Katie Beers (24 page)

News of Sal’s conviction and John’s plea never came up again in my presence. My foster parents never let me see a newspaper or watch television coverage of the cases. They wanted me to get on with living a normal childhood and not think about anything from my past. The memories were finally allowed to retreat and I was allowed to reinvent myself.

It is because of them, I am certain, that I am the woman that I am today. Had they not become my parents, I would have been bounced around from foster home to foster home. At the time of my abduction, Barbara and Tedd were actually getting ready to take a foster infant into their home. They called Child Protective Services and put in a revised request. When Katie Beers is found and if she is going to enter the system, could she be placed in their home? A few days later, I was rescued and assigned to their Springs home, where there was one other adopted foster child, Jason. They chose me!

I wasn’t the easiest foster child for them. I lied, a lot, from day one. I lied about the smallest things—for no reason. I don’t know why I lied —perhaps it was a coping mechanism. I had learned well to lie to Linda about a lot of things to keep her from beating me. Barbara and Tedd never once gave me a reason to lie to them. I did it because it was a hard habit to break. I remember one time, I ate toast as a snack, and Aunt
Barbara asked me if I had eaten all of it. I confidently told her that I had. She asked me again, this time with a hint of disbelief, if I had eaten all of it, and once again I assured her that I had. But she was an experienced mother and was wise to me. The leftover crust was sitting on the top of the garbage. Why I lied about this petty offense, I don’t know—the only thing that I can come up with is that Linda would always yell at me for throwing away food. Instead, under the foster family’s roof, I was punished, not for the failure to finish my food, but for the failure to tell the truth. One week grounding from friends’ visits and phone use for smaller infractions. One month grounding for lying about where I was. The message in the home was clear. For the first time in my life, there were principles and values.

At first, the consequences of breaking their moral code had little effect on me. I would withhold the truth, without thinking. To me, not telling the whole story was not a lie. My friends and I would go to the movies on weekends. Aunt Barbara would ask me who I was going to be with, so I would list a few friends, omitting the fact that boys were in the group, promising to call home when the movie was over. But instead of calling right away, I would wait a little while so that I could hang out in town. I didn’t realize that Aunt Barbara could call the theatre and find out what time the movie was over. The lies flowed freely. It was the only thing Linda had taught me to do well.

I was thrown into a house that had many rules. I didn’t really know what rules were. If Linda hadn’t liked something that I had done, she would simply beat me, sometimes with a smack in the face with her hand, other times with the paddle part of a brush, or she would have me bend over her knee so she could spank me. I would literally have to brace myself on her lap for her to hit me because part of one leg was amputated. And the beatings were based on rules even she couldn’t explain. Marilyn didn’t subject me and John to any rules. Only Sal made rules, and everyone else lived in fear of how he would apply them.

In my new home, there was barely a voice raised in anger. There was a rotating schedule, and I was expected to chip in with small chores. One child had to take the laundry hamper downstairs when it got full, and another child had to clean the bathroom once a week. We also had to set the table every night for dinner. Uncle Tedd gave us each an allowance, three dollars per week, if we did all of our chores. As I got older, I also
had to clean my bedroom, and help with vacuuming and dusting. I enjoyed cleaning my room. With Rebecca in college and returning home only during school breaks and the summer, for the first time in my life, I had a room I could call my own. Uncle Tedd and Aunt Barbara bought me a new bunk bed, new soft sheets and a new cozy blanket. They were precious to me for one reason; they were bought with me alone in mind. They were mine.

It was indeed a whole new world. I was reminded of the Disney movie theme song. After I began my new life, everyone told me that they were under the impression, based on news reports, that the lyrics to the song
A Whole New Word
had deep meaning to me. Truth be told, I had no attachment to that song at all. It was another one of Linda’s self-serving fabrications.

Family came first in my new home, and Uncle Tedd and Aunt Barbara always put the needs of their children ahead of their own. They taught me what it was like to be in a functional family. An involved dad, a mom who was there to put us on the bus every morning, brothers and sisters who would play with us and help us with our homework, and of course, what perfect family doesn’t have a dog or two?

