Tears of the Silenced Read online

  Even as we got older, Samantha and I were still plagued by the no-talking rule and, even though this rule had been in place for years, we would sometimes forget to raise our hands for permission to speak or we would get caught talking to each other and be severely punished for it.

  When Brian and Mamma would leave us alone in the trailer, Brian would place a tape recorder next to us and tell us—pushing the record button and letting it run—that if we so much as moved, he would know it and we would be in trouble. As a result, Samantha and I developed other ways to communicate with each other; we had our own sign language, and we would sniffle and click between our teeth. One sniffle meant Brian was coming; two meant they were both coming; and three rapid ones meant they were in a bad mood, so look out.

  It was a sad existence made even worse by the sexual abuse I was suffering. Most days, when Brian came home from work, I had to shine his shoes and then massage his feet or give him body massages. My small hands would tremble. I hated having to touch him, and as I massaged him, I would try and dodge his fondling hands. Most of the time, I was too numb to cry; staying numb was the only way I could survive.

  The summer I was nine, we officially started to dress in real Amish clothes. Upon writing letters to several communities, Brian was informed that since he and Mamma were divorced, they would never be allowed to fully join any Amish community. However, the Amish welcomed correspondence with people who wished to live a Plain lifestyle, and he was told he could get guidance from a bishop in Pennsylvania. The Bishop wrote Brian and told him he would not mentor him until we began conforming to the full Amish dress code. He sent Brian the name of an Amish company that made things for “Plain people.” Brian happily ordered dresses, head coverings, aprons, shirts and broad fall trousers.

  When the clothes arrived, my sister and I stared with dismay at the plain blue dresses and the uncomfortable-looking aprons and head coverings, but it did not take long before we got used to the uniform. Brian constantly admonished us on how evil and prideful it was to have any form of print on our clothes. Mamma started taking sewing lessons again and was learning to make dresses and other items of clothing. Slowly, but surely, Mamma and Brian were building an unbreakable barrier between us and the outsiders, a barrier few people would be willing to cross in order to save Samantha and me. I am sure there were people who had some idea how badly we were being treated, but everyone looked the other way, all in the name of religious freedom.

  I learned to make bread, cook and clean the kitchen. My sister helped while Mamma oversaw us, beating us with the belt whenever we dropped something or made a mistake. A lot of times, Mamma was worse than Brian. She would laugh fiendishly as she lashed the belt across our small frames. Sadly, the only times she gave us hugs or showed any affection at all was when other people were around.

  That fall when we were living in Prescott, Arizona, we saw some people dressed like us. I remember being surprised because this was a rare occurrence. Brian immediately went over to talk to the man of the family, who seemed just as surprised to see us as we were to see him. There was the father, whose name was Gary, the mother, and their two daughters, who appeared to be in their early twenties. Brian found out that they, like us, had recently converted to the “Plain” lifestyle. The women said they would teach Mamma how to sew plain clothing, and they invited us to go to dinner at their house that evening. At their place, we saw an old school bus stuffed full of all kinds of food and clothing parked in their front yard. When Brian asked what it was for, Gary informed him that they were hiding out because the government was after them. He did not mind sharing this with Brian; he knew Brian was also against the government.

  I liked the daughters. They were very nice to Samantha and me. I especially liked the fact that Mamma did not beat me when we were at their house. I always felt drowsy when there because I found myself relaxing. Mamma and I learned to sew from the girls and soon we were making our own plain clothing.

  Trouble began to brew amongst the adults only a few weeks after they met. Brian and Gary both wanted to be the leader of the group. Gary thought Brian should pay one-tenth of his income to him. He also thought Brian should try to recruit new members. Meanwhile, Brian thought he should be the leader since he was older. Since they could not work things out, we split company.

  One day before we parted ways, Mamma and I went to get some fabric from one of their bedrooms. As we entered, we noticed that one of the closet doors was open. I saw some hair sticking out from under the door and pulled on it. To my surprise, I found myself holding a blonde wig. I looked at it curiously while Mamma opened the large side door. My mouth fell open—there in front of us were a bunch of guns. Along the bottom of the closet, there were several boxes filled with wigs, makeup and many different styles of clothes. Mamma quickly closed the closet and went to tell Brian that she had a headache and wanted to go home. The next day, Brian confronted them and they argued for a while until we left. When we drove by the next day, they were already gone with their fully stocked bus. Many times, over the years, I have wondered who they really were, but I suppose I will never know.

  The winter I turned ten, we got a motor home and Brian officially quit the mining business. He could no longer get permits, and there were way too many people protesting mining in Arizona for him to try to continue. With some of the profits he made from selling the mine to a larger corporation, he bought woodworking tools and extra sewing machines. That summer, we set up shop in the local trailer parks and began making things to sell. Mamma would sew Amish dolls while Samantha, and I would sit for hours in the back of the motor home, stuffing doll parts with cedar sawdust. Sometimes, we would work for eight to ten hours straight, stuffing and sewing doll parts.

