“I wanted to leave the morning after we arrived. I only slept for three hours and twenty minutes that first night and when I did, it was short, like an hour at a time, and then I would wake up in a panic. I heard the lobster boats—though I didn’t know what kind of boats they were at the time—they were trolling some time after the sun came up. It sounded like a faraway hum. I got up and looked out the window. I could see Emma in her room and I started to cry. She rushed out of her room and came to mine and sat on my bed. ‘I want to go home!’ I told her. That was when she told me she was pregnant, and that we couldn’t go home, at least not right away. She said Bill would take care of us and that we would have a good life there. I got very angry with her, I yelled at her and she yelled back, telling me she wouldn’t let me mess up her plan to have her baby.
“I already told you that in my mind I had to choose between Emma and home. And so I chose Emma.”
Judy barged into her story then.“But three years, Cass? You chose to stay for three years? Tell us why you couldn’t leave. You still haven’t explained it.”
Cass continued.
“It’s hard to explain. I think there are two reasons we stayed. First, while the days went by slowly sometimes, the years went by fast. There is something about living that close to the ocean, surrounded by the water, that changes time. Hours can pass just staring at the waves and feeling the wind on your face. And there is so much work to deal with the wind and the water, to keep it from ruining a house, especially without regular electricity.
“Second, there were the good things I’ve been trying to explain.Emma talked to me more and more. We became friends and I didn’t want that to end. Not ever. Sometimes I thought about how much I wanted to be home. But then there were these other things, like being close to Emma and how nice Lucy and Bill were to us. So there were these good things and the time passing so fast… but then the bad things started to come, after Emma had her baby.
“They wouldn’t let me near her when it was happening. She went to them first, in the middle of the night, because she was still very close to them and she trusted them. I didn’t even wake up until I heard Emma screaming. I could also hear Bill yelling at Lucy and Lucy yelling back like they were both scared and angry at the other for not making it easier. I thought she was going to die. I really did. There was so much screaming—and it was screaming from pain that was coming out of Emma. Like she was being tortured. And in between the screaming from pain, there was crying and sobbing from desperation because she knew it wasn’t over. And I couldn’t help her! I tried to go to her, but Bill pushed me out of the room, with both hands and this red face that looked like it was on fire. Emma yelled at me, too. She told me to leave because I would only make it worse. It went on for most of the night until finally it just stopped. I sobbed into my pillow because it was so terrible. Not being able to help her. Not being wanted for my help. And not knowing if she was even going to be okay.
“And then I heard the baby cry. And I heard Bill and Lucy laughing and crying like they were happy now. I went to the hallway so I could hear more, but I didn’t hear anything from Emma. Not that whole night or the next morning. Nothing until the next afternoon.
“That’s when they took Emma back to her room. She tried to sleep, but her breasts got huge and swollen. She asked if she should breast-feed and they said not to bother. Lucy said it wasn’t that good for babies anyway, and Emma didn’t know any better.
“I stayed outside her door so I could get her whatever she needed.‘Cass,’ she would whisper, ‘it hurts so much!’ I brought her ice packs every few hours to keep on her chest, and after a few days the milk just stopped coming.
“From that first cry, Lucy had that baby all day and all night. When Emma tried to hold her, Lucy said not to bother. She said Emma should rest and study because she had her whole life ahead of her. She said, ‘That’s what we’re here for, my love!’
“‘Cass,’ Emma would whisper, ‘have you seen her today? Is she bigger?’
“Emma cried for hours and hours, missing her baby. ‘I need to hold her! Please! Just for a few minutes!’ she would beg. Lucy always had an excuse. The baby was sleeping. The baby was sick. The baby was getting used to her bed. Emma would hear her cry and she would stand outside their locked bedroom door and yell at them. ‘Please! I hear her now. I know she’s awake! Bring her to me!’
“Emma pleaded with me then. ‘Cass, you have to find out what’s going on. Why they won’t let me see her!’
“So one day, I started a conversation with Lucy. ‘You’re so good with babies, Lucy. How do you know so much?’
“We knew they didn’t have children, because they told us and because there was no sign of any children anywhere. No pictures or baby things. Lucy kissed the baby’s forehead. She smiled and said, ‘God wanted me to have babies when he was making my soul, but then he made a mistake when he was making my body. It’s my cross to bear in this life, Cassandra. Not able to do what I was born to do.’
“Then she bounced Emma’s baby in her arms, and her smile turned happy. ‘Until now, right, my little peanut? My precious angel? My sweet Julia.’
“I told Emma what she said. I told Emma I thought she might be crazy, that she had been mothering us, but now she had a baby and that baby had ignited something inside her. Emma’s eyes got very wide.‘That stupid bitch named my baby? She gave her the name Julia?’ Emma said she would hate that name for the rest of her life and would never let it leave her lips.
