And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (9 page)

Then, as soon as I got back on my feet, little David developed terrible diarrhea and vomiting. He turned gray and had to be hospitalized for what turned out to be an intestinal obstruction. Again it was Nancy to the rescue. She was very upset that she wasn't allowed to visit him at the hospital. She chose gifts for us to take to David from among her own very favorite toys. She insisted we go shopping so she could pick out a new outfit for him to wear when he came back. She was enraptured the day he did come back—she sat on the front steps all day waiting for the ice cream man so she could buy David an ice cream cone, his first. She doted on him, followed him around the house to make sure he was happy. A few days after his return we had a special celebratory dinner—Nancy's idea. I made a turkey. Nancy and I baked a cake. She insisted on helping. And what an industrious little helper she was. I had to make up little jobs to keep her busy. Her favorite was licking the bowl of icing clean. She got it all over herself.

She had no nightmares or tantrums during this stretch. I felt relieved. Maybe the doctor was right, after all. Time was all she
needed. I noticed her playing peacefully by herself one morning and thought about how pleasant life would be if she only stayed this way. I hoped and prayed she would.

She didn't. Once our family health problems passed, her own surfaced again.

The circus was in town. Nancy had seen the commercials for it on TV and wanted to go. Frank decided to take her that Sunday, just the two of them. She was ecstatic and very anxious to go. She hadn't had much time for fun lately, what with her vigils for me and then David.

Frank got the car out of the garage, got Nancy's coat out of the closet, and told her it was time to go. She wouldn't leave the house.

“It's t-t-too far!” she wailed.

“No, it's not, sweetheart,” I assured her. “Daddy is taking you in the car.”

“That's right, Nancy,” he agreed as he put her coat on her and buttoned it.

“A-are we all g-g-going?”

“It's a special day for you and Daddy, sweetheart. Remember?”

“I'm n-n-not going.”

“Why?” asked Frank, confused.

“It's t-t-t-too
far
,” she repeated.

“We're going,” he stated.

When he picked her up and opened the front door, she began to scream. He put her down. She took her coat off and hurled it to the floor. Frank looked to me for guidance. He'd never seen Nancy like this. I had.

“Nancy, you wanted to go,” I said firmly.

“That's right,” Frank exclaimed. “The animals will be there. We'll see the bears. And have cotton candy.”

She frowned, thought it over. “Okay. I w-w-wanna go.” She put her coat back on.

We said our good-byes; they went out the door. I watched from the doorway. They got in the car, Frank started the motor, and she started to scream again. Frank turned off the motor, got out, grabbed a wailing Nancy, and returned.

“She says she doesn't want to go,” he explained, exasperated.

Nancy came inside, threw off her coat again.

“Maybe she shouldn't,” I said. “If she doesn't want to.”

“But I already bought the tickets.”

We stood there on the front steps, stuck for a solution.

“Nancy,” I said. “Do you want Daddy to take another little girl? Would that make you happy?”

“Y-yes,” she replied.

“Then okay,” I said. “We'll call Becky from next door and Daddy will go with Becky.”

“O-okay,” she said defiantly.

We went inside and I phoned our neighbors. Becky was sick and couldn't go.

I told Nancy.

“Then I'll g-g-go,” she said. She put on her coat and went out the door to the car, leaving Frank and me standing there in the entry hall, baffled.

He shook his head, followed her to the car. They got in and he started the engine. She started to scream again. This time he didn't cut the engine—he let out the brake and began to back down the driveway.

She screamed even louder. “I d-don't wanna g-go! It's t-t-too far!”

He got as far as the street, then rammed the car into gear and roared back up the driveway to the garage. They got out, returned to the house. She threw off her coat and stormed into the living room.

“I absolutely do not know what to do,” Frank said, shaken. “I don't know if she wants to go or she doesn't want to go. I don't know what to do.”

I went into the living room. She had turned the TV on.

“Nancy, Daddy's going by himself,” I told her.

“O-okay.”

Frank was willing to try anything at this point. So he went out to the car by himself, got in, and started the engine. As soon as Nancy heard the car start she came running out of the living room, sobbing.

“I w-wanna g-go!”

I opened the door and waved to Frank. He waited for her. She got in and he backed down the driveway. She started to scream again. This time he didn't stop. He drove away. I could see her through the car window, sobbing, tears streaming down her cheeks.

When they got back, Frank told me she'd been fine as soon as they got away from the house. They had had a wonderful time.

Then Frank looked down at the floor, cleared his throat. “About the guidance clinic …”

“What about it?” I said.

He took a deep breath, let it out. “Do whatever you want.”

“You think I should take her?”

“It … it seems like a good idea to go for some help.” Frank looked down at the floor again and swallowed, clearly pained by his unhappy realization. “Something is happening to her. I don't know what.”

So glad to have his compliance, I went ahead immediately, fully confident that the professionals would find an easy answer to Nancy's problems—easy and correctible.

The place I drove Nancy to for her first psychiatric evaluation was a child guidance center attached to one of Philadelphia's major children's hospitals. Nancy didn't mind going. I told her we were just going to talk to a doctor. I promised she wouldn't get any shots. She was a month shy of her fourth birthday.

Frank met us out front. It was a gray, shabby old building. We stared at each other grimly, then looked down at our eldest child. She stood there calmly and quietly. We hesitated, wondering if we were making too much of this.

