Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

by Amanda Berry

  He says if he quit, he wouldn’t have gotten as much money, but now he can collect unemployment, and it’s better for his pension, too. He says he’s been egging on his boss for a couple of years, getting smart-mouthed with him and trying to get fired. Last Valentine’s Day he went shopping at Marc’s. He left his school bus in the parking lot and went in wearing his driver’s uniform. His boss was in the store and told him he wasn’t supposed to be doing personal errands with the bus.

  “He said he was going to fire me, so I said, ‘I don’t care. Fire me!’” he tells me. Another time he got into trouble for making an illegal U-turn with a bus full of kids.

  “This way I can spend more time with Joce before all this ends,” he adds.

  He’s been saying stuff like that more and more lately, talking about “the end,” but he never says exactly when that will be. I think he’s trying to figure out how we could all go home. I’ve said to him I could just say that he wore a mask all the time, so I didn’t know who he was. I keep telling him: I don’t have to tell anybody about you. But he knows better.

  “I can’t take you home yet. I don’t want to go to jail,” he says. He is obsessed by prison and watches Lockup on MSNBC all the time. I know it scares him.

  “Look at us,” I say. “We’re in jail. We’ve been in jail for years.”

  He hates it when I say that.

  “This is not jail!” he snaps. “You are not in jail!”

  He lives in his own little fantasy world.

  • • •

  On Sunday he took Joce to the Westfield Mall for the first time, where she got to ride a little kiddie train, and he bought her these cute Skechers called Twinkle Toes that light up. He paid $40 for them! That was surprising.

  She wanted to get her ears pierced at the mall, but he said no. He would have to sign a permission form, and he didn’t want to put his name to anything. But he took her to a photo booth, and the pictures of them together are actually nice. So finally I can put a photo of her up on my wall now—the first one I have of her. I’ve been dying to get one, and it’s taken until she’s almost six years old.

  Joce is starting to feel these walls closing in. She feels stuck in here. She asks all the time to go out with him to the festival at St. Rocco’s Church, or shopping, or anywhere. She wants me to come, too. I always say I have to clean or just, “I can’t go right now.” He jumps in, too, and says, “Mommy has things to do here. She’ll come next time.”

  The other day Joce told me that she wants to move to a bigger house with more space for her to run around. She’s growing up, and that is complicating things for him.

  “We can’t keep living like this,” he says.

  “No, we can’t,” I agree. “You should take us home.”

  It’s only a matter of time until Joce tells somebody about how she and her mom and some other girls live in this house. She wants her friend Tiffany from the park to come over to play and doesn’t understand why we always say no.

  She’s been crying more lately when it’s time to go upstairs, and gets so bored in the bedroom that sometimes she just walks around in circles. She doesn’t want to play with her toys, because she’s sick of all of them. It’s often so hot in this room that he sawed a four-inch hole near the bottom of the door to let in more air from the hallway. So now Jocelyn will sit and look out the hole for hours, waiting for her daddy to come home. She knows that until he returns we have to be locked in, and it’s starting to upset her more.

  She asks all the time why we can’t go downstairs to wait for him, and I have to answer: “You know we can’t open the door, we have to wait for daddy to do that.”

  “I know,” she says sadly. She has never known anything else.

  She’s also learned my real name. One day she saw the gold necklace that I wear sometimes that has a charm with my name on it.

  She sounded it out: “A . . . man . . . da,” and asked, “Is that your name?”

  “Yes, but you can’t say anything to Daddy,” I told her. “That will be our secret, okay?”

  “Okay, Mommy,” she said, hugging me.

  • • •

  “I wonder what they’ll call me,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When this is over, I wonder what they’ll call me in the newspapers. Maybe the ‘Cleveland Kidnapper’? Or maybe ‘The Monster.’”

  One minute he’s saying what a happy little family we are, and the next he’s talking about what a huge crime he’s committed. I think he’s getting worn down by leading this double life. He has so carefully built and guarded his secret world inside this house, and he knows that Jocelyn, the person he loves most, is the one who could bring it all crashing down.

  He’s clearly trying to imagine how this will all end. It’s like a monster just up ahead in the fog. He can’t quite see it yet, but he knows it’s there waiting for him.

  Thanksgiving 2012: Perfect Little Family

  Amanda

  I’ve told him how much I want turkey for Thanksgiving, so he got up really early today and went to Save-A-Lot, since they’re open twenty-four hours, and bought a bunch of frozen turkey legs.

  We can’t cook a whole turkey because we don’t have an oven, so frying the legs will have to do. I don’t even like turkey that much, but Thanksgiving isn’t the same without it, and I want to make sure Jocelyn learns all these traditions—at least as much as possible in this place. It’s sweet of him to help me.

  Joce woke up before six to watch cartoons. She’s been excited because I’ve been building up Thanksgiving for weeks, and I’ve put turkey decorations all over the place. She’s becoming more aware of the significance of things, including being grateful on Thanksgiving for food and health.

