And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (8 page)

But Nancy didn't have them occasionally. She started having several violent tantrums every day, literally from morning to night. She kicked and screamed when it was time to put her clothes on in the morning. She did the same when it was time to get into her pajamas at night. During the course of a day the slightest thing set her off. If I disagreed with her about something—refused to give her a food she wanted, for example—she quickly turned the disagreement into a confrontation and then an eruption. I was not necessarily the catalyst. One time she was quietly coloring with crayons on the living room floor, then suddenly exploded into a frenzied screaming attack. Later I looked at the coloring book and saw that she'd accidentally colored outside one of the lines. This was enough to trigger a fit. I was powerless to prevent the fits, and once they started I was powerless to stop them.

I waited for her to outgrow them. As far as I knew, there was nothing else for me
to
do but wait. One day I thought she finally had done that. I was reading on the living room sofa when she came up the stairs from the basement and walked past me with this strange, glazed look in her eyes.

“Where are you going, Nancy?”

“I'm g-g-going to my r-room. I f-f-feel funny, Mommy.”

“How do you feel funny?”

She twisted her face, as if she were in pain. “I'm g-going to my room. I'll come o-o-out wh-when I'm better.”

She walked slowly upstairs to her room. I followed her up there a minute later and found her sitting up on her bed, staring into space. She didn't notice me, and I left. An hour later she came bounding down the steps, her dark brown eyes all sparkly and alive again, and went back down to the basement to play.

I took this as the promised breakthrough. I thought she had at last come to grips with handling frustration and would be okay now. I was relieved.

I was also wrong. Less than an hour later she had a full-blown fit when she couldn't reach something in the refrigerator. I didn't know how to respond. What could I do? I couldn't control her environment so tightly as to keep her entirely free of frustration. That wasn't possible. All I could do was feel helpless and inadequate.

The tantrums grew with her. As her vocabulary developed over the next few months, verbal tantrums were added to the inarticulate seizures on the floor. At first I didn't recognize them for what they were—another manifestation of whatever was boiling over inside her two-year-old mind.

The first one started in my bedroom. I was making the bed in the morning. She came in.

“I w-want you to g-go outside with m-me, Mommy.”

“Okay, sweetheart. Just as soon as I'm finished.”

“I w-want you to go outside w-with me,
n-n-now.”

“As soon as I've made the bed, Nancy. We'll get your things and we'll go outside and play. Okay?”

“
N-now
!”

“In ten minutes,” I replied firmly.

“If y-you d-don't go out w-with me right now, I'll t-t-tell you what I'm g-g-gonna do,” she warned. “I'm g-g-gonna go into y-your closet, and I'm gonna t-take your b-blue b-b-blouse, y-your red d-d-dress, your g-g-g-green skirt with the l-l-lace on it, and …”

She proceeded to name virtually every single item in my closet. I don't know how she knew what was in there, but she did, the list of garments spilling out in a torrent of stammers. I stopped what I was doing and stared at her.

“… y-your y-yellow sweater. And then I'm g-g-gonna go through your d-d-dresser drawer, and I'm g-g-gonna get all of your
n-n-nightgowns and s-s-slips and your underwear and I'm g-g-gonna get a p-pair of sci-scissors and I'm gonna c-c-cut into l-l-little strips your b-blue blouse, y-your red d-d-dress, your g-g-g-green skirt with the l-lace on it …”

She repeated the entire list.

“… a-a-and slips and your u-underwear. A-a-and after I've c-cut them into l-little strips I-I-I'm g-g-gonna take them outside a-a-and p-put them under the c-c-cars in the s-street, s-so they can r-run over them. If-if you don't go with me right n-now, that's what I'm g-g-gonna do …”

I just stood there speechless. Such venom, such specific, detailed hate, coming out of the mouth of a two-year-old! She scared the absolute hell out of me.

When I didn't move, she started right over again with the entire list.

“Nancy! Stop!” I screamed.

“Y-y-your g-g-green skirt w-w-with the l-l-lace on it—!”

“Stop!”

