Christa Walker, Scrapbook

“The story goes something like this: a twelve year-old girl was kidnapped by a man right outside her house and she was never seen again,” Poppy said, carefully foiling pieces of my hair. “Too much time’d gone by, so everyone figured she was dead, except that she wasn’t.”

The smell of ammonia burned my nostrils, and my eyes watered. “And then what happened?” I asked. Poppy was an encyclopedia of true crime stories. Every time I needed a color touch up or a trim, she had a story. Last month I’d heard about the disappearance of Brian Shaffer, who still hasn’t been found.

“Turns out that eighteen years later, she killed him. He had held her prisoner, brainwashed her, had like three children with her, turned her into a religious nut like himself...” Poppy paused as she wiped dye from my forehead. “And then just before a hurricane hit their town she killed him.”

“How?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Shot him, maybe? I can’t remember. This was a long time ago. I’m sure you can find it online.”

And I did. I googled “kidnapped woman with 3 children kills captor during hurricane” and the story popped up first, although I was surprised at how many stories there were related to women with three children killing people during hurricanes. I mentioned this to Poppy as she situated me under a hair dryer and she laughed and said something about how natural disasters make people crazy.

I learned more than I thought I would from the article. That the woman’s name was Mary and the captor’s name was Pastor Mike. I learned that Mary killed him with a cast iron skillet, not because she had worked up the nerve to kill him because he’d kidnapped her, but because he’d beaten one of her children. In fact, she didn’t remember that she’d been abducted, and she was never able to bond with her parents. She didn’t even want her old name back. In a strange twist of fate Mary and her kids were among only thirty survivors in their small town near Corpus Christi, but Leukemia would take Mary’s life a few years later.

Poppy brought me water and I told her that the story became sad. She said she didn’t want to know. “Imagine not knowing any of your former life!” I said. Poppy told me it was worse, because Mary had been given false memories by her captor.

Forty five minutes later, Poppy said “Voila! A whole new you” and spun me around to look at my reflection—caramel highlights and long layers framed my face. Not a whole new me, but a better looking version of me, I suppose.

It seemed funny to get my hair done before meeting my sister at our mother’s house to clean out her garage, but it was the only time Poppy had available. I knew my sister would see my new hair and look at me askance without saying anything. That’s the kind of relationship we had—small talk and passive aggressive digs. This was because of mom. Neither of us could take care of her at the end and so we blamed each other. I couldn’t take time off of work and Melissa had her young kids and a husband deployed in Afghanistan. This must be what they mean when they say that life gets in the way.

Melissa was already in the garage when I got there, and as was typical of her, she had separated boxes and suitcases into two piles: mine and hers. There was still the business of all of mom’s stuff inside the house—who would take what. Aunt Jenny had already come and taken what was left to her, and the shabby chic furniture that mom favored was now at Goodwill, or maybe even in someone’s living room by now.

“You have more stuff in here than I do,” Melissa said. It was more of an observation than anything else.

“I’m surprised she kept it all,” I said, kneeling down in front of a big cardboard box.

“Well, she wasn’t going to throw it away.”

Mary’s children ended up living with her parents. They were interviewed by Oprah, and told her that they now know the life their mother forgot and refused to remember. That her name was really Amanda, and she played volleyball and liked math. She loved animals and ate beef jerky and listened to Notorious B.I.G. Mary’s parents had kept her room exactly the same, which seemed morbid but proved helpful for her young children who wanted to be surrounded by her things, even if they weren’t familiar.

I opened the cardboard box, digging at the edge of the tape with my nail until I could tear the tape off and open the flaps. Melissa collected a few things, and then asked if I wanted the big red suitcase, which could have belonged to either of us, or even mom, we couldn’t remember. She told me she could really use it and I told her it was fine—I had enough luggage of my own. Melissa left me alone in the garage with my collection of stuff. Most of it was from high school —my cap and gown, ribbons from different science fairs, mostly blue ribbons, but one red, which is odd, because I could have sworn I’d only ever gotten first place, but then memories can be selective.

Oprah had asked Mary’s children if she accepted her family at all, for they had been kind and loving, and didn’t she want any of that? Her life with her captor had been horrible, after all. The children, now adults, explained that their mother had her reasons, but then did not give them. Mary was a good mother, and according to her children and the media she was also a hero. What good was the past to her, anyway? Did she need to be reminded of a life she could have had? It was too late to resume the life of her twelve year old self, and so she stayed who she was.

I found a manila envelope filled with notes which were passed back and forth between my best friend Liz and me during sophomore year. Liz used to dot her I’s with little circles, and looking at these notes I wondered if she still did or if she outgrew it. I scanned the notes, seeing that I had spent the bulk of spring semester wondering if Todd Field would ever break up with Sammi Reynolds. I tucked the notes back into the box and looked around. I found another box filled with mementos from middle school, including my drill team uniform and a collection of beanie babies. And school yearbooks! There were all of my yearbooks going back to first grade. I looked around at piles of clothes, books, dolls, and knick knacks and realized I was making a mess, after my mother had gone to the trouble of carefully organizing my childhood into neat cardboard boxes.

In another article I’d found online, a famous psychologist who had never treated Mary weighed in. Dr. Gunther theorized that it was likely some remnants of Amanda inside of Mary that caused her to kill her captor and save herself and her children. When asked, Mary would only say that she did what she had to do, as directed by God. She asked to be left alone so that she could go on with her life, which ended two years later.

I found a scrapbook at the bottom of the first box. It blended in with the cardboard, and so I missed it at first, but as I began to put things away I felt the bumpy leather of the scrapbook cover. I settled onto a steamer trunk and saw that my mom had put the best of everything inside a leather-bound book: baby pictures, good report cards, prom photos, concert tickets, Melissa and I hugging at birthdays, my college acceptance letter, friends, smiles, laughter.

Things missing from the scrapbook: letters from my stint in rehab, pictures of my ex- husband, pictures of me pregnant before I miscarried, and my rejection letter from Hastings College of the Law. I smiled, imagining my mother at her dining room table, the scrapbook open in front of her as she carefully curated my life.

In the end, there was much confusion as to what to put on Mary’s gravestone. Her parents knew her as Amanda, and her children knew her as Mary, but finally the children’s wishes were granted, and Mary’s parents accepted the fact that for them, their daughter died when she was twelve. And this is where the story of Mary and her children ends. The children no longer grant interviews, and have moved on with their lives. With them they carry the story of their mother that they know, and the story of their mother that their grandparents know.

By the time I’d put everything back into each of the corresponding boxes, it had grown dark. I turned on the garage light, and hummed the tune to a Matchbox 20 song as I dragged everything to the center of the otherwise empty garage. Why was I humming a Matchbox 20 song? I stood still for a moment in the middle of the garage, the boxes creating shadows along the floor. I chuckled then, remembering that the band was one of the concert ticket stubs in my scrapbook. I shook my head and looked at the boxes in front of me, trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away.