Hope: A Memoir of Survival

by Amanda Berry

I try to go back to sleep because at least when I’m asleep I don’t feel lonely.

When I wake up hours later it’s quiet in the house, so he must still be out. I plug in the tape I’ve been making of all the newscasts about me. My TV has a built-in VCR, so I can use it to tape over old movies. I record everything I can about my family on the news, so I can see them whenever I want. I start writing in my diary, and note the time: 2:57 p.m.

Hi Mom! How are you? Are you having a good day? I hope you all are! I’m sitting here crying. I miss my life! We’re so close! I’m so lucky for that. I always had someone to talk to. Just the little things now are such ...

He comes in from his party. I think he’s been drinking. “Merry Christmas,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like Christmas. I’m in prison.” I’m usually careful not to talk back. But I can’t help myself today. “It’s not a prison,” he barks. “You have it good.” “It’s worse than prison,” I tell him. “If I were in a regular prison my family would know that I am alive and they could come visit. Priso...

This has taught me a lot—like NEVER take life or anything for granted! Sitting down and eating dinner with your family or watching TV with them and talking and laughing!

I light my candle for Mom.

This is all my fault. If I hadn’t gotten in that van and been kidnapped, my mom would be healthy. I’m sorry for everything I put her through.

“You call me names all the time, and you never take it back,” I tell him. “Apologize!” he says, more angry now.

When I tell him I won’t, he takes a needle and digs it into my toe until blood starts pouring out, and I scream.

Breaking news: LOUWANA MILLER, MOTHER OF AMANDA BERRY, HAS PASSED AWAY FROM A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK. I can barely breathe. I stare at the TV. I’m numb. I don’t know what else to do. I pick up a pen and start writing: March 2, 2006. 6:27 a.m., Thursday. Hi Mommy. How are you? I know you’re doing better because you’re with the Lord now, in a better place. At least, I know you’re not in pain anymore. You were in the hospital for almost three months! I’m so sorry I wasn’t by your side. I didn’t get to hug or kiss you, and I never will be able to again. Is this my fault? You were fine when I was there. I always pictured when I got to return I’d run into your arms and squeeze you and see your beautiful

smile, your beautiful face. But now I never will. I know you’ll always be looking down over me and will always know where I am. I hope Beth saves everything because I need to have your scent and your stuff close to me. God must have needed an angel. There’s no other reason he would have taken you. You’re so young. Why did God do this? I won’t be able to even go to your funeral or touch you one last time. I love you, I love you, I love you. Thank you for never giving up on me and everything you’ve done for me. R.I.P. God bless you. Love, Me.

I watch the news all day. It’s the top story. People on TV are saying my mom was never the same after I disappeared an...

It’s already morning when he pushes the door open. That look in his eyes. I know what he wants. My mom just died, and this is what he wants from me? “You can’t do this,” I say. I can’t stop him.

I also learned from the article that she named me for a Conway Twitty country-western song called “Amanda” that starts, “Amanda light of my life.” She used to sing it to me, but I didn’t know that’s where she got my name.

I hope Beth saves all her stuff. I want to keep her toothbrush, soap, shampoo, her cigarettes and lighter. Everything she touched. The clothes, hairbrush, pillows. I want to sleep in her bed.

“You told me if somebody close to me dies, like my mom or dad, you would let me go to the funeral,” I remind him. “I never said that,” he says. “Yes, you did!” I shout. Now he’s mad. “No!” he says. “I want...

Mom died a month ago today. I made her a butterfly with hearts on it. I saw on TV that she made a “missing” poster for me with butterflies, so they are going to be our special thing. I’m so sad and lonely, I can barely eat.

I want to die so I can be with her.

Happy birthday to me. I’m twenty. I have a secret. I think I’m pregnant. I missed my period, and I’m throwing up all the time. I think this has something to do with Mom. It’s crazy. All this time and I’ve never gotten pregnant. But then she dies, and now I’m pretty sure I am. I think my mom sent this baby. It’s her way of giving me an angel. Someone to help pull me through, give me a reason to fight. I think she is sending me a miracle.

