Danger lurks as a young girl faces her past.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
They told me to write letters to the Man and the Mother. I don’t really understand why I’m supposed to do that or how it’s supposed to help me. They are some doctors I met at Dr. Joyce’s office that I hadn’t seen before. I do know Dr. Joyce though and I trust her, so I suppose I’ll have to write them. Dr. Joyce said I wouldn’t be mailing the letters. She said the purpose for writing them is to help me to not feel so mad. I would rather mail them so the Man and the Mother will know how much I hate them.
My name is Lisa—Lisa Hunt. I had a brother named Billy, but he’s not here anymore because the Man killed him when he was thirteen and I was eight. I’m ten now. Billy was always with me until then. Sometimes he would leave the room to get food when the Mother hadn’t fed us for a few days. He could only do that when we knew for sure the Man and the Mother weren’t at home. Billy never went outside the house—only to the kitchen and back. I never went outside of the room at all. Billy knew if we did and the Man caught us, he would hurt us. We talked about leaving the house, about running away, away from the room, away from them, but Billy was too afraid of the Man. We were afraid if we did run away and someone caught us, even if we told them about the Man and the Mother, they wouldn’t believe us. Then if they took us back, the Man would have killed us for sure. I wish now that we had taken the chance. If we had, maybe Billy would still be alive, or maybe we would both be dead. That would be okay because at least I would be with him.
Dr. Joyce said if I write about everything that happened in the house and how it made me feel, I’d feel better. I don’t know what it means to feel better. I know I have felt alone since Billy was killed and that I’ve felt angry and hurt for so long I don’t know what it’s like to feel any other way. Dr. Joyce said writing will make me feel happy inside. I don’t know how that is supposed to feel either. All I know is, even since I was found and I have been around people I care about, I still feel alone and sad inside. I’m tired now and I want to sleep but I can’t. I have to write. I have to write about the room and I have to write to them and I hate them.
Billy and I were kept in a room from the time I was born until I was found. There were two windows in the room, but the Man nailed boards over them. Billy told me what he could about what it was like outside. He also talked some about the Mother and the Man; mostly about what she was like before the Man came. He said when it was just him and the Mother; she talked to him all the time. He said she read to him and taught him how to read, to write his name, his ABC’s, and some other things, and a little about numbers. He also said he could play in the yard with friends. Billy said she sang to him and to me too before she put us in the room. There was a different man that would come and visit with the Mother before the Man moved in. Billy thought he must be my daddy because he knew our mother was going to have me before the Man came. Once he moved in, everything changed. The Mother was afraid of the Man because he would get drunk and beat her and he would beat Billy. After I was born, the Mother was afraid he was going to hit me too. Billy said he thinks that’s why, when I was about two weeks old, she put us in the room and made us stay there. The Man never came in, so I never saw him.
For awhile the Mother would come into the room to feed me and change my diaper, but she didn’t talk to us anymore. She would just do what she had to and leave. When I got old enough she made Billy feed me. She brought in food, water, and milk, but she never stayed. She brought in a basin for us to wash in, a bucket to use for a potty, soap, and sometimes shampoo, things like that. Every now and then, when the Man wasn’t home, she’d bring us different clothes to wear and, in the winter, a pair of socks, but never any shoes. If the Man caught her bringing us anything besides food, he would yell at her because he didn’t want her spending money on us.
Billy said one day when I was about two she came in and saw him reading to me from a book that he and the Mother used to read. A few weeks later she brought in a big box filled with books. Over a period of time, Billy taught me to read and write as much as he knew and how to do numbers, and then we started to learn things together. There wasn’t anything else for us to do. We started with the easy books and continued to read them over and over until we knew all the words. We got so excited when we figured out what the dictionary was for. Having it helped us to understand more of what we were reading.
There were books about the history of our country, the presidents, animals, birds, and so many other things. We made up games so we could learn something new everyday, like new words or the names of places like states and cities and the different kinds of birds, things like that. Mostly we would play games with the books. We would pick out words that we didn’t know and look them up in the dictionary. Sometimes we would take turns reading and see who could read the fastest, or we would pretend we were the kids in the story books. We would say our names instead of the kids’ so we could pretend to be where they were instead of in the room. Even though I could read and see pictures, I knew it wasn’t the same as actually seeing or touching or smelling the real thing. I wanted so badly to smell a flower, to touch a kitten and to see the clouds move in the sky.
