The Moth Radio Hour: Forever and Ever
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From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. Today we have four stories. Navigating childhood, surviving loss, enduring the trials of love, and understanding the things that haunt us most. Our first story comes from Talaya Moore. She told it at the Aaron Davis Hall in New York City. Here's Talaya, live at the Moth. My obsession with brats began when I was eight years old and I was gifted one for my birthday. So brats are dolls.

Kind of like Barbies, but better. They didn't have these unrealistic dimensions. Instead, they stood about 10 inches tall with these huge heads, full lips, curvy physique, and they had the coolest makeup. And also, they had these glittery punk rock boots that I loved. I knew I was hooked.

And I wanted more, but I could not ask my mom for more because we were homeless. We had been homeless for over a year and she had bigger worries, like if she had enough money for train fare or food, what borough we would end up sleeping in, and if I had clean uniform for school. So I knew that if I wanted these dolls, I would have to get them myself. So in the shelter, I started selling paper fans that I made and decorated to the guards for 75 cents.

And they would give me more money because they saw I was hustling. I would take that money and I would buy pens, pencils, loose leaf, and candy and sell it to the kids at school for a markup price, which I was good at. And I also braided hair in the shelter. And when I saved up enough money, my mom took me to the big toy store on Times Square. When I arrived, I ran straight to the brat section, searching the shelves for Sasha and

Sasha was the Bratz doll that I really wanted. I had read about her in a pamphlet from the previous doll I had got, and she was this aspiring businesswoman, and she just seemed the coolest, and I wanted her. And after searching and scanning the shelves and not seeing her, I asked the sales rep if he had any more in the back. He said, sorry, kid, she's popular, high in demand, all sold out. And I

That day, I left with Jade. I was disappointed, but I was still happy to leave with a Bratz doll. It had been over a year of living in the EAU, which was short for the Emergency Assistant Unit. And me and my mother had been waiting for overnight placement, and it was Christmas Eve.

And I was sitting there, and it was children screaming and making noise, and I was tired. I was hungry. I had been there since 8 a.m., and it was now going on 8 p.m. And just as I was about to turn to complain, they called us to the triage window for our placement. And as we approached the window, it's this fire.

glass in between my mother and me and the worker. And it kind of reminded me of like a check cashing place or like quarantine. And like we were kept away from all things clean. And once we received our overnight placement, we went back to sit down and then I heard this

uproar, like this cheering, this chanting from the kids in the rooms next door. So I peeked my head out the doorway to see what was going on, like what was the fuss about? And I saw the guards dragging these clear plastic bags down the hall. And then I realized that we were going to get donated toys, that it was Christmas Eve. I had almost forgot. See, I had been here already. I've been here last Christmas and I knew how things went.

We will all be in one room called one by one to receive a toy. So as the guards are dragging the bags, I notice as clear as day, untouched, unwrapped, a Bratz doll. I knew I just had to have it. But I honestly felt like I deserved it. I had all A's and B's in school. I stayed out of trouble. I even helped my mom fold clothes at the laundromat. So...

I knew I had to be first in line. And when the guards came to my room, I jumped up and they said, step right up. And I died digging through those bags. You weren't even allowed to do that. So you were supposed to just step up, get one toy and keep it pushing. But these were the same guards that would buy my paper fans. And they were cool enough to let me search. And as I'm going through the third bag, I'm digging and I feel the outline of that Bratz doll.

That box. I feel it, and I pick it up, and there she was. Sasha. I held her up like they did Simba in The Lion King. And tears of joy ran down my cheeks. Sasha was wearing this ice blue princess gown with the tiara to match. She looked magical, like, you know, Brandy when she starred in that Cinderella movie featuring Whitney Houston. And...

I just felt like I hadn't met a celebrity, like I was starstruck, like I met Tyra Banks or Raven-Symoné. Sasha was beautiful. She was black. And I was black. She was gorgeous. She had this long, dark brown hair, and her clothes were the best out of all the brats.

