Katie Beers by Buried Memories: Katie Beers' Story Page A

dumpster in the strip mall but a new bottle would always appear. When I saw it there, I would cry my eyes out.
    Aunt Linda, who never left the house, rarely left her upstairsbedroom. There, she spent hours on the phone. She ran up my grandmother’s phone bill over one thousand dollars. She was calling the “900” numbers that you see on late night TV. Aunt Linda and Sal never slept in the same room, or even associated with each other. Aunt Linda would call the “900” numbers and talk “dirty” on the phone. I would hear her talking, saying what she was wearing, talking about her body and of course lying about how sexy she looked. In fact, she looked like a bull dog with massive rolls of fat. She would spend her days and nights on the phone talking to anonymous voices on three-dollars-per-minute hotlines.
    “I’m sleeping next to a little girl,” she told one of the men, trying to sound sexy. It was four in the morning and I was pretending to sleep.
    Aunt Linda shook my shoulder and ordered me up to speak to the man.
    “He wants YOU,” she barked.
    “I don’t WANT to talk to him,” I whimpered.
    I just wanted to go back to bed because I had to wake up for school the next day. I vividly remember Aunt Linda telling me that if I didn’t talk to the man that wanted to speak to me, I would not be allowed to go to school the next day and she “would make me sorry.” I really wanted to go to school the next day, so I got on the phone. Aunt Linda fed me the words. I was to say, “Hi, this is Tinkerbelle,” so I did. The man asked me what I was wearing and if there was “anything I wanted to do” to him. I started crying, and Aunt Linda grabbed the phone from me screaming that I was “embarrassing” her. She slapped me across the face and ordered me to go to sleep.
    Both Sal and Aunt Linda made me watch porn—for different reasons. Sal made me watch while he made me play with him. This was an almost daily occurrence. Sal had quite the porn collection; he had over fifty porn VHS tapes. John and I counted one day. Linda made me watch porn with her and would play with herself while I watched the video. There was one video with a woman named “Angel.” I couldn’t believe that a woman with such a beautiful name could be so dirty.
    Sal also liked to abuse me in his Firebird. He’d tell me to get in the car to visit his mother, to run an errand for Aunt Linda or to bring me to school. He would park the car somewhere —usually a vacant lot, theparking lot of the mall in a secluded area, of course, at the school after hours or the park—basically anywhere he could find that was infrequently used. The nursery around the corner from our house was a favorite of his. In the off-peak season, the parking lot would be deserted and Sal would drive us there so we could “be alone.” He’d park in a spot that couldn’t be seen from the road. Sal would take lotion out of the glove box, recline his seat and order me to “play” with him. I would have to play with him until he was satisfied, which usually took anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour.
    Another favorite of his was behind a strip mall off of Sunrise Highway. The stores were closed on Sunday afternoons; this is when Sal would take me there because there was little chance of getting caught. He would go through the same routine as in the strip mall parking lot—lotion and brief instructions to “get busy.”
    I hated getting in that Firebird. In fact, I hate getting into any car with a man now. There are still some people who make me skittish. I size people up quickly. I don’t want to say I’m judgmental, but I’m very aware of people and how they make me feel. I mistakenly trusted everyone when I was younger. Now I have a sixth sense. I can tell what people’s intentions are and know when to retreat. I will never be used again.
    The drill. I could hear the snarl of the drill again, and pulled myself up into the coffin-box, locking the neck chain,