I'm So Over You.

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My nursing boards were scheduled to take place at the Civic Center over a two-day period. I asked Marion if Andrew could stay with her over those two days; I'd do better if I didn't have to worry about him. The first day of the test, the staff ushered us into a large room. We weren't allowed to bring anything in with us and we weren't allowed to leave the room. It was a long and stressful day. That night I went to bed early, my body was drained.

Around midnight the phone rang. "Beth.... This is Dorothy," came the slurred voice, "I'm over at a party.... Will you pick me up...and take me over to Lincoln?"

"No!" I barked and hung up.

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That weekend, the nursing boards finally over with, Andrew and I actually began to relax. Having nothing but welfare now money was tight. But it was okay, Andrew and I didn't need much. We went to fairs, the library, and to visit my family. We went to the beach twice a week and spent the whole afternoon doing nothing but play together in the water and lie on the warm sand. If I had loose change, I bought each of us an ice cream bar at the refreshment stand. It was a beautiful, wonderful time.

Unfortunately, it ended too soon. I came home from an overnight stay at my sister's one day and found Troy and Mathew sleeping in the house. They'd gotten in through the upstairs porch door.

I was angry, but didn't show it. Not wanting them to hate me, I didn’t want them to know how I felt. I scolded them and then let it go. My quiet time was over.

The phone rang just as I was falling asleep.

"Tell my dad Cheri had her kid," Misty snapped.

"Tell him yourself," I snapped back and hung up.

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Mickey came back from Texas, but Paul stayed with his dad. I went into labor in September and Troy drove me in. I didn't call Wilson. Why bother? He knew when I was due. I'd packed my overnight bag for Andrew also, intending that he stay with me. Troy dropped Andrew and me at the hospital door.

Around 5:30 p.m. the next day, Andrew tried to cut his sister's cord. The doctor helped.

Haley's initial color at birth was dark and her face was squashed, accenting her Indian features. My initial reaction to the way she looked was fear. My thought; "I've given birth to an Indian girl who will become a teenage Indian girl."

I was barely out of the shower when Steph arrived half an hour later from work. She very lovingly combed my wet hair out. Erik, Bobby and Chris arrived soon after. All of them took time to hold Haley. I was tired, but so touched and grateful to have them all there. When they left they took Andrew and his belongings with them.

"I'll pick you up and take you home when it's time," Steph offered.

I fell asleep that night comforted by my brothers and sisters. Alone with Haley, my feelings of fear passed.

She was beautiful.
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Tragic Mothers

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Cheri and Gene split up and Cheri, with Carrie almost 18-months-old, moved in with us. I did like Cheri and never stopped wanting to help her, but we walked a fine line with each other. As long as I smiled and gave her everything she expected, we were fine. We spent time together watching TV and teasing Wilson. But again, I was the one that had to do the bending in order for us to get along. If I asked anything of her or refused her requests, I messed things up.

One afternoon after she had been with us about three weeks, Cheri went out with Misty and didn't come back. This took us by surprise. Although we had had our hard times with Cheri, we never expected her to walk away from Carrie.

Now Carrie was my responsibility. A few months earlier, Carrie had been diagnosed with anemia and a yeast infection. Cheri had gotten the medicine but had never really used it. Now with her gone, I wrestled with Carrie twice a day to get her to swallow the bitter liquid iron and grappled to get rid of her yeast infection. The infection had been going on for so long that the normal salve wasn't effective. I took Carrie to the doctor, who gave some stronger medicine, but even that didn't work. Something was still there. I took Carrie again to the doctor.

"The yeast infection is gone; this is something else. I'm going to have to call child protection. This problem is sexually transmitted."

Child protection was called and a report was made. The doctor assured us that the incubation period was such that he did not suspect our home to be the source of the abuse. However, we were told Carrie should not visit her father's house.

Two weeks later, Cheri came back. Sitting on the couch and taking Carrie onto her lap, she asked "Carrie, do you love me? Did you miss me?"

I was surprised her first words to her daughter after three weeks absence were self-centered, but those words gave real insight into some of the problems.  When told about her daughter's diagnosis, she said she didn't know how or when Carrie would have been abused. But she seemed willing to believe it might have been someone in Gene's family. The doctor's statement gave her opportunity to be in control and keep Carrie from them.

Not that she was hung up on having Carrie, herself, though.  Cheri left again without warning the next day.

