Gitchie Girl: The Survivor's Inside Story of the Mass Murders that Shocked the Heartland (3 page)

“I miss my friends,” she’d complain softly to her mom on the phone. “Plus they make me do all their work. I have to get up before dawn, do their laundry, and paint buildings.”

“This will be better for you in the end,” her mom explained.

Sandra hugged her pillow tightly at night and occasionally hot tears would join her muffled sobs. She’d been torn from her friends, her family, her school. She felt like an intruder, like an insect they’d just as soon swat away if it weren’t for all the back-breaking chores she did for them. But Sandra was persistent. She tried to believe the family meant well as her mom had assured her. Still, she kept needling away at her mom during their weekly calls, relaying both subtle hints as well as desperate cries for help. She knew her mom missed her as well, and Lolo finally relented.

“Okay,” Lolo sighed one day when she could no longer resist her daughter’s pleas.

Sandra squealed into the phone then lifted her hands high in the air while doing a little victory dance under the disapproving eye of her foster mom. Bill was allowed to come back soon also, and Sandra was waiting at the door to greet him with a sisterly hug. She was grateful that the experience Bill had in foster care had been completely different from her own. He had been placed with a police officer who’d welcomed Bill into his family and helped him with any problems that cropped up.

It was good to be together again. But the joy didn’t last. Although Lolo would have allowed her children to stay home, she wasn’t the one calling the shots. The new man in her life vetoed the decision. Since the children had Native bloodlines, Sandra and two of her brothers were sent to an Indian boarding school.

This shamefully weather-beaten school, located in a sparsely populated area of South Dakota, contained an assortment of Native American students who’d brought with them the psychological baggage that can result from living on the “Rez,” a term used for the reservation where they had endured poverty and hardships on par with that of a third-world country. Sandra found herself in this Mission school that loomed over the open South Dakota prairie with its aged brick buildings and curls of paint peeling from the wood trim. She slept in a large dorm room with several other girls. The cots and bunk beds were lined up along walls painted a drab green color. The girls shared a common toilet and shower area with little privacy. There never seemed to be enough hot water for showering, so Sandra often had to endure a miserable quick, cool shower. This was especially uncomfortable in winter when the dorm buildings seemed as cold as the barren fields outside. The food was meager except for the one cinnamon roll each girl was allowed to have following Sunday morning church service. Nuns ran this school with strict expectations for good conduct. Sandra tried hard to fit in and follow the rules, but most of the students viewed her as being too white. In spite of her bubbly spirit and natural ability to make friends quickly, she soon became a target and an outcast.

It wasn’t long before Sandra encountered her first bully there. Each morning began with the ringing of a bell announcing wake-up. A dorm rule required a neatly made bed for inspection prior to breakfast. For days this mean girl had been stealthily tearing the covers off Sandra’s bed. One morning, the girl openly tore Sandra’s bed apart the moment it was made. Sandra pursed her lips together and without a word made the bed again, giving the girl a threatening look. When finished, she stood and faced the girl, fists ready at her side, her sense of justice stubbornly refusing to let this act go unchallenged. The girl smirked, then pushed past Sandra and again ripped the covers off with a few hard jerks. A screaming brawl erupted, and the girls went flying into one of the portable lockers that stood between each set of bunk beds, sending it crashing to the floor. When the fight ended, Sandra stood shaking, but only on the inside, fearing she’d now have her first experience with the “Circle of Discipline.” During this almost daily occurrence, students from one dorm would stand in a circle around the offender who had to confess her infraction, at which point a nun would break through the circle and begin whipping the student with a leather belt. In this case, the nuns ferreted out the truth, and Sandra was only required to stand in the circle and confess her wrongdoing to a group of students from her grade.

The other girl admitted her violation then braced herself bravely for what would happen next.

A stern nun lashed the girl’s rear several times. She held in her tears, not giving satisfaction to the nun or the other kids intensely watching for weakness. It had been a close call for Sandra though. The strain of constantly watching her back along with the demoralizing atmosphere gradually dampened her bubbly spirit.

