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

by Spungen, Deborah

  “Nancy, what’s in the bag?” I asked.

  “Aquarius,” she replied woodenly.

  She loved the cat, loved all animals. I couldn’t imagine her wanting to harm him.

  “But why is Aquarius in the bag, Nancy?”

  “I’m gonna throw him downstairs and see if he still lands on his feet, even if he’s inside the bag.”

  “But Nancy, you’ll hurt Aquarius.”

  “I want to.”

  “No!” I wrestled the bag from her. In response, she tried to smack me in the face. I overpowered her in time, shook her.

  She blinked, looked around, looked at me, looked at the bag.

  “Mommy, where are we going?”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Why are we standing here?”

  I looked deeply into my daughter’s eyes. She wasn’t playing a game. She really had forgotten why we were at the top of the stairs, forgotten what she’d been about to do.

  “You wanted to hurt Aquarius,” I explained.

  She frowned, took the bag from me, and opened it. The cat jumped out and darted away. Then Nancy turned and went into her new room. She stared out the window for an hour, then sobbed uncontrollably for another hour.

  The next day I commenced researching the guidance clinics in the area. I found one that appeared to have a good program for pre-adolescents. It was a sprawling, antiseptic institution affiliated with a major private psychiatric hospital.

  The director was an older man with a rather prominent bald head. Frank and I met with him and described Nancy’s belligerent, disruptive behavior, her violent tantrums, the glazed look she was getting, her inability to hold on to friends, our inability to control her. We told him the findings of the child guidance center evaluations administered to Nancy when she was four. We told him we were concerned that Nancy’s crossed eye still hadn’t straightened out.

  He agreed to test her.

  Nancy was angry with us but agreed to submit to a battery of tests. I think she was, deep down inside, becoming as frightened by her behavior as we were. She wanted help. Over several visits a psychology intern administered to Nancy a Bender Gestalt, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Wide-Range Achievement Test, Rutgers Drawing Test, Draw-a-Person, Rorschach, and Thematic Apperception Test. The evaluation was submitted to the head of the institute on October 22, 1968, when Nancy was ten and a half years old. The examiner described Nancy as a “somewhat big girl for her age who walks awkwardly and speaks in a soft, hoarse voice.”

  The results of the intelligence tests were consistent with what we already knew. Nancy’s verbal IQ of 135 placed her in the category of Very Superior. Her full-scale IQ of 129 ranked her in the Superior range of intellectual activity. The Wide-Range Achievement Test placed Nancy as highly advanced—college level—in reading (grade equivalent of 12.9, ninety-ninth percentile) and spelling (grade equivalent of 14.5, ninety-ninth percentile), while almost a half-grade behind her expected level of performance in math (grade equivalent 5.7, forty-seventh percentile).

  Nancy’s performance on the Bender Gestalt and Rutgers Drawing tests yielded the same story we’d heard six years before. The examiner cited “difficulty in the fine motor area with some attempt at compensation through compulsivity.”

  But the examiner’s evaluation of Nancy offered new insights.

  Nancy perceives interpersonal interactions negatively; either as uncomfortable and discordant or as controlled and emotionally sterile. At a deeper level she views her parents as ignoring and rejecting her. Nurturance from her mother, whom she perceives as controlling, is conditional as there is perceived pressure from the latter for independence and intellectual achievement which Nancy perceives as leading to approval and love.

  Nancy feels highly insecure about her inability to do things on her own. She sees herself as small and helpless in relation to a potentially dangerous environment and feels that she needs more support and is not getting as much as she needs and wants. She seems to react to her unmet dependency needs with angry feelings (especially toward her mother) which are anxiety arousing and which she must defend against albeit imperfectly by denial and reaction formation.

  It seems, however, that tension can build up within Nancy and that she is hard pressed to deal with it as she senses difficulty in maintaining adequate delay and control. Despite her high level verbal ability she does not have a well developed rich imaginative fantasy life with which to bind impulse and affect. Rather she attempts to use rigid cognitive control as a compensatory mechanism, and she seems to relate to the external world without spontaneity.

  Her high level verbal ability is not translated into personality functioning in an in-depth way and one does not see the deeper resources in her dealing with personality concerns. Her difficulty with internal control, though well compensated for at the cognitive level, thus appears to influence personality functioning and may have been initially based on some organic difficulty.…

  Because there is much investment in dealing with basic concerns centering around support and security, she does not show signs of having reached an appropriate and age expected level of psychosexual development and she finds the area of heterosexual interaction and identity threatening and confusing.

  Two weeks later the director of the institute held a diagnostic and planning conference with four other staff members, including Dr. Blake, who was to become Nancy’s therapist. According to the report of this conference, Nancy’s condition at that time was summarized as follows:

  She impressed as an emotionally hungry child who feels herself as receiving less than others. This arouses anger which is displayed with sometimes poor control toward peers and siblings. Thought of accepting responsibility for these angry bouts then is sometimes projected onto others.

