I’m not who he thinks I am, but no matter how hard I cry, how fiercely or angrily I protest, he doesn’t listen to me. Doesn’t believe me.
“Jennifer,” he says, “you know how angry I get when you’re like this.”
“My name isn’t Jennifer.” It doesn’t matter if I scream it at him, if I curse and swear, if I break down into tears and beg him to believe me.
“Come on, Jennifer,” he says. “Stop pretending like you don’t know your own dad and come here.”
I hate him. I hate him. My loathing is the only source of willpower it takes to stay alive down here, trapped in this basement. If I were any weaker, I know I would have died by now.
My survival depends on one thing and one thing only. The hope that one day he’ll forget to bind me up the right way. That I’ll find some kind of weapon in this horrid cell of his.
And then I’ll kill him, screaming in his face as his breath deserts him for the very last time, “My name isn’t Jennifer!”
“Mom?”
I jerk myself to attention. “What?”
It’s Annie, looking at me with concern in her eyes. Even Andrew has stopped ignoring me in order to gawk a little. Have I done it again? Did I blip out?
I can’t let things like this keep happening. Not when the kids are around.
“Mom?”
“What?” I ask, doing my best to shake off this fear, this pulse-quickening panic.
“You stopped reading.” Annie points to the book. I don’t even remember pulling this one out of Andrew’s backpack. The last thing I remember was Dr. Seuss and then …
And then …
It must have been Henry. He’s been dead these past ten years, and yet he still lives on in my head.
If I had known it would turn out like this …
No. I can’t focus on him. Have to keep reading to the kids. I shouldn’t have picked such a familiar book. Too easy for my brain to turn off. To stop paying attention to what’s going on right now.
Henry.
Almost nobody survives two full years of captivity. I’m an anomaly, a strange statistic. My story gives hope to parents whose children disappeared decades ago.
If that little Reynolds girl can come back from her ordeal, there’s hope for my baby too.
What they don’t know, what the news reporters and the family liaisons and the sensationalized docudramas don’t tell you is that survival in cases like this can be seen as God’s cruelest curse. How many times did I beg Henry to simply kill me? To get it done and over with quickly. How many times did I taunt him, trying my hardest to provoke him to enough rage that he’d finally end it all?
Except he never did. I was too important to him. Too much like his long-lost daughter. Jennifer. The dead child I was meant to replace.
After my escape, I went through a phase where I hated her. Hated Jennifer. She would have been twice my age, but in her father’s sick mind she was still the age she was when she was murdered.
Nobody back then was convicted of her death.
And yet I’m the one who paid for it.
Henry and I both paid for it.
“Mom, you read that page already.” Andrew’s voice is whiny, and I’m too distracted by these daydreams to feel excited about the fact that he’s voluntarily called me Mom without having to be reminded. It should be good news. A great step forward in our quest for familial unity.
And yet all I can think about is that we haven’t even left the runway yet. A few stray passengers are still boarding, and the kids and I have hours of travel ahead of us. Russel has the easy job. He’ll fall asleep with his Bible while the two older girls read quietly in their seats. And here I am with a squirrely little preschooler who can’t go two minutes without asking me a dozen questions and her five-year-old brother who wants nothing more than to make my life miserable enough that I abandon his father and leave him alone to miss his mom in uninterrupted solitude.
I feel sorry for Andrew. I really do. My parents split up shortly after I escaped Henry’s basement. Dad didn’t remarry until a few years ago, and even now it’s strange to picture him with someone else.
I need to stop thinking about my past. Need to focus on what those books about trauma say. I survived because I’m tough. I’m a fighter. I’m a warrior. I did what I had to do to survive, and nobody has the power to victimize me ever again.
I think I believe it. I want to believe it.
But sometimes I still wonder.
I think Russel would understand if I told him the first part. If I told him that the reason I don’t talk about my high school years is because half of them were spent chained in a crazy man’s basement, and after that I never resumed my public education. I could tell him about how Henry dressed me up in his daughter Jennifer’s clothes, fashions that hadn’t been in style in nearly two decades. Nobody would understand unless they’ve lived through that kind of torment, and like I said before, I’m the statistical anomaly.
My husband wouldn’t understand, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t care. He would listen with those kind, compassionate eyes. It’s his empathy that makes him such a good pastor. He’s the only reason a church as stuck in its ways and traditional as ours can still flourish and prosper. Gospel Kingdom would only work if the members absolutely love and respect their leader. Which they do.
And with good reason.
Russel would try to empathize with the trauma I’ve gone through. He’s as patient as a saint with me already, and that’s without knowing anything I’ve endured.
I should tell him. I would tell him. Except that would lead to other questions. Like how I got myself out of Henry’s basement. How I survived when so many others like me didn’t.
And then he’d realize I’ve lied to him about other things, too. Like how excited I am to start a family with him. He still thinks I’m going to be able to bear him a quiver full of children. How long will I be able to pretend like this before he grows suspicious?
I should never have misled my husband. I should never have agreed to marry him so quickly. It all happened so fast I can hardly remember what life was like before we met. It was as if I woke up single, and in twelve hours I was fumbling around through the world’s most painfully awkward wedding night. Now there are kids calling me Mom, kids I’m responsible to clothe and feed and educate. What do I know about homeschooling? Russel’s showed me the curriculum Sarah used with the older kids, but I’m serious that you need an advanced degree just to understand the teacher’s manual.
It’s a good thing I have God on my side now. I’m not convinced the Almighty has forgiven me for lying to my husband, but I hope that he won’t take it out on the children. It is not their fault. And Russel’s devoted his life to preaching to others. He does it so well too. Just look how he ended up converting me.
I’ve risen to greater challenges than this. Heaven knows that’s true even if my husband doesn’t. The way I figure, if God wants to develop my character by throwing me into a scenario where I’ve adopted four kids who aren’t my own and agreed to homeschool them and raise them up in a tech-free, sugar-free, wordly-influence-free environment, well, it won’t be the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through.
Not by a longshot.
I survived two years in Henry’s basement.
I survived two years calling him Daddy, pretending to be his murdered daughter, wearing clothes that were two decades too old.
I survived the beatings, the assaults, all of it.
More than that. I escaped.
I escaped because I’m tough. I’m a fighter. I’m a warrior. I did what I had to do to survive, and nobody has the power to victimize me again.
I repeat the words to myself. If I can handle myself with a monster like Henry, I’m not going to let a somewhat uppity church and a houseful of kids who aren’t sure how they feel about me ruin my chances at happiness.
When I met Russel, I was drawn to his compassion, to his conviction, to the safety and security I felt in his presence. But that’s not why I married him. I married him because I love him. And if it’s going to take work to make this happily-ever-after thing work, if it means sitting on this airplane for hours with his kids and doing my best to entertain them and keep them quiet and calm so their father can sleep, I can deal with that.
God knows I’ve fought my way out of worse.