Once, I asked Billy about the rain. He got a plastic bag and poked holes in it and then he filled it with water and held it over my head. We laughed so hard we had to get in the closet and put our faces in a pillow so the Man couldn’t hear us. We didn’t dare make any noise. We stayed in the closet most of the time anyway so we could read out loud and talk. When they were gone, sometimes we would sing. Billy taught me all the songs he could remember; mostly they were about Christmas. One book we had was about Christmas. We learned about God and about Joseph, Mary and Jesus. That was all kind of hard to understand then; I know a little more about them now.
Billy explained dark and light so that I could understand about the sun making the days bright and the night being when the sun was gone. He said the sun was like a light bulb only brighter and that it would light up the entire outdoors just like a bulb would light up the room. He said when you turn the light out then the room is dark, but when the sun went down it would slowly get dark, but not as dark as the inside of the room because of the moon and the stars. There were pictures of the earth, sun, moon and all of the planets in the science book. We didn’t understand a lot of things in that one, but it was still fun to look at the pictures.
The boards over the windows were on the outside so Billy could still open the windows at night during the warmer times of the year. When it was windy, fresh air would blow through the cracks between the boards, and at times we could smell the pine trees. Nothing could compare to the smell of the rain and how it felt when the wind was blowing hard enough for it to spray through the cracks in the boards and onto our bodies. One time the Mother came in and saw the windows were open. She looked at them and then at us and walked out of the room. I was scared, but Billy said he was pretty sure she wouldn’t tell and I guess she didn’t because nothing came of it. After that we didn’t worry about it any more.
Billy said we lived in the country, but houses weren’t so far away that we couldn’t hear people when they were outside. In the summer we could hear kids playing and laughing and sometimes older people talking to them. Hearing the kids would make me sad because I knew they had a mama and daddy who talked and played with them. It always made Billy mad and I got so I would get mad too. We hated the Man for being so mean and the Mother for letting him stay. We couldn’t understand why she didn’t make him leave or take us away from there. We both grew to hate her for that, I think even more so than him.
One horrible day the Man took Billy away from me. I can still hear his cries and how he begged and begged the Man to stop. The Mother and the Man had just left and Billy had run downstairs to the kitchen for food. We never knew how long they would be gone but they were always gone long enough. Usually Billy would wait a bit after they left but this time he went right after, because it had been three days since we had eaten and we were so hungry. If only he had waited a few more minutes, because this time they came right back. My heart stopped when I heard the car coming back up the road. I was terrified Billy didn’t hear it and wouldn’t get back to the room before they came in. All of a sudden I heard the Man yelling. Billy was begging him not to hurt him. As Billy got closer to the room, his cries became louder each time the man hit him. He cried and pleaded with him to stop. The Mother also yelled at him, too, but the Man wouldn’t listen. She kept saying, “You’re going to kill him.” Then the Man started to hit her too and yelled at her. He called her names and said if he did kill Billy it was her fault for having us to begin with.
I wanted to run out and hit him and tell him how much I hated him and how much I wished he was dead, but I couldn’t. All I could do was hide in the closet . . . and listen. Billy was just outside the door when I heard him yell, “No . . . No!” and then I heard a slam against the wall and then a thud, and then I didn’t hear Billy anymore, only the Mother shouting, “You killed him! You killed him!” And then it was quiet.
I cried for days. I sat in the closet rocking back and forth. I held Billy’s pillow close to my face because I could smell him on it. I would sleep with it and even talk to it. I couldn’t bear to be without him, so I pretended he was there and just couldn’t see him. That was easy to do at night, in the dark. After a while I couldn’t cry anymore; all I wanted to do was sleep. It seemed quieter in the house after Billy was gone. The Mother came in now and then with food and water. I stayed in the closet most of the time, so I usually didn’t see her. After a while I started to read again. I read out loud to Billy and tried to play some of the games we played. I read as much as I could everyday. I wanted to escape into those pages; that’s all I had left.
