Heart Scars Read online

  Heart Scars

  Jeanette Lukowski

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  St. Cloud, Minnesota

  Copyright © 2013 Jeanette Lukowski

  All rights reserved.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-87839-655-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-87839-949-9

  First Edition: June 2013

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

  I dedicate this book

  to my children,

  who I love unconditionally.

  Follow your dreams,

  and live with integrity.

  Author’s Note

  All of the events are true, but are retold from my notes and my memories. I have changed the names of everyone involved, partly to protect their privacy, and partly to shelter them from the very public persecution my daughter and I have endured since 2009.

  It’s hard to share this story, but too many families live in silence. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our strength—or survival.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. Vulnerable

  2. Frank

  3. Warning Signs

  4. The Practice Run

  5. If You Love Me

  6. My Body

  7. Hans

  8. Alone

  9. Officer Richards

  10. Contented Disciple

  11. Moving Forward

  12. Counseling

  13. Court

  14. Unanswered Questions

  15. Letting Go

  Acknowledgments

  1. Vulnerable

  When I was thirteen, I was molested by an old man who lived in the apartment across the hall from my friend Michelle.

  When I was fifteen, I was asked for “a light” from an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old guy who was walking towards me in an alley. When I extended my arm to light his cigarette, he extended his own in return, so that he could grab hold of my breast and squeeze.

  While staying with my friend Kathy when I was seventeen, she and her boyfriend set me up on a blind date with a guy who turned out to be twenty-three. He took me out for dinner at a nice restaurant, ordered a glass of wine for me and tried to rape me when we got back to Kathy’s house.

  By nineteen, I thought I was a better judge of character, and I let my guard down long enough for my ex-boyfriend’s best friend to get me drunk. After I threw up, he suggested I lie down on his bed. When he was finished raping me, he threw a dirty sweatsock at me, told me to wipe myself off, and then drove me home.

  Because all of these events took place in Chicago, I convinced myself that Chicago was a horrible place. I vowed never to have a child of my own until I moved out of Chicago. I thought I would be less vulnerable somewhere else.

  * * *

  I got divorced when Allison was four and Tommy was two. In the years that followed, I was especially tuned in to all of the “rules” of safety that parents teach their children: don’t play too close to the road, don’t eat any of your Halloween candy until after I’ve had a chance to check it all out, don’t go anywhere with anyone who doesn’t know our “secret word,” and most of all, don’t talk to strangers. I did everything I could to empower my children, but I also took full responsibility for every injury, insult, or injustice they experienced along the way. My own sense of self-esteem was connected to the children. Even though everyone pretty much knew I had made a bad choice when I married Frank, I still felt like a complete failure after the divorce. I was the first in the whole family to get a divorce! From my perspective, the divorce proved I wasn’t strong and capable like my mom. I didn’t want people to think I was screwing up raising my children, as well.

  I internalized the fact that I never heard the words “I love you” from my parents or my husband as meaning that I was unworthy of being loved. Ironically, when I was thirty-five, my mother told me that outward expressions of love were never given in her childhood family—the sentiment was just understood. I couldn’t help but wonder how differently my life might have been if I ever heard the words.

  In an attempt to do better by my own children, I began kissing them and telling them “I love you” every time we parted—at bedtime, at school, or dropping them off with friends. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to fill the void left in Allison by her father’s absence. She wanted to know that she was loveable to someone other than her mom. I bought her a cell phone so she could call her father whenever she wanted, but his hiding from the child support collector meant he hid from us, too. In spite of the drain on the family budget, I let her keep the cell phone to call me if she ran into problems in school or needed a ride rather than accepting one from friends.

  Eventually, that phone became a weapon of sorts—it provided a way for people to hurt Allison, people pretending to be her friends. Through text messages and phone calls, she was bullied, harassed, sent indecent pictures, stalked. Then, Allison met someone with whom she could talk—and cry to—for hours at a time. All he wanted in exchange, he said, was her love. He told her he couldn’t wait to finally meet her in person. They made the arrangements on the cell phone. He sent bus tickets through the mail, and Allison pulled the envelope out of the stack before I ever even saw it. Thanks to the cell phone I had provided for her safety, Allison was on her way the afternoon of April 24, 2009. She was on her way to meet someone she thought was a friend, but who turned out to be a predator.

  No one can prepare you for the pain of discovering your child is missing. More than a year later, I still have a hard time saying the words, “My daughter ran away from home.” My life changed forever on that April day. The scars will never disappear.

  * * *

  Friday, April 24, 2009

  3:00 p.m.

