Читать книгу Tears of the Silenced - Misty Griffin - Страница 16

We arrived in Washington one sunny day in June. I was six-and-a-half years old, and my sister would turn five in August. Our journey came to an end at Brian’s dad’s bicycle and locksmith shop in a little town not far from Seattle. It was a small shop that they had worked in together when Brian was a teenager. After Brian left, his father continued focusing most of his attention on the locksmith part of the business before eventually retiring. When we arrived, the lower part of the building was being rented out to small business tenants, and the upper level was where Grandpa lived.

As we drove up in the back alley behind the shop, I watched curiously as Grandpa came out to greet us. He was a kind, older gentleman and I was surprised when I met him. I had expected an older version of Brian, but Grandpa was just the opposite. While Brian was loud, chubby and plain mean most of the time, Grandpa was gaunt and quiet. He gave Samantha and me each a big hug. We instantly loved this seventy-seven-year-old man. Samantha and I each grabbed one of his hands and followed him upstairs.

The loft was quite spacious with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a large bathroom. We moved into the bedrooms, and Grandpa said he would sleep on a foldout bed in his living room.

That afternoon, Brian’s older sister came by to visit. She seemed angry that she had not seen Brian for nearly ten years. She was dressed in a suit and had short, stylish hair. She walked with an air of confidence, and I could feel that Brian resented her.

Aunty Laura owned a small, successful business just a few blocks away, and when I asked her if she could stop by every day and visit us, she laughed and said she would try. I was so excited that I clapped my hands happily, but when I turned around I saw my mother’s face glaring at me. After Aunt Laura left, Mamma and Brian cornered me in my new room and began slapping me and backing me into a corner.

“Don’t you ever talk out of turn like that again!” Brian yelled at me. “In fact, do not talk to her at all! She is only here to see what kind of bad things she can find out about me through you girls.”

I felt my heart sink—maybe there was no new life; maybe it was the same game with only a few extra innocent players. Mamma and Brian brought my sister into the room, sat us both down on the bed and began laying out the rules. We were not to make any noise when we were being punished. We were not to tell anyone when they had punished us. We should always appear to be happy when around others. If we were caught pouting or complaining for any reason, we would be punished again. We were also not to disturb Grandpa or go anywhere with him.

That was how our new life began. Brian joined the union and worked local construction jobs; Mamma stayed at home with us and took care of the house. Sometimes, after the work was done, we would walk to the park only a few blocks away. Samantha and I liked these outings, but we were awkward around other children and usually just played with each other. We would stay for about half an hour, then walk back to the apartment above the shop. I always dreaded it when I would see the shop in the distance. It was like a prison and my heart would always flip flop as my feet crossed the threshold. Sometimes, I wondered if the other kids I saw at the park were scared to go home. In the afternoons, we were allowed to go outside and play in the alley behind the shop. We loved playing in that alley; it was a great place to escape. When Brian came home in the evening, it was even worse. He always found a reason to beat us and he always used the full force of his strength.

They beat us without mercy or would make us stand in the corner for hours at a time, but it was usually in their bedroom, out of sight. Since we were not allowed to cry when we were being belted or beaten with a stick, Grandpa usually did not know what was going on, but sometimes we could not help it and cried anyway. Grandpa pretended he did not notice our tear-streaked faces, but sometimes I could see a disturbed look on his face.

That summer, I learned to read. Some people were wondering why I was not yet in school since I was nearly seven, so Mamma began pretending I was being homeschooled. The lessons were done at random and I understood very little, but I picked up on the reading part, and soon, I was borrowing books from Grandpa and losing my sad self in his western novels and historical books.

As I skipped over the big words, I would imagine myself as the hero in the book, and I could forget for an instant that I was imprisoned by two people whose only joy in life seemed to be to inflict pain on others. I was being held hostage in front of people who could have saved me, had they known. My sister and I were captives in plain sight, yearning for a rescuer that would never come.

As the summer progressed, Brian began to act even stranger than usual; he ordered a bunch of books on a group of people called the Amish.

One morning during breakfast, Brian announced that we were going to become God-fearing people and obey the Bible in its entirety. He had Mamma take Samantha and me to a local class on crocheting so we could learn something that would keep us busy, like the good little Amish girls we supposedly were. We learned how to crochet in just a few days.

After we had learned to crochet, my mother took us to the local thrift store and started buying a bunch of dresses for us. We were not used to wearing dresses, or anything nice for that matter. Being the little girls that we were, we had fun twirling around in our new full-skirted dresses. Brian came home a few days later with some plain, white muslin dinner napkins. Mamma tied them around our heads and put one on hers as well. Brian stepped back to look at us and smiled.