One winter night the bedroom light bulb burned out. The Mother knew it but she never put in a new one like she had before. I still sat in the closet most of the time anyway so it didn’t matter. I fell asleep a number of times in there and didn’t wake until morning, I’m sure that’s why, a week or so later, the bulb burned out in there too. After that, when it got dark, I would lay in bed until I fell asleep. During the summer it wasn’t so bad because the days were longer. I opened the windows as much as I could just to hear the noise outside and to smell the air. The nights were long and so lonely.
I had been alone for about two years after Billy died when one day my world changed. I heard a lot of shouting, more than usual. Normally I could hear the noise from the television or radio in another room. They were never loud enough to make out what was said, but one or the other was always on except on this day. I could hear the back door slam over and over like someone was going in and out of the house. Then I heard the car start and at the same time I heard the Mother come up the stairs and down the hall. She came in my room and threw a big box of food on the bed and then she grabbed the water pitcher, took it to the bathroom and filled it. She sounded angry as she muttered to herself. After she set the water pitcher down, she walked to the door and then turned and looked at me. She wrung her hands together over and over and shook her head back and forth. She said she was sorry and that there wasn’t anything she could do and then turned and walked out of the room, but this time—this time, she didn’t close the door. She had always closed the door. I heard the back door slam and the car drive away. It was quiet and so eerie. It wasn’t because I was alone; it was because the door was open. When it got dark I could tell there were no lights on anywhere in the house. It didn’t occur to me that they weren’t coming back, even after they had been gone for several days. I kept thinking when they did return, the Man would find the door open and kill me. I wanted Billy with me more than ever now. This was all new and I was so scared. Days went by and I didn’t hear anything. I wanted to go out of the room, but I couldn’t. I even stood at the doorway, but I couldn’t take that step—I couldn’t even look around the corner—I just couldn’t.
It had been about two weeks, I think, since the Man and the Mother left when something woke me. There was someone in the house. I was too scared to move. I huddled up against the wall with the cover pulled up to just below my eyes. I heard someone walk slowly but heavy like a man. It had to be the Man. Who else could it be? He was downstairs for the longest time, and then he started up the stairs. My heart beat so fast I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. I could hear him getting closer and closer to my room, but all I could do was wait. When he came in he tried the light switch, but when it didn’t work he waited a minute and then walked into the room and looked around. He didn’t see me at first. It was daytime, so there was some light but not enough to see very well. He looked towards me but he still didn’t seem to see me. He had something on his face like a mask of some kind. He walked slowly towards me and then stopped. It was then that I saw his policeman’s uniform so I knew he wasn’t the Man. He didn’t say anything; he just stood there for a moment and then walked out. When there were policemen in the books we had read, they were always good, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid. I still wanted to jump off the bed and hide. I was terrified and excited at the same time. After a while, he came back, but this time a lady was with him. She had on a mask too. He had something in his hand that made the room light up. He shined it on me and then around the room. They stood in the doorway and looked around for a minute. Then they walked towards me.
“Hey, sweetie, my name is Miss Shannon and this is Officer Gary.” she said as she slowly walked over to the bed and sat down beside me. “Can you tell me your name?”
She talked to me. She actually talked to me.
At first all I could do was look at her. Nobody had ever talked to me but Billy and the Mother that one time. I opened my mouth to speak, but my lips and throat were so dry all I could do was whisper, “My name is Lisa.”
My heart raced, someone was actually in my room talking to me.
“Where are your parents, Lisa?’ she asked.
“I don’t know.” I whispered. “The Mother and the Man were here but they’ve been gone a long time.”
The officer came closer, and I pulled the covers up tighter.
“Lisa, we’re going to take you to a hospital,” he said. “I promise we won’t hurt you, but I have to pick you up and carry you to an ambulance that’s waiting outside.”
“Why do you have to do that?” I trembled and cried. “I’ve never been out there. What if the Man comes back and he won’t let you take me or he’ll want to hurt me? Do you have to touch me? I don’t want you to, please, I’m so scared.”
