For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. — James Baldwin
On March 27, 2009, another little girl disappeared, this time closer to home for me. Eight year old Sandra Cantu was reported missing from the Tracy mobile home park where she lived with her mother. Her face was immediately on the nightly news, her rounded cheeks and innocent smile engulfed my thoughts those first few nights. I found myself thinking of her as I drove the highway, searching for her face to call out to me in the back of every white passenger van being driven by a menacing old man. I found myself looking out the window more at work, focusing intently on the faces of little girls walking past even though before I would barely have paid attention to passerby; I was just hoping to find her. While I couldn’t help myself from having a nervous nagging fear in my heart, I prayed that she would beat every statistic on the books and make a safe return.
I grew up in the same town as and was five years old at the time Amber Swartz Garcia, another adorable eight year old girl, was abducted in 1988 while playing in her front yard in Pinole, California. Her disappearance frightened me as a child, sure, but I never really understood the significance of what child abduction entailed. All I could comprehend was that it made the teachers keep us inside more often and check identification when we were picked up. It made my parents restrict me to the backyard with my friends, no longer allowing me and my best girlfriend next door to play catch in the street with the neighborhood boys. I remember my friend George from a couple of houses up the block knocking on our door accompanied by his labrador retriever, promising the dog would keep me safe if they let me out to play “Monkey in the Middle”, a game like keep-away where two people would stand on either end of someone standing in the middle and throw a ball to eachother over their head, hoping the “monkey” wouldn’t jump high enough to catch it. While my dad wouldn’t cave, but my mom always fell victim to George’s 9 year-old smile, missing one tooth but nonetheless perfect. She’d open the garage door and let me play with them as long as I promised not to set foot onto the driveway.
As I grew older, our little town grew with me.
A shopping strip sprouted where there had once only been a few local restaurants and newcomers began pouring in from less desirable neighborhoods, crowding up Pinole and making it lose it’s old town charm. Soon, I found myself not wanting to venture out into the street to play with my friends. The street was no longer this special playground but was now a place where I felt danger might loom around the hill. I worried as every car slowly creeped by, holding my breath until it passed. I didn’t follow running after the ice cream truck in the afternoon as far as I used to do. I clicked the garage door closed even in the heat of mid-summer, not liking the fact that anyone could potentially just walk into our home and grab me from the kitchen while my mom was i the back. I no longer walked with my head in the clouds, believing that a labrador retriever with more bark than bite could play my hero. I kept my eyes open and I made it my priority to stay aware of my surroundings. Not doing so no longer meant mischief and grounding; it meant being lost forever, a face plastered on a telephone pole, a future with promise that never would get the chance to be fulfilled.
We still don’t know to this day what really happened to Amber. She will always be a face her parents will be searching a crowd for. In every 29 year old woman’s face, they will look for signs of their daughter. I imagine her mother might sometimes follow a girl that age into a store, all the way to the cash register, just to catch a glimpse. Her father must turn his head and need to catch his breath and calm his erratically beating heart while driving when a nearby driver has his little girl’s freckles. Sadly, Sandra’s parents now know where their daughter is. In a better place we hope. When the suitcase was found with Sandra’s body confirmed to be in it last week, I prayed for the killer to be found. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to be raped and beaten in his jail cell; thankful that there was at least one moral code that even the prisoner population believed should never be broken. I wanted him to die by lethal injection, or more barbarian-like ways if possible. I always imagined a him. The face of your average pedophile.
In all my nightmare scenarios as a child, I never imagined a woman as the face of “the bad guy”. It was supposed to be the bad “guy” after all. My friends and I cautiously stayed away from white vans with tinted windows, what we referred to as “kidnapper vans”. We stayed along the main streets and no longer allowed ourselves the freedom of adventure; to weave through the deserted park trails on our walks home or to play in the back alleys behind our favorite old town bakery. Every old man with long hair and torn jeans that walked by was our potential enemy. Any car being driven by a guy over the age of 21 made us nervous enough to need to run home and pee. Even when imagining someone offering me candy to pull me into their car, I never once imagined a woman. A woman was the face of my mother, my teacher; someone who baked cookies and smiled and took care of kids…never a murderer.
