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