Girl Called Karen (5 page)

W
hen I got back to Toledo, I found that I had no family there.
Not a single one!
Every member of my family had disappeared. There was no big farm, my father and stepmother were gone, Larry and Patti and Grace and David were nowhere to be seen.

Mrs. Smith was waiting for me at the Toledo Airport, and she took me home with her. Hers was a great big noisy Italian household. The Smiths had five children, lots of pets, and a constant flow of extended family. I just slipped in and hoped that no one would notice I was there.

In bits and pieces, I learned what had happened to my family. I know that my father had been fired from his job as veterinarian at the Toledo Zoo. I know that the community outrage at his behavior was at fever pitch – especially among the Catholic parishioners – so
that his veterinary practice had died away, and that the honeymooners had moved to Louisiana.

I heard that there had even been bad talk about my mother – questions as to whether some of us were really his children. I can only imagine his shock when he discovered how my mother in her pathetic effort to “leave something” for her children had gambled away the family’s savings at the racetrack.

I know also that he had systematically disposed of all his children.

Larry had gone to live with Grandpa John and Grandma Lucile. I have always wondered how my father explained to his sixty-five-year-old father why his bright and lively eleven-year-old son couldn’t stay with him and his new bride.

Sandra was with Uncle Lyle and Aunt Mary Louise in New York.

Patti was sent to an orphanage, where she remained until she was adopted.

My father first sent the two little ones to my Great-Aunt May and Great-Grandma Grace in Detroit in the hope that they would adopt them, but Aunt May consulted social work professionals, and it was agreed by all that Aunt May and Grandma were too old to undertake such a long-term venture. Then my father and Marge went to Wyandotte and took the children away, as Aunt May wrote later, “We knew not where.”

That child-disposal plan having failed, their daddy
put little five-year-old Grace and three-year-old David in an orphanage in a suburb of Toledo.

Aunt Eileen had been out of touch with her family, and she did not learn what had happened until the two little ones had been in the children’s home for more than a month. She immediately called her brother to ask that she be allowed to raise the two children. He said he couldn’t get the children from the home. She asked Uncle Lyle and Aunt Mary Louise to intervene, and Lyle was able through mysterious means to persuade my father that failure to accede immediately to Eileen’s request would work greatly to his disadvantage.

So Larry was in Florida, Sandy was in New York, Patti was in an orphanage in the Toledo area, Grace and David were with Aunt Eileen in Chicago, and I was trying to keep anyone from noticing me at the home of the Smiths in Toledo.

Incredibly, all six of us kids didn’t get together in one room again until some twenty years later when Grace and Phil got married in New York.

I thought I was getting away with hiding out at the Smiths until the day that Mr. McCarthy came to visit. He was a social worker with Catholic Charities, and I was one of “his children.” It seems that Mrs. Smith had rheumatic fever, and her home was not appropriate for me. For the next few days, I was paralyzed with fear. Up to this point, I had the illusion of some control over my destiny. Suddenly, I had none.

The day came that I had to say farewell to the
Smiths and climb into Mr. McCarthy’s automobile. We drove and we drove. My new family lived out in Sylvania. It’s just a suburb of Toledo now, with an almost unbroken flow of contiguous neighborhoods. Back then, it was as if I was moving far away to a different town. It was one of the longest trips of my life. I didn’t know what to expect or what it would look like. I felt totally vulnerable.

When we arrived, I was impressed by the house. It was a large ranch in the middle of a wooded area.

Everyone in my new foster family was lined up to meet me. There were Mike the father and his wife, Mary, and sons Michael and Patrick and daughter Kathy. I shared a room with Kathy, the boys’ bedroom was next to the girls’ room, and the master bedroom was at the other end of the house. In the backyard, there was an in-ground pool and bathhouse. It was a large spacious yard. I liked it very much. I also liked being able to walk out in the woods, where I would sit and read for hours.

I was scared to death of doing something wrong. I didn’t know where I would have to go next. I had been abandoned, and I felt abandoned. My family was gone, and people could do whatever they wanted to me. I knew it was imperative that I be very good.

