In the beginning was the word.
John 1:1. Right. I know that now. But what about in the end? How can these words matter, if all I can do is burn or bury them?
Don’t know. Doing this anyway. For me and my BKs.
My hands are shaking. This is a mess. Too much to say and all I have is this one sad piece of paper.
But this is it. This is me now. Me with this crumply page from Our Lord’s Little Lambs, A Coloring Book, writing in the dark on this stinky futon, under this scratchy sheet, ugly stubby pencil poking holes with every other letter but I can’t help that, I can’t help how all this is. All I know is this has to come out. I will go crazy if this doesn’t come out.
Maybe even die.
Will die if I get caught with this. I don’t know but I think they’re almost done with me. The acting is getting hard.
Got to keep going. Oops, sorry for writing this right across the outline of the Lord Jesus’ haloed head but can’t waste an inch. This one single coloring book page is all I’ve got and thank you, brown crayon blob, I bet you are the reason I have it at all.
I don’t get trusted to wear a bra let alone talk to the little kids. But I do get trusted to tub-wash endless fucking laundry and go rake compost heaps. Sometimes I find stuff. Nothing to get me out of here, not me or any other BK, but still. I found this.
Yeah. Some poor kid picked the brown crayon. But here, brown is for dirt and Jesus is always peach. Rip-tear-smack, out in the compost it goes.
I look peach. My dad does not. Not that they know that here. Even if they’d watched for a while, first, they wouldn’t have seen him, Mom and Dad have been divorced four years. Four years plus the almost two I’ve been here. I don’t know the date anymore but I know it’s spring and I’m five months pregnant after two times it didn’t go so well. And. I know the date that I got snagged.
Thursday, July 19, 2018.
My name is ____________________________. I’m twenty now. I was riding my bike in a place where bad things don’t happen: ____________________________, on ____________________________ Road. My mom’s name is ____________________________, my dad is ____________________________ My number was ____________________________ and I am so sorry I don’t know anyone else’s by heart, my phone with my whole life in it got drowned in acid, I’m pretty sure.
I still don’t remember which ones got me.
At least two men and definitely one woman. But the rest is all messed up. I got slammed off my bike by one of those boxy delivery trucks, one that veered right into me at that stretch of cornfields between my grandma’s house and town. I remember people jumped out, they had a blanket and I thought they were going to help me, but they threw it over my head and stuffed it in my mouth and then they stabbed me. A needle, not a knife, but I didn’t know that then.
They used that needle a lot. All through the trip and here, too, at first. Wherever here is. I’m so sorry, don’t know that, either. I’m not outside much but all I’ve seen is miles of grass and far-off mountains and sometimes, some far-off cows.
Once, I saw a plane, way up high. But I flew twice with my dad, so I know: if anyone on that plane looked down, all they saw from that far up was nothing. Just squiggles and patches like a painted map.
I was mostly out of it in the back of that truck. I remember road noise, jounces, and water poured into my face. Maybe I was supposed to be drinking it. Oh, and someone’s bad breath and being told to rejoice, I was saved. Probably they said a lot more that I don’t remember, stuff like what got yelled at me day and night once I was here, or maybe like what I hear all the time in the open now that I’m all broken in.
Outbreed. Outvote. Outactivate.
Take back this country for Christ.
They really mean this. They aren’t kidding. There are way more of them than someone normal like I used to be could ever want to guess. And it wasn’t just the way things went in November 2016 and December 2017 that made this happen. They’ve been doing this for years, and for them, those were signs from the Lord. Proof of their righteous path.
I’ve learned that now. Just like I’ve learned that Jesus is always peach.
Back page now. Obvious, yeah, if you’re looking at this. No color here, just an outlined flock of lambs running into a pen, Very Happy Now That They Are Safe.
No color good. Can say more words.
One more thing from the back of that truck. The thing that saved me and I don’t know where it came from. Theater club, maybe. Creative writing class, maybe. Who knows. But wherever this thing came from, even half passed-out in the back of that truck I knew that to survive, I had to act. From that minute on, no matter what, no matter how hurt or scared, I had to be the best actress ever. A perfect actress. I had to be scared but also sometimes fight them a little, just enough so they didn’t suspect I was faking them. And I had to act perfectly beat down, every time I did get beat down.
Sometimes, acting perfectly beat down is less beat down than how beat down I am for real.
But I do it. I do it right. If I don’t I will never get out.
Here are the words I say. I wake up every day and tell myself, today, you have landed an amazing part. You’re soooo lucky to have this part, so many girls wanted this part, but none of them got it but you. You are getting to play the part of that famous girl who got kidnapped by the Take Back America-ers but unlike any other girl over all these years they’ve done this, this girl escaped. No matter what they did to her, no matter what she saw happen, she did everything right for a really long time. And when this girl did escape, it fired up all the right people, all over the world. Everyone got together, and all of those other BK girls she had to leave behind when she escaped, well, they got set free, too.
My BK girls.
I never say it out loud. Not even to the other BK girls here who really seem like friends to me. I just can’t know if they really are my friends. Thank you, Dad, for all the books, I know how these things go, it is way too easy to trust the wrong person.
I can’t trust my BK girls but I love them. I love them so much. They see me and I see them, even when we can’t cry even one single tear.
BK girls. BK is for Boko. As in, those Boko Haram guys who stole those girls.
Yeah, I know. Can’t happen here. This is America.
Right. Here I am.
Here is my word. I am telling you, it is happening here. It is happening to me.
I bet for the future movie, you want every sick detail. You want the rape-marriage parts and the brainwash parts and all the ways they hurt us while they’re telling us that we’re saved, and that the babies they take are the chosen warriors, and that Out There, everything is Godless. Sorry. Not enough paper. Not for all of that.
Hand shaking again. Sorry. Worse mess than before.
I was almost fourteen when those Boko Haram guys kidnapped those girls from their school and made them into slaves. It was horrible, they made those poor girls convert and marry them, and I remember thinking how I was the same age, but totally grateful I lived in America.
I remember how those kidnapped girls were all over the news. I also remember that even though the whole world was upset, those girls stayed missing, mostly. Missing or dead. The whole world being upset, didn’t change a thing for them.
No internet or cell phones here. None I could get to in a million years, anyway. But in this one single way I’m glad. Because I’m really, really scared that if I searched on those girls, I’d found out they’re still mostly missing or dead. Or worse, that those terrorist guys are all still doing what they do and most of the world has long since forgotten those girls, everyone busy with dealing with something else.
Or maybe just keeping their heads down. Hoping they won’t be next.
In this movie I’m starring in, playing the part of this kidnapped American girl, I’m going to make sure that in the end, every last girl is found. Here and over there. I’m going to make people want to do more than just be sad and move on, forgetting that me and my BK girls ever existed.
Those are my words for the end. The ones I say at night, before I go to sleep.
Here I am. Already at the bottom of this second side, down in the grass beneath the little lambs’ feet.
I’ll fold this sad piece of paper into a tiny strip. I’ll stuff that strip back through the hole in the hem of this awful nightgown, and I’ll pretend to wake up and ask to go pee. At the five-month mark, you can get away with that.
Are you reading this? If you are, you’ll know I played this part of mine perfectly—the girl who did not get scared of her words. She did not burn them or stuff them in the muck.
You will know that me and my BK girls existed. That all of this really did happen. Because here, in the beginning and in the end, these words are mine, and I will believe that you will hear them. I will believe you will never forget.
• EVIDENCE • Redacted • 2/10/21 •