I could have spent time chasing Cheri down, but I wasn't keen on having her back in the house, and it was kind of fun to have a daughter. I picked up pretty dresses for her at the Crisis Nursery, fixed her hair, and took her to the college day care along with Andrew. At night, sitting in the rocking chair with her kneeling on my lap clinging to my neck, it would take only a few minutes to put her to sleep.

That same month Annie was in the hospital, just having given birth to little Shaine. I had worried about this pregnancy. She'd been drinking the whole time.

Bringing a gift to her room, we visited for a little while. Shaine looked good. I was relieved. Annie also looked good. Her long, silky, black hair, washed and brushed, literally shown. Two days of being cared for, sleeping in a comfortable bed and eating three meals a day had been good for her. Or maybe it was the little boy. She held him closely in her arms and spoke softly to him. I hoped that maybe she would leave the hospital determined to stay straight for him - and herself too.

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January 11, 1987 was the afternoon of a big football game. Mathew and Wilson watched it together in our living room. Annie called a couple of times that day asking Wilson to come over and talk with Lila.
"She’s sick," Annie told him, "she's coughing up blood and won't go to the hospital. She wants to talk to you."

Wilson was reluctant. He had been over there several times this week already. All they wanted, Wilson figured, was to ask him to run to the liquor store again.

Lila had some money and a group had hung out with her all week helping drink it up. Lila hadn't moved from the couch the whole time. Wilson said the apartment stunk from the smell of alcohol, urine, and "some other strange smell." He really didn't want to go back there.

Nevertheless, he told them he’d come, then settled back down to finish watching the game. While he and Mathew watched the game, I opened one of my nursing books and tried to look up the symptoms that had been described.

After the game, I went with Mathew and Wilson. I usually didn't go with him anymore, but I was worried about Lila. We pulled into the alley behind the brownstone building, the same building Julia had died in four months earlier, and parked. There was an ambulance parked near the back door. Wilson got out and moved quickly toward the steps. I was slower; I had to help Andrew out of the car. As Wilson began to go in, two men carrying a stretcher came out. Wilson stepped aside to let them pass, glancing only a moment at the body with its sheet covered face, then started up the stairs. I also looked. The belly of the person was huge, as if it were a pregnant woman. The way my mom's belly had looked when it was filled with fluid just before she died. I hesitated, then turned to the two men now loading the corpse into the ambulance.

"Is that Lila Hunter?" I asked them.

"Yes," one responded.

I called up the stairs, "Wilson! Come back! It's Lila!"

He turned and looked down at me, "No it's not."
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Death, Drunkenness, Driving, Dread, Disgust and Despair - and not one ounce of Courage

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After consoling Mathew at the morgue, Wilson and I visited the brownstone apartment building. Death by hanging does not always happen quickly. In a situation where someone in a noose is dropped from sufficient height, the person may die quickly from a snapped neck, but without height, the person may strangle for several minutes, gagging and suffering before finally succumbing.

As I stepped into the closet where Julia, who was taller then I, had hanged herself, the wooden rod from which the clothing hung just touched the top of my head. She could have saved herself simply by standing up.
Did she hate herself that much? How could anyone hate themselves that much! How deep her despair must have been! Oh, why didn't any of us realize the extent of her suffering? That beautiful girl! Why didn't we visit her? Why didn't I just come and talk to her, be her friend, take her to get her license like I had promised? Something!

That evening, we got a call from a detective in the emergency room at the medical center. Roger had been stabbed in the chest.

"Oh, No," I said. "His sister Julia just died!"
"Julia died?" The detective asked, "Do we know how Julia died?"
"Oh, yes. She was upset about their sister Wanda's accident and she hanged herself".
"Wanda?" He asked hesitantly, "And do we know what happened to Wanda?"
"Yes, she fell down a flight of stairs in a wheelchair and re-injured her back". The detective paused. "Do we know how Wanda fell down the stairs?"
I paused. "Yes. She was upset that Julia didn't want to her help her down the stairs, so she threw herself down them."

At this point the detective must have been wondering if there were some kind of conspiracy against the family. I think, in some backward way, many of us hoped there was. It was too much to imagine that all this could happen to one family in one week's time. Worse - that they had all done it to themselves. It would have been a morbid comfort to have some other explanation.

The social worker in care of Julia's little brother Bradley released him into my care so that he could attend the funeral. I actually had to work that day and couldn't go to the funeral, but didn’t tell her that because I figured it wouldn't matter whether it was Wilson or I watching Bradley.

However, as it turned out Wilson volunteered to take Julia's body back up north to the reservation in our van and Bradley was shuffled into his mother's car. Wilson fell apart up there and began drinking again and Yvonne did not return from the funeral on the day promised. When the social worker called looking for Bradley, I was alone at my house and had to confess I didn't know where Bradley was or when he would be returned.