Last year, when he put us all in the basement and the van, Michelle told me that he beat her to make her miscarry. I once saw him slam Michelle into a wall. He said they were “play fighting,” just messing around, but Michelle said later that it was because he was trying to force her to have a miscarriage.

“Let’s go downstairs to clean,” he tells me, loud enough that everybody can hear. Then we go to the living room, where he forces himself on me. It’s almost like he thinks Amanda would be jealous. Maybe she would be, because things are just getting stranger here.

One day I passed out and fell down on the floor of my room. He picked me up, put me on the bed, and made me ramen noodle soup. But another time I fainted in the hall upstairs, and he just left me lying there. He was with me when it happened and decided that while I was passed out he would go into Gina and Michelle’s room and get what he always wants. I must have been lying there for fifteen minutes, if not more, and when I came to I saw him zipping up his pants and leaving their room.

“My ears are ringing,” he says, like it’s a national tragedy. I’m six months pregnant, my breasts and legs are sore, I can’t sleep because of the chains, I’m getting more and more scared about delivering a baby alone in this house, and he thinks I care that his ears are ringing? “So why don’t you go to a doctor?” I tell him. “Maybe you should take me to the doctor, too. Pregnant women are supposed to go to the doctor.” That came out a little sassy, but I’m so miserable that I don’t care. He ignores me, thank goodness, and says, “I’m going to the library.” An hour later he’s back with a thick medical encyclopedia and starts reading all the reasons that his ears might be ringing. We’re sitting in the living room, and I wait until I think he might be done worrying about himself.

“I think you’re going to have this baby on Christmas,” he says. “It will be like a Christmas miracle.”

I keep writing to my mom. It’s like talking to her. I tell her that this baby is part of me, living and growing inside me, not him. I used to worry that if I had the baby it would remind me of him for the rest of my life. But I don’t anymore. This is my baby.

I already feel more like “we” than “I.” Whenever I’m sadder or more depressed than usual, or when he does something especially mean and my hope starts slipping away, I rub my belly and talk to my baby.

I’m pregnant and have to pee all the time. But most nights he still makes me go in a bucket so he doesn’t have to get up to unchain me.

He wants me to have the baby in my room because the windows are so well covered there. It would be hard for anybody to hear me screaming while I’m in labor, or to hear a baby crying.

He tells me to watch a breastfeeding video. He didn’t have to get one for me, because he already had one in his porn stash. He is so obsessed by breasts that it even turns him on to watch breastfeeding.

What will I do if she gets sick in here? I’m just a few blocks from a big hospital, but I might as well

be shipwrecked on a desert island, since I have no chance of getting her to a doctor.

“She needs diapers,” I tell him. He leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later with scissors and a handful of old white athletic socks. He trims the top off and then cuts two little holes in the toe for he...

Then he takes another sock and cuts a bigger hole in the toe for her head, and two little holes for her arms. We slip it over her head, and it’s like a little dress. It’s her first outfit. I want to call her Priscilla, but he hates that name. I don’t know why I care what he thinks about the name, but I do. I need him to feel like he’s a part of her life. I want him to feel invested in her, because I think that will keep her safe. I can’t think of too many other girls’ names that I like, so he gets a phone book, and we start going through it. He suggests some that I hate, mainly Spanish ones, and I like some others that he rejects. Finally I think, Jocelyn. When I was little I had a friend called Jocelyn, and I always loved that name. He’s not crazy about it, but he says okay. I want to give her a middle name to honor my mom. But the...

Jocelyn is three days old and has not eaten anything yet. All she’s had is water, and she has been crying a lot. I tell him I’m doing my best, but she’s a baby—she cries. He walks around with her to try to get her to quiet down. He goes kind of crazy when she wails, so he turns the radio up even louder. The neighb...

