Preacher Paul was sitting in front of the television when Charles walked in. “Look at what some crazy guy did to a poor young girl,” the Reverend said. “Thank God she’s alive.” Hearing his dad talk about him in the third person like that—it freaked him out.
In Which Reality Hits
Omaha, 1978—My eyes opened. It was four A.M. My heart was racing. I was short of breath. I couldn’t shake the feeling of there being a thin layer between my mind and the room. I blinked, hard. It didn’t help. I couldn’t feel my body. Time was out of sync. I realized I was in Genie’s bedroom, in her bed, and she was trying to comfort me.
I don’t remember speaking as much as I remember being horrified at the nightmare I was recounting and the dawning realization it was all real. I’m not sure how or when, or after what passage of time, but eventually we fell asleep.
Later that morning, the six of us got into the station wagon to drive to my grandparents in Des Moines for Thanksgiving, as was the plan. We sat in silence the full three hours. The sense of family cohesiveness we had on our road trip to Florida disappeared long ago, and it wasn’t going to magically resurrect itself now. The roads were covered with melting slush. My grandmother greeted me at the door with a long hug, which said all the words we’d never exchange. I had a tear on my face when Arlo said grace at the Thanksgiving meal. I could only stare at the pearl onions in cream sauce. I looked at the purple bruised marks on my wrists and wondered how long it would take for them to go away.
Later that evening, Arlo moved the mattresses from the basement into the living room so my sisters and I could sleep upstairs. The house went dark. Quiet. I lay wide awake, listening as the clock in the living room struck each quarter of an hour. At one point Gayle whispered, “Are you okay?” and I replied, “Ahum.” She asked if I could tell her what had happened. Feeling protective after sensing I had traumatized Genie the night before, I told her she didn’t ever want to know.
The day after Thanksgiving, Mom asked if I wanted to go shopping at the Merle Hay Mall to buy a new coat. It was Black Friday sales day. And then I remembered, of course! I needed a new coat. My old one with the broken zipper had been kept as evidence. Mom steered me to the outdoor section, pulled out a feather-down jacket, and suggested I deserved a white one. I couldn’t equate losing my virginity with the pain that night—I was blindfolded and had had no experience to give me even an idea of what had happened to my body. But Mom smiled. I looked at the white puffy coat. Why not make her feel good? And then she held up a cute teddy bear. I’d never been into stuffed animals—I’d always preferred my comfort objects in abstract form—Jesus, Mr. Octopus. And then I remembered they had both been rendered meaningless by Mr. K. I took the bear.
Arlo had purchased tickets for me and my sisters to attend the Ice Follies. I knew seats were expensive and hard to get, so when I was asked if I still wanted to go, I said sure.
We were dropped off, the four of us—Genie, age sixteen, Gayle, twelve, Jenifer, eight, and me in my new astro-psychic form—at the front entry to the sixteen-thousand-seat venue and off we went, circumambulating the arena’s concrete halls until we found the tunnel leading us to our seats. I felt trapped between two surreal worlds, a state that became so much a part of me that within a week I no longer responded to the fear or anxiety it triggered. But on that day, less than forty-eight hours after being left alongside that railcar where I chose life over death, I was stuck in that dark auditorium, laser lights sweeping and swishing across thousands of faces in rows, paralyzed in the chokehold of terror. As dancers skated in with their sequined costumes, I responded to the pageantry of lights—the ones that flooded me with helplessness as I stood in the phone booth with Mr. K: the red, yellow, and green of changing traffic lights, the headlight beams, the luminous faces of drivers aglow from dashboard lights, the customers in the blaze of lights at McDonald’s. Other than my face being damp with tears, I had no idea what I was feeling—but I do remember what I was thinking. I was thinking I didn’t understand a goddamned thing about humans, and desperately wished Arlo had purchased tickets to the circus instead. Watching trained animals would have been more comforting.
In Which Charles Smells Turkey
Omaha, 1978—Charles slept the death of angels that night. The next morning he woke up to the smell of roast turkey. He rolled over and checked the time. It was ten A.M. And then he remembered the events from the day before.
He got up and wandered out to the kitchen, but after finding no one in the house sat on the couch and flipped on the television. He was looking forward to the Macy’s parade. He liked watching those Rockettes. And then he saw the newspaper lying on the coffee table in front of him, began immediately leafing through the pages. There was a story on page 5, he could have easily missed it: POLICE SEEK RAPE SUSPECT. Wow. So the girl was alive. That was lucky. He hoped. He read the police were conducting an extensive search. He wondered what an extensive search entailed. The article said a security guard had spotted “a suspicious looking man” on the second level of the Center Shopping Center parking garage at six P.M. They had him as twenty years old—that was good. It meant no one would be checking juvenile records, and they wouldn’t check for a high school student. At least she never saw his face. Now he had to hope she didn’t remember his name—what the hell had he been thinking by telling her his name.
