Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave (17 page)

On the big day Steve, Patty, and I went to the county courthouse. On the way my soon-to-be new mom and dad had a huge fight. Patty was mad at the world because the shirt she’d wanted to wear had not been cleaned properly, and Steve and I had to listen to her loud complaints throughout the hour or more it took us to get to the courthouse. I was angry at her—and at Steve, too, because he never stepped up to tell her how ridiculous she was acting.

Over the years, Mark Abend had become the closest thing I had to family, and he met us there. I was happy that he could share this special day with me. Plus, he was a nice buffer between my argumentative foster parents and me.

Inside the courtroom the judge let me sit in her chair. That was pretty cool. Then the judge said, “Steve and Patty, do you agree to treat Shyima as your own and provide for her as you would your natural born children?” Patty and Steve both said, “Yes, we will.” Then, before I even realized what was happening, the judge signed the order, we took some pictures with her, and boom, there I was with real parents and a real family.

To celebrate we went to eat at a nice French restaurant. Mark could not come, but some of my new extended family came. All of the fighting from earlier in the day was forgotten, and it was one of the nicest times I had ever had.

I thought I would feel differently when the adoption was completed because I was now legally part of a family, but I didn’t. My new mom and dad still fought. Their nephew, my new cousin, still didn’t like me much; and I still had RA, went to school, and worked. Life went on. I just had a new name.

I was born Shyima El-Sayed Hassan, but when I learned that I had the opportunity to change my name during the adoption process, I did. I changed my middle name to Janet-Rathiba. “Janet” was after Patty’s grandmother. She was a wonderfully sweet woman whom I adored. “Rathiba” was after my own grandmother, the one far away in Egypt whom I had loved. I didn’t know whether or not she was alive, but I wanted to honor the love she had for me by taking her name. In retrospect, I am surprised that I recalled her name. I had forgotten the names of many others who’d been important to me when I’d lived with my biological family.

A short time after I was adopted, I called a number that was on a piece of paper I had been given when I’d gotten my green card. The number was to inquire about obtaining citizenship, and I was filled with giddy excitement as I made the call. Sadly, my hopes were dashed when I found out that my social worker had been mistaken. I could have automatically become a citizen only if I had been adopted before I’d turned sixteen. I’d recently had my seventeenth birthday and was now told that I had to wait until I was eighteen before I could apply for citizenship. I would also have to undergo a lengthy interview and take a detailed test.

The time frame turned out to be much longer, though. It turned out that I could apply for citizenship five years after I got my green card, and then only if I had not been convicted of any crimes. I had not received my green card until I was fifteen.

I was devastated to learn this. First my heart sank into my stomach, and then my thoughts turned bitter. “What else could I expect?” I said to myself. “Other people never, ever get it right when it comes to me.” I can’t say that I was mad at the social worker, but I was discouraged. I wanted more than anything to belong to my new country. After a few days of being in the dumps, though, I sucked it up.
If I have to wait three years,
I thought,
I will.
Better late than never.

•    •    •

I had stopped any pretense of being Muslim when I’d moved to my adoptive family’s home, because I had gotten so tired of every foster family forcing the Muslim religion on me. I had studied the Koran with my first and second set of foster parents. The dads of those families had usually read it aloud, and a line that stuck with me said something to the effect of “You respect me.” This was a reference to adult men. From my perspective, however, adult Muslim men had done nothing worthy of my respect. I felt that the demand for respect without earning it was hypocritical. I experienced that demand over and over during my early years and wanted no more part of it. I was more than ready for something new.

My new family belonged to a Christian community church, and I began attending services there. Although I didn’t always agree with the pastor’s politics, I liked him as a person and know he always acted out of compassion for others. I attended my friend Amber’s church too, which was also Christian. More recently I have been going to a Catholic church and have found this church to be open and accepting of me.

For me it comes down to the fact that this country was founded on the concept of freedom of religion. We need to respect that. There is one big sky above us all, and I believe that the same God put each of us here. Every day I pray for the people I love, and while I might not pray in the same way you do, I believe that God hears our prayers—no matter what religion we practice.

For many years I had been forced to do things I did not believe in, in the name of religion. From the relatively simple matter of the head scarf to the accepted practice of child slavery that is common in many Muslim families in Egypt, I no longer wanted to be forced. I wanted to practice a religion because I chose to, not because a Muslim man slapped me if I didn’t.

In addition to the new church, I found that I liked participating in sports. I began to play soccer in 2005 and looked forward to days when I could get out onto the field. I’d never had the opportunity to do that before, and I thought being on a team was great! I loved running and the aggressiveness of soccer. I still had a lot of residual anger and emotion about how life had treated me, and kicking a soccer ball with as much force as I could muster helped dissipate much of that. I had to be careful not to overdo it, though, as I didn’t want my RA symptoms to flare up. I played soccer in a community league every year until I was nineteen. Each season I had different teammates and a different coach, and I found it was a great way to get to know lots of people and have a lot of fun at the same time.

Also outside of school I played softball for a time. I can’t tell you how wonderful it felt the first time I walked out onto a softball field. I had come a long way from watching the Anaheim Angels play and not understanding anything that was going on, to actually putting on my own glove and being part of a game. But my new parents were part of the coaching staff, and they carried their never-ending fight into the dugout. I had enough of that at home, and their continual sniping at each other ruined the game for me. Fighting aside, I found that I enjoyed watching baseball much more than I liked to play, because there wasn’t enough action on the field for me, as compared to soccer. And to be honest, I wasn’t that good at either hitting the ball or catching it.