  Mamma would sew the doll clothes for a while and then sit outside to sell them wherever we happened to be parked. These items sold pretty well, and due to this newfound success, Samantha and I became a very valuable source of income. We were never given lunch breaks and rarely stepped outside of the motor home. I was still plagued with headaches, and the constant smell of cedar sawdust made them worse. Also, the little school work we had been doing stopped. I had completed the second grade math book by this time and was attempting to start the third grade one, but because of my poor foundation, I was not learning much.

  And so, the summers went, one exhausting day after the other. Mamma and Brian became our overseers while my sister and I did almost all of the work. They set time limits on how long it should take to do the dishes, sweep the floor, and make dinner and stuff doll parts. Brian’s favorite way of punishing us was to pull down our underwear, and then while we bent over, he would beat us so hard, we developed large blisters.

  During the evenings and on Sundays, we would sometimes play checkers and other board games. Brian said he had played these as a kid and they seemed to make him happy. Sometimes, we would even have popcorn and Mamma would play too. Samantha and I would try to be happy, but these were the most confusing of times. These people kept us isolated from the world and beat us. Yet, they sometimes would try and pretend that we were all normal and that we could have fun together. Samantha and I loved to play games, and we would smile. Mamma and Brian would appear to be somewhat happy. Then, less than an hour later, they would find some reason to beat us without mercy.

  The winter I turned eleven was a turning point for me. One evening, our motor home mysteriously caught fire while we were away. As a result, we were let out of the payment plans and Brian was able to collect insurance money.

  That March, we headed back to Washington, where Brian and Mamma planned to buy a farm. Samantha and I once again hoped things would get better. We didn’t know we would live isolated on a mountain top for the next eight-and-a-half years.

  Forgotten by the World

  People speak sometimes about the ‘bestial’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, as no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so
artfully, so artistically cruel.

  —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  In March, we drove back north and, one day, Brian came across an ad in the paper for some land across the Cascade Mountains in eastern Washington. We drove across the mountains to see it. The property was nestled on a mountainside six miles outside of a small town with a population of sixteen hundred people.

  It was April now, but there were still occasional snow flurries, and the majestic mountains were capped with glistening crowns of snow. I sat in the truck with Samantha while Mamma and Brian went in to see the

  real-estate agent. I saw ranchers and farmers walking by, and I was intrigued when I realized that we were in cowboy country. I thought to myself: This might actually be fun.

  We drove the six miles up the mountain on a dirt road. As we approached the six-mile mark, we veered off the county road and drove half a mile straight up the mountainside on a very rutted and muddy path.

  “Just so you know,” the cheery real-estate woman told us, “in the winter, the county does not plow this small section because it is a private road. The people who live up here mostly use tire chains and a prayer to get up the mountain in the winter.”

  “We have neighbors up here?” Brian asked with a frown.

  The real-estate agent smiled and nodded. “Oh, don’t worry; you are not all alone up here. About two and a half miles up that way live the Farrows and about two miles beyond them live the Hawthorns. And,” she carried on, “if you follow the county road a couple more miles up, there are a few more people scattered around.”

  I saw that Brian was not too happy at that news, and his forehead was furrowed as we drove up the steep road. Soon, we arrived at what appeared to be a driveway leading to a huge parcel of land.

  “Well, here it is—sixty acres of good quality ranch land,” the agent said, as she flashed her big smile in Brian’s direction.

  I looked around at the acres of desolate, sagebrush-filled terrain. Free-range cows were munching grass in the distance, and two huge cottonwood trees swayed gently in the spring air. There were some flat areas, but the landscape was mostly made up of one hill after another. Mamma and Brian talked a lot, and my sister and I walked around a little. We discovered a creek across a road with tall aspen trees and green moss. We got back to the car in time to hear Brian tell the agent that they wanted the land if they could agree on a price.

  For a moment, my heart stopped. The land was beautiful, but it was in the middle of nowhere. There were no sounds from any other people; the quiet was interrupted only by the occasional mooing cows in the distance or the call of one bird to another. I looked over at Samantha, and although we were not allowed to speak, I could see the same look of sheer terror. What would happen to us here?

  After negotiating an agreeable payment plan with the owners, we moved up on the mountain. Even though Samantha and I had great misgivings about moving there, we were looking forward to not being cooped up in the truck and the tents; and Brian and Mamma would not have to worry about the people asking about our not being in school. As soon as we knew we were going to move, Mamma registered with the State to receive her disability, food stamps, and the checks for Samantha and me. She registered in a different county 150 miles south in Wenatchee, Washington, and gave a fake address in that same county. How she never got caught is a mystery. When she had to go into the government office, she would change out of her Amish clothes and into normal clothes.

  Brian, too, was in hiding from the State. Besides the 1970s child molestation charges, he also had an ex-wife whom he had divorced right before he met Mamma. When she was only eighteen, he had moved her to an isolated mine way up in the Bradshaw mountains of northern Arizona. Eight years later, she fled the mountain to her parents’ home in Phoenix where she pressed charges against Brian for battery. She dropped the charges during the divorce when Brian agreed to give her full custody of their three children with no contest.

