Hope: A Memoir of Survival

by Amanda Berry

My strategy has become: Don’t fight. Don’t make him mad. Do whatever I have to do to stay alive and get home. But now he is making me lie on my stomach while he does that really nasty thing again. It hurts so bad. How would he like it if somebody stuck something into him that way? It’s horrible and he won’t stop. I can’t help it, so I scream, “Let me go home or kill me!” He stops, sits me up, and looks at me funny. “Do you want to die?” he finally asks. “No, but I don’t want to be here!” It’s hard to get the words out through the tears. “If I was dead, at least I could see my family from heaven.” He just looks at me for a while and then quietly says, “Okay.” He steps out into the hallway and returns with an old vacuum cleaner, like one from the ’70s. He takes the cord and wraps it around my neck, and then starts tightening it. I feel it squeezing my throat, tighter and tighter. I feel suddenly calm. I close my eyes. I am ready to die. I pray silently: Please, God, save me. I love you, Mom. I love you, Beth. I love my girls. I love you all so much. I feel a release. No more pain. Then the cord suddenly goes loose, and he throws it on the floor. “I’m not here to kill you!” he shouts. “I don’t want to kill you! This is just about my sexual problem!” He storms out of the room. No matter what he says, I know he could kill me at any minute. His anger comes out of nowhere, like lightning. I never know what’s going to set him off.