I thought, what if the Man and the Mother come back? What will happen? Will these people still take me? Finally the thought of the Man and the Mother returning frightened me more than leaving the room or being touched by the officer.
“We have to hurry,” I said as I frantically threw the covers off and tried to stand on the bed. I was weak, though, and fell to my knees. The officer tried to put a sheet around me, but I was shaking my hands and shoving the sheet and him away, so afraid for him to touch me, yet at the same time in a panic to get out of the house.
“It’s okay, honey. I promise I won’t hurt you,” he said.
Finally I let him wrap the sheet around me. I kept saying, ‘Please hurry, please, please hurry!’ He told me again that he wasn’t going to hurt me as he picked me up.
I clung to him while he carried me downstairs. The house was much bigger than I had imagined, and it was dark and dingy.
“I’m going to put my hand over your eyes so the light won’t hurt them,” the policeman said as we started out the front door.
I let him for just a few seconds, but as he stepped out on the front pouch and I felt the sun on my face ,I reached up and moved his hand away.
“No. I have to see, I have to see.”
The sun did hurt my eyes at first and I had a hard time keeping them open, but it didn’t matter. I was outside and no amount of pain could have overpowered the excitement I felt. It was all I could do to stay in his arms. I wanted to run around the yard, to touch and smell everything. I took a deep breath trying to fill my whole body with the clean fresh air; it was so sweet and wonderful. The colors of the trees were gold and red and purple, so beautiful that I cried. I was completely overwhelmed.
There were big white clouds floating across the sky, and birds were singing in the trees, and then—and then I saw the people. The children were clinging to their mothers, looking at me like I was something strange, like they were afraid of me. I couldn’t imagine why.
The policeman took me to the ambulance and opened its back door.
“No!” I grabbed hold of his shirt. “I don’t want to go in there.”
“It’s okay, honey. You have to ride inside to get to the hospital.”
“Can you go with me? I don’t want you to put me down.”
I didn’t know this man, but for whatever reason I felt safe in his arms. I didn’t know about the men in the ambulance or the lady either for that matter. The officer told the lady he would meet her at the hospital. He got in the ambulance, sat me on the bed, and then sat down beside me. Before we left, the lady came over and gave me a bottle of water. I drank some of it, and it made my throat feel better.
As the ambulance started to leave, a siren came on. I put my hands over my ears and screamed. The officer asked the driver to turn it off and to slow down, so he did. Once I had calmed down, I couldn’t see everything fast enough. I could see houses through the back window and trees, cars, buildings—all the things I had never seen except in pictures. When we got to the hospital, the policeman carried me in. There were people everywhere. They looked at me and made faces and put handkerchiefs over their noses. I stopped looking at them and pulled the sheet over my head. The policeman carried me into a room and sat me on a strange bed. He said he had to step just outside to use the phone but would leave the door open. I didn’t care because I was busy looking around the room at things I had never seen before.
Gary stepped across the hall to the nurse’s station to get a cup of coffee and then stood outside of the examination room where Lisa was, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. When a doctor and nurse entered Lisa’s room, he slipped in behind them.
Dr. Bellows entered the room reading the report that was given to him by the ambulance attendant. As soon as he saw Lisa he stopped short. “Good grief,” he said, fanning at his face. What is that stench? He walked closer to Lisa and then backed away. “How am I supposed to examine her?” he snapped at his nurse.
Before she could answer, Officer Blake said, “Hey! How about being a little more tactful! She can’t help how she is!”
Dr. Bellows ignored Blake and barked at his nurse, “Get her clothes off, so I can examine her. Call me when she’s ready.” He turned and almost ran over Shannon as he left the room.
Shannon heard how Dr. Bellows spoke and didn’t like it one bit. She caught up with him in the hallway and stopped him. “Dr. Bellows, my name is Shannon Jackson. I’m with the Child Protective Services. If you can’t treat Lisa any better than what I just witnessed, then I highly recommend you find another doctor for her.”