And in the pamphlet that she came with, they told me things about her, like how she wanted her own urban clothing line, how she wanted to be a music producer. She had two parents and her own room, and she just seemed like she had it all. And I wanted that.

I had this carry case where I could keep only one Bratz doll in, and I always chose to put Sasha in it. Inside, it was blue velvet and a spot just for Sasha. And on the other side was her wardrobe where I kept all her clothes neatly stacked. It was like her room. And sometimes I would pretend that it was my room. And for a second, I felt like the other third graders in my class. I have a room and a closet full of clothes. It was me and Sasha's world.

It had been nearly two years of staying in the EAU, two years of waiting, two years of being denied permanent housing, and I was tired. Finally, we were moving to a semi-permanent placement called the Ellerton. Inside of the Ellerton, I had one room, and it had a bunk bed, a half-top stove, a mini fridge, a dresser, and a bathroom.

A lot of the times I sat in the hallway and I would play with other kids, but most of the times I played alone with my dolls. And next door lived this girl, and she always wanted to play with me and my Bratz dolls, but I didn't let her because I saw how she treated her toys and I didn't need her messing up my girls. One day I came home after school and I immediately run to the dresser where I keep my dolls, and as I'm approaching the dresser, I notice that they were all gone.

Sasha was gone. My brats were gone. I began to panic. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest, like pins and needles all throughout my body. And me and my mom searched the room looking for the dolls. And I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed her phone. And I dialed 911. I said, hurry, come quick. We've been robbed. They took everything. 110th Morningside.

After I hung up, my mom's looking at me in disbelief, like, did you just call the cops? But in my head, I'm like, these are my girls. They're missing. Like, where's the Amber Alert? When the officers arrived, I just was standing there, eyes bloodshot red, T-shirt soaking wet, nose dripping. And I said it was her. I knew she took my Bratstall. It was the girl next door. So they started the investigation.

They knocked on the door and they questioned her. And she said no, that she didn't have my dolls, but I knew she had my dolls. They said we couldn't help me any further because they didn't have a warrant to search. And one of the officers bent over and said, I'm sure they'll turn up. They're just dolls. Just dolls. Like, they were more than just dolls to me. They were my family. Like, especially Sasha. She was my roll dog, my ride or die, my best friend.

She was the first to know about my crush on Adolphus Butts in the third grade and how he looked like milk chocolate. She also was there with me that night where I slept in my coat and my shoes and this nasty motel and I held her tight the whole night. She was also there when I wanted to jump in the bed with my mom but there wasn't enough space and I would hold on to her.

That night, before bed, I was at the top bunk, and I just kept looking at the dresser, and it was empty. And I felt empty. I went to bed with my pillow wet, and I woke up with my pillow wet. And my mom asked me what I wanted for breakfast, but I didn't have an appetite. Instead, I sat in the hallway almost all day in between my door and her door, waiting for her to come out, waiting to just see if she had my girls in there. Later that night, I got a knock on the door, and there she was.

standing there with an attitude, with a plastic bag full of my Bradstalls. I didn't even have the energy to say anything. I just grabbed the bag and slammed the door and started to spill them on the bed and examine them. And they looked like they had been through something awful. They were all undressed and they smelt like chicken grease. So I started to dress them and clothe them and put them back on that dresser. And as I was doing so, I was holding Sasha and I realized that when they were gone,

That was the first time I actually really felt homeless. And having them back, I felt like whole again. And that's when I realized that Sasha was, she was there for me. These dolls were there for me. Everyone has someone or something that may get them through the day or even a year.

And for me, for nine-year-old me, it was Sasha. It was this black, plastic, professional businesswoman who doubled as a superstar in my eyes. And she was a constant reminder that in a world filled with uncertainty, there could be a happily ever after. Thank you.

Talaya Moore was 11 years old when her family received permanent housing. She said the first month she was so scared someone from the shelter system would come and say they'd actually made a mistake.

