Elaine was the most beautiful woman who ever existed, prettier than any movie star, a goddess. A kind, angelic, gentle person who loved me with her whole heart and soul, who regretted every moment when I was left behind. She was totally misunderstood by her family, by the men in her life, and by the people around her. She was used and abused by everyone, taken advantage by those closest to her. Her innocence had to be protected and nourished by me, her darling daughter, for whom she was the epitomy of grace, femininity, and all things beautiful.
Hmmmmm.
Do we detect a little co-dependence here?
Elaine was born in Provo, Utah, in about 1918. She died sometime later, in the late 1980's or thereabouts. I don't remember exactly; I could look it up, I suppose, buy why bother? I was there at her bedside in an ICU room in a Phoenix hospital, I don't remember which one, stroking her forhead, knowing that she was dying. I told her how beautiful she was, how much I loved her. I remember when all the lines went flat and she died.
I didn't know it then, but I was suddenly free.
One of Elaine's favorite stories about me as a baby was when I was about 8 months old, sitting on top of the bar of a local tavern. I was dressed up all sweet and pretty, as she always kept me, and the patrons were ooohing and aaaahing at what a beautiful baby I was. All of a sudden I let go a massive fart, so big the glasses shook on the bar. Everybody laughed, and it was one of her most embarrassing moments.
Elaine bragged that she never got a babysitter for me; she took me everyplace. Regardless of how suitable that "everyplace" was, apparently. I spent much of my younger days with her in bars, a lot of my nights when I was in junior high school were spent sitting in the truck outside of bars, and I was her "drinking buddy" from the time I was 16 until I moved away from home at 22.
I loved that woman. The sun rose and set on her glory. I think she probably was kind of pretty, but no movie star. She had a very child-like personality, always presented herself as a little bit helpless. She teased and manipulated men, who really fell hard for her. She had several husbands, lots of lovers, and her world revolved around herself and the men in her life.
So long as I was cute and pretty, complemented her and brought her attention, she wanted me with her. It may be true that she never got a babysitter for me; she didn't have to. She had her family, with whom she could drop me off at a moment's notice for as long as necessary -- six months, a year, maybe; the longest time I spent in one place was four years. When I was no longer a cute little baby or a charming toddler, off she went with her latest man, leaving me with Grandma, Neveal, or assorted other relatives -- usually Neveal. I never knew in advance that she was leaving; the usual scenario would be at breakfast she'd say, "How would you like to go live with so and so for a while?" and by five that afternoon, that's where I would be, clothes, toys, and all.
When I was a kid, one thing Elaine had was beautiful hair. It was full and thick and a beautiful, rich auburn with red highlights. Elaine was one of those unfortunate women whose life is governed by their attractiveness to men, and at the first sign of gray, she started dying her hair to the blond and platinum shades. There's nothing wrong with dying one's hair, I do it myself, but the bleaches and stuff she had to use quickly ruined her hair, and when she got into her 50's, she could no longer even comb it herself. I felt (and still do) sorry for her because of this.
Back in the "old days", moral standards were very high, especially in the family that raised me. Neveal, Elaine, and Grandma were always pointing their fingers at this woman or that who was "living in sin". They were among those who were shocked and outraged at Ingrid Bergman's living openly with a man, for instance. Carl became my "stepfather" when I was in about the first or second grade; the three of us shared a household off and on, sometimes at Grandmas's, until I was sent to live with Neveal in the last half of the third grade when Elaine and Carl moved to Idaho. After I was moved back with Carl and Elaine in the summer before the seventh grade, or maybe a little later, I happened across their marriage certificate which showed they had been married in Idaho. Therefore, Elaine herself was one of those women "living in sin" that were so immoral and terrible. I was shocked and dismayed, to say the least.
There was something happening with the family women that fit exactly in the "loose morals" category that they so strongly condemned. Neveal had been married some seven times, twice to the same man. Elaine herself had been married four or five times, maybe even more -- I quit counting. To my shame, I was the first woman to graduate from high school -- every other woman in the family married either because "they had to" or because they were expected to while still in their mid-teens. Since I didn't, then there was something wrong with me because "I couldn't get a man". Not only that, I only married once, and I got married a year or so before I got pregnant.