They reconditioned my thinking and taught me that you have to work hard for the things that you want. In junior high, I so badly wanted to fit in with the popular kids. I tried out for the volleyball team, but with my spindly legs and lack of training, I couldn’t make the cut. So instead, for three years straight, I took the decidedly unglamorous job of equipment manager. Finally, in tenth grade, determination paid off. I not only made the squad, I was named team captain. It gave me confidence to try other sports. I played tennis for several years, and I was a cheerleader. Uncle Tedd and Aunt Barbara taught me that hard work, dedication and practice had satisfying pay offs. Growing up, my coping skills revolved around having to lie while enduring grave injustice. My new family gave me loving support and the confidence to achieve what I wanted through dedication and hard work, concepts that had been completely foreign to me.

Most of all, they were there for me. For a game, a play, a teacher’s conference, they were always there. Uncle Tedd, newly retired, made Jay and me a hot breakfast every morning. There would always be French toast or eggs, a neatly packed lunch and his company at the breakfast
table. There wasn’t much said. There didn’t have to be many words. The message was evident. They gave of their time freely and were involved in my everyday life. This was the greatest gift.

But as my new family steered me down a new path, seeing Marilyn and Grandma Helen was a constant return to the dead-end childhood I escaped. I visited with Marilyn for many years. I liked going on visits at first. Like the therapy sessions, it was three times a week, then two, then once. There were certain things that Marilyn and I were not allowed to talk about during our visits. My foster family was one of those off-limits topics, other than general information. What happened to me during the kidnapping was also off-limits. At first, I would tell anyone that would listen to me that I wanted to live with Marilyn again. The response was always that the court was going to do what was “best for me.”

The visits with Marilyn, though, continued to take me back to a place I was beginning to see more objectively. Now that I was enrolled in school and attending every day, I wondered why I hadn’t attended before that. I used to beg Linda to let me go to school, but she needed help at the house —either doing laundry, someone to “fetch” her food, clean up after her and do all of her running around. I didn’t go to school a good part of my third grade year because we had moved to Bay Shore, and Linda couldn’t legally enroll me in school. Marilyn had to. But Marilyn never enrolled me either because she wanted me to come live with her in Mastic Beach. She thought that by not enrolling me in school, the authorities would get involved and take me away from Linda. They never did. Now, attending school regularly for the first time, I realized that school was not optional. I was beginning to see that Marilyn’s solution was short sighted and kept me in harm’s way.

Perhaps there was a turning point when my memories began to be paired with more mature understanding. I slowly began to see Marilyn in a different light.

Not surprisingly, while Marilyn was busy going to court trying to keep custody of me, she missed a lot of our scheduled visits. She would only make it to about one out of five visits. I was seeing her less and less and it was sad for me because I looked forward to seeing her and my Grandma Helen. My caseworker, Ginny, was creative. When Marilyn would miss a visit, Ginny and I would do something special —it was usually playing
a game of “let’s get lost” which consisted of us driving around aimlessly with me telling Ginny where to turn. Missed visits took a real emotional toll on me. When Marilyn would miss a visit, my heart would sink and I would sadly say to myself, “Not again.”

There were also nightmares, stomach aches, heart palpitations and anxiety. I would get this feeling in my chest like someone was tying a rope around my heart, and every time I inhaled, the rope would tighten and I couldn’t take a deep breath—the pain was excruciating. I often yelled in my sleep, furiously. I still have dreams about being abducted or being sexually violated. To this day, every now and again, I will have a dream that either I am in the bunker or being held against my will. The dreams are vivid—I am ten years old, in the little coffin-box where Big John held me, chained by my neck—but in my dreams, I am not smart enough to find the key to the padlock—so I am chained twenty-three hours out of the day, laying in my own filth, not able to move. Another dream that I have is that while I was kidnapped, something happens to Big John— either he is arrested, because I was presumed dead and he was the only suspect, or he dies, or moves—and the dungeon becomes my grave. I sometimes dream of the abuse that I endured by Sal —but this time I am an adult, and he is still violating me because I don’t have the mental capacity to get away. The dreams don’t scare me anymore. They are not real. They are my memories struggling to emerge.

