Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland Read online

  After Roy sets up my cash drawer I walk over to my work station. My friend Jennifer is working “front cash,” at the main counter, and I see Teddy standing there. Our eyes meet, and I shoot him daggers.

  I plug in my headset.

  “Welcome to Burger King. May I take your order?”

  Here we go again.

  Time ticks by slowly. It would be easier if we were busier, but it’s the Monday after Easter, and it’s dead. I try not to talk to anybody. Roy knows I’m having a hard time, so around seven fifteen he asks if I feel like going home early. He doesn’t need to ask me twice. I’m so ready to get out of here.

  I grab my things and sit down at a table to call my boyfriend, DJ, to see if he will pick me up. No answer. I call him again, but still no answer. I would love to see him tonight. We’ve only been dating for a month, but I like him. He holds my hand and opens doors for me. I first saw him when he ordered food at the drive-through. Jennifer knew him and said he was nice. He kept coming back and asking about me if I wasn’t there, then finally we went out.

  Right now I just wish he would answer his phone. Where is he?

  I almost never walk home. For one thing, more people are around in the evening, and I don’t like being seen in my Burger King uniform. But the big reason is that my mom doesn’t like me coming home alone at night. She never learned to drive, so she has Beth pick me up.

  But Beth and Mom are still at work, and I am definitely not hanging out in this soap opera one minute longer than I have to. It’s seven thirty, still light outside, and I start walking.

  • • •

  My phone rings as I head home. Beth says she is cutting out of work now, and I tell her I’m doing the same thing.

  “We can get you. What time should I pick you up?”

  “No, don’t worry. I’m already walking home.”

  As we start discussing Teddy, I see an old maroon van blocking the sidewalk ahead. A guy has turned into a driveway on West 110th, but hasn’t pulled all the way up.

  I walk around the front of the van to get by. Because I’m still on the phone I’m not paying much attention, but I notice that the girl in the passenger seat looks familiar. I’m pretty sure she used to work at Burger King with me. The driver—it must be her father—is looking right at me and smiling. I smile back as I keep walking.

  A minute later his van pulls up alongside me, and he rolls down his window. No cars are coming in either direction, so he’s just stopped in the middle of the street.

  “Hey, you need a ride home?”

  Now I can see him more clearly and definitely remember having seen him before, but I’m not exactly sure where. I’m halfway home, maybe a five-minute walk, and don’t really need a ride, but it’s nice of him to offer.

  Still talking to Beth I nod “yes” to him and start walking toward the van.

  When he reaches over and opens the front passenger door, I notice that his daughter is not in the car anymore. I rush Beth off the phone as I climb in.

  “Beth, I gotta go because I’m getting a ride.”

  He starts to pull away as I hang up the phone.

  “Where is your daughter?” I ask, as I suddenly realize I am alone in a car with an older guy I don’t really know.

  “So you work at Burger King?” he says, not answering the question but smiling and friendly. I’m still in my uniform, with my “Amanda” name tag, so it’s an easy guess where I work.

  I’m starting to get a weird feeling, but he seems nice enough. He’s dressed cooler than guys his age: he’s all in black, from his T-shirt to his jeans to his boots, and he’s listening to 107.9, hip-hop and R&B.

  “My son used to work at Burger King. Do you know him? Anthony Castro?”

  That’s who he is! He’s Anthony’s dad. Anthony is no relation to Roy Castro, the manager, but I know Anthony, and so does my mom.

  “Oh, yeah, I know Anthony. He came to my house one time. He’s friends with a friend of mine.”

  I tell him I also went to Wilbur Wright Middle School with his daughter Angie. “How’s she doing?” I ask, more relaxed now that I know who he is.

  “She’s good,” he says. “She’s at the house right now. Would you like to go see her?”

  “Okay. I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

  Why not go see her? I wasn’t looking forward to going home anyway.

  He makes a few turns away from my house and then pulls out onto I-90, cheerfully talking about his kids.