They had the amount of money wrong, too. They said it was a couple of thousand dollars. Why the hell would he go through all that trouble for a couple of thousand dollars? And they also made it sound like their little session happened somewhere near the shopping center. That was weird. These journalists should get their facts right.
In Which I Learn God Is Dead
Omaha, 1978—On Saturday we left my grandparents’ home in Des Moines to return home. The senior minister from the First United Methodist Church, Dr. Holston, called that afternoon to ask if I would like to meet after church. I had attended services for almost three years but never had reason to talk to him personally; my direct relationship was with our junior minister, Rebecca. The request felt appropriate, though, like the announcement of a funeral.
Mom said she couldn’t handle the social demands of a public appearance, and Dad wouldn’t be able to make it. I told her I understood and offered to call Floyd and Bonnie Morehead, volunteers who helped coordinate group logistics for our youth choir. I had grown close to them on the summer tour our youth choir took out west and knew they’d come pick me up. I completely forgot it was Thanksgiving Sunday and had no emotion when I thought back to the effort I’d made to get to Wednesday’s practice. I told Mom I’d be back by one P.M., and walked out the door as if all were normal.
Floyd and Bonnie picked me up. I felt so relieved to be with them. They told me they were honored that I had chosen to go to church with them and that I was the bravest kid they had ever met. It felt like we were celebrating that I was alive. When we arrived at the choir chapel, I saw the tear-strewn faces of my closest friends as they hugged me. Twenty minutes later, as our youth choir filed into the main chapel from the side door, I remember thinking as I looked out at the church congregation that Thanksgiving Sunday was as packed as I thought it would be. Subsumed by shock, I got through the service without a further thought.
After the service, Floyd and Bonnie accompanied me to the Reverend’s office, still as delightful in their warmhearted cheer as they had been when they picked me up. They weren’t afraid of my need to lighten the mood with a laugh, walked the balance of care and compassion perfectly. Once the Reverend arrived and we all exchanged greetings, it was clear that I was comfortable, so Bonnie discreetly pointed to the chairs outside his office where they would wait.
Dr. Holston, a former college football player who stood about six feet tall, carried his potentially imposing presence quietly. His style at the pulpit wasn’t overtly emotional—he was more the philosopher type, so I was hoping for a bookish conversation. He offered me a chair in front of his huge dark-oak desk while h
e hung his white robe on the hanger on the back of the office door. I kept myself busy by looking around the room at his bookshelves, the pictures of his family, his wife, two sons. I reached up to fiddle with my cross and felt a pang. It was no longer around my neck. I didn’t know when I had lost it. He seemed to be delaying. I sensed he had none of the confidence I usually felt in his presence. He sat down, paused.
If I had gone first, I would have told him that my heart was broken. That I was grieving the loss of both God and Jesus as if they were human. But he saved me when he took the lead. He reminded me of the story of Job. I listened as he assured me what had happened was not my fault—that sometimes people can feel, after bad things happen, that they must have done something to deserve it. But this was no test from God. This was a horrifying thing to happen. And God would help me through this difficult time. I nodded. He offered me a book. I looked at the cover—When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I thanked him. Coming from a man of his position, it felt meaningful. We shook hands.
Sadly, I walked out knowing that no matter how well intentioned the meeting had been, I would never go to church again. I couldn’t go on pretending. I was done with God.
I was fifteen minutes late arriving home. Mom was standing at the door, furious. It would seem I had been grossly insensitive by worrying her. Her volume was unsettling, too much for my senses. I went straight up the stairs to put distance between us. A moment later, she was at my bedroom door.
“You aren’t the only one who has gone through a horrendous experience,” she yelled. “The rest of this family went through something, too.” She insisted that I look at her. “You can choose to hole yourself up in this bedroom and cut yourself off from the world, or you can stop feeling sorry for yourself and start living.”
I went to school the next day. Monday. Day 5.
In Which I Wonder Where Dad Is
Omaha, 1978—Other than seeing the shadow of his image, I have few memories of my father from over the next month. He was there, but more not there, a hint of Dad.
I never got to say that I was alive because of him. The opportunity just never seemed to surface.
Nor did we talk about my experience near the stockyards, or my narrowly escaped murder.
Maybe he didn’t ask because he was afraid I would break.
Or that he would.
In Which Charles Reviews the News Headlines
Omaha, 1978—Two days had passed. Charles checked in with his probation officer. Yep. All good. No problems. Then he worked his shift at Godfather’s Pizza.
When he got home, he read the Omaha World Herald on the kitchen table. His mother was impressed with his sudden interest in current affairs. Red China’s power struggle after Mao Tse-tung’s death and Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre were top-fold stories. He flipped the paper up to open to the inside pages, and that’s when he saw it. On the bottom fold.
AGONY OF RAPE VICTIM’S FATHER: NO ONE HELPED
The layout of the article was slightly different from the others—it had all these subtitles. It took up almost a quarter of the page. “Put yourself in the shoes of the father whose 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped and raped.” Apparently, the parents were “shocked, horrified and hurt, but not embittered.”