Very gradually, visits with Marilyn lost their appeal. Playroom visits at the Social Services Office in Riverhead or Ronkonkoma became supervised outings to the mall, the outlets or out to dinner. When Marilyn, Grandma Helen and John moved to a new house in Patchogue, I was able to have home visits there. We would do homework, bake, make dinner and watch a movie, for three hours twice a week. But as I got older, the visits were even further reduced to once every other week and were usually on Saturdays in East Hampton because I just didn’t have time to carve out of my high school schedule. My new reality was being involved in school sports teams and being on the stage crew and I had neither the time nor the desire to visit with Marilyn anymore.

By the time I was thirteen years old, I understood that I would never go back to living with Marilyn. It was a sad realization, not because I wasn’t happy in my foster home, but because my entire life I only wanted
to live with Marilyn. It was a deep longing for anyone to love me. And now, even if Marilyn had the means to “take me away,” she no longer had the legal ability.

I also came to understand why Marilyn did not rescue me from Sal and Linda when I was younger. You didn’t mess with Sal because he would follow through with his threats—and Marilyn knew this. I think that if Marilyn had been aware of the physical, emotional, mental or sexual abuse, she would have gotten me out of the situation quickly, but she was blind to it. I didn’t tell her because I was ashamed of it all and I didn’t want to worry her. Again, I was the adult.

I was getting ready for high school graduation when Aunt Barbara mentioned that she felt that it was important for her to finally meet Marilyn. She didn’t want it to be awkward at the actual ceremony if that was to be the first time that they actually met. Mary arranged for them to be introduced at her office. It was a civil but surreal meeting. Marilyn thanked Barbara for taking such good care of me. Tedd didn’t meet Marilyn until just before graduation. He wasn’t as sold on the idea of one big happy family. It was awkward for everyone, but it was something that Mary agreed should happen. For me, it was a freeing moment. The hand-off was complete. I was liberated from my sad past and a longing for something that would never be. From that day forward, “Uncle Tedd and Aunt Barbara” would be my “Mom and Dad.”

Whether revelations about Marilyn’s failures as a mother came out of my years of therapy or from finally living in a functional, happy family, I do not know. What I do know, is that I would never be able to leave my child with a virtual stranger like Marilyn did to me.

When I turned eighteen, I got to choose when and if to see Marilyn. I now had a steady boyfriend, my own car, and was getting ready for college. Since then, I have seen Marilyn, at most, once a year.

I never saw Linda again. At one point, when I was thirteen years old, someone from the Social Services office phoned and told me Ann Butler requested a visit with me. Did I want to see Linda and/or Ann? I told them that I had no desire to see either of them. Linda didn’t protect me from Sal—in fact, she defended Sal saying he would never abuse a child. She stood by her husband and denied being told about the abuse before Sal was arrested. And Ann, she was just the gateway to Linda. I was old
enough to know that Linda needed to stay out of my life.

On high school graduation day, an elderly woman showed up with a younger woman and a small child. She followed me inside. I was pretty sure I had never seen this woman before in my life. I actually thought that it was a news reporter, so I turned around to get a better look.

“Do you recognize me?” the old woman asked. “It’s me, Mom.”

I looked at her long and hard and thought, “Who the heck is this woman?” And then suddenly, a light bulb went off. It was Ann Butler.

“Get the fuck away from me. I never want to see you again,” I snapped.

I walked away but she followed me. So I got into my best friend Caitlin’s car and had her just drive me around for a good long time until I was certain she would be gone. I had no desire to see her and she knew it. Ann had always treated me well; I liked going to her house because she was like a grandmother to me, always spoiling me. I would go to Bingo with Ann, or to the flea market—she treated me like I was her granddaughter. I had no ill feelings toward Ann, but did not, on my graduation day, want a trip down an agonizing memory lane. And I didn’t want Ann to know what type of car I drove, or worse, to get my license plate number. I also didn’t want her to know where I lived.