  “That’s a nice phone,” he says, looking over at the little blue phone in my hand. A few of my friends have cell phones, and I just bought this one a week ago, used, from a girl at work.

  We turn off the highway at West 25th Street, take a few more turns, and then pull onto Seymour Avenue.

  I know this neighborhood. It’s only about a ten-minute drive from my house, and I have cousins who live close by, on Castle and Carlyle. There are so many Spanish-speaking people here that they call it Little Puerto Rico.

  We pull into the driveway at 2207 Seymour. It’s a white, two-story house. Nothing special, that’s for sure. He drives to the back, where a big, mean-looking dog is barking like crazy right outside the passenger side of the van. It’s one of those Chow Chows, with a huge bushy head. The dog is chained to a tree, but the chain’s long enough to reach the van. I’m glad I’m inside.

  He mentions my phone again.

  “That’s really nice; let me see it for a minute.”

  I hand it to him.

  “Wait, let me hold the dog back so you can get out,” he says, taking my phone with him as he jumps out of the van and pulls the dog away by its collar.

  “Angie’s inside,” he says. “Let’s go see her.”

  We walk to the back door. He unlocks it and we step inside a small enclosed porch cluttered with boxes. Then he unlocks yet another door into the house.

  I follow him inside.

  • • •

  He turns on the light in the kitchen. It’s so messy. Definitely could use some cleaning up.

  He points to the closed bathroom door.

  “Angie must be taking a bath right now,” he says. “While she’s in there, let me show you around the house.”

  “Oh, okay,” I tell him. “That’s very nice of you.”

  We walk into the small dining room, then into the living room, which has dark wood paneling and a black leather couch. He has a big stack of old phone books, family photos all around, and the two biggest stereo speakers I have ever seen. I’m five-foot-one, so they must be four feet tall.

  “C’mon, I’ll show you upstairs,” he says, when he’s already halfway up.

  As I reach the top landing, I see that it’s pretty dark up there. There are a couple of closed bedroom doors, and he points at one of them.

  “My roommate is in here,” he says. “She’s sleeping.”

  That’s weird, I think. Maybe he got divorced from Anthony and Angie’s mom? I guess he has a roommate now to help with the rent.

  “Take a look,” he says.

  The doorknob is missing, and I bend down to look through the big hole where it should have been. A girl is sleeping there, with a TV on. I look only for a second, because it feels strange to peek into somebody’s room.

  We walk into a big bedroom and then a smaller one beyond it. And when I turn to leave, he suddenly blocks the door.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him, startled.

  “Pull down your pants!”

  “No!” I shout. I am panicking and can’t believe what he just said. “Take me home! I want to go home!”

  There is a girl across the hall, and his daughter is downstairs, so what could he be doing?

  I look directly at him for the first time. He’s maybe in his forties, older than my mom. He has curly brown hair, dark eyes, a receding hairline, and a
goatee. He’s about five-foot-seven and stocky, with a bit of a beer belly. If I passed him in the mall, I’d never even notice him.

  “Pull down your pants!” he orders again.

  He has suddenly turned so scary—his voice, his eyes, his manner—and I do what he says. I stand there, crying, my jeans around my ankles. Why didn’t I see this coming? How could I be so stupid? Just because I know his kids doesn’t mean I should have gone with him to his house.

  He pulls his pants down and starts playing with himself. It’s disgusting.

  There’s a window behind him with lace curtains. He glances outside and says something about police. I look out and see a police car parked across the street. The cops are so close! He says he’ll hurt me if I make a sound.

  He hurries what he’s doing and when he finishes, his voice changes back, and he sounds like the nice guy who was talking to me in the car.

  “I’m going to take you home now,” he says and tells me I can pull my pants back up.

  “Please,” I beg him. “Please take me home.”

  I start praying, asking God to get me out of here.

  We start toward the door but then he suddenly stops.

  “Turn around, get on the bed, and take your pants down.”

