That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister (3 page)

For Dad Christmas was all about anticipation: the fun of decorating the tree, the store windows, “Jingle Bells,” the endless possibilities of wishes coming true. If they didn’t, never mind—the fun was getting ready for it all. He learned to lower his expectations for the things Santa could bring him, and enjoy the season. Every year on June 25, he would announce to us all, “Exactly six months to go! We’d better start planning!”

I told Dad, “I think you should have gotten a bike and I should have gotten a horse.”

He laughed. “So do I, honey, so do I, but sometimes life just gives us things to dream about. And guess what! When I was fourteen I earned enough money to get my own bike, so dreams can come true. You just have to make them happen.”

“It seems to me, Daddy, that all you ever got for Christmas was a pair of shoelaces, and you had to earn everything else.”

He said, “That’s about right. But look what it did for me. And I think I love Christmas more than anybody else does.”

That summer I learned to ride a bike. I wanted one of my own. One day toward fall I sat with Dad in the vegetable garden, among the warm tomatoes, biting into their juicy red flesh. Dad always brought the sugar bowl along—he liked to sprinkle each
bite. It was a little ritual we had together. I asked him, “So Daddy, did you love your bike that you earned?”

“Oh yes, I loved it, for the whole day that I had it.”

“You had it only one day? What happened?”

“I rode it to the Pantages Theater to see a movie. It never occurred to me that someone would be so mean as to steal it. But when I came out, it was gone. That was the day I learned the world was not as friendly a place as I thought.”

“Did you earn another bike?”

“No, by then I realized I didn’t balance very well, because my ears were so bad. I had fallen down so much in one day, riding that bike, it didn’t matter that much to me anymore. I would probably have really hurt myself if I’d kept it.”

We sat in the sunshine and feasted on our tomatoes. “Maybe one day,” I said, “I will get a job and earn a horse. Now I need a horse
and
a bike.”

“You show me how you can ride your friend Stephanie’s bike and I’ll buy you one. As to the horse, that takes a lot of time and money and a stable to keep him in. If you want a horse when you’re older, I bet you will earn one.”

I put it on my to-do list.

When Gene Autry actually came to town, we riders from Aunt Sally Benson’s Gene Autry Riding Club were invited to his suite at the Hotel Utah. When we were ushered into his presence, I gazed upon my first hotel luxury: a big basket of fresh fruit, all wrapped in cellophane and tied with a huge red bow. I was in awe: this is what you get when you’re famous.

The Gene Autry Riding Club always rode in the big Twenty-fourth of July parade down Main Street, celebrating the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley. I could hardly
wait to be a part of it. That summer I was only ten, and the rule was that you could only ride a horse in the parade if you were twelve years old or over. So the younger riders had to be pioneers on a float that followed the horses and riders.

I was dismayed. My friend in the club, Sheryl Gardner, who was twelve, got to ride a beautiful chestnut horse, and I had to sit on the float in my pioneer dress. I tried to be a good sport about staying with the other younger kids on the float. In our bonnets, full skirts, and aprons, or farmer’s hats and pants with suspenders for the boys, we waved to the crowds lining the street, all of us seething inside that we couldn’t show off our riding skills from atop horses, where we belonged. I waved to Mom and Dad and Bammy and Irene as they sat on chairs along the street. Irene looked awestruck at the whole idea of the parade. Well, at three years old, a kid is easily impressed, I thought. She has no idea that I am stuck here on this dumb float watching Sheryl Gardner ahead of me on her fancy shiny horse. Sheryl had on a turquoise cowboy hat and a sequined shirt. I could have killed her, I was so envious.

Years later, I met her at a party and told her of that day and my feelings of deprivation and envy.

“Yes,” she laughed, “and I was looking at the girl ahead of me on a palomino, all white and shimmery, and I was so envious of her. I wanted to be on the palomino!”