But she wouldn't stop. I grabbed her by the arms and shook her. She kept going, screaming now.

“… Y-your y-y-yellow sweater—”

I picked her up. She began squirming and punching at me. I ran down the hall with her, put her in her room, left her there, and closed the door behind me. She followed me right out and down the stairs, still screaming the list at the top of her lungs.

“Nancy!”

I clamped my hand over her mouth. She bit me. I smacked her hard on the rump. It had no effect. I covered my ears and fled to another room. She pursued me.

“… Y-y-your g-g-green skirt with the l-l-lace on it a-and slips and under-r-wear a-a-and I-I-I'm gonna t-take them o-outside and p-p-put them u-under the c-c-cars in the s-street s-so they c-c-can r-run them over!”

Then she abruptly stopped, sat down on the living room floor, and began to play quietly with her coloring book, as if nothing had happened.

I called the pediatrician immediately.

“I've never heard of anything quite that extreme,” he admitted.

“What should I do?”

“Stop her. Don't let her continue.”

“How?”

“Well, with children like this the best thing is to try and distract her.”

“What do you mean by ‘children like this'?”

“Or channel that energy.”

“
How
?” I pleaded.

He increased her dosage of phenobarbital again. But the verbal assaults continued, some of them lasting as long as an hour.

I wasn't satisfied with either the pediatrician's analysis or his treatment. I had the gut feeling that there was something seriously wrong with Nancy. I thought about taking her to see someone else, but I didn't know who to turn to. One day I opened the phone book and looked through the list of child psychiatrists, but I stopped short of calling one. I thought perhaps I was being silly or overreacting. After all, her doctor said it was just a stage. I was of the naive belief that when your doctor told you something, it should be taken as undisputed fact. I was wrong to stay with a physician whom I was not content with. But I did not trust my instincts then.

I was not content with what he had to say about another problem Nancy was starting to have—violent, recurring nightmares.

Most nights she screamed for me seven or eight times in the darkness. Sometimes she yelled that a man was trying to dynamite her bedroom. Usually she cried that a rabbit had bitten her. Then it was always the same routine.

I went to her, turned her light on, opened the closet door. “There's no rabbit here, sweetheart. See? No rabbit.”

“It b-bit me,” she insisted.

“Where?”

She showed me a spot on her leg. “Here.”

“Want me to kiss it?”

“Yes.”

I kissed it. “Want me to bandage it?”

“Y-yes.”

I bandaged the leg and she quieted down but didn't sleep. I sat on her bed and talked about nice things—taking picnics on sunny days, going to the beach—and she finally calmed down. As soon as she fell back to sleep, I returned to bed. An hour later she woke up in terror again.

I reported Nancy's night terrors to the pediatrician. He told me that a lot of kids Nancy's age had recurring nightmares.

“It's nothing to worry about,” he said. “They forget about them the next day.”

Nancy didn't forget hers. She insisted on keeping her rabbit bite bandage on all day and would only let me remove it to change it. She actually believed the attacks took place.

I reported this to the pediatrician.

“That isn't normal,” he advised. “I've never heard of that.”

This was the best he could do. I finally decided it wasn't good enough. He was a sincere, professional physician, and he was making a genuine effort to account for Nancy's behavior based on what he had encountered previously. Clearly, he'd just never dealt with a girl like Nancy before.

So I tried taking her to a different pediatrician, an older man. He was brusque and impatient with Nancy on our initial visit. After he was done examining her, he handed her a lollipop.

“Y-you know w-w-what I'm gonna do with this l-l-lolli-p-pop?” Nancy said as she took it from him. “I'm g-g-g-gonna take it outside and throw it under the w-w-wheels of the first t-truck I see. Th-that's what I think of y-you and y-y-your l-lollipop.”

His mouth dropped open in amazement.

I decided to stay with the younger doctor. It wasn't a different pediatrician Nancy needed. She needed some other kind of help.

I knew Frank would be against it. He had mentioned his distaste for therapy in general several times.