I have given up asking for formula. He says it’s expensive, and it never goes on sale. I keep trying to get her to breastfeed. C’mon, baby. We can do this. I start praying that my mom makes my little baby a fighter. After hours and hours she finally latches on and doesn’t let go. She’s drinking, and I...

“I have to disguise you,” he tells me, handing me a jacket, a black wig, sunglasses, a white surgical mask, and a cowboy hat. The getup is so completely over the top that it’ll probably attract more attention than just dressing normally. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky, and somebody will see me and think it’s so weird that they call the cops.

I just found a strange-looking bag in the freezer and asked what it was, and he told me it was my placenta! I couldn’t believe it. He keeps everything. He said he was afraid that if he threw it away, the garbage men might see it and get suspicious.

Life is better with Jocelyn here.

Today is my twenty-second birthday. I’ve been here five years, and I’m spending the day trying not to let Jocelyn see my tears.

I turn off the light and snuggle up with my baby. It’s been six and a half years since I have been able to fall asleep without being shackled.

I saw an Oprah show about a boy in Missouri named Shawn Hornbeck, who was kidnapped in 2002. They were saying he had Stockholm syndrome, a condition that made him start to identify with his abuser. Until someone has gone through this, they don’t know how they would react. They can’t understand that there is no simple label for what it feels like. You do what you have to do to survive, and it’s multiplied by a million when you have a baby to worry about. I don’t “identify” with my abuser. I have just done my best to cope, every day, for thousands of days in a row.

I don’t think anybody is only one thing, and I don’t think he is only evil. He can be a loving man and father. And if I can find warmth in him, I’m going to take it. Before he locks our door each night he gives Jocelyn a big hug and says he loves her. Then he kisses me good night, and it’s okay. I hope Beth will forgive me someday.

“Maybe this is God’s way of punishing me for doing this to you guys,” he says. He thinks everything is about him.

There is nothing normal about this. But at least Jocelyn is happy.

I remember one day I heard people on TV talking about sociopaths. I had never heard that word before, but the description fit him so perfectly that I wrote the word down and later looked it up in the dictionary: a person whose behavior lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. And I thought: That’s him! I started going through the whole dictionary to find other words to describe him and wrote some of them in my diary: Censorious: Always finding fault, criticizing. Despot: Person who treats those under his control in any way he cares to, cruel or unjust. Fastidious: Not easy to please. Very particular. Impenitent: Not feeling shame or regret. Not sorry for what he’s done. Imperious: Like a dictator, arrogant. Impolite. Impudent: Not showing respect, shamelessly rude. Sadist.

He is all those things.

“When are you going to let us go home?” I finally ask him after he goes on talking for another half hour. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I don’t have a date yet. But soon.” “You’ve been saying that for years.” I get up to leave and am actually looking forward to going back upsta...

I want a fairy tale. After this is over, I hope I can find a man who loves me and looks at me like I’m the only woman he ever wants to be with. I want a man who is kind and gentle. I want a husband who is my best friend and adores Jocelyn. I hope I will find my own prince someday.

He asks me to trim his hair. I don’t know why, because Gina usually does it for him. “I’m not a hairdresser,” I tell him. “I don’t know how to cut hair.” “Do it anyway,” he says. “And don’t mess it up.” He’s obsessed with his appearance, always primping in the mirror. He asks me if this shirt goes with these pants, are these shoes okay, how does this outfit look? He has shoes and socks in red, white, and blue, like the Puerto Rican flag. He thinks they are stylish, but to me they’re just silly. Sometimes he wears eyeliner to make himself look like a cool rocker guy. He must have ten black leather jackets hanging up in the kitchen, and a whole collection of hats because they cover up his receding hairline. Like anybody cares.

I hate myself for ever getting close to him. I am so stupid. I can’t believe I got fooled by him. He’s standing there laughing at me. I grab my comb and try to push some hair over the bald spot. He takes his hand and messes it up again.