Somehow, the family managed to live in this dichotomy; they didn't identify what they were doing as being "loose women". The only thing I can figure is that to them, it was so much better to "have a man" than not that no matter how you had that man, it was better. Neveal at least was closer to obeying the family moral standards than Elaine, but nobody ever criticized Elaine. Believe it or not, this hypocrasy helped me in both maintaining some "sanity" and in my recovery. When I began to question their moral attitudes, it opened the door to questioning their attitudes and treatment of me, as well.
Elaine could never figure me out. I wasn't the person she expected me to be or something -- I'm not sure why. She loved sunbathing at the beach and I hated to lay around like that; I would swim or walk while she basked in the sun. I wasn't much of a "party girl" and didn't seem to have much interest in men -- at least not to her way of thinking. She knew I wasn't gay (I'm not all that sure about her, though -- she was probably bi-sexual at least; she cross dressed and went to gay bars with some of her women friends), but she really was upset that I didn't have a constant stream of boyfriends and wasn't married by at least age 16. Of course, she was one of the reasons for that, but I didn't know it then.
One of the puzzles about Elaine was that she could be the world's nicest person, sometimes. She could be kind and generous and sweet. My youngest daughter grew up hating her, but my oldest daughter can't quite understand why her sibling and I feel that way about her. Elaine was very helpful and supportive when Joni needed help, and she doesn't remember the abuses Elaine did to her when she was a baby. This dichotomy in Elaine was one of the reasons I became so codependent -- even when she was doing one of her "nasties" it was so easy to believe that she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart. And yet, she literally tried to kill my youngest daughter. And I believe it was deliberate.
That story is this:
When Teri was born, she was a "blue baby" because Don's and my RH factors were at odds -- I was negative, he was positive. Teri needed a full transfusion when she was born, and we almost lost her. But I didn't know that. Elaine told the doctor not to tell me Teri was so sick; she didn't want me to get "upset" and she would tell me herself "when the time was right" and in such a way that I wouldn't be upset.
But she didn't tell me, and I firmly believe that was deliberate.
Teri was a quiet baby, slept a lot, and had a small appetite, but nothing seemed really extraordinary. When I took her to the doctor for her six-weeks checkup, however, the nurse grabbed her out of my arms as soon as I walked through the office door. She said, "What are you trying to do, kill your baby?" and, literally, ran with her into the doctor's office. I thought the world had gone mad, and of course I followed her. It seems that Teri had become quite anemic but I hadn't noticed anything (even today, I don't remember her looking "anemic", although I was told at the doctor's office that her ears were "waxy" around the edges. Duhhhh. Anyway, that's when the doctor told me how sick she had been and he was really surprised that Elaine hadn't told me. Teri could easily have died and Elaine knew how sick she was. The doctor had given her instructions on what symptoms and dnager signs to watch for, and even though they were happening, Elaine never said a word -- and she was living with us at the time so knew what was going on.
How can one understand this? Elaine was unfathomable. She convinced the doctor that it was in my best interest not to know how sick Teri was! I was in no way "fragile" and could have handled knowing Teri was sick, and Elaine had to know me well enough to have understood that. What was upsetting was being told in the doctor's office that I was trying to murder my baby.
I could never confront Elaine about this. I know now that I was intensely angry but was unable to feel that anger or act on it. What I felt at the time was confusion. I knew that Elaine had done something grossly wrong and had endangered Teri's life, at the very least. It wasn't until quite late in my therapy that I realized the anger I had felt, and I told my therapist, "Elaine is lucky she's dead, or I would kill her."
There's a disorder called "Munchausen Syndrome" where a person makes her/himself ill because they like the attention they get from doctors, hospitals, etc. -- frequently going so far as to take poison. It has an off-shoot called "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" which gets the person the same attention, but instead of making themselves sick, they make sick.
When I was an infant, I had convulsions and Elaine would rush me off to the pediatrician. I didn't have convulsions in his presence, however, and she would get lectured about how babies have tempers, etc. This is how Elaine told me the story:
"Well, finally about the third time, you had convulsions there in his office and he shouted at me, 'Why didn't you tell me about this?' So he took a lot of tests and couldn't find anything wrong, and decided it was a calcium deficiency so I gave you calcium pills for a while. I guess you just outgrew whatever it was because you didn't get sick again."