Only one way to find out: We went inside.

We waited on a bench for a while and were finally admitted to the office of a psychiatric social worker. A young woman took Nancy down the hall to a playroom. She went willingly. Frank and I related to the psychiatric social worker what had brought us there. He made notes as we talked.

“We'll have to evaluate her,” he advised us. “You'll bring her back for a series of visits. We'll give her some tests, and then we'll see where we stand. Okay?”

We agreed. I took her there for an hour visit once every other week for six months. I hired a baby sitter to take care of Suzy and David while I was away, and paid her out of the following week's grocery money. I was optimistic, sure the clinic would diagnose Nancy's problem and give Frank and me the proper direction so she'd be all right.

Her visits to the clinic had an immediate effect. Her stuttering began to ease up. By the time her evaluation period was completed and the verdict was in, it had virtually disappeared.

Frank mentioned how pleased we were about this to the psychiatric social worker when we came in to hear the results.

“Well, she was an early-speaking child,” he advised. “Stuttering isn't that unusual. She's outgrown it.”

He opened a folder and related his findings.

On the Revised Stanford-Binet she had demonstrated an IQ of 134. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test yielded an IQ of 129. Both placed her in the category of very superior intelligence.

“Actually she has the functioning IQ of a seven-year-old,” he reported. “That pretty effectively rules out any sort of brain damage from her birth, which you mentioned you were concerned about.”

We were relieved to hear that.

“Now, we also found that Nancy's motor-visual development is slightly behind her age level. Put together her unusually high IQ and her motor-visual deficiency and you arrive at, we think, her basic problem. She sets high goals for herself. If they're motor-visual oriented, like learning to tie her own shoes or knit, she's unable to perform at the level she's set for herself.”

“You mean her head's ahead of her hands?” asked Frank.

“Precisely. This causes her a severe level of frustration, and that's where the tantrums come from. It's an adjustment reaction.”

“What can we do?” I asked.

“My opinion is that she'll outgrow her problem as she grows into her intellect.”

“That's all?” Frank asked.

He looked over his report. “Yes. The only other area worth mentioning is that her fantasies aren't as rich as they might be for a child her age. She constricts on the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test. An average child may see fifty different things in a splotch. Nancy sees one. Always the same one.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A butterfly.”

Frank chuckled. “That doesn't sound too dangerous.”

“Not at all. It's another area she'll outgrow as she encounters new friends and situations. My feeling is that time and the structured environment of school will be the answer for Nancy. If
you
feel she needs therapy at any time, feel free to return.”

We shook hands, thanked him.

“Take her home and love her,” he said with a wink as we left.

We were relieved.

We found a nursery school for her, thinking that might help. It did. The teacher was sensitive and seemed to understand Nancy, who adored her. Nancy learned new skills and eagerly awaited going every day. The teacher reported to me that she was already doing first-grade work.

Kindergarten was next. Again Nancy had no problems—short of
her inability to hold on to the friends she made. She'd hold on to friends, we reasoned, once she met some nice kids.

The main thing was that she was starting to get the stimulation and channeling she required. We felt certain that she would soon become like other kids.

She was going to be okay.

On the Friday before Nancy started first grade, I took her to have her hair done and bought her a new dress and a pair of red boots that she wanted. She was almost giddy with excitement about starting school—until the night before, when I found her sobbing in her room.

“What's wrong, Nancy?” I asked her.

“I can't go to school tomorrow,” she wailed.

“Of course you can.” I sat down next to her on the bed. She moved away.

“I can't,” she insisted.

“Why not?”

“I don't know how to read and write yet.”

I laughed. “But Nancy, sweetheart, that's why you go to school. To learn those things.”

She began to scream. I tried explaining again, but to no avail. She sobbed and wailed and rolled around on her bed for several hours.

But she did go to school the next day and performed very well. In fact, she did so well in her first-grade classes that in the sixth week of the term the principal called Frank and me in to tell us he
was moving her to a special first-grade class for intellectually gifted students.

We were very proud.

By the end of the second grade Nancy was doing fourth- and fifth-grade-level work in all areas except math (which frustrated her so much she would burst into tears) and penmanship. Her handwriting was a bit clumsy because of her motor-visual problem. Nancy's second-grade teacher recommended on her report card that she skip third grade and go right into fourth. Her only reservation about Nancy, the teacher noted, was that she “was disruptive due to inappropriate laughter.” I went in and asked the teacher about this. I had never noticed this behavior in Nancy.

“She seems to laugh at her own little jokes,” the teacher explained. “She's tuned in to her own private TV show and just starts giggling.”

She did skip third grade, though, and had no problem keeping up scholastically with the fourth graders, even though some were two years older than she was.

Socially, however, Nancy made no progress. She would be tight best friends with a little girl for a week, then they would become bitter enemies. No relationship lasted. Her first new school friend was a sweet, cute girl who lived down the block. Nancy brought her home three or four times to play, then stopped. I asked about the girl, but Nancy refused to answer me and just cried. A few days later I found a note from the girl in Nancy's jeans when I was doing the laundry. It said: “I hate you and you stink and stay away from me forever or I'm going to kill you.” I immediately called the girl's parents. They seemed unconcerned about the note, though they did feel it would be best all around if the two girls stopped seeing each other.