Talaya worked with Moth director Jodi Powell to craft her story. Jodi sat down with Talaya to discuss what it felt like to walk into her very own apartment for the first time. You know, I'm curious about like the first moment you opened the house and recognized that, all right, those are my neighbors. This would be the front of the building that I enter. Yes. This is home. What was that feeling like? When we came into the apartment, they had redid everything. So it was new paint, new everything. And I was just like, oh my God, like this is our apartment. And I have my own room.

But I didn't sleep in my own room for like three months because we only had one mattress. So me, my mom and my little sister slept in one mattress in the living room. We had no furniture. We had nothing. But we were just so happy, you know, like to just know that we don't have to go back to the shelter anymore, that we don't have to, you know, fight for a good placement to sleep or share a shower with multiple families anymore.

The story is about the process of being homeless as a child and using your imagination to create your own safe space. And that's what the dolls did. It was like my time to get away from knowing that I'm a kid in a shelter, knowing that every day I walk, I'm dragging a suitcase with me right before I go to school. I have to give the suitcase back to my mom, you know, full of my clothes. And just knowing when you get out of school, you have to go sit back in a shelter and

But knowing that you have your toys kind of make you feel like just like a normal, you know, if you feel normal again. So I definitely feel like this story made me realize that I was a strong kid, a very strong kid. And it kind of prepared me for the real world for like today. And definitely feel like I have a lot more stories that I can bring to life and find a deeper meanings to it. Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

That was Talaya Moore talking with Moth Director Jody Powell. You can find out more about Talaya on our website, themoth.org. Coming up, trying to recapture a moment from the past when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. Our next story comes from author Nikesh Shukla. He shared a story at an evening we produced at the Union Chapel in London. Here's Nikesh live at the Moth. Hi. In 2010, I get a phone call from my cousin to tell me that my mum has died.

And it comes as a bit of a shock because two weeks ago she had been perfectly healthy and then she got diagnosed with cancer and she passed away quite quickly. And grief is a funny thing because me and my mum, we had a very difficult relationship. We both loved each other intensely and the only way that we could really show our love for each other was by bickering all the time about really small things. I do what...

a lot of people do when they're faced with problems and I move to another city. I leave London where I've grown up and I move to Bristol to make a new home. London feels dead to me at this point because my mum is no longer there. Something has changed, something either within me or within my family and I just can't be here anymore. The first time I walk into my new house in Bristol

The first thing I notice is that it stinks. It'd been occupied by some hippie students because it is Bristol. And so between growing pulses by the kitchen sink and burning incense and lots and lots of cats, it smells like it's a house that belongs to someone else. It definitely doesn't smell like my house.

And I don't feel like I'm at home. I'm kind of caught in this in between. I'm mourning for my mum every single day. It feels like this heavy thing on top of me. And I've moved cities and I don't know anyone and I just cannot wash the cat shit out of the carpet. And I go home to visit my dad. It's been a year since my mum died. And there's one weekend where I go to visit him.

And maybe it's because I've moved into a new space that I suddenly look at my childhood home with fresh eyes. But the moment I walk into my childhood home, it feels so familiar and yet it feels different. Because in the year since my mum has died, the house has kind of been locked in stasis.

You know, there's still laundry in the basket left over from when she was alive. Her clothes are still in the... Dirty clothes are still in the laundry basket. Her handbag is still at the bottom of the stairs.

And while it looks like my childhood home, it also looks very clean, like nothing has been used. It feels like a museum. Like, say there was a recreation of our house in the Tate Modern, or Tate Britain, which would be a weird thing to see. It feels like a museum to how things used to be. The kitchen looks unused. The only place that kind of has any life is the lounge area where my dad sits and listens to Bollywood songs really loudly.

