: “Look, I got a haircut! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I’m laughing about it, which makes them laugh. Jocelyn thinks it’s all just a funny game.

  He comes into the living room and asks me: “What are you going to do? You going to shave your head?”

  “No, I like it,” I answer. “I’m going to keep it just like this.”

  He doesn’t look happy and walks out, slamming the door and locking it.

  That felt good. A little victory.

  June 15, 2011: The Park

  Amanda

  He took Jocelyn to Roberto Clemente Park, just a few blocks away, for the very first time today, and though she was too scared to go on the swings, he took her down the slide on his lap. She is still getting used to the outside. I’m always telling her “I love you,” and Jocelyn was so excited to see other kids that she was saying, “Hi, I love you” to everybody she met. She played with a little boy and girl at the park and kept hugging them. He said the other parents told him she was so beautiful and friendly.

  He’s been taking her out in his car, but today he actually got a car seat for her. He drove her to a bakery on Clark Avenue, where they gave her a free cookie with purple icing and sprinkles. Joce saw a little girl there with her grandpa, and she kept saying, “I love you” to her, too.

  After that they went to the McDonald’s drive-through and he told me that Joce asked the lady, “How are you doing?” And as they left, Joce said, “Thanks. Have a nice day!”

  I love hearing how chatty she is. I’ve been worried that living in this house and being so isolated would make her afraid of people. It’s good that he’s taking her out more, because I want her to be normal and happy when we leave here someday.

  July 14, 2011: Carnival

  Amanda

  They went to a carnival in the neighborhood today, and he came back with a video of her riding a little roller coaster. She was waving at the camera in his phone, saying, “Hi, Mommy!”

  I started tearing up when I saw it, because it was one more little memory that I wish she had made with me.

  “Mommy, why are you crying?” Joce asked.

  I had to pretend it was nothing and went into the bathroom to dry my eyes.

  “One day you’ll get to do these things with her,” he says to me. “You just have to wait.”

  If I hear that one more time, I will explode. I’m so tired of waiting.

  It’s summer, so he doesn’t have to drive the bus and he’s home a lot. Joce has been getting up early, waiting for him to come unlock the door and take her somewhere in the car. She’s four and a half now, and it’s harder to keep her in the house. They’ve been to Home Depot, where a lady told Joce that she loved her curls. He took her out to get us his version of dinner—KFC for chicken, Little Caesars for pizza, and Walgreen’s for pop. They also went to Family Dollar, where he got her a new swimsuit and let her ride in the shopping cart, which she loved.

  He makes her hide on the floor when they pull in and out of the driveway. I cried when he told me he taught her that. She must think it’s perfectly normal for kids to do that, which makes me sad. But she loves going in the car, and she always returns all excited, describing what they did and who talked to her.

  It’s so weird to picture him waiting for her at the end of a slide or watching beside the monkey bars, acting like a normal parent.
Other parents must think he’s just some nice dad or grandpa. I wish they could somehow sense something wrong and report him to the police, but I guess I’m dreaming. I hate that he’s the one who gets to do these things with her.

  When they go out, I imagine what he’s showing her: fire trucks, Lake Erie, the glass triangle of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I keep extra busy until she comes back by finding tasks to do. I scrub the floors and tidy up. I write in my diary. I make tons of lists: names of my friends, birth dates of my relatives, favorite songs, sayings that make me feel good, like “Choose happiness” and “Know what you can and cannot change.”

  It’s much better for me to keep busy. It’s easier if I don’t think too much.

  July 30, 2011: Church

  Amanda

  Jocelyn prayed in church for the first time today.

  He took her to a church festival where they had games and a crafts table for kids, and she made me a pink cross that she decorated with little hearts. He took pictures of her there with his phone. In one she’s holding a little rod and is fishing in a kiddie pool filled with plastic fish. In another she’s smiling and holding another little girl’s hand. That’s her favorite thing: meeting other kids.

  She had never been inside a church before. I’ve taught her a lot about Jesus, but she’s never seen an altar or rows of pews. She told me that she saw a statue of Jesus and hugged it—so sweet!

  Then the two of them knelt down, bowed their heads, and prayed together.

  I taught her to pray in this room. At night we kneel together at the side of the bed, fold our hands, and pray for “Mamaw,” my mom. We pray for my dad and Beth and our whole family, too, then we climb into bed.

  I bet she prays for my parents in church just like she does here.

  I wonder what he says to God.

  July 31, 2011: Praying

  Amanda

  It’s a big weekend for Joce—today he took her to the lake for the first time!

  Some guy had a kite and let her hold the string. It’s been so hot—ninety-seven degrees. Last night I was fanning her with a cardboard box as she slept because it’s so miserable in our room that we bake in here. I shut off the TV, the light, anything that might make it even one degree cooler. Joce’s little cheeks get so flushed because there’s no air. So I love the idea of her flying a kite in the cool breeze.