Heart Scars

by Jeanette Lukowski

  The letter began:

  I am writing to inform you that the [. . .] Office is in receipt of a gift package containing boxes of cookies and a letter addressed to [Officer Richards]. I want to inform you that it is against [. . .] Policy and Procedures for any member to accept a gift for services rendered as a member of the [force]. As a [police] Office we are very proud of the work that [Officer Richards] performed in seeing to it that your daughter was safely returned to your home. However, at this time we would ask that you would cease sending him gifts or writing him letters of a personal nature.

  Thank you. If you have any questions feel free to call me at [. . .].”

  I was absolutely mortified. The chief of police sent me a cease-and-desist letter for two boxes of Girl Scout cookies and a stupid note inviting a man out on a date. What an asshole.

  And what an asshole I must now appear to be to them. I pictured myself as being the laughingstock of the whole town. I wasn’t following Officer Richards around town. I wasn’t calling him at work, or harassing him at home. I wasn’t a stalker—just a lonely, single, middle-aged woman who would rather meet a man in her everyday life than in a bar or through the Internet.

  What made me even madder, though, was not knowing whose idea the letter was. Had Officer Richards asked the chief of police to send me the letter? Or had the chief sent it and thrown away my note to Officer Richards? What happened to the cookies I sent? I had envisioned the entire office sharing the cookies, not getting a cease-and-desist letter in the mail.

  * * *

  At the time of this writing, it has been more than a year, and Officer Richards is still on my mind. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since that Wednesday in April of 2009, but I ran across a rather grainy black-and-white photograph of him in the Sunday paper one afternoon late in February. The caption underneath the picture read, “. . . Vic Richards was awarded the Award of Merit for his investigation into the case of a fifteen-year-old female runaway who was believed to be on a bus en route to Chicago. Chicago police found the girl and Richards arranged for her and her mother to be reunited . . .” Part of me wanted to call up the newspaper and tell them their information was wrong—my sister and I tracked her down to Chicago, my sister got the Chicago police involved, and I had my travel plans made before Officer Richards ever set foot in my house. Another part of me was glad he received recognition, because he really did seem to go a step above and beyond, which is what I had wanted to acknowledge when I sent the Girl Scout cookies.

  When my daughter and I were subpoenaed to testify in the last court case stemming from her running away, I thought I would finally get my chance to see Officer Richards in person. I feared how I was going to handle it, as I seemed to blush every time I simply said his name out loud. In fact, when the district attorney mentioned Officer Richards was also going to be testifying, during a pre-trial conference with Allison and me, I was relieved to discover the attorney looking down to read something in the file long enough for the blush to recede from my face. As it turned out, I had to leave the courthouse after I testified so that I could pick up my son after school. By the time I returned to the courtroom, having transported my son to his next activity, Officer Richards had been there and gone, and the next witness was in the middle of providing his testimony.

  The days and weeks after the final court case was settled with an acquittal, I hoped for a phone call or note from Officer Richards himself. None came. Then, exactly one year later to the day I first met him, I succumbed to one more bold and rash move: I sent a text message to the telephone number on the card that Officer Richards had given me that Saturday morning in 2009. The message read, “One year ago today, Officer Vic Richards came into my house; he has yet to leave my head . . . When I wrote him a note of thanks, I received a letter to cease-and-desist . . . I saw that they awarded him a plaque though . . .”

  * * *

  Whenever I felt really down and alone, I made a simple request to God: please send me the man who is right for my family.

  The year after Allison ran away, I added another simple request, but never on the same day, or in the same prayer: please let Officer Richards think about me as much as I think about him.

  The days that my son, my daughter, and I have thought about the one year anniversary of that weekend that changed our lives forever, I said something to my son about how “God sent an officer to our door, who helped us get another chance . . .” While my lips kept moving, finishing the sentence, that other part of my brain had already frozen in its tracks: God sent Officer Richards to my door on Saturday, April 25, 2009.

  Some might suggest that I remain focused on Officer Richards simply because I have a “savior complex.” He was the authority figure involved in helping me get my daughter safely home, so I “fell in love” with him for what he did. I don’t know that it fully applies in our case. My sister and I got my daughter back. I initiated the hunt for my daughter, and then for her absent father. I’m the one who has been helping Allison through all the public persecution since April 24, 2009. Officer Richards was just the man on duty when my daughter was “found” by my sister.

  My fear is that it’s always going to be easier to hang onto a dream than it is to face the drama, pressure, and eventual disappointments of an actual relationship with a man. When we found out Frank had remarried, my mom said, “You know, you’ve managed to move on with every other aspect of your life except this one.” It’s true. But when I look at my track-record with men . . .

  My heart wants Officer Richards, my head retains the memories of all of the men who have hurt me in the past, and my body bears the scars.

  I cling to my faith, which encourages me to look to God for help and guidance.