And I go upstairs and I'm lying on my childhood bed and something feels different this time because when I grew up,

My bedroom was on top of the kitchen. And so I grew up with the sounds of Bollywood music and I grew up with the sounds of the pressure cooker and I grew up with the smell of onions and cumin and garlic and ginger and chilies in the air. You know, my mum was a firm believer in me and my sister removing our school uniforms every time we came home from school because she didn't want our clothes to smell like

like the food that she was cooking. She said, "Don't give the white people ammunition, just wear house clothes." And we respected that. I was lying there and everything felt stale. It didn't feel like my home. And I'm already feeling unstuck because Bristol doesn't feel like my home and here I am on my childhood bed and my childhood home and this doesn't feel like my home. I'm hungry and so I go downstairs and I look in the fridge

and it's empty except for cans of fosters and ketchup because my dad is now a singleton and that his fridge reflects that and i open up the freezer hoping for some inspiration and i see some tupperware boxes of my mum's food in there and i think oh my god here is my mum's food so i take out what a tupperware box it's got hound one here which is like this really delicious savory pancake

and I put it in the microwave to defrost and I'm standing there waiting for it to heat up and something happens to that really stale, sterile room. It starts to smell like my mum's kitchen again. The spices are making the air come alive and it feels like my home. I eat the hound war and it's delicious as it always was and I think I need to learn how to make this hound war.

I'm disappointed in myself because every, you know, I had years and years of my mum trying to teach me how to cook like her. When I left home, she tried to get me to learn how to make basic chana masala and paneer and stuff like that. And I just, I was just like, well, I'll just come home and get leftovers. It'll be fine. And she was like, no, I won't always be around. And I was an idiot and I never learned. And I know that she was disappointed in that. And here I am now, ruining those decisions.

and I really want to know how to make handwa. I remember that my mum told me she got the recipe from Salamasi. I haven't seen Salamasi since my mum's funeral. So knowing that my mum's handbag is at the bottom of the stairs, I go and look through the handbag to find her address book. So I can phone Salamasi and say, "Hey Salamasi, can you teach me how to make handwa?" And I find a stack of papers in my mum's handbag and I open one of them

And it's a shopping list. You know, it has things like Weetabix and onions and cumin powder and chili and cheese and really mundane things that you get for the big shop on it. But there's something about seeing my mum's handwriting that makes me crumble. It makes me feel the heaviness crash over me again because seeing that ink on the page...

You know, that ink came from a pen that was connected to her fingers, that was connected to her arm, that was connected to her brain. And seeing her handwriting and the smell of her food still lingering in the air, it feels like she's a real person. You know, when someone dies and you romanticise them, they become the really good things and the really, really bad things that used to wind you up and you forget about the really mundane things like when they wrote shopping lists or when they made handwares.

And I take one of those shopping lists home. I phone Salamasi, I get the recipe. And when I get back to Bristol, I decide I'm going to do this shop. I'm going to do my mum's big shop. Which is silly because we already have cheese and we already have Weetabix. But I feel like I need to do this. So I go to the shop and I buy all the things that are on the list. Making sure that I also add in things that I need to make handel. And I go home. And...

I'm looking at Salamasi's instructions to make hondor and I think, "God, I really wish I knew how to cook." "Okay, let's do this. It just says mix all this stuff up in a bowl. I can do that." So I get everything out because that's how I cook. You cook when you don't know how to cook. You get everything out so you can stare at it. I put everything in a bowl and I'm following the instructions very robotically.

And the last thing you have to do is temper some sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds together. So I Google temper. I then Google temper cooking. And for some reason, I decide to get a big frying pan out to temper these sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds. And so I put the pan on and I light the hob and let it do what it's doing. I get distracted sometimes.

putting the mixture out into a baking tray and I don't notice that I've been tempering a bit too long and the pan is smoking. The smoke alarm starts to go off.

And I panic. I don't know what to do. Do I turn the hob off? What do I do? So I grab a tea towel and I'm between the smoke alarm trying to wave the smoke away from the smoke alarm and the hob trying to wave the smoke away from the hob. And the tea towel catches fire because I'm an idiot. And...