“Not quite Amish yet,” he said, “but pretty close.”

From that day on, he took up reading the Bible to us every morning before he left for work. Aunty Laura seemed to be in shock over our new way of dressing and argued about it many times with her brother. He told her she belonged to the wicked world that he was no longer a part of. It was clear that he enjoyed being the most religious and pious member in his family.

Now, Brian and my mother had a new avenue to make us comply with their every demand. We were different than the people around us. The clothes we were now wearing isolated Samantha and me even more. Again, we were not allowed to talk to anyone other than Mamma and Brian and, when we wanted to talk to them, we had to raise our hands most of the time. We spoke so little. We were like ghosts people barely seemed to notice.

For the next four years, we traveled to Washington in the summer and back to Arizona in the winter. In Arizona, we would live in trailer parks and, when spring came, we would pull up stakes and drive to Washington, where we would alternate between trailer parks, the beach and random truck stops. In the summertime, Brian would work construction jobs and, in the winter he would work a few small mines he had in northern Arizona. Mamma continued to collect government checks for us, one for herself and one for Samantha and me. Since she and Brian were not married and she was not working, she qualified for almost all assistance.

My sister and I were mostly confined to the trailer, crocheting and cleaning. Sometimes we were allowed to play outside around the trailer or read books. We were very lonely girls. Even though we were used to it, we did not understand why we had to be so isolated.

The fall I was seven, Mamma finally got nervous that the state would notice I was not in school and she enrolled me. At school, I was not used to being around other children, so I usually stayed at my desk. I could read better than the other first graders, but I was seriously behind in everything else. Although Mamma had me wear normal clothes to school, I must have seemed strange. It was not long before the teachers asked to meet with Mamma and Brian to talk about my behavior. The teachers seemed bewildered when I did not race out to play like the other children, and I took little interest in coloring. I was plain scared of everything and everybody and would shy away from the teacher when she tried to hug me. Needless to say, Brian got nervous about all the questions, so my time in school only lasted a few weeks.

After that, Mamma continued to keep the homeschooling books in a cupboard in case anyone from the state was ever to ask us if we were being educated. A few times a week, she would give us a couple of school books and we would read the instructions, trying to figure out how to do the lessons. Many times, we got most of the answers wrong. I can remember that I wanted to learn, but it was so hard to teach myself. I dreamed of growing up to be a great and famous doctor that would save the world and find a cure for AIDS like the missionaries in Africa that I had read about in National Geographic. But that seemed unlikely given the nature of my education.

Even as we got older, Samantha and I were still plagued by the no-talking rule and, even though this rule had been in place for years, we would sometimes forget to raise our hands for permission to speak or we would get caught talking to each other and be severely punished for it.

When Brian and Mamma would leave us alone in the trailer, Brian would place a tape recorder next to us and tell us—pushing the record button and letting it run—that if we so much as moved, he would know it and we would be in trouble. As a result, Samantha and I developed other ways to communicate with each other; we had our own sign language, and we would sniffle and click between our teeth. One sniffle meant Brian was coming; two meant they were both coming; and three rapid ones meant they were in a bad mood, so look out.

It was a sad existence made even worse by the sexual abuse I was suffering. Most days, when Brian came home from work, I had to shine his shoes and then massage his feet or give him body massages. My small hands would tremble. I hated having to touch him, and as I massaged him, I would try and dodge his fondling hands. Most of the time, I was too numb to cry; staying numb was the only way I could survive.

The summer I was nine, we officially started to dress in real Amish clothes. Upon writing letters to several communities, Brian was informed that since he and Mamma were divorced, they would never be allowed to fully join any Amish community. However, the Amish welcomed correspondence with people who wished to live a Plain lifestyle, and he was told he could get guidance from a bishop in Pennsylvania. The Bishop wrote Brian and told him he would not mentor him until we began conforming to the full Amish dress code. He sent Brian the name of an Amish company that made things for “Plain people.” Brian happily ordered dresses, head coverings, aprons, shirts and broad fall trousers.

When the clothes arrived, my sister and I stared with dismay at the plain blue dresses and the uncomfortable-looking aprons and head coverings, but it did not take long before we got used to the uniform. Brian constantly admonished us on how evil and prideful it was to have any form of print on our clothes. Mamma started taking sewing lessons again and was learning to make dresses and other items of clothing. Slowly, but surely, Mamma and Brian were building an unbreakable barrier between us and the outsiders, a barrier few people would be willing to cross in order to save Samantha and me. I am sure there were people who had some idea how badly we were being treated, but everyone looked the other way, all in the name of religious freedom.