ONE DAY WHEN
I was twelve and Irene six, Dad came home with the fanciest gizmo we’d ever seen. The year before, they’d bought an automatic dishwasher, which we all thought was the
height of progress. But
this
box held the biggest change ever to happen in our lives at home. It was a television set.

When Dad hooked it up, on came
Kukla, Fran and Ollie,
the puppet show. Irene and I were simply mesmerized. Every day after school, we turned it on, this little black-and-white screen, and the two of us watched it together, our own little ritual. On Saturday nights the whole family gathered around to watch
Your Show of Shows
with Sid Caesar. We were maybe the first on our block to get a set, and Dad was excited about the prospects of advertising in this new medium.

I had been turned out as a commercial actress by my father at the age of three. One of his best clients was Morning Milk, a subsidiary of the Carnation Milk Company in Los Angeles. In an effort to expand their market, Dad thought it would be great if people could be convinced to drink Morning Milk, which was canned and evaporated, instead of just using it for cooking. He needed to show a little kid using it on her cereal, and I was handy. Dad was filming it himself in our dining room. Home movies had only recently been invented, and he had bought one of the first cameras. He set up lights, put the cereal in front of me, checked my dress and hair (Bammy made all my clothes, and I believe I was in fluffy organdy), and rolled the film. This was several years before television, so I wonder now what he was doing filming me. Maybe he had an idea of what was to come, and would show this to his clients as the next way to advertise. “Okay, honey,” he said, “now pour the milk on the cereal. No, turn the can so we can see the name on it! That’s good. Now pour your sugar on. Keep smiling! Look at the camera and smile again! Good! Now taste your cereal!”

I did exactly what he said. But the cereal with evaporated milk made me wrinkle my whole face up and look for a place to spit it out.

This was a blow to my father. He said that he didn’t actually
care
how the cereal tasted with Morning Milk on it; that we would keep doing it again and again until I tasted that stuff with a
happy smile on my face.

Realizing what might be in store for me for the next hour, I did the whole thing on the second take, and, boy, did I smile! Dad was thrilled. I learned to do things on first takes so I could get on with my life.

It took nine years for Dad’s vision of television advertising to come into being. I was already his trained professional. In 1952, every ad was broadcast live. Dad’s client, a grocery store chain, advertised every Sunday evening. Dad and I would go to the television station, I would be given my directions, and we would perform little one-minute ads.

You would see my hands putting food in ovens, or in refrigerators. Or you’d see me as the young girl shopping at the store, exchanging dialogue with the fellow who played the store proprietor. Bammy was very proud that I was doing this. “Our Terrell is on television, you know,” she’d brag to her bridge group. She never mentioned what I actually
did
on television.

When Bammy and my mother went out for their bridge luncheons, they hired a sweet older woman, Mrs. Grayson, to tend Irene. I would arrive home from school around four o’clock and find Irene and Mrs. Grayson there. Mom hardly ever asked me to relieve the babysitter: she wanted to pay her when she got home, and give me time to myself. I would make myself a sand
wich of Wonder Bread, butter, and sugar, and curl up happily with a book on my mom’s chaise longue in their bedroom.

It was an afternoon in late spring when Mrs. Grayson came in to me, looking frightened, but saying calmly, “Terrell, something is very wrong with me. I need you to call an ambulance. Tell them to come here right away.”

Holding her head with both hands, she went into our bathroom and closed the door. I could hear her moaning and crying. My heart pounding, I picked up the phone to call the emergency number. Someone was on our party line, chatting away. “Excuse me,” I said, “this is an emergency. Could you please hang up while I call for an ambulance?”

“How old are you, dear?”

“Twelve. Please. I really need to get help here.”

“You kids are all alike. The minute you want to use the phone, you try to get us to hang up.”

“Please. This is not a joke, honest! Our babysitter is in the bathroom and I think she may be dying!”

“If you’re twelve, what are you doing with a babysitter, huh?”