Now I've got a tea towel on fire, the smoke alarm's going off, the pan is still smoking because I still haven't taken it off the hob, so I open the back door because that seems like a sensible thing to do. I open the back door, I throw the tea towel out into the garden, I turn off the hob and I take the pan out, take the pan off the hob and I run outside and I leave it on the ground outside, making sure I don't stand on the smouldering tea towel. Then find another tea towel and I try and wave the smoke away from...

The smoke alarm. And I'm really just a year and a bit's grief just suddenly crashes over me. My mum is gone. She won't be able to show me how to cook this stuff. I can't follow simple recipes. And she's gone. And her food is gone. And I'm not sure how I'm going to honour her in this new home. And so I sit down on the middle of the kitchen floor and I cry. The smoke alarm is still going on.

And I look up because there's a smell in the air. And somewhere amidst the smell of smoke and burnt sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds, there is also the smell of onions and garlic and ginger and chili. And my house smells like my mum's kitchen. And for a second, just for a second, it starts to feel like home. Thank you.

Nikesh Shukla lives in Bristol, England. He says when he goes home, it still feels like time stopped. His father still lives in the memories of when everything was perfect and constantly wants to know what his mother would have enjoyed about today. Nikesh thinks his mother would be proud that he can now whip up a successful chana masala, a dal bat, roti, and can make a mean tepla, and probably happy that he gave up his band t-shirts for proper shirts.

Nikesh is the author of three novels, as well as editor of a recent collection of essays about race and immigration entitled The Good Immigrant. You can find out more about Nikesh and find links to his books on our website, themoth.org. And while you're there, you can check out our pitch line. Sometimes listening to other people's stories reminds you of your own, and if that's the case, why not pitch us?

When I was eight years old, I decided to try the sport of speed skating. I was a really athletic kid, and evidently as a little girl watching Olympic speed skating on television, I said, Mommy, I have big legs like those girls do. So when my parents and I saw a flyer for the Omaha Speed Skating Club, we thought, hey, why not?

My parents drove me to these early morning practices for a year, at which point, at the fully mature age of nine years old, I told them, I need to move to Milwaukee so I can become an Olympic speed skater. My parents said, okay. I

I really wish I could remember how that conversation went down because looking back, it was totally bananas for my parents to agree to that because seriously, who lets a fifth grader call the shots? But my parents did and I owe them everything because it paid off. In 2014, I represented all of you in Sochi, Russia as a member of the United States Olympic team. Wow.

Whenever somebody finds out that I'm an Olympian, they're always super excited. And then they always ask, did you win a medal? When I tell them no, they say, oh, I'm sorry. And I'm always like, why? I went to the Olympics. I'm not sorry. But if it makes you feel any better, I'm going for the gold in 2018.

Remember, you can pitch your story at themoth.org. Just go to our website and look for Tell a Story. You'll find directions on how to record and tips and tricks for how to craft a great pitch. That's all on our website, themoth.org.

Our next storyteller, Andrew Somsen, spends his mornings fixing computers, his afternoons hiking, and his evenings telling stories to anyone who will listen. He told this one at our open mic story slam at Busby's East in Los Angeles, where we partner with public radio station KCRW. Here's Andrew live at the Moth. Hi, everybody. I'm Andrew, and I'm a nerd. I got a Nexus 5 and an iPhone 5 in my pocket right now.

I love them both. I'm platform agnostic. And the other day, I got asked to participate in a show that a friend of mine does called Crapshoot. And the idea behind Crapshoot is that people just do interesting, unusual things. And what I did was I got up on stage and I yelled at people for three or four minutes to back up their hard drives. I'm good at that. Back up your shit.

Hard drives are mortal things, and my least favorite thing to do is to tell somebody they've lost everything. My refrigerator is covered with magnets from dead hard drives, and every one of those is somebody's baby picture or unfinished script, and now they're on my refrigerator. Anyway, I did that, and it went well. People laughed, and I was in the lobby at the end of the show, and this girl came up to me.

