A mother's pain

‘It took me ten years to have a child and now I feel as if I have lost her,’ the mother said. My mind darted back to the headline “Kidnapped for life” a few weeks ago.

She had all but given up having children. She would look in sadness as other people loved theirs, praying and trying every kind of fertility treatment, even local herbs. Everything and anything. When she realized she was pregnant, she couldn’t believe it. Her husband was ecstatic; the unspoken, emotional void was about to be filled.

Her daughter was kidnapped. She now refuses to listen to music. Ransom negotiations were not going well and people had become frustrated. Hands tied behind her back, with duct tape plastered over her mouth and a pair of headphones over her ears, she was raped by the three men who stood guard over her during captivity. The music was so loud in her ears that it distracted her from the pain. ‘I screamed in my head because I couldn’t open my mouth,’ she said in a distracted, matter-of-fact kind of way.

She eventually accepted her fate and decided that she would try and concentrate on the music instead of focusing on the invasion and violation of her body but her powers of concentration were no match for the brutality. The duct tape was yanked off and she was forced to submit herself to the worst forms of sexual abuse. It was degrading and humiliating, but the worse was yet to come. Her parents were trying to be tough with the ransom negotiators. They had so far refused to pay a ransom. This, on the advice of the police and a private negotiator her father had hired.

The kidnappers were playing for time, knowing that the family will come round. The father was also playing for time, thinking that once they eventually realized that he was not going to pay up their resolve would weaken and his precious daughter would be freed. She paid the price for this principled stance. As the negotiations intensified, she was allowed to speak to her uncle on an old school friend’s cell phone. He asked if she was alright. More concerned about her family and how they were coping, she put up a brave front and said yes, they were treating her fine. She didn’t want to add to the pressure they were under but asked him to do what they could to get her back.

The following day, she was dragged out of her room and into the kitchen what seemed like a run-down dirty apartment. It was the first time that she had even left the room. No head phones, this time. The men were cursing, saying her father ‘set dem up’ and ‘took dem for (expletive) fools’. “All yuh Indian feel all yuh too smart!’ he said. He was supposed to drop off the money yesterday but apparently changed his mind. They had another kidnapping job to do and were behind schedule and someone (the boss) was not too happy. It seemed as if they were working with a list. They blamed her for all of this. She didn’t do as she was told. She was supposed to cry and beg them to pay the damn ransom.

They blamed her for failing to convince the family to pay the ransom. They concluded that she had things too easy. She too, was ‘(expletive-ing) dem up’ because she playing brave and didn’t show enough pain. That was about to change. She was spread-eagled on the floor naked, belly down and anally raped by all three men. She couldn’t resist as the other two actually stood on her hands. She begged for the headphones she hated so much to no avail. She could feel something running down her legs and thought it was semen. It was not. It was the blood from her ruptured anus that didn’t make any difference to her rapists. One man used a condom because he didn’t trust the other two ‘because all yuh always running hoe (whores)’.

Battered and bruised, she thought of her father. He was indeed wealthy. Why did he not just pay the money? Did her mother not tell him to pay it? Were the dreams about them talking to her and lovingly coaxing her to sleep each night during captivity not real? She thought she was so close to her father that he could read her mind. He knew she was tough and always put up a brave front! She remembered how he hugged her and took her for ice cream when her best friend chose someone else to speak at her birthday party and she pretended not to care. The precious, unforgettable unspoken understanding between father and daughter. Did his money mean more to him?

That night, she cried and begged her uncle for daddy to pay the ransom. It was paid the following day in full at three different drop-off points. Now, she wishes she never broke down because facing her family was more difficult than that the suffering and assault she had grown to accept and endure. She was bitter, angry, hurt and totally disconnected. She keeps asking herself if it was her brother that was kidnapped whether her father wouldn’t have just paid the money without waiting.

She went into a shell. She lived in her room. Spoke and ate very little. One night, she just woke up screaming. Her parents rushed in and she pointed at her father and said she hated him. She accused him of making them rape her and started rampaging her room. She was stark raving mad. She flung everything from her desk, pictures from the wall and broke the bed lamp. She rummaged through her draws and took a gold chain he had brought her for her 16th birthday and ripped it and pelted him with it. She wanted nothing from him anymore she shouted, telling him to take back his (expletive) land. (Her father had given her a piece of land).

Her mother held her and tried to hug her. She raised her hand to slap her but was stopped by her brother. She struggled. The phone started ringing – neighbours wanted to know if everything was alright. Her mother chased everyone out, cursing and telling them to ‘leave her alone with her chile’. Her mother listened in horror to everything and in tears confessed that she told the father to pay the ransom. The kidnappers had spoken to her once at her sister’s home. He told her that they would not harm her daughter if the money was paid. He gave her his word. He said the police were involved and if the family told them what was going on they would only make things worse because they (the police) were very greedy.

She begged her husband to pay the money. The police had set up shop in the house and had advised him not to do that because the kidnappers might think he paid it too easy and ask for more. He must negotiate. He had hired a special negotiator who had helped another family whose child was kidnapped. The men, she said took over. She didn’t trust the police and spoke to her husband but he did not listen to her. She tried telling her that her father meant well but the look she would never forget the look from her daughter that pierced her eyes like a well-sharpened dagger. She had to be strong. No point reminding her about all her father had done; all the years she’d spurned her mother as a child in bed so that she could go to her father’s side to hug him to sleep while sucking her thumb.

She had failed the child that God had blessed her with after ten long years of painful infertility. She had thought about secretly pawning her jewelry and borrowing the money from her sister herself to secretly pay the ransom without telling her husband and the police but had no way of contacting the kidnappers. The home phone was tapped by the police and it was her husband and the negotiator who spoke when they called. Her son sided with his father and told her to leave it alone and she did.

She knows that her husband loved his daughter more than life itself but her daughter’s pain was too great for her to think of anyone else’s. She took her daughter and moved out of the house. She misses her son but has explained to him that he must take care of his father while she looks after his sister. Her husband has gone into a state of irreversible and permanent depression. He swallows pills and drinks himself to sleep every day. The man who fathered her two children was now an unrecognizable drunk. She still has access to the bank account and he makes sure that there is always enough for them to live on.

One day her son got into a fight at a nightclub and the protagonist told him ‘Yuh sista geh kidnap and doh worry, you next in (expletive) line’. His father sent him abroad immediately. Her daughter cut off the beautiful hair which her father loved so much and now sports a ‘boy cut’. She is supposed to go for counseling but always has an excuse. She no longer prays and hates the gospel music she once loved. She wants no bible in her room and wants no priest to come and pray for her. She has turned vegetarian and has a robotic existence with predictable ritualistic routines. Rhyme, rhythm and reason have disappeared from her life.

As a mother, she is collapsing inside. She feels as if her insides are being ripped apart ‘with pliers’. Her family has been fractured and destroyed by these kidnappers. A perfect marriage had come to naught. She saw her daughter eavesdropping while she spoke with her husband on the phone once with a frown and speaks with him in secret now. She has stopped him from calling her as he often did so when he was drunk to ask about his ‘baby girl’. In total isolation, mother clings to the shadow that is left of her daughter nursing the memories of happier times.

She wanted the world to know her story because she has heard many people say that the families should not pay the ransom. If she had it her way, she would have gladly given them a little extra, she said.