Several incidents stand out from the early days in foster care.

Sometime during the first month, Mike went out of town on business. The boy Michael and I were horsing
around in the living room, and I went over backward in the recliner, putting a gouge in the wall. The following night, I visited my friend Maureen Mackley’s house. I was depressed and anxious. I was convinced that Mike would send me away when he returned home. Maureen’s mom finally got me to open up. I think she must have called my foster father because I was comforted and reassured that I was not going to be sent away.

Throughout the first months, I routinely hid food and saved money like a miser. You just can’t trust grownups. I got through all the first holidays. Then on Easter Sunday, Michael threatened me with a BB gun, and I went flying through the house, threw myself on my bed, and lay there sobbing. Mary came in to find out what went so very wrong. I kept sobbing that I wanted to go home. She told me my home was gone.

That was the first day that I faced and accepted my separation and loneliness and abandonment.

Since I got to remain at the same school that I previously attended, I kept my friends, my teachers, and the familiarity of the physical plant. That continuity and the love and protection of the sisters of Notre Dame created a protective barrier against much of my pain.

I also had my best friends. It seems that very early I learned the value of strong female friendships. To this day, fifty-odd years later, after finding each other in the fifth grade, Kathleen Maier and I are still friends. We
are separated by miles and get together only occasionally, but the bond remains strong. Kathleen knew my mother. We have a history.

Judy Moon and I became friends in the seventies and know everything about one another. Judy is my touchstone. She is whom I call at 3:00
A.M
. because I can’t breathe. We have raised a lot of hell together, and we are growing old together.

Mary Groff became my mentor and then my friend later in life. Those three are my closest, dearest pals. There are also Donna Farish and Linda Mosley and Carol Jean Exby and Rita Hayes.

I have my children, whom I love dearly, but these women are my family in a way that children can never be.

I felt that my foster mother was a cold, unaffectionate woman. I didn’t think it was just her attitude toward me. I don’t remember any affectionate play between her and her husband, Mike. She did express affection to her own children, and she did take excellent care of all of us. Her home was immaculate, our clothes were beautifully cared for, and she was a good cook who had a meal ready every evening for her household. In her own way, I suppose she loved her family. I know that she never loved me or even particularly liked me.

When Mike died, I attended the funeral with my husband, and she introduced me as “the little girl we got from Catholic Charities.”

What joining this new foster family meant was that I acquired three more siblings. I was twelve, slightly older than Michael, so I became the eldest of the four of us. He and I were never close, but we were not at odds, either. He was an attractive boy who was a little bit
self-centered.
We played when I first joined the family, but as I entered adolescence, we grew apart.

Patrick was a wonderful, sunny child who resembled his father. Mike the father was a recovering alcoholic, and unfortunately, Patrick inherited this predisposition for alcoholism. He had his dad’s wonderful, outgoing personality, but he died very young, probably as a result of abusing his body with alcohol.

Kathy and I shared a room. She was an adorable child and a pleasant roommate, even though I was six years older than she.

I felt it was good for me to have these foster siblings. I was accustomed to caring for younger brothers and sisters and expected to fill that role in my new family, but the first time my foster parents went out alone, they secured the services of a babysitter. I was outraged. In fact, logically or not, all these years later, I am still incredulous. I had taken care of my brothers and sisters for years, and I had already baby-sat outside my home. I was a professional babysitter. I did not need a babysitter.

Another issue was family outings. If I preferred not to go out with the family, they felt that I did not appreciate them, when the truth was that
adolescents routinely seek some independence and solitude. Or at least that was part of the truth as far as I was concerned.

The other feature that took a good deal of getting used to was the eating habits of this family. Mary would often prepare three different meals to satisfy the palate of each family member. I, on the other hand, had come from an environment where you ate what was provided or did without. If there was something that you found really odious, you could pass on that item and eat whatever else there was. Meals back on Algonquin Parkway were not customized to fit individual tastes as they were in my new home. Fortunately! It would have been an endless task to fix special dishes for each of us six youngsters.

