A Kidnapping in Nigeria

They took her in Nigeria

And I called the embassy

I called the embassy

And I asked them

What we should do

And they gave me another number

Another number to call

A referral

And I screamed

I screamed at them

Right into the phone

Not a word

Just a sound

A scream

I screamed

Walter had to—

Do you remember, Walter?
Do you remember

Having to pry the phone

Out of my hands

Because I just—

I wouldn’t stop screaming

It was impossible

It was impossible to stop
Myself

I don’t even remember doing it

This was in April

It was April
And it was two weeks
After Liza’s birthday

And she disappeared

She disappeared

And I thought—

My god, she’s been kidnapped

They’ve kidnapped her

We were there

Against my wishes

Because Walter was doing work

With AirTech

Which wanted a presence

In Nigeria

I remember saying—

‘What does that mean, Walter?

A presence?
What does that mean?’

And what it meant was that

There was all this intrigue

Going in and out of the country

And Walter was just there

To work on their computers

And get systems up and running
That kind of thing

And so we move there

Again, without my approval

I mean, I went, but I wasn’t happy

Walter wasn’t really happy about it either

But this is the world now, you know

This is how things are

Ironically, Liza was very happy to go

She thought it was an adventure

And we promised to get her a puppy

If she went and didn’t put up a fuss

And that was all she needed to here

Children are easy like that

Get them a dog or a lizard

Or anything they can give a name to

And they’re just as happy as can be

So it was April

And we’d been there, uh

Only a month or two

And Liza was playing outside

In this gated yard

--I told Walter I wasn’t living anywhere in Nigeria

Without a gated yard

So we found a place with a gated yard

And she was out there

With Reg, her dog

She named her dog Reg

Because that was Liza

That’s just how she was

And I went inside to grab my coffee

That was it

Just to grab my coffee

Probably took me thirty seconds

A minute—tops

And I come back outside

And she’s gone

Liza’s gone

And there’s Reg

Sitting there

Like—What happened?

And immediately I think—

She’s been kidnapped

Someone kidnapped my daughter

I call Walter

He comes rushing home from work

I call the embassy

I’m screaming

Walter keeps calling people

Trying to figure out what we can do

Neither of us speak anything but English

I’m crying

I think I passed out for awhile

Just went upstairs and passed out

Because my daughter was dead

I knew that

I mean, I instinctively knew that

And so I just said—

Well, I’ll go upstairs and die too

Bury me when you get a chance, Walter

I mean, it sounds funny

Talking about it now

But that’s really how I felt

I’m done

I’m just done

My daughter’s dead

And it’s my husband’s fault

And my fault

Because I listened to my husband
When I should have put my foot down

And said ‘We are not going to Nigeria’

We are not leaving a perfectly good home

In a perfectly nice country

To go live amongst the barbarians

And I’m—

I’m sorry, but that’s how I felt

At that moment

I know they’re not—

That just because someone’s not an American

That doesn’t automatically make them, uh—

But at that moment

I was very upset, obviously

And I’m still upset

I’m still very upset

Thinking about it

But an hour later

Liza came home

She swore she told me

That she was going over to the Taylor’s

Our neighbors

The father works with Walter

Well, not with Walter

But he works at AirTech

Liza said she yelled to me

That she was going

And she didn’t take Reg with her

Because the Taylor’s little girl, Marie

Is allergic to dog hair

And she was being considerate

Considerate to Marie Taylor

But she gives her own mother

A heart attack

I wanted to throttle her

But, of course, I just hugged her

And I kept saying—

‘I thought I lost you

I thought you’d been kidnapped’

And she couldn’t figure out

Why I would think that

She was just so innocent

There were just so many things, she—

You know, that she didn’t know

That she—

To her, there was no difference

Between Nigeria and America

No difference at all

We lived both places

We had houses in both places

And both places were fine

It’s not like I worried

When she played out in the yard

In America

And that yard didn’t even have

A gate around it

But—

I told her ‘From now on, you stay inside the house’

And she didn’t like that very much

But Walter backed me up

And that was that

And we never had any other trouble

The entire time we were there

Which only ended up being a few more months

Thank god

It just made me nervous

Being there

It just wasn’t

Somewhere

I wanted

To be