  10. Contented Disciple

  I am happy to be firmly grounded in my faith. It’s a quiet, almost private kind of faith. I don’t talk about my religion much, outside of the conversations I have with my children explaining why this or that happened as part of a bigger plan. I don’t want to push my faith on others. I’m just one of those reserved Christians contentedly labeled as Lutheran.

  My mother was raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition, so none of my grandmother’s four children have middle names. My mother chose to continue that tradition in naming, even though she was confirmed in a Lutheran church and chose to have my sister and me each baptized as Lutherans. As far as I know, there is no significance to our names, although I remember my dad once saying that he liked the 1930s singing duo of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. Although my father seemed to object to most everything my mother did, from the way she cleaned the house to the way she dressed for work, he apparently never fought her on the topic of raising his two daughters in the Lutheran faith. Just as long as she didn’t force him to join us for church on Sunday mornings, he didn’t care. As a cynical adult child, I couldn’t help wondering, after he died, if he thought that letting our mother raise us that way presented him with the golden ticket into heaven. Part of me thinks that he probably didn’t care one way or the other about heaven or hell. Part of me thinks it’s unfair if his death bed confessional with our pastor got him into heaven after all. Part of me chastises myself for even thinking that God would let my dad get away with one more scam, talking his way into heaven.

  When it was time to send us to school, my mom began scouting out parochial schools. Being dissatisfied with the math class she observed in a Catholic school (“if you have three Hail Marys, and add two more, how many Hail Marys do you have in all?”), her search led her to a Lutheran school in Chicago, where she stayed for the next thirty-five years, first as supportive mother and devout congregation member, then as mother of two alums and a devout member, and finally as faculty member and devout disciple.

  Being raised in the Lutheran tradition didn’t mean much to me in the early years, but as I got older it translated into the reality of a long commute to and from school each da
y, ugly school uniforms, and church two times a week. Sunday morning attendance with your family was “strongly encouraged,” and every Wednesday morning began with a short church service for the students, faculty, staff, and whatever community members were available at 9:00 a.m.—translation, really old people. As this was a kindergarten through eighth grade school, we had first communion training in fifth grade, confirmation in eighth grade, and curricula throughout the years that was closely tied into religious topics, like spelling tests for English courses using the books of the bible.

  Perhaps because I didn’t know any differently, I didn’t mind the curricula. It was rigid, but it was also thorough in my preparation for a college-preparatory high school, and I came to appreciate the geographic distance from my home more and more as the years passed. For instance, when my sister and I were left to travel alone (when she was in eighth grade and I was in fourth), she made the decision to walk a little farther so we could take the “L” train to and from school as opposed to taking two buses. That would allow us to pocket the extra ten cents. Our new fortune bought a lot of candy at the penny candy store we would then be walking past as we neared the school! Of course, we had to be careful when making that decision. If we spent all of our money in the morning, we were ultimately committing ourselves to the longer walk in the afternoon, rain or shine. Years later, when I was traveling that distance by myself, the “L” train platform became a private place to experiment with smoking the cigarettes I had sneaked out of my father’s pack, as well as an opportunity to flirt with the various “L” train employees.

  * * *

  As an adult, I tried to maintain the diligent church attendance that my mother had raised me to have, but it became more and more difficult to crawl out of a nice warm bed on Sunday mornings and travel to church alone on a cold Midwest winter. If my pleading with Frank to join me got to be too much to bear (he used the excuse that he was Catholic), he would turn off the alarm clock without my knowledge. Eventually, it became too depressing for me to even think about going to church alone, so I succumbed to the life of a sleep-in-on-Sunday sinner.

  That changed when Allison was born. My religious upbringing resurfaced in time to get her baptized at my home church when the roads were safe enough to drive from Minneapolis to Chicago. She was baptized when she was two months old. Frank went to church with me that day, as did his devoutly Catholic father, my mother, and some of our extended family.

  Two years later, we were back in the church in Chicago, this time for Tommy’s baptism.

  Knowing I was now responsible for the religious upbringing of my own children, I tried to get our family to church on a more regular basis. I even asked the pastor of the church in our new hometown to visit us at home, so that we could find out about becoming members of the congregation. Frank sat through part of that home visit with me, in our dining room, but refused to join the church, based on his belief that it meant he was turning his back on his Catholicism, and he would never do that to his dad. While I wanted to counter that argument with the fact that he hadn’t attended a Catholic church or gone to confession during the entire ten years of our marriage, I knew it was better to keep my mouth shut. The visiting pastor left the house that night with the hope that we would join soon, but it would be almost two years before the children and I became members.

