On Sundays, we would go to a church in town. Brian would always warn us to not talk to anyone about our home life and only answer questions when asked. We were the quietest little girls in the church. I am still surprised that no one thought our withdrawn behavior was strange. Couldn’t they see our sad eyes and the angry looks that Brian shot at us? Or did they notice and just did not know what to do?
One summer day, about a year after we came to live at the mine, Mamma told me to undress and go outside and stand next to the five-gallon bucket to wait for my bath. She always stood us in that bucket and gave us our baths before we went into town. I did not want to undress and stand outside since Brian always came over and talked to me as he stared me up and down. Whenever I tried to turn away from his stares, he would get angry and tell me I was an ungrateful, selfish little girl. Although I was not a perfect child, I was certainly not selfish, and his saying so confused and saddened me.
On this particular day, I stood next to the bucket for a few minutes, trembling as Brian started inching his way over. When I could no longer stand his staring, I asked him if I could play in the sawdust pile until Mamma was ready for me. He just shrugged, so I ran over to the giant pile and covered myself with the sawdust.
A couple of minutes later, Mamma came out of the trailer yelling for me. I ran back to the five-gallon bucket and found that she was very angry because I had fine sawdust all over me. I tried to tell her that Brian had given me permission to play in the sawdust, but she grabbed me and started shaking me. She said I had the devil in me and that she was going to beat it out of me. I started screaming, half hoping someone would hear and save me, but of course, there was nobody to hear.
Brian came over and grabbed me. He put my upper torso between his legs and squeezed as hard as he could. I struggled for breath as his knees squeezed my five-year-old diaphragm. My mother began hitting me with a big leather belt. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I tried to break free. Brian squeezed harder and harder with his legs and Mamma said the pain was just the devil trying to come out. I screamed and screamed, but only my echo heard me. My mother laughed an evil laugh with every blow, and Brian goaded her into continuing. When I finally quit struggling, Brian let me go. I went limp and sank to the ground. I tried to get up, but I could not. I had a piercing pain in the left side of my rib cage, and every breath was torturous.
Mamma wiped me down roughly and dressed me. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I was too weak to scream anymore. After she had dressed me, Brian came over and placed me in the back of the pickup truck with the canopy on it. I lay in the back as the truck bounced across ruts in the road on the way into town.
My little sister tried to hug me. I think she sensed there was something very wrong with me. The pain was so great, I could not breathe. I put a hand on the upper left side of my rib cage. I was sure I had three broken ribs. I was in terrible pain, and the motion of the truck was making it even worse.
When we got into town, Brian parked at the far end of a shopping area, like he always did. He got out and came to the back of the truck to tell us not to make a sound. Then he and Mamma walked off into the store. They usually came back hours later with groceries or tools or clothes. We sometimes had a couple of old dolls to play with, but we did not have many toys because they would make noise and someone might hear us. They would sometimes come out of wherever they were to take us to the restroom. I can still remember how refreshing it was to get out of the back of the truck and walk around, seeing other people and breathing the fresh air.
Staying in the truck, however, was better than the times we had to go with them. On the rare occasions that we got to come out, Brian would make us carry a belt so that other people could see what bad children we were.
In the truck, I would get up on my knees and stare out through the cracks in the canopy. I would see children walking by with their parents—little girls in pretty dresses, mothers laughing and hugging them. For a short while, I would imagine that I was them. But I was not; I was only a small girl with bright green eyes and dirty blonde hair. I was peeking out at the world from the back of a pickup truck. People passed by within a few feet of Samantha and me, yet they never knew we were there. We were two girls that did not exist—two sad, frightened little girls at the mercy of two merciless individuals.
That summer slowly turned into winter. My ribs never healed quite right. It felt like they bunched together and became a small knot, and even to this day, when I am running, I still feel pain in that knot. As time progressed, Brian and Mamma became more and more irritated. It was 1988, and the gold mining industry was suddenly experiencing an upsurge of activists protesting in front of the mines and in the surrounding towns.
These people were against the use of dynamite because of how it disturbed the animal habitats. Due to this, Brian was finding it harder and harder to get mining permits from the state. His frustration was turned back on my sister and me in a big way. Sometimes, we were left alone in the trailer and I would have to scrounge up something for us to eat from the ingredients in the cupboard.
The following spring, Brian was unable to get any permits and lost the mine. Shortly afterward, we packed our things, and Brian set fire to the tools and the mine shaft so the man that took over would have great difficulties. Brian said we were moving to Washington State to stay with his dad who had a small shop there. Samantha and I were excited. We felt we were beginning a new and perhaps better life. We would no longer be isolated. Brian bought a new trailer that was a little bigger, and we packed everything inside.
On the day before we were to leave, we came back to the trailer and found it had been broken into. Brian became angry, grabbed his pistol out of the truck and ran up into the thick manzanita brush. He came back with a teenage boy. He had the gun pressed to the kid’s head. Brian yelled at the boy to tell him where our stuff was or, he said, he would kill him. I remember standing in front of them, frozen, unable to move, and thinking that if he shot and missed, I was in the direct line of fire. The teenager was screaming, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Your stuff is up in the brush.”
Brian laughed and said, “I should just shoot you anyway.”
But he finally let the boy go and chased after him, firing the gun in the air. I will never forget that day. It is etched into my mind forever. I was so scared; Brian seemed so cold and dangerous.
We left a few hours later and hit the road for Washington. Brian seemed to be in a lighter mood as we traveled, and he told us stories of growing up in the Evergreen State. It took us about three days to reach Seattle. Sometimes, Samantha and I got to sit in the cab rather than the canopy covered truck bed. I would stick my head out the window and feel the wind whip through my hair as I smelled the new scent of the ocean. My sister and I pointed out exciting new sights to each other, although we were careful not to make a sound.
As we traveled during the day and camped by night, things seemed nicer. Mamma and Brian were preoccupied and did not feel the need to beat us so much. For those few days, I told myself that things might not be so bad and that everything was going to get better. Little did I know that a dark cloud was looming in front of me, the extent of which I could not comprehend as a child. It was a dark and ominous cloud that threatened to engulf me, not even leaving a trace.
The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and
the feeling of being unloved.
—Mother Teresa
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