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"Once upon a time, I was Rhonda Patricia Christie, a beloved four-year-old princess living with my parents in a tidy garden apartment near the naval base in San Diego. Mom, in her beehive hairdo, would dress me up in frilly purple dresses to meet Dad&amp;amp;#8217;s ship whenever he came into port, and he would spend his shore leave teaching me to ride a bike with training wheels. &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;ll start school soon, like a big girl,&amp;amp;#8221; Mom would tell me, and I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t wait to be in school with lots of other kids my age. It was a happy, sunny time. I had no idea that dark secrets were swirling around my family&amp;amp;#8212;secrets that would swallow my childhood. One afternoon there came a knock at the door, and when Mom opened it, there was a lady I&amp;amp;#8217;d never seen before. Next to her stood a tall girl a little older than me. Mom seemed to know the woman&amp;amp;#8212;she called her Shirley&amp;amp;#8212;and that surprised me because I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t think Mom would be friends with somebody with missing teeth. They told me that the tall girl, Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e, was my sister. She didn&amp;amp;#8217;t look like me&amp;amp;#8212;her skin was much darker&amp;amp;#8212;but I was so happy to have a sister I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t ask questions. Mom told me I was going to have a fun sleepover. Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e would play with us for a while, and then I&amp;amp;#8217;d get to spend the night with them at their motel! When she saw my bedroom, Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e acted oddly. Later I realized it was because she&amp;amp;#8217;d never seen such things as my canopy bed, my closet full of dresses, the toys scattered across my bedroom floor, my fish tank. &amp;amp;#8220;This is all yours?&amp;amp;#8221; I remember her asking several times. Then Mom dressed me in my favorite red sneakers, packed me an overnight bag and with a kiss on the cheek told me to be good and have fun. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;ll see you tomorrow!&amp;amp;#8221; she sang. As we drove off, Mom stood in the street and waved. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t see her again for more than 30 years. Shirley drove us to an ugly motel, but we didn&amp;amp;#8217;t stay there. She rushed us up to a room, barking at me to hurry up, and threw a few belongings into the car. We drove off with a squeal of tires and I, suddenly scared, whimpered, &amp;amp;#8220;I want my mom!&amp;amp;#8221; Shirley turned in her seat and screamed in my face, &amp;amp;#8220;Pepper, you shut up!&amp;amp;#8221; Nobody had ever yelled at me so viciously, and I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know the name Pepper; I started to cry and became hysterical. Shirley snarled at Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e, &amp;amp;#8220;You keep that little chink quiet.&amp;amp;#8221; And thus began my new life. Hungry For Love The next 12 years were a blur of cheap motels where we&amp;amp;#8217;d stay a day or two, or maybe weeks, before sneaking out in the middle of the night. &amp;amp;#8220;Pepper,&amp;amp;#8221; Shirley called me&amp;amp;#8212;never Rhonda. I had no idea why she renamed me, and I learned quickly not to insist I was Rhonda. All that got me was more nasty scolding. I was hungry and dirty. Shirley never cooked for us. She&amp;amp;#8217;d take us to Salvation Army soup kitchens for bowls of mush, and Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e and I scrounged for food and sometimes I begged for handouts. For money, Shirley would drive out to highway rest areas and visit truckers in their cabs for 15 minutes; not until I was older did I figure that out. Some nights, Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e and I slept in rest-stop restrooms. Shirley kept saying that Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e and I were sisters, but I never understood that. She looked nothing like me, and why had I never known about her? I kept waiting for the nightmare to end, for Mom to show up and take me home, but it went on and on. The hunger, discomfort and fear were bad enough, but the terrible mystery of it all was the worst: Who was Shirley? Why was she so horrible to me? And why had my mother let her take me? I cried for my mother a lot, and Shirley would snarl that she was protecting me from &amp;amp;#8220;that f&amp;amp;#8212;ker.&amp;amp;#8221; She would never tell me what my mom had done to make her hate her so. Shirley warned me never to talk to anybody, especially the police, because we&amp;amp;#8217;d all go straight to prison. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t understand why, but she said it with such vehemence I was afraid to doubt her. More than once, the police pulled us over. Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e often panicked, screaming and crying so much that the officer would ask what was wrong. Shirley had a story: &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;m the grandmother, looking after them now that their parents were killed in a car crash.&amp;amp;#8221; I wanted to shout, &amp;amp;#8220;No, they weren&amp;amp;#8217;t!&amp;amp;#8221; but by then I&amp;amp;#8217;d become such a skittish, traumatized puppet that I kept my mouth shut. Through teary eyes, I&amp;amp;#8217;d watch him drive off&amp;amp;#8212;my salvation, my deliverance. I still dreamed of going to school like other kids, but we never stayed anywhere long enough. Two nights here, a week there, always in hideous motels full of drunks and addicts who beat one another bloody. Every now and then, we&amp;amp;#8217;d drive in Shirley&amp;amp;#8217;s old car cross-country to New Orleans, where somebody called Titi lived. There were three boys always in and out and around her house, and they hated me and Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e. Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e is black, and they seemed to think I was Asian. They called us the ugliest names and, worse, one of the boys was all over me. We&amp;amp;#8217;d never stay at Titi&amp;amp;#8217;s long before we&amp;amp;#8217;d get back on the road, but being molested became a regular feature of my life. I remember one old guy&amp;amp;#8230;. I must have been six years old. And every few months, we&amp;amp;#8217;d circle back to Titi and those horrible boys. Becoming Invisible As the years went by, it got harder and harder for me to remember my mom&amp;amp;#8217;s face or details of the normal, loving life I used to have. I had snapshot memories and a dim recollection that my parents were known as Bob and Bobbie. Shirley carried a red bag that she said never to go into, but when she was asleep, I&amp;amp;#8217;d sometimes sneak a peek. She kept a photograph in there that I knew I&amp;amp;#8217;d seen before&amp;amp;#8212;me and my mom dressed up to meet my dad&amp;amp;#8217;s ship, holding hands and smiling at each other. Only Shirley had cut the picture in half, throwing away the image of me. In retrospect, it was a perfect metaphor for my childhood. In more ways than one, I was gone, gone, gone. What drove Shirley? I never knew, and I still don&amp;amp;#8217;t. She hated my mother, that much was clear. But enough to drag me around for years and years? I can almost understand kidnapping a child because you love her and want to give her a better life. But a child you obviously hate? She put me in school a couple of times&amp;amp;#8212;a month here, a month there. Then, she told me to call myself Rhonda, but by that time I&amp;amp;#8217;d been Pepper for so long I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t answer to Rhonda, and people thought I was stupid&amp;amp;#8212;I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t read or write and absolutely refused to speak. I&amp;amp;#8217;d become a listener, though. Shirley would be talking to her low-life friends in some motel and say, &amp;amp;#8220;Don&amp;amp;#8217;t worry about her&amp;amp;#8212;she&amp;amp;#8217;s asleep, and she don&amp;amp;#8217;t talk. She won&amp;amp;#8217;t tell anybody what&amp;amp;#8217;s going on.&amp;amp;#8221; She was right that I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t talk; she had me thoroughly terrorized by her demeaning words and her dark warnings never to speak to anyone about our lives. But she was wrong that I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t listening. What saved me, through all those years, was that I always knew that what she said and did was wrong, and that what was being done to me was wrong. Walking back to the motel from school, I&amp;amp;#8217;d look at houses with clean, happy children playing out front. I&amp;amp;#8217;d known love, and while the details were fading, that feeling of having been bathed and fed and hugged never left me. I believed Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e had never known anything like that, so she didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know that what was happening to us was wrong. Her way of dealing was to sleep all the time. I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t sleep. I stayed awake. I listened. I remembered things, like Titi&amp;amp;#8217;s address and the addresses of the motels where we stayed. I can recite them to this day. But what I still cannot