“Oh, please! Please! Help me!”

Finally, they gave in and hung up.

I got the ambulance people, gave them the address, and then called Dad. “I’m on my way. Good girl.” I went into the bathroom then to see if I could do anything for Mrs. Grayson. She had been sitting on the toilet, but had collapsed and fallen off. She was wedged in between the sink and the toilet, and blood was pouring out of her nose and mouth onto the white tile.

Irene was standing in the hall, both hands in her mouth, her eyes wide in horror. We heard the sirens wailing as they
approached our house. Doors slammed and the paramedics ran up the stairs.

Just then Dad arrived home, followed by Mrs. Grayson’s daughter, who was also terrified, and crying, “Oh no! Oh no!” as she watched her mother being carried out on the stretcher. The ambulance people had already called for a hearse, which arrived shortly afterward. Dad said, “Terrell, you and Irene go stand outside under the willow tree, so that when Mom and Bammy drive in, they’ll see you two are okay.”

We did. Irene watched as Mrs. Grayson’s body was transferred from the ambulance to the hearse, her daughter weeping and following. Mrs. Grayson had died of a massive brain hemorrhage.

Irene stayed quiet, but inside she was not calm. To this day, she still frets over ambulance sirens, asking constant questions about who is hurt, are they dying? The next day she will still be worried about it. As for me, there are still times when I go into a ladies’ room and open a stall door, and for just a brief moment I see Mrs. Grayson lying there.

T
he sadness of Mrs. Grayson’s death began our year of bad news and change. Irene entered kindergarten in September 1951, and that’s when we found out how injured her brain really was. After the very first day, the teacher telephoned and asked my parents to come and see her the next day after school.

She told them that Irene was unable to do most of the things her fellow classmates could, and she suggested they have Irene tested at the University of Utah. She sent them to a well-respected professional in the field of special education.

When the test results came back, the professor gave them this news:

1. Your child is mentally disabled with an IQ of around 57.
   
2. She will never learn to read and write.
   
3. She will make lots of friends and she responds well to loving attention.
   
4. Her emotional age is around three, which means she will
   not have the emotional capacity to empathize with others. Ever.
   
5. Her explosive temper outbursts are not because she is spoiled. This is very common to this population: their brain chemistry wires them for tantrums.
   
6. Although she responds to love and affection and has some social skills, she will probably never marry because her emotional skills are not up to that.
   
7. She does not fit into normal public schools. There are no programs where she would fit in, except, of course, at the state institution. Many parents have chosen this option.
   
8. So sorry.
   

WHAT HAD CAUSED
Irene’s brain damage? Looking back on her difficult birth, her crossed eyes, her delayed reactions and abnormal behaviors, the professor concluded that she was a victim of anoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain, during her birth. There was no going back and making it right. Mom probably should have had a cesarean, but she’d had a substitute doctor that day, and in his judgment, it hadn’t been necessary.

Bammy never forgave that doctor for putting my mother through that labor and delivery when he could have used safer methods. Now and then she would shake her head and say, “He will pay for that sin, just you watch. If not now, he will in heaven.” Then her eyes would narrow and she would add, “If he gets to heaven at all.”

Mom and Dad went over it again and again in their minds, and finally realized they had to move on and decide what to do now.

In the opinion of most Americans of that time, it was best to
send these children away, so that they could “be with their own kind.” Either that, or keep them out of sight of the rest of the neighborhood. It was too unpleasant, you see.

So my parents went down to take a look at our state institution in American Fork, about sixty miles south of Salt Lake City. They saw large, smelly rooms of children and adults, all with some handicap or other, some engaged in an activity, others staring blankly or longingly out the window. They couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her there.

They came home and said that Irene was not going to the state training school.