  “No! No!” I scream. “If you don’t take me home right now I’m going to call the police!”

  I blurt that out even though I know I can’t call anyone. He still has my phone.

  “Help! Help me!”

  Doesn’t his roommate hear me? What’s going on in this house?

  I run back into the bigger bedroom and try to open the door to the hallway but there’s no knob. I see a doorway next to it and run into it, but it’s a closet.

  I’m cornered, crying, when he grabs me by the arms and drags me over to the bed, where he yanks off my pants and rapes me. He must be fifty pounds heavier than me, and it hurts so bad.

  When he is done, he gets up and says, “I’m going to take you home now, but you have to be quiet.”

  I’m terrified and I know he is lying.

  “I’m going to tape your mouth so you don’t scream any more until I get you home,” he says as he reaches for a roll of gray duct tape, tears off a long piece, and slaps it over my mouth from ear to ear.

  He slams my wrists together and tapes them, too, and then does the same to my ankles. Then he takes out a leather belt, and I freeze. Is he going to beat me with it? Hang me? I don’t move as he slowly wraps the belt around my ankles, over the tape.

  He takes a motorcycle helmet from the closet and pulls it over my head. I can see out of the visor until my tears make everything foggy.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, as if he is actually trying to help me. “I’m just doing this so I can carry you to the van and take you home.”

  He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. My head is dangling down by his butt, and every part of my body hurts. He carries me down to the first floor, then takes me into the basement.

  He sits me down on the cold concrete floor and props my back against a pole. He takes a thick rusty chain, like a tow truck might use to pull a car, and wraps it around my stomach and the pole. He clamps it shut with a padlock and puts the key in his pocket. We are not going out to the van.

  He pulls off the motorcycle helmet and turns on a little black-and-white TV, setting it on a tiny stool.

  “Be quiet. Don’t scream. Don’t try to get away,” he says in an oddly calm voice as he switches off the one bare lightbulb and walks back upstairs.

  I look around and see piles of clothes, boxes of junk, and dusty shelves filled with knickknacks. It smells like wet dirt, like the basement hasn’t been aired out in years. It is so creepy.

  I have to break out of here. I put my taped hands up to my face and use my fingertips to pick at the tape across my mouth.

  “Somebody help me! Somebody help me!” I scream when I get it loose. “Please! Someone hear me!”

  I bite into the tape on my wrists and begin to chew it off, bit by bit. It takes forever, but I finally get my hands free and quickly pull the belt and tape off my ankles.

  Now my nails are broken and my fingertips are bleeding. I struggle to get this chain off my waist, but it’s so tight I rip my shirt trying. My jeans are kind of thick, so I wriggle out of them, hoping that if I have that extra bit of room I can slip out of the chain. But I can’t.

  “Somebody please help me!” I scream over and over, not knowing what else to do.

  He’s going to come back and kill me, and I’m going to die because I took a ride from a dad who turned out to be a psycho.

  I have no idea what time it is, but while I have been fighting with the chain many TV shows have come and gone, so hours must have passed. Cops is on as I finally fall asleep against the pole.

  • • •

  I wake to the sound of heavy footsteps. My body tenses up. He’s back. How long have I been asleep?

  “I told you not to try to get away,” he says in a cheerful voice, looking at all the ripped tape.

  It’s so strange how nicely he’s talking to me, like we’re friends playing a game.

  “I brought us breakfast,” he says, holding out a Burger King bag. “But first we’re going to take a shower.”

  He unlocks the padlock, loosens the chain, and helps me stand up. Since I couldn’t get my jeans back on, I’m wearing only my shirt and underwear. He walks me up the stairs, staying close behind, and guides me into the bathroom off the kitchen, where he tells me to undress and get in the shower. Then he takes his clothes off and comes in, too, and with a washcloth rubs away the sticky stuff from the tape around my mouth and ears.

  “Here, let’s get this off,” he says sweetly, like he’s washing a baby, and then he begins to shampoo my hair.