  In reference to parents she reacts with anger but also with concern that she will lose love, nurturance, and protection. Her relationship with mother appears particularly conflictual. Self-concept is inadequate as she would prefer to be prettier, and nicer. Nancy’s conflicts seem to be partially internalized, and there are evidences of anxiety, nightmares, and possible phobic features. Compulsive striving in academic work is seen as compensatory efforts at establishing her adequacy. Additionally, she seems to use denial and projection extensively, which might represent more characterological methods of defending herself.

  Finally, the family environment seems to be one in which hollering and physical punishment are common, which provide both a model and instigation for aggressive behavior.

  (I don’t know where this reference to physical punishment came from. Frank and I did not believe in it. Nancy might have made it up in an interview for shock value.)

  Out of the planning conference came two recommendations: individual therapy for Nancy, as well as both individual and group therapy for Frank and me.

  This was relayed to us by the director the following week.

  “You two have a lot of problems,” he said. “Until you are able to work them out, individually and as a couple, Nancy will never be okay.”

  We were stunned. He was saying it was our fault that Nancy was the way she was. She was disturbed because we had a lousy marriage. Admittedly, ours had not been a perfect marriage. We had had some problems. But we had not said anything to the doctors about our infidelities. We felt that our problems as a couple were working themselves out, that our marriage was solid now. Clearly, the director did not think so. He saw something wrong. He pinned the blame on us. He was saying we were rotten parents. True, Suzy and David were fine, healthy children. But that was just an accident! We were lucky we hadn’t destroyed them, too!

  I felt awful and worthless as Frank and I crossed the parking lot to our car. Here I had devoted myself to being a good mother and wife, only to turn up a total failure. It meant I was a failure as a human being.

  If only I had realized then that doctors are human beings, too. They make mistakes. Their diagnoses are speculation, not gospel. But I didn’
t know that then. Back then doctors were God to their patients. And I was intimidated.

  My instincts told me he was wrong, that something was seriously wrong with Nancy—regardless of her environment. But I couldn’t bring myself to doubt the director or disagree with him. He knew what he was talking about. I was a housewife. I remember thinking I had hit bottom. I didn’t know then that there was still a long, long way to go.

  Chapter 6

  I went to the clinic twice a week, once for my individual therapy, once for my group. Frank also went twice. Nancy started out just going to individual therapy, but soon she was also in group.

  Dr. Blake, Nancy’s therapist, wore a red dress to their first session. She was a middle-aged woman with a European accent. Nancy seemed to like her and didn’t mind going. But she absolutely detested group and after a few weeks refused to go. I couldn’t get her in the car.

  “I don’t want to go and sit there talking to a bunch of dumb, sick kids,” she protested. “I don’t have anything in common with them.”

  Dr. Blake said it was all right for Nancy to stop going to group.

  I couldn’t blame Nancy, actually. I disliked the group session myself. So did Frank. It didn’t help that Frank and I were forbidden to attend the same group session.

  Six or eight parents sat around in a circle. A doctor chaired the session. We just sat and stared at each other until someone spoke up. The doctor didn’t speak until someone else spoke. One week I spoke up. I said I was upset with my mother because she was smoking excessively against doctor’s orders. He yelled at me.

  “Who are you to judge other people!” he barked. “In your own way, you know, you’re not much better off!”

  The doctor put everyone in the group down like that. It reinforced your tentativeness and feeling of helplessness. You didn’t come out feeling cleansed. You came out feeling like garbage. Nevertheless, Frank and I went every week for almost a year.

  Frank complained bitterly about his group sessions, mostly because he said they never focused specifically on whatever was supposed to be wrong with our marriage. Actually, Frank didn’t believe we had serious problems. He disagreed with the clinic staff that Nancy’s difficulties were rooted in her home life. He felt something else was wrong with her. But he didn’t have the confidence to disagree with the professionals, either.

  In my individual sessions I met with a social worker, who functioned more as a liaison with Nancy’s therapist than as a therapist for me. Each week I reported what had gone on at home since we’d last spoken. She passed on what I said to Dr. Blake, then reported Dr. Blake’s comments back to me the following week. As the year went on, the events I reported became more painful and bizarre, the comments less and less helpful. Frank and I, meanwhile, grew to feel more and more helpless.

  The first major episode I reported was prescription-drug-related. Drugs again. Nancy, who was continually plagued with allergies and respiratory infections, came down with a particularly bad throat infection and high fever shortly after we started at the clinic. Her pediatrician gave her antibiotics for the infection and recommended aspirin for the fever. When the aspirin failed to reduce the fever or the restless hyperactivity it was causing, he told me to fill a prescription for Atarax, a mild sedative, so she could rest. I did, and gave her one.