At night, atop a thin, lumpy mattress that smelled of must and old urine, Sandra curled herself into a tight ball and fell asleep trying to remember every detail of her friends back home: how they’d laughed, how two friends would each hold one end of a long rope while the third girl jumped, all of them singing a catchy rhyming song about “Cinderella dressed in yella.” And how they were all kind to one another. Had the plastic handles of the jump rope been blue? No, green, she remembered, and one handle had a crack that would pinch your skin if you didn’t hold it just right. This attention to detail helped her focus on something besides the fact that it was still over a month until she could go back home for Christmas.

Sandra was able to avoid the Circle of Discipline, although the fear of it loomed heavily. Her gut ached every time the belt cracked against another child’s thin pants with a slap and a whoosh even when it was someone who’d been less than kind to her. Her gentle heart couldn’t stomach the fear and injustice. The cold stares and taunts of “white girl” followed her every day while she sat in a colorless classroom surrounded by jeering whispers and constant ridicule. She met each insult with a brave face, and in quiet moments daydreamed about the shocked looks they’d have on their faces one day when she received her Miss America crown on television as the audience applauded wildly in the background. She knew it was unlikely to ever happen, but she held onto these dreams, one of the only things that hadn’t already been taken from her.

What she felt wasn’t anger, it wasn’t animosity; it was overwhelming loneliness, especially since only sporadic phone calls home were allowed. Sandra waited, counting the days until she’d see her mom again. She marked off each day in her head until there were only two left. Once home, she planned on badgering, explaining, and pestering until she could convince her mom to take her back. But then, the day before Christmas break, she found out the bad news.

“You’re not going home,” a stern nun explained when Sandra inquired about a bag or suitcase for her belongings. Sandra didn’t have much at the school but intended to take it all since she had no plans of returning. The next day, some of the students left to spend Christmas at home while others stayed. Sandra never found out why she was a part of the latter group.

There was little to do around the boarding school during the break. She slipped into a blue fog, with each day stretching endlessly. After the break ended and everyone returned from their homes, life continued on in its own dismal and disconcerting way. The only thing Sandra knew was that she had to persuade her mom to let her come home once and for all.

When the school term finally ended and Sandra and her brothers did get to go home, Lolo was waiting for them at the front door. Sandra raced past the others, throwing her arms around her mother. “My baby girl,” Lolo whispered over and over, stroking Sandra’s hair. Neither had to say how much she’d missed the other. With a simple touch, the bond between mother and daughter was once again sealed.

Over the summer, Sandra pleaded with her mother, who adored her only daughter. Sandra’s well-worded complaints finally convinced her mother not to send her back to the Mission boarding school. Sandra was relieved; her boarding school nightmare was finally over. The family was back together. The fighting in the house had calmed down. It looked as if the worst was behind them.

Sandra and her brothers had settled into a comfortable summer routine of lazy afternoons at the nearby swimming pool and neighborhood games of kick-the-can at night. She was close with her friends, and all of them were looking forward to starting eighth grade that fall at the junior high, which was within walking distance of Sandra’s house. Life was finally good again.

Then out of nowhere, Lolo gathered the children to inform them that due to a job change they would be moving from Minnesota to a tiny town in South Dakota. The kids had never heard of Tea, South Dakota. Despite well-worded protests—none of them wanted to get sent away for causing a problem—the moving van was packed and they were on their way. The children, now in their teens, except for Sandra who would turn thirteen in a couple of months, were crushed over leaving familiar friends.

The family settled into a large farmhouse outside the small town of Tea, South Dakota. Sandra and her brothers often walked the half mile into town for something to do throughout the remainder of the summer. Sandra quickly met several friends, including a girl named Debbie who lived just down the road. Even though Debbie was three years older than Sandra, the two were drawn to each other through their love of animals, music, and watching movies. Debbie had a sister as well and sometimes, due to the proximity of their houses, the three girls all hung out together with Sandra’s brothers. They were a bubbly group and would spend hours together talking, laughing, and making batch after batch of Kool-Aid to quench their thirst in the hot, waning days of summer.

One Friday night before Sandra started school in nearby Harrisburg, she was watching
The Brady Bunch
while sitting cross-legged on the couch with a bowl of buttered popcorn on her lap that she was eating one piece at a time. The television was cranked up louder than necessary, as it usually was, to account for the noise that came from having a houseful of kids.

