When I got to St. Louis on the bus, I took a taxi to a clean, inexpensive motel and settled in.
I bought a newspaper and scanned the classifieds for inexpensive cars. I found two or three that looked promising and made arrangements to meet the owners to see them and drive them. When I called about them, I told the owners that I didn't have a way to get to them, so could they bring them to my motel for me to look at them.
I wanted to deal with private owners, rather than a dealership, because I was paying cash and I didn't want some slicker trying to sell me something I didn't want. Also, I figured the less paperwork, the better.
After looking at a couple of clunkers that weren't in real good condition, I found one I liked, a small two-door with about 160,000 miles on it. I looked at the engine closely. Early on, Uncle Bill had taught me the basics of auto mechanics, so I knew my way around a car engine.
I found this car's engine was in good shape, so after some dickering, I paid the man $3,000 in cash and he left me with my mode of escape. I put the address of the motel as my place of residence on the title, just in case.
That night, I took out a map of the United States and looked it over to see where I wanted to go. I didn't have a specific place in mind, but knew what sort of place I was looking for. I wanted to go someplace far, far away from Missouri, where no one would know me and where my degree might get a serious look.
I hit on a mid-sized city in the Carolinas, and as I did, I had another one of those flashes, where I saw myself settling down, getting a good job, making friends and finding a husband.
The next morning, bright and early, I packed my little car with my meager possessions, checked out of the motel and headed east. As I crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois, I could feel a heavy weight being lifted off my shoulders just from leaving Missouri.
It happened just as I had envisioned. I settled in Carolina, rented a small but nice one-bedroom apartment, and soon found a job working for a grocery store, using my years of experience at Bill's store to my advantage.
I worked there eight months, while I looked carefully for a job in my field, and finally I found one, with the company I'm still with. I left with a good recommendation and best wishes from my boss at the store, and some lifelong friends.
I got an apartment in a nice complex, dove into my work, which I quickly proved to be very good at, and tried to make friends at the office. I developed credit, traded my old faithful clunker for a newer model car and built a nice professional wardrobe.
I deliberately avoided anything, any relationship that I thought might result in a sexual encounter. I stayed away from bars, shunned any overtures from the men I encountered, and generally kept to myself.
Part of the task of building a life for myself was to learn to do everything on my own, to be independent of anyone outside of the work setting telling me what I had to do and where I had to go. Also, I wanted to prove to myself that I could indeed live a life that wasn't defined by sex, as it had been all of my life until I fled Missouri.
I didn't think I'd ever go three years without a sexual relationship of any sort, but that's the way it turned out, and the longer I went without it, the less I missed it.
Truth is, I rarely even masturbated, because when I did, the nightmare images of what I had done as Uncle Bill's whore would flash through my mind, and I would relive that trauma all over again. And I found it took me forever to come.
As 1993 moved into 1994, however, I began tentatively accepting some date requests, but none of them developed into much. But I was starting to have fun in the dating game, the way I never had before. I was playing the field, going to concerts, ball games, art galleries, doing all the things I had been denied by my uncle.
Slowly, over time, the trauma from my past faded somewhat. I realized I could make it on my own, that I didn't need people leading me, using me for their selfish reasons.
Still, I couldn't quite escape my past forever. I spent Christmas with a friend and her family, and it drove home the point that I had no family.
Then, in a flash, I thought about my mother, still sitting in prison in Oklahoma, as far as I knew. Suddenly, something told me I needed to go see her, that if I didn't go now, I'd never have another chance.
So I took a week's vacation that January and drove out to Oklahoma. I knew it was a risk, in a lot of ways. There was still the chance that she would still refuse to see me, the way she had for all those years.
Uncle Bill had always gone to see her a couple of times a year, and I would always ask if I could go. He'd always say that she didn't want to see me, that I had fucked up her life and to just leave her alone. For awhile I wrote her, but the letters were always returned unopened, so I quit. I could take a hint.
But I wasn't going to take no for an answer this time. I was going to stay there until she agreed to see me, and if she still refused to accept me when the time came for me to leave, then at least I'd know I tried.
And, too, there was always the chance that she'd contact Bill, assuming he'd survived the drugs I'd given him when I made my escape, and that he'd come down and try grab me to take me back to Missouri. That, I vowed, would not happen. I'd kill him first.
When I got to the town nearest to the prison, I called the warden and asked about Marie Trotter. The woman sounded taken aback, as if it had been awhile since anyone had asked about her.
But she was still there, so I told the warden what I wanted, that I was her daughter, that I wanted to see her and that I wasn't going to accept her refusal. She said that she'd do what she could for me, but that I'd best see her first. She also agreed to say nothing to my mother until I got there.
The next morning, I drove to the prison, subjected myself and my car to a thorough search, then drove to the warden's office. The warden was a business-like woman in her mid-40s who nevertheless greeted me warmly. She offered me a seat and that's when I learned that my mother had terminal lung cancer.