I made Frank's favorite dinner that night—my homemade stew and bread I baked myself. Then I took a deep breath and brought up the idea of taking Nancy to a child guidance clinic.

“You're paying too much attention to the problem,” he said flatly. “You're magnifying it. She's not that bad.”

“She
is
that bad,” I said. “You're not close enough to see it.”

“You're
too
close,” he insisted. “Look, she's a kid. She's stubborn. That's the way kids are. Maybe she's a little tougher than the other kids. That makes her a tough kid. That doesn't make her sick.”

“I want to take her to a doctor.”

“You don't go to the doctor every time you get a scratch on your hand.”

“Who's talking about scratches? She's sick.”

“It's not that bad.”

“What about her nightmares?”

“All kids have 'em.”

“Not like those.”

“Sure, like those.”

“How would you know? You sleep through them. Or pretend to.”

Frank sighed. “Maybe it's the way you're handling her. Ever think of that?”

“Of course I thought of that,” I snapped. “I've tried everything.
I've read the books, I've talked to the doctor. I do what they tell me to do. Nothing works. We've got to do
something
.”

My voice cracked. Deep down inside I blamed myself for whatever was wrong with Nancy. I wasn't nearly the success as a mother that I wanted to be, but I didn't know where I was going wrong. I was totally frustrated.

Frank didn't answer me.

“We've got to do something,” I repeated.

“Well, we're not going to do that,” he declared.

He refused to discuss the matter further. He didn't want to believe that something was wrong with Nancy. And he felt that people like us—who were college graduates and came from good families—solved our own problems. Besides, we were low on money.

I backed down. I was willing to accept his position, mostly because he seemed so sure about it. I wasn't sure of anything. I was looking for answers. He had given me one: no.

So we dropped the subject, until I raised it again about two months later, again at dinner. Suzy had just started to walk. That afternoon Nancy had knocked her to the ground—violently—every time she stood up. (The very first sentence Suzy ever said was “Nancy, leave me alone.”) Nancy's verbal tantrums had already exposed such a bottomless pit of rage that I was genuinely afraid she might really go after her baby sister and cause her serious injury. I moved the playpen up from the basement so I could keep an eye on them. And I approached Frank again.

He refused to discuss it and we quarreled. Out of frustration he had joined a softball league at a nearby park, which kept him out of the house every Sunday afternoon. I resented it deeply, and we quarreled over that. Frank finally agreed to take Nancy and Suzy for a drive Sunday mornings before his game so I could get some sleep. Because of Nancy's nightmares I hadn't slept through an entire night in at least two years. Some days I was so exhausted I'd lean against a wall for a second and start to doze standing up. My chief fantasy was to check into a hotel all by myself and sleep straight through for one night.

I worried about Nancy constantly. Soon, however, I had another worry—my period was late.

My knees were knocking when I went to see the obstetrician. I was terrified that I was pregnant again. I desperately didn't want to be, not for a couple of more years, at least. As I drove over for my examination I thought about a dress I wanted that cost twenty
dollars, which was a lot of money to us. I made a deal with myself that, because I hadn't bought anything for myself in so long, I'd go out and buy the damned thing if I wasn't pregnant.

I didn't get to buy the dress.

David was born six weeks early, on October 26, 1961. Nancy was three and a half.

She took to David immediately, much more than she had to Suzy. The second I brought him home, she wanted to be with him and hold him. She called him “the boy.” She was very sweet to him, caring and compassionate.

When we encountered a couple of health scares during the first few weeks of David's life, Nancy was concerned, loving, and helpful.

I developed a kidney problem right after I got home. The tube between my right kidney and my bladder was twisted. It required surgery and a week's hospitalization. We applied to the Family Service Agency and got financial help for a homemaker. Nancy was cooperative the entire time I was in the hospital, giving neither the homemaker nor Frank a bit of trouble.

When I came home she appointed herself my nurse. She was in my room all day making sure I was okay. I had a pretty ugly scar from the front of my abdomen around to my back. The doctor told me to put cocoa butter on it three times a day to help it heal. Nancy made absolutely certain I did, and insisted on helping me rub it in.