bag when I left Mom and Pop’s and then hid it under my other pillows when I wasn’t home so she couldn’t throw him away. I slept with Beary every night and pretended he was a messenger between my grandparents and me. Whatever I told Beary, he would relay the message to Mom and Pop. I was so afraid I would never see Mom and Pop again. I was happy with them, protected and cared for. But my grandparents didn’t have custody of me so I had to live with weekend visitations. Whenever my mother came, Pop would always tell me: “Be strong Kayla, Pop isn’t going to let anything happen to you. I promise I am going to bring you home with me and you will never have to go back.” Of course I would start crying, I was a child and I was afraid. I held on to those words each and every day. My mother was not the best of parents and I knew she wasn’t ever going to try to be one either. Common sense didn’t exist in her mind. Especially when it came to whom she brought into my life. Yeah, she slept around but she also had several marriages; one in particular that changed my life forever. She married a man named Scott Mitchell when I was seven then after a few months had my baby sister Faith. He had several children with other women and had been in jail for drugs before. I hadn’t found out until I was older that she married him even after finding out he molested and raped his other children. One night my mother wanted to go out with my Aunt Ginger and left Faith and I with Scott. After she left, I watched him place duct tape over the eye hole of our front door. I didn’t 34
know what was coming but I had a feeling it wasn’t good. We had dinner, then he told me after bath time I could watch a movie before bed. Bath time consisted of him washing me, even though I was seven going on eight and had been taking baths alone for a few years. Then we went to the living room and he had a box full of tapes out and told me to pick one. I did. The first scene was a cartoon of some ants walking around but then it turned into a group of people having sex. He told me I had to finish watching the whole thing before bedtime. I sat in silence with my knees tucked under my chin squeezing my eyes closed as hard as I could but the tears escaped anyway. The movie was over and I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth when I found women’s red panties lying on the sink. He told me to put them on, but I didn’t. I ran to my room and shut the door. I fell asleep for what seemed like a minute and I heard my door open. I squeezed Beary the whole time. I heard my mother’s drunken voice come into the apartment and Scott ran out of my room, trying to fix his pants after leaving me with his evidence on my legs. The following morning I told my mother what happened but she told me I was dreaming and that Scott would never do that. So that’s what I told myself. I never mentioned it again until I was sixteen, when my cousin came out to the family that Scott had done the same thing to him. We both took Scott to court and he got 20 years for me and 15 for my cousin. Scott is currently in a Maryland prison, I don’t know the name of it because I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know how close or