  I am disgusted by his touch. I want to run away from him, but I’m trapped.

  I’m afraid he is going to attack me again, but instead he climbs out of the shower and finds some Band-Aids for my bloody fingers. He gets dressed and gives me a pair of jogging pants and one of his shirts, then takes me into the living room. We sit on the couch, and he hands me a cold ham-and-egg croissant.

  He’s talking, but I’m in shock and can’t focus.

  “It’s time to go upstairs,” he says after I finish eating.

  What choice do I have? I follow him up the stairs and into the bedroom where he raped me.

  “Just lay down and relax,” he says, pointing to the mattress, which has no sheets.

  He lies down beside me, and I brace myself for what’s next, but he seems exhausted, like he was up all night. At least an hour passes, maybe more. He is inches from me, asleep, or pretending to be. I’m afraid to move or make a sound. My mom and Beth must be losing their minds, so scared about what has happened to me. I am so scared about what is happening to me.

  Then, suddenly, he opens his eyes, stands up, and says, “Let’s go downstairs.”

  He walks me back down to the basement, sits me against the pole, and locks the chains tight around my stomach. I cry and cry, but he only turns up the volume on the TV, shuts off the light, and walks back upstairs without a word.

  It’s so dark.

  Then I remember: It’s my birthday.

  April 25, 2003: Alone in the Dark

  Amanda

  He has moved me upstairs into the bedroom where he first raped me. It’s not pitch-black like the basement, where I spent the first two nights, but it’s still dark. There are two small windows covered with heavy gray curtains that were probably white once.

  I have to lie sideways on the queen-size bed, my toes hanging off the edge, because of the way he has me chained to the radiator. The padlock on the rusty chain around my stomach feels like a big rock. Its weight makes it hard to sleep, and it’s giving me huge purple bruises.

  He came in yesterday and put
some old socks around the chain so it wouldn’t hurt me so much. I don’t think he felt bad for me but was just tired of me complaining. He fastened them with plastic zip ties, and now those are digging into me.

  The chain is just long enough that I can stand up next to the bed to use my “bathroom”—a tall, beige plastic trash can. He put a trash bag over the top, but it still smells so bad that it’s making me sick.

  The chain isn’t long enough to let me open the curtains, or reach the switch for the overhead light. So when he leaves for work in the morning and turns it off, I have to sit in the dark until he comes back. He told me that he kept the light out of my reach so that I couldn’t flip it on and off to attract the neighbors’ attention.

  He’s careful. He constantly peeks out the window to check if anybody is watching the house. Whenever he leaves he keeps a radio blasting in the upstairs hallway. That way, he says, nobody can hear me if I scream. It’s hard for me to even hear my TV. Is that girl he called his roommate still here? Who is she and why isn’t she helping me? After the first nights in the basement, I lost my voice screaming, so I don’t bother anymore. I know nobody can hear me over the radio. Sometimes he stays out all night, and that means it’s impossible to sleep with the noise, or even to think. I have a constant headache.

  He has a weird mannequin, a woman’s torso with black hair that he dresses in a red fishnet tank top and props up in the kitchen. Sometimes he lays it down on the living room couch when he goes out. He says if a burglar tries to get into the house, he’ll see it and think somebody is home.

  I still don’t know his first name. I can’t believe I know his kids. I met Anthony only once, and I haven’t seen Angie in a while. Why did I agree to come here to see her? I was having a bad day and made a bad decision. Now I will probably die because of it.

  • • •

  I hate wearing his ugly, baggy clothes. I even have to wear his underwear—big, nasty briefs. It’s like I’m wearing a prison uniform. The only thing I have left of my own is the bra I was wearing when I got here. I used to hate my work uniform, but now I’d give anything to have it back.

  I eat once a day, if I’m lucky, McDonald’s or Burger King that he brings for me when he comes home. Often that’s at five or six in the evening, but sometimes it’s midnight, and I am so hungry.