“We were both shaking then. I had confirmed what we both suspected. Lucy had gone crazy, and Bill didn’t know what to do about it. You know how sometimes you have two parts of yourself—one part that wants you to do something crazy and the other part that sees how crazy it is but doesn’t do anything, because it doesn’t want to upset the crazy part? You don’t want to cut yourself in half.… That’s what they were like. They were like one person with two parts. And the Lucy part was stronger.
“That happened in the fall, one year after we left home. By then we both knew something was wrong. The baby was six months old, and she was getting bigger and easier to handle. But still, they would not let Emma take care of her. Lucy held that baby like it was her own. Something just snapped in Emma. She went to their door and pounded on it with her fists. ‘Give me my baby right now!’
“Bill got very mad at her. He yelled from the other side of the door, ‘Go back to your room, young lady, or there will be dire consequences!’
“‘Give me my baby!’ Emma yelled, and pounded again on the door. I was standing beside her, frozen with fear because the situation was escalating and I knew it wouldn’t end well. Emma had fire in her veins but no power. I think the fire made her feel powerful and stopped her brain from working. We heard loud footsteps and then the door opening. Bill was there and he had this look on his face that was beyond angry—he looked like he needed for this to stop or he would lose his mind. I think on the other side of the door, Lucy was pleading with him to get us under control, to make Emma stop asking for her baby, and I think he had no idea what to do about any of this. He couldn’t make his wife stop, so he turned his rage to Emma and he slapped her clear across the face. She stared at him in shock. So did I. And he stared right back, just as surprised as we were by what he had done.
“‘I told you to leave! Why didn’t you listen to me?’ He said this in a pitiful, whiny voice and he even had a tear in his eye. Emma said nothing. She turned and left and I followed Emma back to her room. We sat on her bed. She took my hands in hers and she said, ‘You have to get out of here and bring back someone to help us.’
“We came up with a plan. I told her I would find a way to leave. I told her to start fighting with me and make it look like I left because of her and that I wanted no part of her, so that way when I left, they wouldn’t fear that I would return with help. And that was the plan. That I would come back for Emma and the baby. Emma agreed.
“From September to February, I watched three things: First, I watched the boats. I watched the hours of the day when they passed through different channels safely. Second, I watched when the boatman came and left. Third, I watched the hours when the baby slept during the night and when she needed to be fed.
“Bill kept a small rowboat at the dock. There were oars on the boat, and I thought I could use the boat and oars to leave. I was very stupid.
“The night I tried to escape, I waited until the baby had been fed and they were all asleep. I went down to the dock and got on that boat and untied it from the post. It was dead quiet and freezing cold. All I could hear was the sound of the water splashing against the sides and my heart beating fast. I was scared and excited and again, had that feeling of being powerful because I was taking charge of my life and getting away from these crazy people and saving my sister and her baby. It was also so hard to leave Emma, to leave the baby, like I was leaving a piece of me behind. So I just kept thinking about how I would return, maybe even that same night if I got lucky, with help. With someone who would save us.
“I grabbed the oars and started to use them to steer the boat. I had watched Bill do it sometimes when he didn’t want to wait for Rick. He would make it through that part of the current that pulled things back tothe island, and then all the way into the harbor until he disappeared from my sight. But it was so much harder than I thought. I didn’t know to sit backwards. I didn’t know how to put the oars in the rings, and they were so heavy and the current was so strong against them. One got pulled right out of my hand and fell into the water and was carried away. Then the whole boat started to drift alongside the island toward the west, where those rocks were. The boat was totally out of my control. I went from side to side, pushing the water, pulling on it with the one oar that was left. The boat would spin a bit, then just keep on going with the current. I felt this panic like my head was going to explode. I knew if we headed toward the west end of the island, I would get stuck in the rocks. And that’s just what happened. The boat got lodged between two rocks. I pushed with the oar. I got out and tried to shove myself from the rock with my hands. My feet kept slipping. I don’t know how long I tried before I heard the motor, and saw the lights of another boat. Then I saw the face of the boatman. I saw Rick and his stone-cold stare.
“He didn’t say anything to me. He tied a rope around the boat and started to drive away with it, his boat pulling Bill’s. I screamed at him to help me. ‘They won’t let us leave!’ I yelled as loud as I could. ‘They won’t let us leave!’ But he just drove off, taking the boat with him. Leaving me alone on the rocks.”
Abby hit pause and wrote down the time of this piece of the recording. Cass had started to cry then. Abby asked her what she was feeling and she said she was remembering the despair, the feeling of self-loathing at her stupidity, her immaturity. She said she also felt rage, and that she had learned that rage is powerful and it can make you do stupid things. Listening to it now, some time gone by and Cass not right in front of her clouding her mind with the wonder of her return, it felt out of place with the story. Cass hadn’t done anything worthy of self-loathing. She had risked her life trying to escape and save her sister.