And she started talking to me about Harlan Ellison. And I may not know a lot about women, but when a woman is talking to me about the man who wrote, "Repent Harlequin," said the TikTok man, and "City on the Edge of Forever," which is the best episode of Star Trek ever made, that's a girl I can talk to. And we did talk very seriously, very intently for an hour. I'm a big dude. I'm heavy.

I've been 500 pounds, I'm not now. And I get it. And she was obviously heavier than she'd ever been and uncomfortable with that. And I'm comfortable with it and not comfortable with it in a lot of different ways. And we connected. We talked. And at one point she said, let's get out of here. And we went to a party some friends of mine were having. And we sat on the couch in the living room there. And after about 15 minutes more of really serious conversation,

She grabbed my head and started kissing me. And like I said, I don't know a lot about women, but I read the signs and I invited her back to my apartment. She came. And we got back there and we had a glass of wine and one thing led to another and we found ourselves in the bedroom and we were lying in bed there and from her side of the bed I hear her say, does this mean we're boyfriend and girlfriend now?

Just kidding. And I was terrified, no question about it. But she wasn't kidding. And I was kind of okay with that. I liked her. She was interesting. We, during the course of the evening, become friends on our phones. And the next day, I wrote her a message and I said, what a wonderful time I'd had and that I hoped we could see each other again. And a couple of days later, I got a message from her saying,

and it said that she was embarrassed by what had happened, that she wasn't usually so impulsive, that she thought she might need to get her medication checked. And, you know, I thought about that. That stung a little. But I liked her, and I just wanted her to be happy, and she wasn't. And so I wrote her back, and I said, "Look, whatever you need to be happy is what I want you to have. Just know that I found you funny, smart, charming, and beautiful. Be well."

Be kind. Be kind to yourself and let others be kind to you. It's hard, Lord, I know it's hard, but in the end, it's the only thing that ever really matters. Best, Andrew. And then she blocked me on Facebook. Thanks very much.

That was Andrew Somsen. A few years ago, Andrew surprisingly matched with the girl from the story on Tinder, which opened a new line of communication, which then eventually fizzled. But they're on good terms now, and Andrew's happily in love with someone he describes as simply amazing.

These days, Andrew is even more of a backup evangelist, especially now that the backup options are easy. So he says there's no excuse for you not to back up your hard drives. Coming up, a tale of two kidnappings when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org.

This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles, and our last story comes from Caitlin Fitzgerald. She shared it in front of a sold-out crowd at Lincoln Center in New York City. I just want to note that this story contains some graphic descriptions of violence and is not appropriate for children. Here's Caitlin Fitzgerald live at the Moth.

So I was in Los Angeles for my first pilot season as a young actor and I was staying with some family friends, a lovely couple named Brian and Pam.

And I was home in the house one night, it was just Brian and I, and I was upstairs in my bedroom. And I was feeling really, really sorry for myself on this particular evening. I had the flu, I'd been on like 9 million plus unsuccessful auditions, and I had no money. And all of a sudden, there was a knock on the bedroom door, and Brian said, Caitlin, I need to come into your room. And before I could respond, he opened the door, and behind him,

was a very large man wearing a ski mask and holding a taser and a crowbar. And I screamed and leapt out of bed, and the man in the mask said, "If you do anything stupid, I will kill you, and I will kill him." And I was immediately compliant. And I believed, naively, that if I just did everything that this man asked me to do, everything would be okay.

And he wanted money and jewelry, neither of which we had. I had $3 in my wallet, which I gave him. And he handcuffed Brian and I together, and he had us lie face down on the bed. And at some point, Brian's wife, Pam, came home, and she didn't have any money or jewelry either. So the man in the ski mask decided that the best course of action would be to take us to the ATM machine to get cash. So we all got in the car.