I was on the high school track team for a short time too, but it was too hard on my joints. And the constant practices took up much of my time that otherwise would have been spent doing homework. With the exception of math and English, I had mostly caught up, but it took me much longer than most other students to finish my assignments.

While I was waiting not-so-patiently for the day when I could take my citizenship test, I jumped at the chance during my junior year of high school to join the local police department as a volunteer in their Police Explorer Program. This program is open to young people ages fourteen to twenty-one who have completed at least the eighth grade. Explorers had to go through a rigorous application process and maintain at least a C average in their school studies.

Since the day I’d been rescued, I had wanted a career in law enforcement, and this was a great opportunity for me to get my foot in the door. But while the opportunity was there, it didn’t automatically mean that I would be approved for duty. There was a lot to the application process, which was set up to prepare candidates for the similar experience of becoming a police officer.

To start, I had to not only fill out a mountain of paperwork and get fingerprinted, but I also had to meet with a detective who served as an adviser to the program. He, or someone in his department, then did a background check on me. After that I had to meet with a corporal in the department, and after that, the chief of police. That meeting was pretty intimidating for me. I was scared to death. A few short years before, I’d been terrified of anyone involved in law enforcement. Now here I was meeting with the chief of police! But the chief turned out to be a nice man, and he spent most of our time together asking about my personal and education goals. He even went so far as to give me some advice on area colleges. I liked him and couldn’t wait to begin.

There were about ten of us in my junior group, and we were one of the first groups to go through the program. I was thrilled on the day that I received my uniform, which consisted of black dress pants, a light blue long-sleeved shirt with black epaulets, and several official patches sewn onto the sleeves. A black tie and belt, and pins on the points of my collar completed the uniform. I was asked to wear my long, dark hair pulled back into a bun, and when I looked at the picture the department had taken for their files, I have to say that I looked every inch the junior officer that I was.

But before I was 100 percent official, I had to pass a test. I had to wait thirty days before I could take it, because the people who set up the program wisely understood that Explorers needed to have some on-the-job experience first. There were roughly thirty questions on the test, and I did fine, even though almost everyone in my group, including me, got the last—and most important—question wrong. The question was something to the effect of, “When should an Explorer use the police radio?” For the life of me I could not think of the answer to that, even though I knew we had gone over it several times. The correct response, by the way, was “Only in an emergency, or when instructed by an officer.”

During training the other Explorers and I attended an intense weeklong summer program at the sheriff’s academy in Riverside, California. After the other Explorers in my group and I arrived, the kids from different towns were divided into groups, and I ended up being the only person from my local area in my group. Each group stayed in a cabin, and we had to take turns staying up at night to “guard” the cabin and our fellow Explorers. I learned a lot about law enforcement and legal procedures while I was there. We also spent time doing police drills and running, just as real police officers would. And even though Explorers are unarmed, we got to go through gun training. I learned about different kinds of weapons, how to clean them, and even spent some time target shooting.

The training was rigorous and intense, and several people dropped out. None of us from my town even dared think about that, though. Even though it was a tough week, we knew we’d get much worse from our local supervisors if we didn’t complete the course. Plus, we had such a sense of pride that we didn’t want to let anyone at our police department down. And we didn’t!

After we returned home, the real fun began. I got to work directly with officers when they were on the job. During my shift I might ride with an officer and handle paperwork such as a request to tow a vehicle. Or I might fill out the paperwork during a traffic stop for infractions such as speeding or failing to signal. And I was trained to relay information over the police radio—if an officer instructed me to.

As a police Explorer I often went to public events such as our local cherry festival, bike race, or summer concert series. I would direct traffic, or I might join others to pick up trash, help out in our area’s food kitchen (which served meals to the needy), or run errands for officers.

Other times I filed police reports in the records division of the police department, and in the process I got to know almost every officer on the force, and most of the department’s support staff too. Being able to network with those in law enforcement was the best, and I learned a great deal about my chosen career path. It was an invaluable experience, and I stayed until I reached the age limit of twenty-one.

Even then I couldn’t get enough. I stayed on another year doing volunteer patrol. This is a program where citizens (mostly retired) drive their own cars around town and call in any suspicious activity. I felt proud whenever I put that
VOLUNTEER
sign on my car, because I knew I was helping the department.

•    •    •

During my junior year of high school, and while I was adjusting to my new role as a police Explorer, my new mom arranged for a local newspaper reporter to interview me. At the time I was not sure what Patty was thinking or why she set up the interview, but the result was that my story of enslavement and rescue was featured in the local paper. I have to say that as much as I hated the publicity, it helped my social life at school.

Before the article was published, I had a small circle of friends, and a wider group of acquaintances who knew me as the girl with the accent, the girl with the funny name, or the girl in foster care. But once everyone read the story and learned about my past, one after another, people came up to me to talk. I met a lot of kids that way, and some of my teachers even looked at me with an odd expression that might have been admiration. That was my first experience with the power of the press, but it wasn’t my last.

That same year I was featured in
Reader’s Digest
. I didn’t want to do that interview either. But Patty set the interview up and encouraged me to do it. “By sharing your story you will help other people,” she said.

I didn’t dispute that, but I was a junior in high school. I had missed such a big portion of my childhood that I wanted to savor the lone year that I had left before graduation. I wanted to be a kid. For the first time in a long time, I was happy. I didn’t want to be brought back into my past. I needed to focus on the present and on my future, and the interviews kept me from doing that. Yes, I wanted to help others and knew that I would spend the rest of my life doing that. I just wanted to grow up first.