The Marsh King's Daughter(13)

He didn’t. The jeans and Hello Kitty T-shirt my mother had been wearing since he snatched her became a problem. Eventually my father must have noticed that her shirt no longer covered her stomach and she couldn’t zip her jeans, so he let her borrow one of his flannel shirts and a pair of suspenders.

I imagine my mother growing thinner as her belly swelled. During the early years at the cabin, she lost a lot of weight. The first time I saw her newspaper photo, I was shocked at how fat she used to be.

And then, when my mother was five months pregnant and really starting to show, an extraordinary thing happened. My father took her shopping. It seems that in all of the preparation for my mother’s abduction and their life at the cabin, my father forgot to purchase clothing for the future me.

His predicament still makes me smile. Imagine, this resourceful wilderness man who could kidnap a young girl and keep her hidden for more than fourteen years overlooked the inevitable consequence of taking her as his wife. I picture my father examining his options with his head tipped to the side as he stroked his beard in that thoughtful way he has, but in the end, there weren’t many. And so, true to character, he selected the most practical and began making preparations for a trip to the Soo, the only city within a hundred and fifty–mile radius of our cabin that had a Kmart.

Taking my mother shopping wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds. Other kidnappers have done it. People stop looking. Memories fade. As long as the victim doesn’t make eye contact or identify herself, the risk is small.

My father cut my mother’s hair as short as a boy’s and dyed it black. The fact that he had black hair dye at the cabin was a key point the prosecution later used to prove that my father acted with knowledge and malice aforethought. How did he know he would need hair dye? Or that my mother would be a blonde? At any rate, anyone looking at them would have seen a father shopping with his daughter. If they also happened to notice that my mother was pregnant, what of it? Certainly the average person wouldn’t have guessed that the man holding tightly to the young girl’s elbow was not her father, but the father of her child. I asked my mother later why she didn’t tell anyone who she was or ask for help, and she said it was because she felt like she was invisible. Think of it: she was only sixteen, and by then my father had spent more than a year convincing her that no one was looking for her. That nobody cared. And so as they walked up and down the baby aisles filling their cart and no one paid any attention, it must have seemed to her like it was true.

My father bought two of everything I’d need in every size from infant to adult. One to wash and one to wear, my mother later told me. Boy clothes, because they’d work no matter which sex I turned out to be, and what use would I have at the cabin for a dress? Much later, after the police cleared the crime scene and reporters swarmed our ridge, someone took a picture of the row of shoes lined up in graduated sizes along my bedroom wall. I’m told the picture trended on Twitter and Facebook. People seemed to see the photo as a commentary on my father’s evil nature, photographic proof that he intended to keep my mother and me prisoners for life. To me, the shoes just marked my growth the same way other people measure their kids against a wall.

In addition, my father bought my mother two long-sleeved shirts, two short-sleeved T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of jeans, six pairs of underwear and a bigger bra, a flannel nightgown, and a hat, scarf, mittens, boots, and winter jacket. My father snatched my mother on the tenth of August; the only coat she’d worn the previous winter was his. My mother told me he didn’t ask what colors she liked or whether she wanted a scarf that was solid or striped; he simply picked out everything for her. I can believe that, as my father liked to be in control.

Even at Kmart prices, the trip must have cost a fortune. I have no idea where he got the money. It’s possible he sold some beaver skins. Possibly he shot a wolf. Wolf hunting was illegal in the Upper Peninsula when I was a child, but there was always a thriving market for skins, especially among Native Americans. He may have stolen the money, or he could have used a credit card. There was a lot about my father I didn’t know.

—

I’VE THOUGHT a lot about the day I was born. I’ve read accounts of girls who were kidnapped and held captive, and they helped me understand some of what my mother went through.

She should have been in school, crushing on a boy or hanging with her girlfriends. Going to band practice and football games and whatever else kids her age were doing. Instead, she was about to have a baby with no one to help except the man who took her from her family and raped her more times than she could count.

My mother labored on the old wood-spindled bed in my parents’ bedroom. Covering the bed were the thinnest sheets my father could find; he knew by the time I arrived, he would have to throw everything away. My father was as solicitous in my mother’s most difficult moment as he was capable of being, which meant that occasionally he offered her something to eat or brought her a glass of water. Aside from that, my mother was on her own. It wasn’t cruelty on my father’s part, though he can be cruel. It was just that until it was time for her to give birth, there wasn’t a lot he could do.

At last my head crowned. I was a big baby. My mother tore enough to let me out, and it was over. Except it wasn’t. One minute passed. Five. Ten. My father realized they had a problem. My mother’s placenta had not detached. I don’t know how he knew this, but he did. My father told her to hang on to the spindles in the headboard and to get ready, because it was going to hurt. My mother told me she couldn’t imagine anything hurting worse than what she’d gone through, but my father was right. My mother passed out.