According to statistics conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, women are involved in only 7 percent of murders across the board–with solo killings of children being even more obscure (CBS News). When it was announced that Melissa Huckaby, a neighbor, a mother of a five year old, and a Sunday School teacher was being charged with the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sandra Cantu, what was previously believed to be an unspeakable act became all the more disturbing. The murder allegedly happened at the Clover Church where Melissa’s grandfather is a pastor and where she taught children at Sunday School. A community searchers for answers; why? What makes a woman, a mother, a supposedly “god-fearing” woman; hurt and abuse and kill a child? Why would a mother kill another mother’s child. I think to myself, God, save us from your followers.
Someone whose opinion I hold dear was talking with me about Sandra’s tragedy and told me she thinks that Sandra would be alive if her mother was more watchful over her. If Sandra’s killer was found to be your average pedophile, maybe I would find it hard not to agree. But, I do find it hard. This wasn’t some guy who pulled a little girl into a car because no one was watching. This was a trusted member of the community, a mother whose daughter was best friends with little Sandra. How can a parent prevent the unthinkable? How could Sandra’s mother have known, as she let her daughter happily skip down the street, that her neighbor who she knew was sick enough to harm her child? This is a case of blaming someone for not having prevented the completely unforeseeable.
While Melissa Huckaby was arraigned today, she and her family members cried and whimpered. I choose to cry instead for the missing girl in her Hello Kitty t-shirt who was last seen alive happily skipping down the way in the mobile home park, without a care in the world.
I think to myself: What can I do now?
My first thought is to contact the prosecutor’s office demanding as a concerned citizen that they push for the special circumstances that would result in a death penalty conviction. If a society allows the abuser and killer of an innocent child to live, I believe that it is doomed. For anyone who disagrees, think about what you would do to someone who took your trusting child into their home and touched them and violated them and took the light from their eyes and the breath from their bodies, stuffing their deceased body into a suitcase and dumping them away like trash. Tell me what you would do, and if you reply anything other than seek justice and want an eye for eye, I will call you a liar and unfit to be a parent.
So, what do we do? In cases like Sandra Cantu’s, we can really not do much. But, in the majority of child abduction cases, the one where the boogeyman fits the average description, we can make ourselves and our loved ones aware of potential danger.
Megan’s Law is named in remembrance of Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered by a convicted child molester living across the street from her home. President Clinton signed a federal law allowing public access to information about high-risk offenders. Megan’s Law promotes the belief that “Every parent should have the right to know if a dangerous sexual predator moves into their neighborhood.” (The Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation’s Mission Statement). As a result of this law, in California, for example, you can go to http://meganslaw.ca.gov/ and research registered sexual offenders in your neighborhood. Go online, as scary as it may be, look up the addresses where they live and as a step in the right direction, don’t let your children play around those houses. If your children are a little older, show them these men’s faces and let them know to alert someone if these men ever approach them. It may seem absurd to you civil liberties advocates to be able to research someone’s criminal past, but in my mind, our children’s civil liberties hold more weight than that of a known sex offender. The sex offender has already paid for his crime you say? Well, I say let him suffer through some extra screening if it means the children of my neighborhood keep their innocence intact.
In every community, there is a local neighborhood watch or concerned citizens’ meeting. I know Iranians aren’t much for attending events like these, but face it; you came to America to give your children a better life. Attend these meetings and raise your concerns, write your congressmen about funding for child abduction advocacy groups, get to know your neighbors and don’t shy away from them because they don’t speak the same language your father spoke. Instead of trying to build fences around your children, delve deep into their lives and get to know their friends’ friends and friends’ parents. Teach them that the world isn’t perfect and that there is bad out there to beware of. That advice alone will never shatter their innocence, believe me.
Tonight, I will say a prayer for Sandra Cantu and Megan Kanka and hope they are in a better place happily skipping down a road where no monsters await them. I hope they are holding hands, braiding each other’s hair, singing and playing without a care in the world; knowing all the while that they are missed. I also pray for Amber Swartz and so many other children; missing around the globe, whose parents will never be allowed the chance to close the chapter on their grief. It will be a daily struggle, not knowing what to expect or to expect anything at all, when every missing remains found in some remote location make you close your eyes and pray to God, pray to know whether or not they are the remains of the child you brought into this world. I pray for them and pray that with each step we take to better learn about and improve the state of our society, tragic stories like these become less and less, and our children one day are able to bear children in a world that is a little better than the one we grew up in.