Pam was driving, and we got to the ATM machine and parked the car, and Pam was sent out with our debit cards around the corner to get money. And the man in the ski mask got in the driver's seat, and I felt my fear, like, click up about six notches because...

I could tell that he was off his script, that he hadn't planned this part of the evening, and he was afraid. And his fear felt really dangerous to me. And a few minutes later, we heard sirens and we saw flashing lights. And unbeknownst to us, Pam had called the police. And the man in the ski mask turned to Brian and I in the backseat, still handcuffed together, and said, "That's the cops. You guys are dead."

And he peeled the car out of this parking lot and onto Sepulveda Boulevard going against traffic and cars are screeching around us and it has started to rain in LA and the tires are squealing and I know with absolute certainty that I am going to die.

And he turns the car into a residential neighborhood and then down a dead end street and we hit a tree going full speed ahead at the end of the street and the man smashes the windshield of the car with his forehead and then gets out and runs and suddenly the car is surrounded by police with their guns drawn and I start screaming for help. And the next thing that I really remember, I'm in the back of an ambulance strapped to a stretcher and I'm thinking, oh my God, never again for the rest of my life will I feel safe again.

But in the weeks and months and years that followed this incident, that turned out not really to be true. And yeah, like if I hear a weird noise in the night, sometimes I'll jolt awake in a way that I didn't before, or if a cab driver revs his engine at a particular frequency, I'll feel this adrenaline rush that it didn't used to happen. But for the most part, I was okay.

The whole thing came to seem like this sort of bad Hollywood horror movie, like just enough fear to sort of titillate and make a good story, but not enough to actually traumatize me. So untraumatized did I appear to be that multiple members of my family have said to me, you know, I forget that that even happened to you. And I really did too.

for the most part. And a few years after this incident, I finally booked the TV show that I'd been longing for, and as it shot in Los Angeles and I was living here in New York, I had to move west. And it's really important to know that while I lived in New York, I lived in some of the worst shitholes

shitholes that New York has done. Like truly, you think you've had bad apartments in New York. Like I have had bad apartments in New York, like the dregs of New York real estate. So when I finally got the TV show and was moving west, I was like, this is it. I'm going to get a great place to live. And I did. I found this amazing apartment, this sort of like converted loft space with walls that actually met the floor at a right angle. And

marble countertops and a washer and dryer like grown-ups in the rest of America have, and a security guard downstairs. And I felt so happy and I felt so safe. And I slept through the night just lulled by the dulcet tones of the 101 freeway outside my window. And shortly after I moved in, I was hanging out in this like back courtyard section and

of the building where all the dog owners and the cool kids hung out. And I was a dog owner and I really wanted to be a cool kid, so I spent a lot of time back there. And this particular evening I was sort of sitting with the cool kids and we were drinking some artisanal cocktail someone had made. I was thinking, "God, I've really, like, I've arrived. Isn't this amazing?" And someone said, "Hey, what unit are you in?" And I told him, and there was this silence.

And the cool kids started to look at each other a little uneasily. And one of them said, "Do you know what happened in that apartment?" And I felt my blood go absolutely cold and I said, "No, I don't." And he said, "Well, I'll tell you, but you have to promise not to Google it because there are some things you can't unsee." This is not a promise that I kept.

Turns out that my beautiful building had been a hotel long ago, and in 1927, a young man very famously had kidnapped a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker and brought her to this hotel. And he'd sent ransom notes for a few days to her father, and then there'd been a botched exchange where the kidnapper had seen that the police were present and whisked Marion back to the hotel, at which point he must have decided that she had become a liability

because he put her in the bathtub and he strangled her and then he proceeded to dismember her and disembowel her. And he wrapped her limbs in towels and hid them in a lesion park across the street. And this is how the cops later found him because of the logos on the towels. And the cool kids take turns telling me the story and

I remember being kind of aghast by the strange pleasure they were getting in recounting this tale. And the way they were sort of depicting Marian as this like monster figure, the stuff of nightmares, the stuff of scary stories. And one of the kids said, you know, I had to move units because I couldn't even look at your unit from my unit. And the other kid said, can I come see your apartment? And when I opened the door, she was like clearly disappointed that there wasn't a blood stain on the floor or like a ghost hovering around her.