I learned to make bread, cook and clean the kitchen. My sister helped while Mamma oversaw us, beating us with the belt whenever we dropped something or made a mistake. A lot of times, Mamma was worse than Brian. She would laugh fiendishly as she lashed the belt across our small frames. Sadly, the only times she gave us hugs or showed any affection at all was when other people were around.

That fall when we were living in Prescott, Arizona, we saw some people dressed like us. I remember being surprised because this was a rare occurrence. Brian immediately went over to talk to the man of the family, who seemed just as surprised to see us as we were to see him. There was the father, whose name was Gary, the mother, and their two daughters, who appeared to be in their early twenties. Brian found out that they, like us, had recently converted to the “Plain” lifestyle. The women said they would teach Mamma how to sew plain clothing, and they invited us to go to dinner at their house that evening. At their place, we saw an old school bus stuffed full of all kinds of food and clothing parked in their front yard. When Brian asked what it was for, Gary informed him that they were hiding out because the government was after them. He did not mind sharing this with Brian; he knew Brian was also against the government.

I liked the daughters. They were very nice to Samantha and me. I especially liked the fact that Mamma did not beat me when we were at their house. I always felt drowsy when there because I found myself relaxing. Mamma and I learned to sew from the girls and soon we were making our own plain clothing.

Trouble began to brew amongst the adults only a few weeks after they met. Brian and Gary both wanted to be the leader of the group. Gary thought Brian should pay one-tenth of his income to him. He also thought Brian should try to recruit new members. Meanwhile, Brian thought he should be the leader since he was older. Since they could not work things out, we split company.

One day before we parted ways, Mamma and I went to get some fabric from one of their bedrooms. As we entered, we noticed that one of the closet doors was open. I saw some hair sticking out from under the door and pulled on it. To my surprise, I found myself holding a blonde wig. I looked at it curiously while Mamma opened the large side door. My mouth fell open—there in front of us were a bunch of guns. Along the bottom of the closet, there were several boxes filled with wigs, makeup and many different styles of clothes. Mamma quickly closed the closet and went to tell Brian that she had a headache and wanted to go home. The next day, Brian confronted them and they argued for a while until we left. When we drove by the next day, they were already gone with their fully stocked bus. Many times, over the years, I have wondered who they really were, but I suppose I will never know.

The winter I turned ten, we got a motor home and Brian officially quit the mining business. He could no longer get permits, and there were way too many people protesting mining in Arizona for him to try to continue. With some of the profits he made from selling the mine to a larger corporation, he bought woodworking tools and extra sewing machines. That summer, we set up shop in the local trailer parks and began making things to sell. Mamma would sew Amish dolls while Samantha and I would sit for hours in the back of the motor home, stuffing doll parts with cedar sawdust. Sometimes, we would work for eight to ten hours straight, stuffing and sewing doll parts.

Mamma would sew the doll clothes for a while and then sit outside to sell them wherever we happened to be parked. These items sold pretty well, and due to this newfound success, Samantha and I became a very valuable source of income. We were never given lunch breaks and rarely stepped outside of the motor home. I was still plagued with headaches, and the constant smell of cedar sawdust made them worse. Also, the little school work we had been doing stopped. I had completed the second grade math book by this time and was attempting to start the third grade one, but because of my poor foundation, I was not learning much.

And so, the summers went, one exhausting day after the other. Mamma and Brian became our overseers while my sister and I did almost all of the work. They set time limits on how long it should take to do the dishes, sweep the floor, and make dinner and stuff doll parts. Brian’s favorite way of punishing us was to pull down our underwear, and then while we bent over, he would beat us so hard that we developed large blisters.

During the evenings and on Sundays, we would sometimes play checkers and other board games. Brian said he had played these as a kid and they seemed to make him happy. Sometimes, we would even have popcorn and Mamma would play too. Samantha and I would try to be happy, but these were the most confusing of times. These people kept us isolated from the world and beat us. Yet, they sometimes would try and pretend that we were all normal and that we could have fun together. Samantha and I loved to play games, and we would smile. Mamma and Brian would appear to be somewhat happy. Then, less than an hour later, they would find some reason to beat us without mercy.

The winter I turned eleven was a turning point for me. One evening, our motor home mysteriously caught fire while we were away. As a result, we were let out of the payment plans and Brian was able to collect insurance money.

That March, we headed back to Washington, where Brian and Mamma planned to buy a farm. Samantha and I once again hoped things would get better. We didn’t know we would live isolated on a mountain top for the next eight-and-a-half years.