Dr. Bellows shook his head and sighed. “That’s probably a good idea. Look, I’m sorry, but I just can’t handle working with . . . that.” He didn’t give Shannon the opportunity to respond before he turned and walked away.
When Shannon returned to Lisa’s room, Dr. Bellows’ nurse said, “I’m sorry the doctor was such a jerk. He’s had a rough day. I’ll send Crystal to help with Lisa. She’s a nurses’ aide and wonderful with children. I’ll be right back.”
Shannon looked at Lisa and said, “I’m sorry, that doctor wasn’t very nice to you.”
Lisa didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. The look in her eyes said it all.
Crystal’s entrance was an explosion of energy. “Hey there, girly,” she said as she approached Lisa. “Good heavens child, you need a bath!”
Gary leaned over and whispered to Shannon, “She’s not much in the ‘tact’ department either, is she?” When Crystal looked at them, Shannon said, “Go easy, we’re not sure what we’re dealing with here.”
Crystal nodded. Then she said to Lisa, “My name is Ms. Crystal and I’m going to help you change for your examination, okay?”
“No, I don’t want you to help me!”
Gary said firmly, “Lisa, I want you to do what Crystal tells you to do. We’re going to leave you with her for a few minutes, but we’ll be back.”
“She’ll be fine,” Crystal said as they left the room.
“No I won’t be fine! I don’t know that I like you and why is it that I’m supposed to call you Ms. Crystal?”
“Well, here in East Texas when a child addresses their elders, it is respectful to address them as Mr. or Ms. whatever their first name is.”
Lisa sat on the examination bed with her arms crossed in front of her with a defiant expression on her face.
Sensing Lisa’s hostility, Crystal said, “I’m sorry I said what I did about your needing a bath. Will you forgive me?”
Lisa replied firmly, “I’m not sure. Why do I have to take my clothes off and why does that doctor have to examine me?”
“Well, you have to take your clothes off because they need to be washed for one thing, and the other is so the doctor can make sure you’re not hurt anywhere, so hop to it!”
“Hop to it? What does that mean?”
“It means get those clothes off, girly, and put them in this bag, then put this robe on.”
“Where’s the bucket?” Lisa asked as she undressed.
“Bucket for what?” Crystal asked.
Lisa looked at Crystal like she didn’t have a brain and said, “I need to potty and there isn’t a bucket in here.”
“Bucket?” Have you never heard of going in the bathroom and using the toilet?”
“We didn’t have a bathroom or a toilet in the room; we had a bucket, so that is what we used.”
It wasn’t Crystal’s place to press Lisa with questions, so she didn’t. She walked over to the bathroom adjacent to the examination room and pointed inside. “The toilet is in this room, which is the bathroom.”
Lisa bent forward, straining to look inside, and then jumped down off the bed.
“My legs feel funny.”
“Are you able to walk?”
“I’m not sure; I think you’ll have to carry me.”
“Well, maybe I won’t unless you say ‘please’, young lady.”
Lisa stood with her hands on her hips. “Well, maybe I’ll just stand here and pee on the floor!”
“I can see I’m fighting a losing battle,” Crystal said. She picked Lisa up and carried her into the bathroom.
By the time she was done, in her robe and back on the table, Gary was back with Shannon and two other ladies. “Lisa, this is Dr. Sarah Bentley and her nurse, Deb,” Gary said. “Dr. Bentley is a doctor that only works with children, and she’s going to examine you instead of Dr. Bellows.”
Crystal spoke to Deb for a moment and then left the room.
Gary patted Lisa’s arm. “I have to go to my office for awhile, but Ms. Shannon is going to stay with you until I get back.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Go, she’ll be fine.” Shannon told him.
Lisa crossed her arms and said defiantly, “Here’s someone else saying I’ll be fine, and just how do you know this?”
I didn’t really listen to Ms. Shannon’s reply. I’m thinking now how much has changed in the past few hours. Earlier in the day I was alone in the room, and now I’m sitting in a hospital. Somehow I think my life is going to be different now. Somehow, I think it’s going to be better.
Read more about My Name Is Lisa and Norma Cape HERE.
Copyright 2008 Norma Cape. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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