I saw and ate my first shrimp during this early period with my new family, and I quickly gained an appreciation for that particular delicacy. Big Mike said that I was developing expensive tastes, although I knew he really liked it that I loved the new delicacy. Mike and I enjoyed a kind of camaraderie. I cherished all the love I could get.

As far as my real family was concerned, I was utterly alone. I was needy, and I was powerless. Among my sisters, Sandra was nearest my age. I knew I could have been with Sandra and Aunt Mary Louise and Uncle Lyle if the religious difference hadn’t been the great issue. Still, I felt some satisfaction because I had
chosen not to betray my church and my mother. In any case, Sandy was lost to me now.

Aside from our doctrinal differences, Uncle Lyle and I had become close enough that I had told him of my father’s disgusting invasion of my body. I expected some sort of an explosion, outrage that you could hear all the way to Toledo, and I felt puzzled and betrayed by what I considered Lyle’s inaction.

I learned later that he used his knowledge as a powerful “persuader” of my father when it really counted, but at the time, Lyle merely questioned me closely several times as to whether I had told anyone else about the episode. And then he was quiet. With my twelve-year-old penchant for simplifying all complexities, I confirmed for myself that this was something I must not talk about, a secret that must be buried somewhere deep within me and never told. Adults, it seemed, could never be trusted.

Perhaps that explains why I was such fair game for Mike, my foster father. It was a pleasant day, the day it first began. I was thirteen, thin, certainly no Lolita, though I had big dark eyes and a chubby face. I was on the phone.

The phone was a sore point with me. One of the most disagreeable rules at my new home was the telephone limit. I was allowed five minutes and no more. In teen-talk, that would hardly get you past the amenities. I have to admit that I was always pushing the limit while I was glued to the phone in the little
niche outside the kitchen and the den. Mike chose a peculiar way to deal with my disobedience.

On this particular day, everyone had gone out except Mike and me. I was on the phone. He came and stood beside me. Instead of telling me to end my chatter, he began to massage my arms and then my back. I was grateful for the rare affectionate gesture. I kept on talking. And talking. He continued to stroke my skin up and down my torso very gently. I began to feel paralyzed, and I didn’t move. His hands slipped lower and touched my skinny behind softly, almost as if by accident. It made me feel funny.

He stopped the minute he heard Mary’s car enter the driveway, so I knew immediately that this was a secret.

Every time my foster father and I were alone – and it seemed to happen a lot – he would touch me. His finger teased me for weeks before he put it inside me. His hands played with my little-girl nipples, making them hard and sore. I never said a word to him. I never acknowledged even to myself what was happening. Somehow I knew I should try to avoid him, but the day always arrived when we were alone, and I couldn’t evade him.

I was a little girl in so many basic ways. I didn’t have my first menstrual period until I was fifteen and only then did I begin to fill out. I loved to run and play, and I escaped constantly into books. I had good girlfriends.

But, along with the little-girl pursuits, there evolved the secret life. Mike never came into my
room or into the bathroom. I was never denied personal space or privacy. The thing was that I was fair game in the public rooms of the household, and I just couldn’t hide out forever.

I never seemed to figure out when Mike’s probings and proddings and sexual caresses were going to happen. We never talked about it. I always stood motionless. Both of us remained silent. We never looked at each other’s face.

Our relationship got terribly skewed. Sometimes I asked to do something or go somewhere that ordinarily would have been denied, and Mike would give me permission. Not always, but sometimes I’d get special treatment.

I developed a dislike for Mary. If she would love him and be good to him, he wouldn’t bother me, I thought. If she were a good mother, she would protect me. I believed she knew what was going on and failed to intervene because it got her off the hook. Anyway this was all a great big secret in this devout household that had been entrusted by Catholic Charities with the upbringing of a bewildered adolescent girl whose mother had died unexpectedly, whose father had abandoned her and parceled out her five brothers and sisters all across the country.