  He put the TV in the kitchen so we could watch my favorite, the Macy’s Parade, while we cook. I love watching the big floats in New York. I’ve never been on a plane and hope I can see the parade in person someday.

  While Gina and I start picking the meat off the thawing turkey legs and putting it in the frying pan, he and Joce go out in the backyard to rake leaves. Since he got fired he wants to be with her all the time. “She’s everything to me now,” he keeps saying. “She’s the reason I keep going.”

  When they finish their raking, we all dance to music in the living room. I want to be with my family more than anything on Thanksgiving, but this is the best I can do today.

  He and Joce love rice and gandules, so we heat them up in the rice cooker, make some instant mashed potatoes and a box of stuffing, and warm up a can of corn in a pan.

  We all sit down to dinner in the kitchen and finish with a special treat: pumpkin pie with Cool Whip! I feel like a whale because I ate so much, just like I used to at home. God, I miss that feeling of being home on a lazy, happy holiday. Watching him sitting here with us, smiling and content, it’s suddenly so clear to me: he wants that feeling, too.

  He had a lousy family life growing up, and a terrible relationship with his ex. Maybe that’s partly what this has all been about, why he stole our lives, why he let me have a baby. He wants that perfect little family he never had. He’s created his own world and he doesn’t realize it’s fake.

  I feel sorry for him. I’m grateful that he went out of his way today to make us happy. I have never felt closer to him than I do at this moment.

  But I also know that if I had the chance to kill him right now to get free, I would do it without a second thought.

  January 2013: Pile of Chains

  Amanda

  It’s been three years and seven months since he stopped shackling me like a dog, but he won’t take the chains out of my room. I hide them from Jocelyn under some blankets and in the toy box, but this space is so small and they’re so big and bulky. The other day, when I took the blanket that was covering them off to wash it, Jocelyn noticed them and asked why they were in our room
.

  “They’re just there, that’s all,” I said. That was good enough for now, but how much longer can I keep saying things like that to her? I just want them out.

  “No,” he says. “Leave them right where they are.”

  “Can I at least put them under the dresser?”

  “I told you, leave them where they are.”

  I know what he’s doing. He wants them here as a reminder of my six years living in chains, a silent warning about how easily he could put me through that again.

  When he leaves the room, I slide them under a plastic bin. He didn’t say anything about not putting them under there.

  February 2013: Invisible

  Gina

  The headphones help. At night, I put them on and lie on my bed, listen to music, and try to forget where I am. I used to have to shut off the music so Jocelyn could go to sleep, but now, with these headphones he gave me, I can listen to music all night. Staying up late makes it easier to sleep away these horrible days.

  For years if he wanted sex he just woke me up. But something is happening to him. He doesn’t wake me up anymore. He hasn’t touched me in months.

  He still fights with Michelle. I’ve given up trying to explain to her that there are times to stay quiet, little things to do and not do, so you don’t rile the monster. I’ve run out of ways to help her.

  In the past I would say, “Please stop hitting her!” when he went after Michelle, and he would say, “Oh, we’re just playing,” and stop pushing her around. But now it’s like I’m not even here. He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t stop.

  I feel invisible.

  People are outside, walking and driving by. I wonder if my mom is at my aunt’s house just down the street? How can nobody know I’m here?

  I’m so worried that this is how the whole rest of my life will be.

  My friends have had their quinceañera and Sweet Sixteen parties, graduated, found jobs, and maybe even gotten married. It’s hard to think about the nine birthdays, the nine Christmases, and all the fun in between that I’ve missed with my family and friends. I was in seventh grade when I walked into this house. Now I’m twenty-three.

  The days are going by more slowly. It’s getting harder in this tiny, smelly room. I hate being locked up in this closet waiting for him to open the door and give me the privilege of using the toilet downstairs.

  Michelle says we are never leaving.

  I used to like to sing and dance with her to the music on our radio. When Rihanna or Adele came on, I knew all the words and got up and danced around the room. Even with the chain on my ankle, it felt good. Now I feel like a block of ice in a freezer. I used to daydream about loud, happy reunions with my family. Now all I can see in my head are images of being old and gray and still here.

  When I stand in front of the mirror, I look the same, just a lot thinner. My family and friends would know me in a second, but I’m a different person now. I was never sad before.

  • • •

  “Come on, Chelsea. Think positive!”

  Amanda is at my door, trying to get me out of bed. She says I’m spending too much time lying down and I have to move around, and that I have to think of something, anything, that will make me smile.

  “Come over here with Jocelyn and me,” she says. “Look at all the things I’m going to buy when I get out of here.”

  On her bed are pictures of shiny white kitchen appliances and pretty dresses that she’s cutting out of newspaper ads. She says there are tons of pictures here, and I should pick what I’m going to buy someday, cut it out, and keep it as a reminder of good things ahead.

  “Look at these shoes! Look at all this nice food!”

  I miss my mom’s cooking and all my relatives sitting around our table. I miss being able to get up and go to the refrigerator when I’m hungry. I see Amanda’s picture of a big ham sandwich. I sure would like one of those, and the roast beef sandwich, and all the fruits.