  I pulled up to the middle school like I usually did and found a parking place at the far end of the lot. We moved to this town in July 2008. After a week of experimentation the previous September, the children and I had decided that I should park in the lot directly adjacent to the bus lot. This was the area closest to the school bus loading-and-unloading lot, and the easiest place from which to exit the school grounds once both kids were in the car.

  For the eight months we had lived in the town, our daily routine was that I would send Allison a text message once I was parked to tell her I had arrived. She was enrolled at the high school, which released students at 3:05 p.m. She boarded a school bus there that brought her to the middle school lot. At exactly 3:20 p.m., the middle school students were released, and the parking lot dance would begin. The buses would swing their bus doors open, and students of all ages would fill the lot. Some of the high school students would board another bus for the trip home, some, like Allison, would get into their parent’s car, and some would walk home. By 3:30 p.m., all of the buses would stream out of the parking lot, leaving only the vehicles of the custodians and teachers who coached after-school sports. Whether or not Tommy had some after-school activity that would require a later pick-up, I was always there to pick Allison up by 3:20 p.m.

  3:25 p.m.

  Tommy had track practice after school this afternoon, and I’d gotten so involved reading a book that I didn’t notice how late Allison was until I looked up and saw the number of now-empty parking spots in the lot. No sight of Allison. At 3:28 p.m., I sent her a text message asking, “So, where are you?”

  While I was getting used to her talking to people between buses, she typically responded pretty quickly to my text messages. I waite
d for her response.

  3:40 p.m.

  As the last school buses pulled out, I sent Allison another text: “Where are you?”

  Still no answer. I told myself to take a deep breath. Perhaps Allison was pouting against the middle school building somewhere, because I told her that she couldn’t go to the mall. Or, maybe she actually took my advice to meet with the science teacher to talk about her missing assignments, and was angry about having missed the school bus. I decided to drive over to the high school.

  3:43 p.m.

  I sent Allison another text message: “I’m at the high school, ready to walk in.”

  No response.

  I walked into the high school, clutching my cell phone in my left hand and my car key in my right hand.

  I headed to the main office. “Hi. I was wondering if Mr. Kline is still in? My daughter didn’t get off the school bus, so I’m hoping she stayed here,” I said to the woman sitting behind the counter.

  “Oh, my,” she replied. “Let me try calling him in his room.”

  I could tell by the look on her face that no one was answering the phone.

  “Would you like me to page him in the building?” she asked.

  My brain said No. A public school teacher was not going to sit out in the commons area with my daughter an hour after school was dismissed. But my mouth said, “Yes.” I watched as the secretary paged the teacher through the building’s intercom system.

  After a minute or two of avoiding each other’s eyes, the secretary asked if I would like her to call the bus company’s office.

  “No. Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll find her.” I hoped that my voice sounded more confident than I was beginning to feel.

  4:13 p.m.

  I decided to try another angle and send a text message to Andrew, Allison’s best friend. (I happened to have saved his phone number a few weeks earlier, after she used my phone to text him when her phone’s battery died.) “Do you know where Allison is?” I asked.

  No response.

  I got back into the car, not sure where to look, what to think or what to do. I sent her another text message at 4:24 p.m.: “Do I call the police now?”

  No response.

  What the hell is going on?! my mind screamed. This was much worse than any stunt Allison had ever pulled before. In the beginning of the year, for instance, she had ridden the school bus home, and then couldn’t get into the house because she doesn’t carry a house key (having lost three to our previous house in as many months). She had called me from the school bus driver’s phone, asking where I was—which resulted in our current pick-up arrangement. She had insisted on having her own cell phone after that, and it had become like a third appendage. If her cell phone battery were to die, and she was nowhere near an electrical outlet, Allison would throw a temper-tantrum and find someone else’s to use. But now there was silence?

  Maybe she had gone home somehow, with a dead cell phone battery, only to discover that she couldn’t get into the house and couldn’t call me. I still had time to run home before having to be back at the middle school to pick Tommy up from track practice.

  I drove with my cell phone on my lap, carefully sticking to the speed limit in spite of the adrenaline coursing through my body. No need to get pulled over by the police at this point, because I was too embarrassed to admit I couldn’t locate my teenage daughter.

  Driving up the last street, our house came into view. I scanned the yard and front stoop for Allison. If she was there, I was going to hug her, then kill her for worrying me so much.

  But she was nowhere in sight. Maybe she called the house, and left a message on the machine. I pulled the car into the garage, turned the engine off, and walked into the house. The house was silent.

  I headed straight to the house phone and scrolled through the numbers on the caller ID. No missed calls. Dammit! Where is that girl?! Deep breathing wasn’t working anymore. At 4:44 p.m., I sent a pleading text message to Allison’s phone: “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  No response.

