road. On most days he leaves at seven or eight in the morning and doesn’t come home until dinnertime around five or six at night. To contact him on the road, he has taught us to say, “Breaker, Breaker, Sky Walker, do you copy?” Sky Walker is his handle. He says we can pick a handle to be called, too, so when he calls we will know it is him and not a stranger on the same frequency. Nancy’s handle is Baby Blue. She says Phillip calls her that and when they used to go up to the mountain to get high they would take a CB radio with them and talk to all the truckers. I pick the name Data, which is my favorite character on
I can’t wait until Nancy can stay home with us all day. I really need some help with them. Phillip is gone most of the day and doesn’t help with them when he is home. Yes, I have all I need physically for them, but I wish he would spend some more time at home. I am getting overwhelmed.
A is reminding me more and more of my mom. Sometimes when I look at her all I see is my mom. I must put those thoughts behind me; it just makes me sad to look at her and I don’t want to feel that way. I need to change these feelings into something positive instead of negative. Phillip has been teaching me how to use affirmations to change my thinking process. I know in time it will get easier and I won’t feel like this every day.
This seems like a good place to give a little update on how my girls are faring now. It is the first day of real school for them. Wow, I can’t believe I am writing those words. This is something I have dreamed about for them for so long. I have done my best to educate them in the backyard, but I could only go so far. My education level only went to the fifth grade.
Phillip always believed school was a terrible environment. He thought it was so much better to homeschool the kids than for them to be in public school. He used to say he had created the perfect environment for raising children. We never had a choice in the matter. Phillip believed public school would expose the girls to bad influences, like bad language, drugs, bullies, and all the things he believed the kids should be sheltered from. While I agree with him that some schools are not the best environment for growing children, I do believe in education. I loved school. I didn’t always love the kids that I went to school with—at times they were mean or I was just too shy to stick up for myself—but overall my experience in school was positive. I don’t think Phillip enjoyed his school years and that, combined with drug use in high school, gave him a warped sense of what life is like. I believe that in many ways he wanted to create his own little world and for a while he succeeded at the expense of others. I was just a character in his world, a world he created for his own benefit.
My own education stopped at the fifth-grade level and although I have kept myself reading and learning all these years, I still am not a teacher. Thank goodness for the internet! (I know what people are thinking, and the answer is yes—yes, I did think about using the internet to find my mom, but Phillip told me and convinced me that he was monitoring everything I did on the internet and he would find out each and every thing I did on it. He said the computer kept a record of everything and he could see it anytime he wanted.) If not for the internet, I don’t think I would have been able to educate the girls at the level I did. When I proposed the idea of enacting an actual school schedule for them, it was at first met with some hesitation. Phillip believed that within a few more years he would be able to hire someone to educate them. The girls also had their own issues with doing school every day; these are very strong-willed girls. Nothing like their mom, or their “sister,” as I was known at the time. They didn’t understand why all of a sudden they had to keep a schedule. They were used to doing pretty much anything they wanted during the day, as long as it was in the backyard. No playmates for them. No sleepovers. No playdates at the skating rink. Their day was pretty much just video games and certain TV channels and programs approved by Phillip. Anyway, I ended up winning the school battle and before they knew it, I had them going to school from ten a.m. to two p.m. I would print out their worksheets the night before and put them in special folders I made for each of them. They had four subjects—math, spelling/reading, social studies, and science. I loved websites like enchantedlearning.com and www.superteacherworksheets.com, which are great for all subjects. We had a lot of printers. Phillip loved Canon printers and the separate ink cartridges the brand made. It made the printing business a lot cheaper to run because he filled his own cartridges and bought the ink in bulk. So I had everything I needed to print the worksheets for the girls. We always had leftover paper around, so that wasn’t a problem either. I would stay up late and print their worksheets at night before I went to bed. In the morning, I would get up at about nine to start my day. I would wake the girls up and tell them to get up and get dressed for the day, then go inside the studio building (now called the office) and make some Hills Bros. Cappuccino, double mocha flavor, while I watched the
The girls would come in and want to go up to the house to get some breakfast. Phillip told them they must always call first. The girls and I grew up knowing he was on parole for the rape of a woman in his past. It wasn’t something we questioned him on. Phillip was afraid his parole agent would show up unexpectedly and he didn’t want the agent to see where the girls came from. He was sleeping in the house lately with Nancy and his mom. He didn’t want anybody to see the back property. I always thought it was so strange that not one of Phillip’s parole agents knew that the property extended further back. I just figured they didn’t care and thought Phillip was a totally rehabilitated offender. I wanted something to change. I wanted his parole agents to ask questions. If Phillip wouldn’t be able to answer, maybe something would change. I also feared whatever change would come. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had the girls to take care of. But I wanted them to have a better life. I just couldn’t do it for myself. I needed someone to free me, but no one did.
I, however, have mixed feelings about high school. On the one hand, for eighteen years I had been taught that schools are bad and kids learn bad things there and peer pressure can ruin a child’s life forever; but when I consider who I heard all this stuff from, a kidnapper, rapist, pedophile, narcissistic, pervert, I can only come to one conclusion. Maybe school isn’t so bad after all! I don’t know what my high school experience would have been like. Part of me would like to go back in time and take that first step out of the car as a new freshman, and part of me is so glad I didn’t have to. I look at my daughter and see what it could have been like for me had I not been kidnapped and taken away from my life at the age of eleven.
Both of my girls are going to school full-time now. When they first made this decision, I didn’t want them to see how the idea scared me to death. How all I could think about was how much school would change them and how lonely I would be without them and how the thought of anything happening to them would just kill me. But I knew saying any of these things aloud wouldn’t help. So I supported them. Taking A to shadow at different high schools. Helping G decide what school and grade would be best for her. Taking them back-to-school shopping. And then before I knew it, A’s first day arrived. It was a Tuesday. I made her a veggie rollup. I asked how she was feeling, and she said she was nervous and excited. A week before, we attended orientation. What an experience that was. I felt so out of place, like I didn’t belong. A nudged me and said, “Hey, you’re making me nervous.” So after that I really tried to seem calm and in the moment. But all I could think about was if this is what it would have been like for me. That day ended up being really good for her; she was nervous about the other kids, but after seeing that they were just as scared as she was, it helped her to not feel so out of place. Unlike me. I felt very out of place. I think part of it was being afraid people were thinking, How can she be a mom? I’m short and have been told I look very young for my age, and then there’s the fact that I gave birth to her when I was fourteen. Of course, people must be curious. Nobody said anything to me, though. And I started to relax and just enjoy being on campus. We listened to the principal. We watched as he introduced his assistant and turned just in time to see her pulling a finger out of her nose! That helped to relieve some of the tension that I felt just from being there. Watching A getting her student ID, gym locker, and watching her interact with the other kids was an eye-opening experience. I realized she’s going to be okay. And in realizing that, I have gained peace of mind.
Walking the high school grounds brought up feelings of grief for what I had lost. I even felt some jealousy and envy deep down inside. I should have had the opportunity to have these experiences. But they were forcibly taken away from me. Now I have the opportunity to take back a piece of my life that was taken. I always dreamed about
