Free Katie Beers by Buried Memories: Katie Beers' Story

every day.
    Day three, or so it seemed, I may have dozed off for a minute or two. I woke up to the sound of a news anchor and a sad realization.
    “Good Morning. It’s Wednesday, December thirtieth, nineteen ninety-two,” the newscaster said in a perky voice. I missed my birthday. I missed my tenth birthday. I cried over and over again.
    My picture was on every newscast, every hour. So was Marilyn, lying on what looked like a child’s bed, decorated in 101 Dalmatians bedding, holding a pillow, and crying. The news report said that the room was in Aunt Linda’s house, and that it was my room. My room at Aunt Linda’s consisted of one of those little chairs that flips out into a really small bed with a hamper. I don’t remember having toys in the room— I didn’t have many toys at all. This new room looked like the Disney catalogue. It had a beautiful day bed with a Dalmatians comforter, shaped pillows, curtains, an area rug and lots of toys. This room was not mine. It was a fabrication. And yet on the news report, Aunt Linda was telling the reporter how sad she was that I was missing and she wanted me home.
    On this birthday, Big John told me that when I turned eighteen, he would give me his red and his black Camaros. And he would give me one hundred dollars for every day that he kept me. I would be rich by the time I was all grown up.

FIFTEEN MINUTES
    Neighbors didn’t hesitate to come out of their homes to bask in their fifteen minutes of fame. They added obscure pieces to a puzzle that was taking shape as a grotesquely distorted image behind the veil of normal suburban family life. On Marilyn Beers’ block, yellow ribbons hung, or rather flapped, from tree limbs as if they had been randomly scattered by the gusts of a nor’easter. On one home, the words “Prayin’ for Katie” were scribbled in crayon on cracking window trim.
    A young mother with a big-hair perm seemed to mean well. Standing on her driveway in a grey sweatshirt, she had no trouble fielding questions about her little neighbor, Katie.
    “I was standing by my sliding glass doors and Katie had axed my daughter why don’t you see your Daddy and she just said because I don’t. And Katie axed ‘Does he touch you in any sorta way?’ And my daughter said ‘No.’ Katie just turned around and said ‘Don’t ever let a man hurt you, ‘cuz they hurt you a lot.’ So I went over to the pool and I said, ‘Ya know, Katie, if yous ever have a problem, ya know, I’m a Mom, ya know, you can tawk to me,’…and she just axed me not to say nothin’ to no one and I couldn’t go tell the mom ‘cuz, ya know, there’s an ongoing problem.” She shook her head. “So there wasn’t nothin’ I could do.”
    How about calling the police—did you ever think to do that?
    “Yeah, I thought about that but, ya know, I had a problem with the court system myself with my daughter’s father so, ya know. …as far as I knew with the schools and all…” her voice trailed off as she changed the subject. “Katie was a well-kept child—a well-kept child.” She emphasized the word “well”, as if to convince herself and reporters she hadn’t overlooked blatant clues.
    It was quite obvious that Katie had fallen through so many walloping cracks, it was hard to keep all the gaping crevices straight and pack the disturbing details of the unfolding travesty into the limited time we could devote each night to the story on the evening news. Neighbors suspected the little girl had been sexually abused; schools were aware shewas chronically absent and had dropped out altogether soon after starting fourth grade; merchants were troubled for years by her abominable hygiene and lack of supervision; Suffolk County’s Child Protective Services had been to Katie’s house at least twice and in one visit claimed Linda hollered and chased the caseworker out; 6 police not only had a confession from Sal Inghilleri, her godmother’s husband, that he had molested Katie but also