is so dry. He says he got an extra straw for me, so I don’t need to worry about his germs. I am so grateful for that drink—my mouth feels so dry like I’ve been screaming for a long time, but I can’t remember screaming at all. All of a sudden I hear him laugh. He is saying something about how he can’t believe he got away with it. I want to tell him I want to go home. But I am so scared I am afraid to make the man angry. What should I do? I just don’t know what to do. I wish I did. I’m so scared. I want to go to sleep and pretend this is not happening. Why is this happening? Who are these people and what do they want with me?
Since my return back into the world, I find myself collecting pinecones. I ask the people I know now when they go on trips to bring me back a pinecone. I have pinecones from Lake Placid, Maine, and Oregon. My therapist and I finally solved my obsession. A pinecone was the last thing I touched before I was taken away by Phillip. A hard and sticky pinecone was my last grip on freedom before eighteen years in captivity.
Stolen
My head feels like it’s spinning. I think I must have fallen asleep. When I come awake, we have stopped again. It is still daytime. The man tells the other passenger that we are home and then whispers something else that I can’t hear. I still can’t see the other passenger but can hear someone exit the car. The man that grabbed me tells me to be quiet and I won’t be hurt. He says I need to be very quiet or I will upset his very aggressive dogs. I do not want to do anything to anger him or the dogs. He seems big to me. He says he is going to take me in the house and for me to be quiet and not say a word. He throws a blanket over my head and leads me somewhere. I want to go home. My brain feels less foggy than it did before. I tell myself I am having a dream and any minute I will wake up and my mom will be there to hold me and tell me it was all just a bad dream. But of course this is reality I must survive. I don’t ever remember having a nightmare quite this vivid. I was afraid of ET for a while when I first saw the movie. I used to think that ET would come to my house and be all dressed up like when the little girl in the movie dressed him; in my dream, he was mad at me for that for some reason. That was a crazy dream but nothing as scary as this.
When we are inside the strange house, he takes off the blanket and instructs me to sit on the wicker sofa. He is a very tall man. He has very light blue eyes and brown hair that is thinning on the top a bit. His nose is kind of long and his skin is a bronze color. It looks like he spent too much time in the sun. He does not look like a bad guy. He looks like a normal guy. Like any ordinary guy you would see in everyday life. But he is not! He couldn’t be … could he? He shows me a black thing with metal ends that look sharp. He calls it a “stun gun” and he says he will use it again if I try to get away. He turns it on and I hear the strange zapping sound I heard before when my body would not work. The sofa I’m sitting on has a lot of cat hair. I look up and I see a cat sitting on a washing machine. The cat looks like a Himalayan Persian tortoiseshell and there is another one that looks like a very fat, tabby torty. I ask if I can pet them. He says if they come to me, then I can. One comes over and I give it a pet. Its hair feels silky and real. I think this cat is the only thing that feels real right now; everything else feels like a nightmare but this is too real to be a dream. The man says to follow him.
Looking back on that day, feelings of dread come to mind. I was eleven years old, still very much a kid. I was very scared and alone. I didn’t know what was going to happen and if someone had told me what I would be enduring for the next eighteen years, I would never have believed them. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. What this man had in mind for me was like a foreign language. I had never been subjected to any form of sexual abuse before, hadn’t ever heard the words either. My only reference to sex was what I had seen on TV or movies and then acted out when playing Barbies, which would be in the form of Barbie and Ken laying in the bed together side by side. That is what I thought “sex” was. I know—silly, right? But that is the truth. My aunt Tina says that I asked her once how babies were made and she explained it to me. I do not remember asking her this question and I don’t remember her answer to me. Even if I had understood or remembered what she told me, it still would not have prepared me for what Phillip did to me. No amount of preparation could have helped me understand why another human being would do what he did to another human being, a little girl, for that matter. I still don’t get it.
The Secret Backyard
I follow the man. I don’t have a choice. There is nowhere to run. There is nowhere to hide. I have no idea where I am. Everything is turned upside down. All I can do is wait for my mom to come and find me. I wish I could be back at home right now. I would even like to hear a criticism from my stepdad Carl; anything familiar would be okay. Anywhere other than being here with this stranger that has hurt me with the stun gun. When we arrive at the bathroom in this stranger’s house, he closes and locks the door. The shower is running and the strange man says that he wants me to take my clothes off. No, I say! Why does he want me to take my clothes off? I am very self- conscious of my body. The man says if I do not do it myself, he will do it for me. I am too scared to move, my body is shaking, so I do what is easy: I just stand there. He pulls down my pants and takes off my shirt. I am naked and very embarrassed. He stuffs all my clothes, shoes, and backpack in a bag. He doesn’t notice the tiny ring on my pinkie. I am relieved. I was afraid he would take that, too. He takes off his clothes and I try not to look. He asks if I have ever seen a naked man before and I answer no. He says that’s hard to believe at my age. I have never seen a naked man before and know that I’m not supposed to look. The strange man tells me to look at him. I glance real quickly and want to start laughing in spite of my fearfulness. His private part looks so funny. In spite of myself, I smile, sometimes I laugh when I’m nervous; I don’t mean to, it just comes out. The man says to touch it. It is small and squishy. The man says to make it grow. In my mind I think this man is crazy. This is the strangest weirdest man on the planet! I do not want to touch his private part, but the man insists, so I hold it in my hand. It is soft and paler than the skin around it. He says that’s enough and tells me to get into the shower. I want to resist, but the man pushes me into the shower. He gets in the shower, too. He tells me to wash up and hands me the soap. I want to be asleep in my own bed not here in the shower with this strange man. I do as he tells me, not knowing what else to do. He then asks me if I have ever shaved my underarms and vagina. I say no, I haven’t. I think to myself, this man wants me to do the exact thing that I have wanted to ask my mom if I can do, but why does he want me to do it in front of him? My upcoming field trip was going to be to a water park and I had been wanting to ask my mom if it was okay if I could shave my armpits and around my legs. I was embarrassed to be seen with all that hair, but I also didn’t know how to ask my mom. The night before, I remember going to her bedroom wanting to ask her “the question.” But instead I just sat there and never asked. I wonder what my mom would have said if I had asked her “the question” last night.
•••
Now I am with this stranger who is asking me strange questions and all I can think about is my mom. My mom must be worried. Has anyone told my mom that I was taken by some stranger? How will she find me? The man shaves my armpits and legs and then he says he’s going to shave my vagina hair. Why? I think to myself. When he’s done, he says I can get out of the shower. I feel like I am in a nightmare that I have no control over. Silent tears start spilling over my cheeks. They feel hot against my cold skin. I start to shiver. I am so cold. I try to stop the tears. I tell myself I must be brave. It feels like my life is not my own anymore. My whole body feels heavy and I just want to collapse. This cannot be real, I tell myself. It’s only a dream. I will soon wake up in my own bed. The man hands me a towel. I gladly wrap myself in it. It feels warm and safe. I want to bury my head in the towel. The feeling of safety the towel creates brings memories of when my mom would wrap me up after my baths—the floodgate in me opens and my silent tears become giant sobs. The man looks like he doesn’t know how to respond; he tells me to calm down and be quiet, that he is not going to do anything more today. The
