At least I’m not dealing with kids. Because that happens too. Held captive long enough, pregnancy, babies, can ensue. Jacob, however, was adamant on that subject. Once a month, he forced me to swallow some god-awful homemade brew he swore would prevent pregnancy. It tasted like turpentine and led to immediate, excruciating stomach cramps. The sexual assault nurse who performed my initial exam had been curious about the potion. Though, in her professional opinion, it was my extreme emaciation and total lack of body fat that probably truly did the job. Frankly, I didn’t even have a period through most of my captivity; I was that thin.
Now, I watch my mother straighten in front of the stove, muffin tin clutched in an oven-mitten hand. She turns, spots me, and immediately stills. Her gaze takes in the oversize sweats that obviously aren’t mine, then the garbage smeared across my cheek, my hair.
She doesn’t speak. I watch her chest fill, a conscious inhale. Then the slow exhale as no doubt she counts to ten. Wondering yet again how to survive a daughter like me.
At her throat is a necklace with a single silver charm. A dainty but perfectly rendered fox.
She bought that after I went missing. When the FBI prepped her for the first press conference by dismissing her usual attire of wide-legged yoga pants and flowing handwoven wraps such as the kind favored by Afghan tribal elders. No more bohemian, organic potato farmer from Maine. Her goal was to look like Mom, with a capital M. An instantly recognizable and relatable maternal figure who would appeal to my captor’s kinder sentiments, assuming he had any.
They stuck her in jeans and a button-up white shirt. Probably the plainest outfit she’d ever worn in her life, not to mention the real shoes versus her usual Birkenstocks.
I didn’t see that first press conference. Or the second. I think I caught the third, when things were truly heating up. Even then, spying her, my mom, on the TV, standing in front of the microphone, flanked by suited FBI agents, wearing a light blue button-up shirt, more jeans . . .
My mom, but not my mom. A surreal moment in a life that had already taken a completely, horrifically surreal turn. I would’ve shut the TV off, wasted my rare privilege, rather than see this mom-but-not-my-mom. Except then I spotted the fox charm. Nestled in the hollow of her throat.
I never heard her words that day. But I knelt on the floor of that cheap hotel room and placed my finger against the charm around her neck, my finger so large, her form so diminutive on the small TV, that the tip of my index finger obliterated most of her head.
I might have cried. I don’t really remember. I’d already been gone months by that point. I don’t know if I had any tears left.
But I tried to touch her, this mom-but-not-my-mom. And for one moment, I was a child again, running wild on the farm, throwing golf balls for the fox kits and laughing as they batted them across the tall grass.
Now, she sets down the muffin tin on top of the stove. Her hands are shaking slightly.
“Are you hungry?” she asks, her voice almost normal. Her farm is three and a half hours north of Boston. Assuming Samuel called her the minute after I contacted him, she got into her truck immediately and has been driving since the crack of dawn.
“I should shower,” I hear myself say.
“Of course. Take your time.”
There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. I pad away, still holding the waistband of the sweats. Four whacks of the old plumbing later, the water turns steaming hot. I shed the baggy sweats. I step into the hard spray. And I let the water scald me.
For a moment, I can almost smell it again. Freshly roasted human skin. Like a pork barbecue.
Then the moment passes, and I close my eyes. The void fills me, and I welcome its emptiness.
To always be alone in a crowded room.
The only time I ever feel safe anymore.
*
AFTER MY ABDUCTION, when I returned to the land of the living, one of Samuel’s first tasks was to develop my postcaptivity support plan. Basically, he conducted an assessment of my coping skills, while also working with the victim specialists who’d assisted my family to understand the level of support network already in place.
While Samuel is an expert in post-traumatic stress, he informed me that he’s not a fan of the term. In his opinion, it’s often applied too readily and as a one-size-fits-all model. He’s worked with dozens and dozens of survivors over the years, and while all of us experienced trauma, only a few genuinely qualify as suffering from PTSD. In fact, he warned my mother explicitly about making such an assumption, or even such excuses on my behalf.
Survivors make it because they learn to adapt. Adaptation is coping. Coping is strength.
My mother, my brother, myself should not expect me to be weak now, nor actively foster dependency. Instead, we should all focus on reinforcing my natural resilience, which got me through the ordeal in the first place.
As for myself, the biggest mistake survivors can make, according to Samuel, is second-guessing their actions now that they’re safe. So, no wondering why I went to the bar in the first place that night. Or why I didn’t struggle harder. Or escape the first time Jacob left the cab of his truck unlocked. No matter that Jacob had pulled over his rig in the middle of nowhere and he was standing right there, taking a leak in a drainage ditch.
The past is the past. It doesn’t matter what mistakes I might or might not have made. What matters is that I survived.
Samuel was right about the pitfalls of second-guessing. I don’t suffer nightmares about Jacob as much as I suffer terrible anxiety over the might-have-beens, should-have-dones. My first enrollment in a self-defense course was an attempt to help mediate those nerves, make me feel more comfortable. Ironically enough, my mother supported that step, even took that first class with me. Samuel had approved as well. Reinforcing a feeling of personal strength, excellent.
It was right about the fourth or fifth class, and my growing interest in marksmanship, that my mother became concerned. I was living back home those days, and I overheard her discussing it with Samuel during one of his checkins trying to assess how either of us, both of us, were doing.
Samuel is not a therapist, and certainly not my therapist. He had, however, recommended counseling for me, or therapeutic support, as he liked to call it. I’d resisted all attempts, though. Private sessions would by definition involve telling my story, and I was sticking to my guns: I’d told my story once, as promised. Never again.
Ironically enough, it was my mother who took Samuel’s advice. I moved on to tactical driving classes, while she started meeting with the local pastor once a week.
Another one of those realizations that all survivors have to make: My abduction hadn’t just victimized me but my entire family too. My mother, who, after the third postcard, pretty much gave up on the farm and turned her attention full-time to reaching out to a depraved kidnapper in the desperate hope of seeing her daughter again. My brother, who dropped out of college, first to answer endless police questions and later because, in his own words, how could he possibly concentrate knowing I was out there, somewhere, needing him?
Major crimes are like cancer. They take over, demanding an entire family’s full resources. My brother became a social media expert, building a Facebook page, running Twitter feeds. And, frankly, trying to manage the press who camped out in the yard for weeks at a time, especially after Jacob mailed out a new postcard, offering fresh bait.