10.Easter - Phillip on an Island

Nancy  comes  to  bring  me  dinner.  She  says  it’s  a

special Easter dinner. It’s 1993. I  am thirteen years old. I  do

not  feel  thirteen.  I   still  feel  eleven.  I   don’t  feel  like  a

teenager. Dinner  is  corned  beef  and  cabbage.  It’s  good.

Usually  they bring me  fast  food. So  it’s nice when  I  get a

home-cooked meal.  I   tell her  I ’m  so  lonely  to please  stay

and chat for a little bit and she says she will. I  have asked

her  in  the past  to stay, but sometimes she says she can’t

because she  feels guilty  for  taking me. She says  it’s hard

for her to be with me. She tells me she wished and prayed

the morning they took me that Phillip would get a migraine

and not be able to go through with it. I  think to myself, Me,

too. As I  finish my dinner she tells me about her day at work

at  the  old  folks’  home.  She  says  she  enjoys  her  job  but

doesn’t  like  all  the  girls  she  works  with.  She  says  they

gossip a  lot. She  tells me  that Phillip is so sweet, how he

comes  to  visit  her  on  her  breaks  and  brings  her  flowers.

Sometimes  they go back  to  the  van and  smoke weed or

she  takes a hit of  the pipe with  crank  in  it. She  says  the

crank helps her stay thin. She doesn’t want to get fat. I  think

that’s weird she spends so much  time worrying about her

weight.  I  don’t  think Phillip helps with her  image when he

talks about the other girls that look at him. The two of them

have such a strange relationship.

She asks me things like what music I  like and I  tell her I

like Disney songs. I  also like Mariah Carey, Wilson Phillips,

and Whitney Houston. I  just want her to like me. I  really hope

she likes me. For some reason I  get the feeling she doesn’t

like me. She says after a while that she needs to go but will

be sleeping with me back here tonight. There was a movie

she wanted to watch called The Unborn; she said she liked

scary movies.  So  I   acted  like  I  wanted  to  see  it.  I   didn’t

really want  to watch a scary movie, but  I  wanted her  to be

happy with me.  I  expected  to see Phillip sometime during

the day, but he never came in. I  tried to think of the last time

I  had seen him and decided it had been a few days at least.

I  wonder where he was. I  was relieved for the release from

the sex, but I  knew the longer he went without it, the longer

the next “run” would be. I  feared his return.

That  night,  Nancy  comes  in  and  locks  the  iron  door

behind  her.  I   thought  it was  strange  because  she  usually

slept  wherever  Phillip  slept.  I   asked  where  he  was.  She

said  he went  to  live  on  an  island with  a  rich  friend  for  a

while. She said he’d be gone for a month. Wow! A WHOLE

MONTH WITH NO SEX!  I   am  so  excited  inside. But  she

looks  sad,  so  I   just  say,  “Fine.” The movie  starts and  it’s

scary and kind of disgusting with  the baby walking around

and killing people. Yuck! Then we hear a noise outside and

we both  jump. Nancy says she’s scared  to go see what  it

was  but  thinks  she  better,  so  she  unlocks  the  door  and

goes outside. She’s back  in  less  than a minute and says

everything looks okay. That the dogs were not barking, so

everything must be okay. She says  I  can sleep with her  in

the big bed, and I ’m grateful because I  didn’t want to sleep

alone. By now  the pullout couch has been replaced with a

real mattress. I  like it a lot better because it doesn’t squeak

like  the  other  pullout  couch  did.  We  go  to  bed.  In  the

morning she wakes up and leaves. I  probably won’t see her

until dinnertime. The loneliness sets in again.

A  few weeks  later when Phillip  returns, he comes  “next

door” where  I  am being  kept.  I  actually  feel happy  to  see

him. He has been gone awhile.  I  missed having someone

to talk to. Nancy doesn’t say much and she cries a lot. I t is

hard to know what she wants, and I  don’t quite know what to

say  to her at  times. She  reminds me  of  a  turtle;  you  can

never quite know what a turtle is thinking. Phillip is easier to

relate to; at least I  know what he is thinking. Phillip makes

me laugh with all his jokes and antics. He says he learned

so much while  he was  away. He  has  come  back with  a

device on his ankle, which I  find strange. He tells me that he

was sent back to prison for the month. He wasn’t really on

an  island with a  rich  friend. He said  the police had  found

some  drugs  in  the  house  and  arrested  him  for  parole

violation.  He  added  it  was  Nancy’s  pipe  that  they  had

found. She had forgotten that she had put it in a drawer in

the house. He asked if Nancy had taken good care of me

and I  said yes. He talked for a while longer and then took a

nap on the bed, while I  read quietly, wondering inside would

this  be  the  end  of  him  hurting me? Somehow  knowing  it

wasn’t.