All of these memories are a part of me now, the DNA inside me. Indeed, these are the things that have moved and shaped me, sometimes twisting, sometimes wrenching me into the person I am today.
Sometime long before I was taken, I had been told that when someone dies, the first thing you forget is the sound of their voice. This thought terrified me. What if I could no longer remember my mother’s voice, a sound I had heard every day of my life! I started to think of her, and other members of my family and their voices. I started to think of all the things my mom used to tell me every day: Have a good day at school. I love you. Have a good night. I would have given anything to hear her at that moment.
Every morning she used to sing at the top of her lungs, “Oh what a beautiful morning…”
I used to hate it.
What would I have given to hear her voice again!
Over the first few weeks of captivity, I forced myself to think of things like that. I remember sitting in the heat of the summer, the sun baking on my back, forcing myself to think of my mom’s voice, her laugh. How beautiful she looked in her black skirt and gold top. The shape and the color of her eyes.
But there were other feelings too. And though it might be hard to understand, a few of them were good, for they show the things you cling to when everything is gone.
I remember the pure rush of gratitude for any time that I could sleep. The realization that I would live another day! Relief when the sun went down and the heat gave way to the cool of the night. Gratefulness for food or water. A few minutes when I might be left alone. The ability to slip into a state of pure survival, a state of blankness, a quiet and painless place where I could shut the world down.
Looking back, I realized that at one point, early on the morning of the first day, something had changed inside me. After I had been raped and brutalized, there was something new inside my soul. There was a burning now inside me, a fierce determination that no matter what I had to do, I was going to live!
This determination was the only thing that gave me any hope—the realization that as long as I could survive one more day or one more hour, I might find a way to get back home.
I also discovered something that is harder to imagine, and much more difficult to explain.
Sometime during the first couple of days, I realized that I wasn’t alone. There were others there beside me, unseen but not unfelt. Sometimes I could picture them beside me, reaching for my hand.
And that is one of the reasons I am still alive.
*
When I think back on those dark days of my capture, I realize my story didn’t start on the night that David Brian Mitchell slipped into my bedroom and held a knife at my throat. In an odd way, my story began a few days before. Sunday afternoon. In my home. Just a few days before my world was torn apart.
Over time, I have gained an enormous appreciation for what I experienced on that Sunday. It has helped me to keep perspective. It helped to give me hope. And it helped me understand a little better why things might have happened the way they did.
2.
Sunday School
Two days before I was taken, I was sitting in my Sunday school class, surrounded by a group of other fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds. There were maybe seven or eight of us, a mix of boys and girls. Some of the kids were listening, but not everyone, for we were teenagers, you know. Looking around me, I was comfortable, for these kids were my friends. I had grown up with them, gone to school with them, eaten snacks at their houses, giggled with them on the playground. We knew one another well.
Though there was some horseplay among the class, for the most part I was quiet. I don’t know if I was shy, but I guess I was. I just didn’t feel a need to stand out. It surprises some people when I tell them that. Most of them picture me as an outgoing teenager. A cheerleader type, I think. But I wasn’t. I was kind of quiet. A very obedient child. A 4.0 student. I played the harp, for heaven’s sake! How un-cheerleader is that!
Some people say I’m pretty. Blond hair. Blue eyes. But I promise, I’ve never thought of myself that way. As a fourteen-year-old girl sitting in my Sunday school class, I certainly didn’t think of myself as beautiful. Honestly, I don’t think I ever thought about it at all. Some of the girls I knew were boy-crazy, but I never thought about those kinds of things. I didn’t wear makeup. I had never had a boyfriend. The thought had never even crossed my mind. My favorite things were talking to my mom and jumping on the trampoline with my best friend, Elizabeth Calder. We just liked to have fun together. But our idea of fun wasn’t chasing boys, or prank calling other kids in our class. In almost every way, I was still a little girl.
And one thing that I can say for certain is that I didn’t understand the world.