It then went on to roll through his crime and list all the places that people might have intervened. Turned out there was a woman watching them when they’d been in the phone booth outside McDonald’s. She said she wasn’t sure what was happening so she didn’t get involved. He wondered where the hell she had been standing. And then there was the guy at the service station. He told the police that he thought the van driver was going to rob him and was just relieved when the van left. And then the police spokesman told the reporter they wondered why no one who was driving by the phone booth did anything. It would have been an odd picture—a man in a ski mask with his arm wrapped around the neck of a young girl, even if they hadn’t seen the knife. Well, honestly, Charles was stumped, surprised even, when he thought back on it.
They now were reporting him at five foot eleven, two inches away from his five foot nine, and they mentioned his sideburns. And the school PTA announced they’d raised one thousand dollars toward a reward fund. The paper described the girl as “popular, good looking and active at her church and junior high.” Well, it didn’t surprise him she was popular.
He went back to the article. The reporter said that the reason the girl didn’t struggle to escape at the gas station was due to “a mixture of fear and belief that her best chance for safety was to cooperate.” Well, she was some good fake because he never noticed her being scared of him. Until the phone call to her dad; he showed both of them who was in charge then!
The father was quoted as saying she’s “fighting this thing.” Apparently, the girl was now back at school and went to church on Sunday, then sledding with school friends. Good for her.
But it was on the front page—wow.
In Which I Carry On
Omaha, 1978—If home was my hell, then school was my respite. Learning how to walk to the school bus again was my first conscious step in risk-taking. Once I was at school, my favorite science teacher, Kent Friesen, took me aside and gave me the championship coaching speech of my life. He told me I was the bravest kid he had ever met and I was his hero. He also said he never felt so bad about missing someone—referring to Wednesday when he was called away to coach for the wrestling tournament and left me that note on his desk. Said when he found the empty bag of popcorn on Monday, he felt sick, he was so sad.
It hadn’t take long for friends at school to put the pieces together. After my abduction was broadcast on the news, classmates began calling each other to see who was missing, and a couple of them had called my house. I couldn’t help but notice my presence had the power to induce a level of emotion in others I was unaccustomed to experiencing.
Someone’s mother organized a lunch for some of my schoolmates over the weekend. A high school teacher who had been raped by a student came in to discuss the experience and its long-term effects on her. And because Mr. K was still out there, they gave students mace spray for protection. It quickly became clear that I had an extended support team.
Further support came from unexpected corners. Bessie, my old sparring partner, walked up to me in our girls’ gym class and asked loudly if I was the girl who had been raped. The gym went silent. “Yeah,” I told her, though I might have described the experience differently. But as I knew everyone was thinking about it, it was nice to have it out there in the open. The room suddenly filled with looks of empathy, including something resembling emotion from Bessie. “Oh.” She shrugged. And we all went back to bouncing our basketballs.
Six days after the abduction, I was in the kitchen eating breakfast when I saw the newspaper on the counter with the headline REWARD $3000 FOR RAPE INFORMATION. In addition to the PTA’s money, there was $1,500 from the Independent Insurance Agents of Omaha, $300 from the Omaha Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, and more from the Lewis and Clark Parent Teacher Association.
Later when I asked my mother about it, she said not to worry about it, and then told me she and Dad had agreed on a closing date with the buyers for our house. We would be leaving Omaha in four weeks. The plans to move to Iowa had been made that summer, and my parents saw the “incident” as motivation to hold course.
Feeling desperate and overwhelmed at the thought of losing all the friends and adults who were holding me together, I remembered the conversation with the nurse at the hospital who encouraged me to call the Rape Crisis Hotline. I hated the idea of talking to a stranger over the phone, but overcame my reluctance. Within minutes of talking to the volunteer, I felt some stress lift. She affirmed the courageous step I had taken in calling and, after we chatted for fifteen minutes, she encouraged me to ask Mom for help finding a counselor.
Mom was happy to support me in this endeavor, but she was surprised when, finally, I chose a male pastoral counselor named Robin. Our s
econd meeting was a family session at our house, though it quickly devolved into a showdown between Mom and Genie. Since the night of my abduction, Genie had retreated further into her own world. When Mom insisted that Genie join us in the living room, and then continued to push her to share her feelings, Genie exploded and let Robin know that he had no idea what happened that night, suggesting there was a side to the story he hadn’t heard. I copped Dad’s numb position on that one, couldn’t bear the idea of asking her what this awful truth was. And that was the last family session.
I attended three more sessions with Robin before we left Omaha. He made a heroic effort to try to salvage my faith, even encouraged me to take a more intellectual approach by asking if I’d like to coauthor an article with him. If I didn’t mind, he’d be happy to do a first draft. We agreed on the major points.
One of the most difficult issues I faced was waking up to my religious naivete. Having spent years enjoying the comfort of a personal relationship with God, I was hugely disappointed to discover the persona I had created had all been in my imagination. Those moments I spent hoping to be miraculously saved nearly cost me my life.
Dancing with the Octopus Page 15