understand is why nobody ever suspected something terrible was going on. Kids show up at a school with no notice and leave a month later the same way&amp;amp;#8212;and then suddenly return the following year? That doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t put up a red flag? And it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t just me and Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e who were being mistreated. Every sleazy motel we stayed at was full of what I call motel kids&amp;amp;#8212;children dragged around by abusive, addicted adults. When I was in fifth grade, a couple of drunken grown-ups left their three-month-old baby with me. I fed him sugar water because I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know any better, and nobody showed me how to care for him. We had a playpen in the motel room, and I slept in it with him. I had that baby a whole year, and then the parents showed up and took him back. Kids like that&amp;amp;#8212;like me&amp;amp;#8212;are invisible, I guess, because Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e and I spent more than a decade being dragged around, hardly going to school, and nobody ever called the police, child protective services or a social worker&amp;amp;#8212;nobody. I knew very few decent people. One boy was a sweet-natured motel kid my own age, who suddenly disappeared from my life just as we were becoming friends. Another was a prostitute I&amp;amp;#8217;d met at a motel in Downey, California, where we lived on and off for a decade. She gave me the first hug I&amp;amp;#8217;d had in years; I wanted it to go on and on. And then there was a Gujarati woman who worked at one of the motels. She spoke almost no English but called me Baby Mama because I always had that baby on my hip. She fed and bathed me. She even took me to Indian festivals with her family. But as far as I know, she never called the police on Shirley or tried to intervene. Maybe she was afraid to. I think she just didn&amp;amp;#8217;t realize&amp;amp;#8212;I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t see her leave the motel; she may never have been to any other part of the country. Perhaps for her that scene at the motel&amp;amp;#8212;filthy, neglected children and drunken, abusive parents&amp;amp;#8212;was just normal America. Making My Own Way I like to say that I ran away at 12, but &amp;amp;#8220;ran away&amp;amp;#8221; implies someone wanted me to stay. Truthfully, by then, Shirley didn&amp;amp;#8217;t care what I did. I&amp;amp;#8217;d been taking care of another baby, a nine-month-old. Her parents used to tie her to her potty and they&amp;amp;#8217;d whip her tiny brother with a belt. When they left the motel, I went with them to protect her and to get away from Shirley, and got through a whole semester of seventh grade. But it was worse with them than at the motel. The drinking and screaming were terrible. The dad even shot up the house with a gun one night. Finally, I could tell he was getting interested in me sexually, so I took off. That was the start of the third phase of my life&amp;amp;#8212;drifting around on my own as a young teenager. I would stay with whoever would take me in, make my way to school in the morning and then after school get any odd job I could find. School was the one constant in my life. Occasionally I&amp;amp;#8217;d ask the county for food stamps or welfare, but I could never get help because I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t prove who I was. When I tried to explain my circumstances to social workers, counselors or welfare officials, one after another would frown and say, &amp;amp;#8220;I can&amp;amp;#8217;t help you.&amp;amp;#8221; When I was 16, I got hauled before a judge for driving without a license, and when I told him my whole life story to explain why, he dismissed me with a fine to pay and a curt &amp;amp;#8220;I never heard of such a thing. Good luck.&amp;amp;#8221; People who might have helped either didn&amp;amp;#8217;t believe my story or didn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to. At 17, I fell off the back of a motorcycle, breaking most of the bones in my face and tearing my lips and cheeks almost completely off. The nearby private hospital where I was taken wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t treat me because I was a minor without a guardian. I had no idea who Bob and Bobbie were or how to find them. The hospital staff literally put me out on the street, bleeding and broken. I hitchhiked to a county hospital, holding my face together with my hands. Without a birth certificate and a Social Security number, you are literally nobody. During this entire time, as odd as it sounds, I kept returning to visit Shirley at the motel. I even cared for her when she was dying of pancreatic cancer. Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e was still in her clutches. She hadn&amp;amp;#8217;t had the strength to get away, and by then we had very little in common. One of the reasons I can offer for why I went back was that Shirley was my only hope of finding my parents and regaining my identity. &amp;amp;#8220;Please tell me who I am!&amp;amp;#8221; I begged her, but she took her secrets to the grave. &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know nothing,&amp;amp;#8221; she&amp;amp;#8217;d mumble, turning her face to the wall. Maybe by then she was ashamed of what she&amp;amp;#8217;d done to me. But I managed to make a life for myself. I graduated high school, even though&amp;amp;#8212;unlike every other kid that day&amp;amp;#8212;I had no family there to watch me receive my diploma, to tell me how proud they were that I had made it. I bounced from one low-wage job to another and stayed out of trouble. For a while, I tried to check out with drugs and alcohol, but I found that true healing doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t work until you really feel the pain. There are no shortcuts. You can&amp;amp;#8217;t go around pain; you have to go through it. When I was 24, I got pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Milan. Her father knew all about my past&amp;amp;#8212;he&amp;amp;#8217;d been a motel kid too&amp;amp;#8212;and we tried to stay together but couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t make it work. Still, Milan saved my life; she helped me find a new focus. I wanted to make her life as full of love and protection as my childhood was not. I wrapped her in a blanket and with $30 in my pocket boarded a bus from Los Angeles to South Lake Tahoe, California. Someone had told me it was beautiful there and that there were jobs because of all the casinos. I settled into steady work as a checker at a supermarket, and made as normal and loving a home for Milan as an underpaid single mother can. Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e and I stayed in touch. She found herself a nice husband and moved to Southern California, but she still struggles. I think that she carries a lot of guilt. I worry she believes Shirley used her as bait to convince my mother to hand me over. She frets constantly over the other motel kids we knew. I tell her over and over: Forgive yourself. Shocking Answers For years, life continued to be a challenge; money was always a problem. Then, in 2009, a woman at my church offered me what sounded like a crazy solution to the legal limbo that had held me back for so long: She&amp;amp;#8217;d adopt me. As an adult! With my own child! But it was no joke: If she legally adopted me, I&amp;amp;#8217;d get a birth certificate. I could go to college. Get a good job. We filed the paperwork using the only name I knew&amp;amp;#8212;Rhonda Pepper Smith&amp;amp;#8212;and miraculously, a judge approved it. But then the county hall of records put a stop to the process, because in the boxes for the names of my natural parents and place of my birth, we&amp;amp;#8217;d had to write &amp;amp;#8220;unknown.&amp;amp;#8221; The woman at the hall of records who called me&amp;amp;#8212;I wish I knew her name&amp;amp;#8212;was heartbroken that she couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t help. The department sent back my paperwork. When I opened the envelope, I found among my papers a photocopy of a California birth certificate: Rhonda Patricia Christie. The birth date was my own. Parents: Robert Christie and Barbara Jo Blackwelder. Bob and Bobbie. I almost passed out. With that information, I was able to track them down in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. When I reached for the phone to dial their number, my hand was shaking so badly I could barely hit the buttons. &amp;amp;#8220;Hello?&amp;amp;#8221; an old man&amp;amp;#8217;s Southern-twanged voice said. &amp;amp;#8220;Are you married to Barbara Jo Blackwelder?&amp;amp;#8221; I asked. &amp;amp;#8220;I am.&amp;amp;#8221; I swallowed and asked, &amp;amp;#8220;Do you know anything about Rhonda Patricia Christie?&amp;amp;#8221; There was a long pause. I could hear the rasp of his breathing. Unable to wait, I said, &amp;amp;#8220;I think I&amp;amp;#8217;m her.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Barbara!&amp;amp;#8221; he yelled. &amp;amp;#8220;Pick up the phone! It&amp;amp;#8217;s Rhonda!&amp;amp;#8221; There was a clatter of a receiver being picked up, and the first words I remember my mother saying in three decades were, &amp;amp;#8220;You were stolen. Shirley stole you.