Ring ring.
“I’ve got it!” she yelled, jumping off the couch and half dropping the popcorn bowl onto the coffee table, where it spun nearly to the edge. “It’s for me,” she yelled again before answering the phone. If one of her brothers answered, they would jokingly hold the phone out of her reach or say something embarrassing to the person on the other end before giving her the phone.

“Hey, Debbie!” It was her good friend who lived down the road, and the two talked every day.

“You’re watching
The Brady Bunch
, aren’t you?” she asked.

Sandra laughed. “Yes, so why did you call now?”

“I knew you’d be home! Listen to this song. I just heard it for the first time this morning.” Debbie held the receiver to the radio and turned up the volume so Sandra could hear it.

“I heard that song this morning, too! My brother kept turning the volume up really loud and when I’d tell him to turn it down, he’d turn it down so far I couldn’t hear it!” They both laughed while Sandra tried to stretch the phone cord from the kitchen far enough into the living room to grab her popcorn before one of her brothers took it. The cord was so twisted and kinked that she nearly pulled it loose, all because she didn’t want to set the phone down and interrupt Debbie.

“Please go to the Starlight with me tomorrow, Sandra. It won’t be fun without you.” The Starlight was a drive-in movie theater in the nearby city of Sioux Falls that was a popular summer attraction where kids hung out with friends or went to meet new ones. Sandra hesitated just slightly. There really was nothing better to do, but she barely had enough money to go.

“Pleeeeease. I never meet boys unless you’re with.” Debbie laughed again. It was true. Besides her exotic French-Indian features, Sandra had skin that glowed satiny tan, especially so when amplified by the summer sun. She possessed curves that could pass for a high school student, which attracted the stares of many boys and the jealousy of many girls. The attention never went to her head. In fact, she often seemed oblivious to their boasting and swaggering, having observed the actions of her brothers over the years when girls were around. So far, the adoration of her father, who had said that Sandra was going to be his little Miss America some day, had sufficed. Yet recently she found that she didn’t mind the attention heaped on her by some of the boys when she and Debbie would walk into town. Sandra no longer threw her hair into a ponytail before departing on these walks; instead, she now kept a comb handy so her hair could flow freely about her shoulders while she and Debbie chattered their way into town.

The following evening was hot but clear, typical for the time of year and just right for a night at the Starlight Drive-in Theater. The girls sat in the car but not for long. The whole purpose of coming here was to socialize, not watch movies. The soundtrack was blaring through the metal speaker attached to the door of the rolled down window, and the smell of fresh popcorn and chili dogs hung in the air. Sandra gazed down the rows of cars, some with children sitting on blankets atop the roof and others surrounded by small groups of teenagers laughing and sipping ice cold Cokes or whatever illegal beverage they might have sneaked in.

“Let’s go,” Debbie said, eager to see who else was there.

Sandra wore a delicate summery top with flowing sleeves and cut-off jeans. Her flip-flops caught bits of gravel with every step.

The concession stand was in a sparse cement block building crammed with an impatient crowd waiting to get back to their cars and friends. The two girls stood in line, but then some people who Sandra didn’t know motioned for Debbie to join them. When Sandra went to leave the concession stand ten minutes later with a pack of licorice, she’d lost sight of Debbie.

Sandra stepped from the stuffy building into the mild night. Not twenty feet away and headed straight toward her was the most handsome boy she’d ever seen. The world blurred and glimmered, becoming a vacuum containing only Sandra and this suave boy with layered black hair flowing in the breeze, as if she’d been transported into a movie. A hint of a smile crossed his face when their eyes met, sending a quiver skipping through her. The boy walked right up to her. Later that night, and for days—no, years—to come, she’d replay the moment over and over with eyes closed and an irrepressible smile on her face. She’d think of how it had been almost like those too-romantic-to-believe moments portrayed on made for TV movies designed to appeal to women, but it was more than that because even the most talented author or brilliant movie producer can’t capture the emotion that sweeps through a young girl on the cusp of first love. All the overused platitudes whipstitched together couldn’t describe what she felt:
her heart stopped; she literally froze in her tracks; their eyes met; it was love at first sight.
She didn’t just see Roger for the first time. She felt him clear through to her soul. And suddenly, there he was in front of her.