And a couple days later, I discovered that my apartment was on a famous Murders of Los Angeles tour, and vans of tourists would pull up and take pictures and then zoom off to look where the black dahlia killer did his work. But I couldn't zoom off. I couldn't go anywhere. I had to live in this apartment. And my beautiful, safe apartment no longer felt beautiful or safe anymore.

And I felt this creeping darkness invading all the corners of my life. It colored everything.

And I started to have this reoccurring nightmare that I would wake up and Marian's limbless torso would be hovering over my bed, like the perfect horror movie motif. And it wasn't just at night. Like if I went out into the city and forgot about Marian Parker for a moment, when I came home at night, I had to turn on Marian Avenue to get to my apartment and the whole thing would come flooding back. And I just, I felt awful. And for the first time in my life, I really understood what people mean when they say they feel haunted.

I mean, I was the girl who had survived her kidnapping, living with the ghost of a girl who hadn't. And I found myself really hating Marion Parker and hating her for her naivete and hating her for her fragility and hating her for

for the burden of being female in this world and what that means, and hating her for being so totally compliant and for believing that if she just did everything her kidnapper asked, everything would be okay. And that feeling that I had in the moments after my own kidnapping, that never again would I feel safe, was coming horribly, horribly true. And then one night I had this dream.

And in the dream, I was in my apartment, it was kind of the sketch of my apartment, and out of the bathroom door was streaming all this really beautiful bright white light. And I knew that Marian's body was in the bathroom, and I was terrified. But I found myself walking into the bathroom anyway, and sure enough, there she was, her limbless torso in the bathtub.

And she was dead, but also in the logic of dreams, somehow still alive and very aware of me. And I found myself walking up to the bathtub and kneeling down, and I put my hand on her face. And then I put my hand on the place in her chest over her heart.

and then I touched the place where her arm had been cut away from her body. And I remember her blood being on my fingers. And I realized in this moment that she wasn't a horror movie motif, she wasn't a monster, she was just skin and bone and blood. She was just a little girl. And I very tenderly, very carefully picked her up

And I held her, and I awoke just in floods of tears. And after this dream, my fear just broke like a fever, and I felt at peace in this apartment, and I felt at peace with Marian, and I came to feel really protective of her. And when I would hear someone in the building talking about her in any sort of salacious way, I would remind them that she was just a little girl who'd been really, really afraid.

And these days I do sleep through the night for the most part. I pay attention to my dreams, they seem to know a lot of things. And I turn down most of the horror movie scripts that my agents send to me. And I really get it. I get why as a culture we need to tell these stories and we need to relegate our deepest fears to the screen or to the pages of a book.

And I don't know for myself if I am more afraid or more free because I know that sometimes the man in the ski mask can walk off of the screen and in through your bedroom door. I suspect a little bit of both, probably. I do know that safety has come to mean something very different than it did before.

I don't live at the apartment on Marion Ave anymore. I'm back in New York. But every time I drive by, I give a little wave to Marion and I tell her that I'm thinking about her and that I care about her and that in my own deeply ineffectual human way, I am protecting her. Thank you.

Caitlin Fitzgerald is an actor, director, and writer. She says, I asked Caitlin if she still turned down the horror movie scripts her agent sends to her, and she said, Yes. Not only because of my history, but do we really need more horror in the world? ♪

You can find out more about Caitlin or re-listen to her story or any of the stories you heard in this hour on our website, themoth.org. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour. ♪

Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show, along with Jody Powell. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Janess, and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Emily Couch. Moss stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our pitch from our pitch line came from Sugar Todd in Salt Lake City.

Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Boombox, Shiva, RJD2, and The Elftones with Rhiannon Giddens. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.