&amp;amp;#8221; I burst into tears. I hadn&amp;amp;#8217;t dreamed it. I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t crazy. I&amp;amp;#8217;d been right all along&amp;amp;#8212;I had been loved. Milan and I flew to see them within days. Waiting at baggage claim, I saw my parents holding a sign with my name on it before they saw me. Mom looked very frail, her head wrapped in a scarf. I tapped her on the shoulder, she turned and we both began bawling. &amp;amp;#8220;My God!&amp;amp;#8221; she sobbed as we squeezed each other. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;d have never known you!&amp;amp;#8221; It seems I found her in the nick of time; she is very ill with lung cancer. She asked me to be baptized at her church, and I agreed. In her mind, that means we&amp;amp;#8217;ll be together in heaven. I&amp;amp;#8217;m still putting together the pieces of my identity. I finally learned, to my shock, that Bob and Bobbie are my adoptive parents; they told me I&amp;amp;#8217;d actually been born to a New Orleans couple who gave me up for adoption. Mom took me in when I was three months old, but it was not my birth mother who arrived to deliver me to her. It was Shirley&amp;amp;#8212;the same Shirley. My adoption was finalized when I was four; some time after that, Shirley showed up again, with Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e&amp;amp;#8212;who, I&amp;amp;#8217;m told, really is my half sister. (I&amp;amp;#8217;d actually first met Ren&amp;amp;eacute;e when I was a toddler, but I have no memory of her until the day I was kidnapped.) &amp;amp;#8220;When Shirley took you off, I had a feeling,&amp;amp;#8221; Mom told me. &amp;amp;#8220;The next day we drove to where you were supposed to be, but the motel room was vacant, and we knew you were gone. My heart died from that point on.&amp;amp;#8221; She told me that they called the police in California repeatedly, but nobody took them seriously because they&amp;amp;#8217;d willingly given me to Shirley. It turns out my parents knew that horrible Titi in New Orleans as well, and they drove all night to her house, stopping at rest areas to kneel and pray. Titi told them nothing. But lying there on her porch were my little red sneakers. My father went so ballistic that a cop on the scene had to restrain him. But the police still couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t help them get the answers they needed, couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t help them find me. It&amp;amp;#8217;s infuriating to me that the police didn&amp;amp;#8217;t take my kidnapping more seriously. My parents weren&amp;amp;#8217;t rich or sophisticated, and their relationship to Shirley muddied the situation. I imagine the case was easy to ignore, but a maddening list of much bigger questions remains. How did my parents know Shirley and Titi? Why was Shirley able to deliver me as an infant to my mom? Why did Shirley hate my mother so much? And why, oh why, did my mother hand me over to Shirley that day? When I ask these questions, my parents become vague and evasive. I can see the agony in their faces, and I don&amp;amp;#8217;t press them too hard. They are old. Mom is sick. The secrets they are keeping are incredibly painful. I may never get all the answers. I can live with it. I have survived by refusing to let Shirley&amp;amp;#8217;s memory keep me as her prisoner. What&amp;amp;#8217;s important is the present: Milan, the family I&amp;amp;#8217;ve built around me, my dear and everlasting friends. I still struggle. Holidays are hard: Everybody brings up their rosy childhood memories, and I sit mute. Even meeting people and starting romantic relationships are difficult. One of the first questions is always &amp;amp;#8220;Where are you from?&amp;amp;#8221; That&amp;amp;#8217;s a question I can&amp;amp;#8217;t answer. Mom and Dad would love it if Milan and I moved to Upper Sandusky, but we&amp;amp;#8217;re staying put. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been able to get financial aid and am now a student at Humboldt State University in California. Milan and I talk to Mom and Dad often, and we&amp;amp;#8217;ve visited several times. Culturally, we are very different, but all that love is still there. Much as I want them to clear up all the dark mysteries of my childhood, I draw every day on the four years of love and decency they gave me at the start of my life. It protected me through the horrors of what came later, and protects me still. I&amp;amp;#8217;m free now. Shirley, it turns out, didn&amp;amp;#8217;t win after all. Pepper Smith is now searching for her birth mother with the help of her attorney, Gloria Allred. Dan Baum, who has written for The New Yorker, is the author of Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death and Life in New Orleans."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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