I was never allowed to take him again.

For the most part, I had learned to live with crisis in this family. But this week had been too much. Once I learned that Wilson was drinking, I couldn't eat or sleep. My stomach churned constantly. I knew that Andrew and I were going to be on our own again. Because I couldn't eat or sleep, I didn’t think I’d be able to properly care for Andrew either, so I called the Crisis Nursery to see if I could place him there for 48 hours. The counselor, one whom I’d never gotten along with, suggested I put Andrew in a foster home. I hung up on her. I just needed help right now, for this moment; not forever.

To my relief Wilson came back a week before our wedding reception. However, he told me he'd have to go back up in a few days to bring Dale and Tammy down. When he left, Cheri went with him. I was nervous about him leaving but couldn't change it. On their way out of town, Andrew and I rode with them as far as my sisters house where we were going to spend the night. On the way I told Cheri about my new pants, blouse, and white blazer that was missing. "Misty was the last to wear them," I said. "She probably took them," Cheri responded.

When Wilson didn't get back on the day he said he would, my stomach again began to churn. I knew I should probably cancel the whole reception, but canceling would be so embarrassing. There was still a chance I was wrong and everything would be okay.

Of course, everything wasn't okay. Wilson rolled his van load of people into my dad's driveway late the night before the party. The entire vehicle reeked of beer. Wilson was drunk. So drunk, he'd allowed 16-year-old Cheri to drive.

"I don't want Andrew around all of these drunks," I told him.
Cheri answered, "Well, we grew up watching my dad drink and if its good enough for us, it's good enough for your kid!"
"Yeah, but look how you turned out," I responded.
"Get in the car," Wilson growled.
"I'll drive the rest of the way to our house," I answered.
"No. Cheri's driving. She drove this far and she'll drive the rest of the way."

I was disgusted, but was too embarrassed to go back into the house and let my family know everyone was drunk. Maybe things could still work out, I hoped.

Driving the open highway is one thing I suppose, but through the city is another and Cheri didn't have any idea how to use the side mirrors of the van.
"Look out!" I hollered, "There's a car right next to you!"
"Shut up," she spat.
"I'm so sick of you and Misty. All you guys do is come in and steal from me. Misty better get those clothes back to me, too."
"She don't have your clothes."
"You said she took them!"
"I did not!"

We made it home and people continued to arrive all that night. How was I to know that when I sent a couple of invitations to Wilson's sisters, forty of his relatives would show up at my house to stay?

And wedding receptions to this crowd meant heavy drinking. While Elaine and her crew were fine, many others I knew only by name and had to tell them over and over again that they could not drink at my house. Despairing, I stayed awake as long as I could, but eventually fell asleep about 4 am.

The next morning, I found Paul sleeping on the floor. He was one of the children that I had given a bed to, but apparently James, now out of jail, and his wife, Gloria, had come in after I had fallen asleep and kicked him out of the bed.

Sickened that Gloria - the woman that beat her own child to death - was in my home at all, I told Paul never again, in my house, to give up a bed that I had given him.

Sure, I could talk tough to Paul, but wouldn't / didn’t say a word to James or Gloria.

Wilson went to the store that morning with James. When he didn't return, I grew more desperate. The party was in just three hours, what happens if he’s drinking again? What if he doesn’t even show up? I had no way to go look for him.

Then Gloria offered to drive me. My sickened feelings about her and what she did to her baby would have to take a back seat to my sickened dread about Wilson. I needed help. After driving around a little while, we finally spotted Wilson’s van at Arthur's bar.

Coming out of the bright sunlight into the dark room, it took my eyes a moment to adjust before I recognized Wilson, his back to me, playing pool. His beer sat on the edge of the table. Walking quickly up behind him, I swung my purse and smacked it down on his head. He swung around. Seeing me, he started to laugh. The most frustrating thing was there was nothing I could say that he didn't already know. There were no words that could make any difference.

James got into Gloria's car and followed Wilson and me in the van. Back at the house I didn’t know what to do. I was supposed to go up to Dad’s house to help my sisters get the yard ready but I didn't want to leave my house to these people. No one was here to watch my things. Elaine was busy making a dish to bring to the party, but I knew I couldn't trust the others, including Wilson.

I was leaving my home unprotected. But my sisters were waiting for me and I couldn't call them and tell them anything was wrong. So I thought I had no choice. I took Andrew and left for Dad’s house.