It's possible, of course, that I could have had a milk allergy or something, but I doubt it. I think she purposely made me ill -- probably fed me poison or something. This is not paranoia.
When I was about two or three, there wasn't any such thing as steam irons; to dampen your clothes you used a specially-made sprinkler bottle. For some reason, I liked to drink out of that bottle. Elaine kept it under the kitchen sink, and I would sneak a swig every once in a while. One day, I sneaked a swig and went into a coma for two days. Elaine had replaced the water with ammonia.
Being clueless, when my daughters were about two and one years old, I had Elaine babysit them my during the day while I was at work. I kept getting calls that my eldest had to be rushed to the emergency room because she had done something like stuffed raisins up her nose, swallowed an orange wrong and Elaine had scratched her throat trying to get the slice of orange out, or she had diarrhea, or -- on and on. The raisins incident was a strong clue that something was not right, and I almost picked up on it. There was an old saying, often repeated in the family, that "If you don't want kids to stick raisins up their nose, tell them to do it." And here my daughter had done just that, according to Elaine, and I thought at the time that that was very strange, too coincidental.
It was a series of incidents that happened while Elaine was babysitting my girls that, when I found out about it later, triggered my recovery from Elaine. In one of my earlier chapters, I mentioned that Elaine made me wear my baby shoes long, long after I had outgrown them. Ever since I can remember, I had problems with my feet -- lots of corns, calluses, and they would cramp severely, a very painful cramp that often extended (and still does) up to my knee. I frequently had to go to a podiatrist to have the calluses removed, and one day I mentioned the cramps. He said I had "hammer toes" because -- as he put it -- of doing that "girl thing" of always wearing shoes that were too small, which I had never done.
I was talking to my daughter on the phone one day, and she mentioned having to go to the doctor because of severe foot and leg cramps. He told her that they were from either me or Don making her wear shoes that were too small when she was a baby. In a flash that left me speechless -- nearly caused me to faint as a matter of actual fact -- I remembered coming home from work and seeing Joni's baby shoes (which I had kept, at Elaine's insistence for bronzing) laying on the table or somewhere. I asked Elaine what they were doing out, and Elaine told me they had been "playing with them". What Elaine had been doing to my daughter -- and what she had done to me -- was making her wear them. As a result, my daughter has the same crushed bones in her arches as I do.
Why don't I hate Elaine?
I went to visit Elaine one day; the kids were still little, that's how long ago it was. She didn't answer the door, but it was unlocked so I walked in. Elaine was laying on the couch in a fetal position, sucking her thumb. I thought she was sleeping and tried to wake her up, but when I shook her, she whined and slapped at me like an irritated little baby. I shook her harder, she curled up tighter. I ended up calling an ambulance and they took her to the hospital. They were finally able to rouse her in the emergency room, and she was in the hospital for a week or so.
Elaine was a troubled woman to say the least. I don't know what made her tick, I don't know where she was coming from, but since my childhood I knew that Elaine was sick. She never got psychiatric help -- the family would never have allowed it and I know that now. But at the same time, Elaine would never have asked for it. Even after the above incident, Elaine didn't get the kind of help she needed. Whether it was suggested to her or not, I have no idea.
I pity Elaine, but that doesn't mean I love her. She and her family damaged me badly, but I don't hate any of them anymore. I am disgusted whenever I think of them, they were truly evil people, and Elaine and Grandma were the worst. We can't start the road to psychological health unless we acknowledge we are ill and the family would never, never have done that and so in a way, they were beyond help.
Do I forgive Elaine? No. There is a difference between understanding and accepting that that was how Elaine was, but she was "that way" because she chose to be. She took the easy road. She was weak. I firmly believe that Elaine was aware of what she was doing to me, but she chose to do it instead of recognizing it was wrong or resisting her impulses.
I'm not finished with writing about Elaine, this chapter doesn't begin to cover it all. But it helps put Elaine in perspective, both to you the reader and to myself.
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