  Brian kept a low profile after that, in order to avoid paying child support. The mountain was on the outskirts of a tiny ranch town, only a few miles from the Canadian border. This proved to be the perfect place for Brian and Mamma to wallow in their paranoia about the government, while practicing their religious beliefs and torturing my sister and me.

  After we had pitched the tents, Brian announced that we would need a lot of money if we were going to try to build any sort of structure before winter set in. I shivered at the thought of winter; we would have to build a shelter or we would freeze to death. The winters on the mountain could range anywhere from zero degrees Fahrenheit to thirty degrees below zero. Not long after pitching the tents, Mamma and Brian went into town to get supplies and left Samantha and me at our new homestead.

  When they returned, Brian and Mamma brought with them shovels, picks, and rope.

  “Here we go,” Brian said as he started pulling things out of the truck bed. “We got a generator too, so we can start making things to sell again.”

  A few hours later, Samantha and I were put to work with picks and shovels to clear the sagebrush, so we could start building a small shelter. Brian helped some, but he would use the truck and a chain to pull the debris out. I was only eleven and Samantha was only nine: the tools were heavy.

  As dusk fell, Brian came out and said we could come in for the night. We had only cleared five square feet but could do no more. Mamma gave us some soup, and we collapsed on our blankets and fell asleep to the lonely howl of coyotes that seemed to say, “You are all alone, so very alone … and defenseless.”

  It took us nearly two weeks to clear a chunk of land fifty feet wide by fifty feet long. While working, Samantha and I stumbled upon an old piece of cement that was sticking up from the ground. It turned out to be part of the basement to a house that had been on the land in the thirties. We were excited with our find and ran down the cement steps into the underground room which was only ten feet by ten feet. Of course, there was no hidden treasure, but it was still fun to see how old it looked. We did find a few mason jars of canned plums that still had their seal. Brian seemed pleased with our find and even let us eat the fruit. They were surprisingly delicious, even though they had been there, at least, sixty years.

  Brian decided that we would construct a small building on top of the basement and stay the winter there. However, lumber was expensive, so we would have to sell a lot of our crafts in town to buy the needed supplies.

  It was May and a rainbow of different colored flowers covered the mountains. They nodded their pretty heads in the warm spring air and brought a smile to my otherwise sad face. Wild cherries were blossoming along the country road; there were miles of apple, cherry, and peach orchards down in the valleys. All the way to Wenatchee, all you could see was orchard after orchard. When they were all in bloom, it was a masterpiece to behold. Springtime made everything look alive and beautiful, but there was also a sense of urgency in the air. We had to prepare for the oncoming cold that would kill every form of life if it were given a chance.

  That first week of May, we loaded our wares into the truck and headed to Wenatchee to pick up Mamma’s government checks. They did not come to the post office in our little town because the P.O. box had to be in the same city as her fake address. Every month, Mamma and Brian made this trip to pick up the checks and food stamps. Since Mamma did not have a job and the government did not know she was making money on the side with crafts, we qualified for all kinds of government aid.

  Just a few miles outside of Wenatchee, Brian and Mamma set up our table with Amish dolls, Amish cookbooks, and Brian’s music boxes. A lot of people set up stands to sell their vegetables, so Mamma thought it might work to sell our items.

  We did pretty well that day and sold more than half our things, and Brian was able to buy some of the much needed lumber for our winter shelter.

  As the summer progressed, Mamma and Brian started bringing home goats and other farm animals from the auc
tions. Samantha and I loved playing with the goats, but we did not get much time to do so as our list of chores seemed to grow with every day.

  Samantha and I would now have to get up before the adults. We were to heat up water for coffee, make breakfast, put Brian’s shaving things out and then wake them up. After breakfast, we would clean the two tents and then help Brian and Mamma with building, pull sagebrush or take care of the animals.

  My sister and I were in charge of virtually everything since Mamma had complained to Brian that she did not want to be stuck with the work around the tents. She believed that we were capable of doing more than we already were.

  As early fall approached, old Jack Frost revisited the mountains. A shiver ran up my spine as I watched the geese fly south and the goats’ fur become fluffier.

  Life in the new shack was tight, and Samantha and I were only allowed inside to sleep, cook and eat. Everything else was done under the giant cottonwood tree, which had a lean-to tarp nailed to it.

  While Samantha and I worked, Brian and Mamma often argued. Mamma would then storm off in the truck and go into town, leaving us alone with Brian, who would look for reasons to beat us. When they were not fighting, Mamma would often bury herself in a romance novel while Brian would call me to the loft for a massage. This was often used as a pretext to molest me. My legs would shake as I climbed the ladder. I would sometimes push Brian off me, but he would then get angry, and for the rest of the day he would walk around and find things to beat me for.