Bammy was making her delicious swiss steak, handed down from her pioneer mother. She listened carefully to them, frowning the whole time. “I don’t want people making fun of her,” she said as she slathered mustard over the meat. “Children can be so cruel.” She piled slices of onions and then fresh tomatoes from the garden onto the steak. “If you keep her home, she’s staying right inside the house with me.” She sprinkled a bit of sugar over the tomatoes and put the pan in the oven.

Mom watched her thoughtfully, worried that Bammy was ashamed of her little namesake. But that wasn’t the case.

What Bammy didn’t tell us then, what she never told any of us, was something I found out about half a century later.

Bammy, who had been born in 1899 to a prominent pioneer family, had had a half-brother who was mentally retarded. Her mother had kept George in a little house of his own, behind the family house. He was never allowed out in company, or with the family either. A helper always looked after him, and it was agreed that no one would ever mention him. One grainy family photo, I am told, shows the whole family on a picnic, and one child in a
cage. It must have been George. Her father had been the mayor, and George was his son by his second wife in polygamy, who had died. In Salt Lake City in the late 1800s, you would never admit to the community that you had a child that “wasn’t right.” It was a sign of weakness.

With this news, Mom said we had to move into a bigger house, with more than one bathroom and a separate bedroom for Irene. I would be entering junior high. Mom knew I’d be having homework and telephone calls, and sharing a bedroom just wouldn’t work anymore. She thought I would be happy.

She was wrong. I was devastated. I didn’t mind sharing a room with Irene, and I loved our little house and my willow tree and my fence that turned into horses for me. I loved the neighborhood kids, Tommy Murphy and Mean Merrill Hall notwithstanding. I did not want my childhood to end. But Dad painted over the horses’ names on the fence in front and spruced up the house for sale. I was heartbroken. Dad took me for a ride in the car and talked to me about it. “Honey, I can see this looks like an end of happy times to you. But we have to do this. Our house is just too small. Could you think of this as the beginning of new and wonderful times?”

I could not. My happy, secure childhood in my little gabled bedroom was over. Mom and Dad’s ribbon and roses wallpaper was over. My life as a sidekick to the Murphy family was over. Who would be my friends and neighbors now?

Mom and Dad bought a big old house in Federal Heights, at 1383 East South Temple. Bammy said, “You know, this is a much more fashionable part of town.” She was all for improving one’s station in life.

I hated it. I hated a big house. I wanted a cozy little house. When it came time for us to leave 518 J Street, I remember praying, “Please let me come back here. Please. I’ll do anything to earn it. Just let me know. I’ll do it. This is my real home. No other house will be home to me, ever.” As we drove away, I looked back longingly at the Murphys’ house, and Tenth Avenue, and all I loved as warm and familiar.

God was silent on the matter.

My notion that we had moved into a strange house was proven when Bammy set up her iron and ironing board in the large upstairs hall. When she plugged in the iron, the doorbell rang nonstop for five minutes and then stopped. Dad inspected the wiring, and when he couldn’t fix it, he called electricians, who couldn’t fix it either. For all the years we lived in that house, we knew when Bammy was ironing because the doorbell would ring endlessly. We learned to ignore it.

But a few days after we moved to the new house, I got even more of a surprise. It was about eleven at night, and everyone was, I thought, asleep in bed. I was looking for my hairbrush, which I’d left in Irene’s room. I knew Irene was never bothered by lights being on after she was asleep, so I flipped the switch so I could see.

My father was kneeling at her bedside. His forehead was resting on his folded hands. I could not even imagine it. I believe he was praying.

At the shock of the light going on, he rose quickly and whispered, “Don’t you
ever
turn a light on like that again!”

Irene slept blissfully through this scene, but my pain was already so great at losing my childhood home and my willow tree
that Dad’s anger left me doubled up in my bed, weeping, my head and heart protected under my covers.

Looking back on it now, I am sure that he was embarrassed that I found him on his knees, so vulnerable, asking for help.

He’d never admit it, but I think his answer came very quietly. Because only a few days later, Dad took action.