  Ironically, it was that church, and that pastor’s visit, that reconnected me to my faith. Every Sunday after that home visit, I got out of bed as early as I got up for work on weekdays, I got the children up and dressed, and the three of us went to church just as my mother, my sister, and I had done all the years I was growing up. Frank seemed to think I was merely putting on a show for him those first few Sundays, and that I would eventually give up. Then, in the winter of 1997-1998, the pastor gave a sermon containing a message that changed my life forever. Frank moved out of the house in October 1997, when the kids were two and three years old. Within the month, I became an official member of the church and continued taking the kids to church every Sunday. I don’t personally believe in divorce, instead opting for a “you made your bed, now you must lie in it” approach to such huge commitments, but the sermon that particular morning dealt with a bible verse discussing the institution of marriage. I’ve since lost the piece of paper I wrote the bible passage on, but it said something to the effect that “a woman can divorce her husband if she has lost favor in his eyes.”

  I couldn’t help but think that God had spoken directly to me at that moment. My brain already knew I needed to divorce Frank. Although I had known about his use of cocaine and marijuana before we were married, I had fooled myself into believing my love would fill the void in his life. I lived in denial for twelve years of marriage, ignoring Frank’s poor job history and the steady disappearance of our money, because I had promised “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer.” What I hadn’t promised was to be the punching bag to his verbal attacks, or the victim to his escalating violent rages. For instance, the night he punched a hole in the kitchen wall just inches from my head because Allison had come home from the daycare lady’s house with a raw, bloody nose, I had flashbacks to my childhood home. I already knew what life would be like for Allison and Tommy, and wanted better for them. Frank refused to go to counseling, though. “They always say the same thing: stop doing drugs. Like that’s got anything to do with this!” he scoffed.

  Seeing the cycle of abuse beginning to repeat itself within the children broke my heart most of all. Every time I saw three-year-old Allison reduced to tears because of the mean things her father was saying to her, or saw two-year-old Tommy kicking the furniture when he was mad, I felt another cut to my heart. I knew they deserved a better life, even if I didn’t. Although I had been taught that getting a divorce was a sin, that Sunday morning I heard another message: I heard a message of hope and forgiveness.

  * * *

  My faith and my obligation to the children have gotten me through a lot of tight spots over the years. My faith helps me to forgive, although I can never forget, and it gives me strength to keep getting up after life knocks me down. My faith has helped me get through the minutes and hours since April 24, 2009. Although I don’t understand why it had to happen, I believe that everything happens for a reason—and for a greater good. I’m just not always comfortable sharing that perspective with others.

  On April 25, 2009, Officer Richards sat at my dining room table, and asked me a very difficult, direct question. “Okay, ma’am, but how did you know that she would be on that bus?”

  Before I could begin answering that question, I darted my eyes up to the room’s ceiling. Anyone would begin hunting for a runaway child on public transportation and look for the closest metro hub for each type of transit system. In our case, Minneapolis would be the first large city, and Chicago the second. When I talked with the officer on Friday night, however, he sounded like he was dismissing Allison as just another kid who was rebelling against her mom’s rules. “Yes, ma’am,” he said when I called him at ten that night, telling him about the phone conversation I had been having with Allison since 9:15 p.m. “But I stopped by the bus station here in town, and they said that they hadn’t seen your daughter.”

  Thankfully, my sister and I continued with our search efforts. Whether we were led by faith or by intellect, my heart accepted the belief that it was only by the grace of God that we found my daughter in time to save her from herself. That’s why my eyes flicked up to the ceiling before answering Officer Richards’s question; I needed to send the credit where I believed it was due, and offered a silent and quick message of thanks before speaking aloud.

  I don’t remember what I said that morning of April 25, but I know what I have felt every minute since receiving and reading the text my sister sent me at 5:43 a.m. that same morning: we found Allison through divine intervention. My mother raised two very strong, smart, and spiritual women—and we used every fiber of that religiou
s wiring that weekend. How did I know that Allison was on that bus, Officer Richards asked. I didn’t. How did my sister know to take a drive to the downtown Chicago bus station in the wee hours of the morning? She didn’t. My sister and I just followed our instincts and our faith.

  * * *

  After Allison was safely home again, had provided her hours’ worth of testimony to Officer Richards, and we had been informed of the capture of Nicholas, the man who had sent her the bus tickets, I was horrified and sickened to discover a little bit more about him. According to Frank, a newspaper covering the arraignment hearing in Massachusetts reported that Nicholas had been charged in another crime involving a minor before skipping out on bail. Although I will probably be carrying the emotional scars from that April weekend for the rest of my life, Allison turned out to be a lot luckier than the five-year-old Nicholas allegedly sexually assaulted before fleeing his home state and seducing my fifteen-year-old daughter over the phone.

  My brain suggests that Nicholas would have been caught and held accountable for his actions to that five-year-old, eventually, with or without our intervention. Television shows like Law & Order suggest that many criminals are caught, but how many other children might Nicholas have hurt in the interim? My brain tells me that no parent will ever be immune to suffering, because children test boundaries relentlessly. Will Allison now become a better parent because of that weekend, just as I became a better parent than my dad, who chose to punish people for what they did rather than love them for who they were? My faith tells me that God worked through Allison and me that April weekend, to help bring justice to an innocent five-year-old victim and his family.