  Amanda spends hours every week copying down recipes from Martha Stewart and other cooking shows. I asked her why she spends so much time pausing and rewinding the same show over and over just to get the exact amount of flour and cinnamon or whatever. And she says someday she is going to walk into a grocery store and buy whatever she wants and make all these recipes.

  Plus, she says, she needs to occupy herself, or she’ll get depressed. She keeps telling me I need to keep busy and in motion. I know she’s right, because misery is taking over my mind. It’s gotten harder and harder to get out of bed in the evening when he wants me to jog around the house. I don’t want to get up, and I sure don’t want to be near him.

  “Please get up, Chelsea. Will you color with me?”

  Jocelyn wants to play, but even that is hard.

  I used to make her laugh. Now she is trying to do the same for me.

  When I ask him when I can go home, he always says, “One day.” But that day never comes. I am so tired of his lies. I used to like to go downstairs to do the laundry or the dishes just to get out of this room. Now when he makes me go down to clean, I only want to go back to bed. I don’t want to be around people. When he sends me back upstairs and locks me inside this closet, I feel relieved.

  Finally, I think, I can lie down.

  Castro’s Story: A New Sister?

  On April 10, 2013, Ariel Castro and his eldest daughter, Angie, sat in the McDonald’s at Westown Square, within sight of the Burger King where Amanda once worked and the corner from where Gina disappeared.

  They had been drinking coffee and chatting for a long time, and Angie thought something seemed strange. Her father would stop talking and hold her gaze, start to speak, then stop and look away. It seemed as if he wanted to tell her something, but couldn’t quite get it out.

  Then, finally, he pulled out his cell phone and showed her a photo of a little girl, about five or six years old.

  “She’s cute—who is that?” Angie said, curious and suspicious, because the girl looked almost exactly like her sister Emily at that age.

  “It’s my girlfriend’s daughter,” he said.

  Angie knew her father had dated women now and then since her mother had left him seventeen years earlier, but she didn’t recall hearing about anyone recently. She wondered if her father was struggling to tell her that she had a new sister.

  “Is that your kid?” she finally asked. “She looks a lot like Emily.”

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “She’s my girlfriend’s kid, but I’m not the father.”

  “Are you sure?” Angie asked him.

  “It’s not my kid,” he said, clearly trying to end the conversation.

  Angie knew her father met a lot of women at the clubs where he played, and she felt uncomfortable asking questions about who he might be sleeping with. But she was anxious to know more about this little girl.

  “You can’t just have a kid out there and not be sure if you’re the father,” she told him. “You need to get a DNA test.”

  “I told you,” he said, annoyed now. “It’s not my kid.”

  Angie took a long look at her father. For her entire life he had been very good to her. When she was a kid, he bought her what she needed, talked sense into her, made her laugh. After she got married, he was always there when she needed help with her kids or projects around her house. She suspected that he’d never really gotten over her mother, despite their tortured relationship, and she had come to regard him as a quirky, older bachelor set in his ways. He often canceled family plans at the last minute, claiming his allergies were flaring up. He didn’t want her or her husband to go upstairs in his house, because he said he had too much stuff up there. She knew he was a hoarder, constantly buying unnecessary junk at yard sales, bargaining old shirts down from a quarter to a dime. But she sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her about this child.

  “If there’s
another one of us out there,” she told him, “I need to know about it.”

  He put his phone away and changed the subject.

  April 12, 2013: Recurring Dream

  Nancy and Felix stood courtside at an NBA game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the New York Knicks, looking up at Gina’s picture on the big screens hanging above the 20,000 fans gathered at the Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland. At a special half-time presentation the announcer asked the crowd to look at the photos of several missing Ohio children, including Amanda and Gina, to see if any of them looked familiar.

  Nancy knew her neighbors and friends thought she was delusional to keep believing that Gina was alive after so long. She could see that they didn’t believe her, even pitied her, when she insisted that one day her daughter would walk through her front door. Though Nancy had never lost faith, the pain of the past nine years had taken its toll. She had lost nearly ninety pounds and Felix had suffered a heart attack. Doctors told them stress was making them sick, but they stayed in the public eye every chance they had.

  When people came up after the Cavaliers game to offer condolences, Nancy told them there was no need because her daughter was not dead. She had been having a recurring dream that she was sure was a sign that she was right. In the dream, Nancy would walk by Gina’s school and see her daughter eating lunch, sitting on the grass and leaning against the building, smiling and waving at her.

  It woke Nancy up night after night, frightened, but more convinced than ever that Gina was still alive.

  April 12, 2013: Demons and Facebook

  Amanda

  “This is going to be over soon,” he says.

  For so many years I clung to that lie, long after I actually believed it. I’ve always tried to wire my mind that way in here: focus on the hopeful thoughts, push out the negative ones.

  But today I answer: “I don’t believe you.”

  I’m finished with telling him what he wants to hear, tiptoeing around and trying to keep him from getting mad.