  As much as this was upsetting me, I reminded myself I still had another child to take care of. I drove back to the middle school to be there when Tommy got done with practice.

  4:56 p.m.

  Waiting for Tommy to finish track practice, I sent Allison another text message, this time saying, “I’m going to keep calling until you talk to me, dear—whatever it takes.”

  No response.

  Tommy wouldn’t be done for another fifteen minutes, which wasn’t enough time to do much, but I needed to do something. At 5:03 p.m. I decided to send a text message to a guy Allison had been texting from my phone the week before, when her battery was dead. He claimed to be seventeen, and living in North Carolina. My gut had sent up all kinds of warning flags when I heard this, but my daughter yelled at me about trusting her. The message I sent him simply said, “So what’s going on?”

  No response.

  At 5:18 p.m., I sent one more text message, warning him, “I’ll find you if anything happens to her.”

  No response.

  Then, two minutes later, I got a text message from Allison’s phone. “I love you,” it began. “I’m not going to Massachusetts.”

  Massachusetts? I wonder. Why is Allison talking about Massachusetts? We don’t know anyone in Massachusetts.

  “I’m sorry for all the hurt I put you through. You will always be my one and only mommy,” the message continued.

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream! I wanted to reach into the cell phone and pull Allison through. But Tommy was in the car by this time, and we were heading home, so I couldn’t do more than just drive and explain to Tommy that I didn’t know where his sister was.

  5:26 p.m.

  When we reached home, I pulled into the garage, turned the car off, and typed out another text message to Allison: “Please talk to me.”

  At 5:27 p.m., she replied, “Hi.”

  “Live voice” I sent back.

  “Why?” came her reply at 5:28 p.m.

  “Voice verification,” I answered. I wanted to hear my daughter’s voice, I wanted to know that she was alive and okay, and I wanted to hear her explanation.

  The reply from Allison’s phone simply read, “Hmmm.”

  That didn’t sound like Allison. “Then this is not her,” I typed back.

  No response.

  I called the police.

  Waiting for the officer to come to the house was difficult. I decided to search through Allison’s room, to see if anything would provide a clue as to what she was doing or who she might have been talking to. In a backpack on the floor of her closet I found an empty cigarette box (Who smokes? I asked myself). On the floor next to the backpack was an empty can from one of those energy drinks (that I never bought), all the rage with the teen set and “extreme” athletes. I also found a photograph of Allison, taken just months before, when we celebrated her fifteenth birthday. I figured the police might want it for an Amber Alert. I also found a sheet of notebook paper on the floor in front of the television set, where she sometimes sat while talking on the phone. Scrawled across it were two lines of an address in Massachusetts. Son of a bitch!

  I carried my bounty upstairs, set the items on the dining room table, and waited for the police officer to arrive.

  Officer Clark was a fairly young, but extremely tall man—well over six feet—and weighed at least 250 pounds. Having spent the past eleven years with just my children, it was hard not to be overwhelmed by such a huge male presence in my house. I reminded myself that I asked for an officer to come over, and that he is one of the “good guys,” as opposed to being someone who might hurt me. I don’t remember much else about him, except that he had reddish-brown hair, glasses, and a very calm approach to his work. I gave him the photograph of Allison and the
piece of notebook paper with the Massachusetts address. I told him that this was probably where she was heading.

  “Why do you say that, ma’am?” he asked.

  I answered, “She’s been talking to some guy on the phone a lot lately, and then she sent me a text message saying that she wasn’t going to Massachusetts. We don’t know anyone in Massachusetts, so there’s no reason she would have this address unless it belongs to the guy . . .”

  Before he left, Officer Clark gave me a business card with his name and phone number, as well as the case number relating to Allison’s police report. She was now classified as a runaway.

  Runaway! My mind screamed at the word. This was my daughter we were talking about, not some troubled kid from an abusive home who needed to run away in order to feel safe. I had dedicated my entire life to taking care of the kids! I wanted to tell him there had been some terrible misunderstanding, but could only utter a quiet, “Thank you.”

  Within the hour, Officer Clark called to report that he had stopped by the bus station in town, and the person he spoke with didn’t recall seeing my daughter. “I’m sure she’s still nearby, ma’am,” he said in a reassuring voice. “Is it possible she might be over at a friend’s house? You might try calling around . . .”

  We were still relatively new to town, though, and I didn’t know any of Allison’s friends’ phone numbers or last names. One downside of cell phones, I discovered, was that the cell phone user was typically the only person with access to those phone numbers. I told Officer Clark that I knew where some of her friends lived, because I’d driven her over to their houses, but not their phone numbers.

  “Well, you might consider driving around and asking if they’ve seen her,” he replied.