  It was evening. The kids were in their rooms. Frank and I were watching TV downstairs. About forty-five minutes after Nancy had taken the Atarax I heard her screaming from her room. I also heard a loud, rhythmic thumping noise that was strong enough to shake the house. I ran up the stairs to Nancy’s room.

  She was sitting up in bed, banging her head repeatedly against the wall with tremendous force and pulling her hair out of her head in handfuls. Her eyes were glassy. She was screaming, a guttural, animal yell I’d never heard before.

  “Nancy!” I cried.

  She was possessed, demonic. She was hallucinating and she had no idea I was there. I grabbed her by the shoulders, tried to wrestle her down on the bed so she’d stop hurting herself. In response she snarled, whipped around on the bed until she was free of my grasp. Then she sprang across the room to her bureau and began to smash it with her fists. She pulled the drawers out, hurled them across the room, and kicked a leg out from under the desk, which toppled to the floor.

  I yelled for Frank. He came immediately. Nancy didn’t recognize him either. He wrestled her kicking and screaming back into bed—barely. She was very strong. She had his square, broad-shouldered build and was getting heavy.

  Nancy lay on her back screaming, then abruptly stopped and began to sing random half-phrases of familiar songs like “Happy Birthday,” “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Then she stopped and started to scream again.

  “I’ll call the doctor,” I gasped to Frank. “You hold her.”

  “I’ll try,” he replied.

  I turned to find Suzy and David standing wide-eyed in the bedroom doorway in their pajamas.

  “What’s wrong with Nancy?” Suzy asked.

  “She’s upset. She’s not feeling well,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Please go back to bed. Go to sleep.”

  “But she’s making so much noise.”

  “Try. Please.”

  They did. I ran to call the doctor.

  “It must be an allergic reaction to the medication,” he said. “I must admit I’ve never heard of such a reaction to Atarax.”

  “What should we do? Take her to the hospital?”

  “No, keep her there. You’ll just have to wait it out. Try to keep her from hurting herself.”

  I was frightened and confused. It seemed to me that Nancy belonged in a hospital. I was genuinely afraid she was going to hurt herself or have severe convulsions or some other physical breakdown we wouldn’t be able to handle. But the doctor was adamant. Again, who was I to argue?

  I went back to her room and reported the doctor’s recommendation to Frank. He had Nancy pinned to the bed. When he turned his head to listen to me, she squirmed free of his grasp and began to punch herself repeatedly in the face. He struggled with her until her arms were again pinned against the bed.

  “Who are you?” she screamed. “Who are you people? Why are you doing this to me? Why?”

  She began to laugh hysterically. Then she began to sing. Then she started to sob.

  “Where is she?” she sniffed. “Where is she?”

  “Where’s who, Nancy?” I begged.

  “Her.”

  “Who?” Frank asked.

  “The lady in the red dress. Where’s the lady in the red dress. I want her. I want the lady.”

  Dr. Blake had worn a red dress at Nancy’s first therapy session. I phoned her at home. She agreed with the pediatrician that Nancy was probably suffering an allergic reaction.

  “He said we should not take her to the hospital,” I reported.

  “I agree,” she said. “Nancy will wake up there and think that she did something very bad. Then you will have to explain to her what happened. If you leave her in her own bedroom she will not remember the episode tomorrow. It will be better.”

  Nancy screamed and sang and fought us the entire night. Suzy and David huddled in blankets on the den sofa, trying to sleep, while Frank and I took turns holding her down, wiping her off with cold cloths, making coffee to keep us going. By dawn the ferocity of the episode began to subside—the singing took over from the screaming. Then she began to talk.

  “I know you,” she said to me abruptly.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, you’re the nice lady from last night.” She looked over at Frank, who sat at her desk, bleary-eyed and stubbly. “And you’re the nice man from last night.”

  She began to sing gaily, like a drunk. At around nine o’clock she recognized us.

  “Mommy, where were you all night?” she asked me.

  “Right here, Nancy.”

  “Oh.” She frowned, terribly confused. “What day is it?”

 
“Saturday.”

  “Can I watch cartoons in your bed?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes. Please, can I?”

  She got unsteadily out of bed and we walked hand in hand to our room. The bed was still made—Frank and I had never used it. I pulled back the covers and she got in, propped herself against the pillows, and began to happily watch Bugs Bunny, singing merrily. I brought her some breakfast and she ate hungrily.

  Frank had promised Suzy he would go with her to buy a bicycle that Saturday, her very first two-wheeler. He shaved, showered, and took Suzy and David out to buy the bike. He wanted to get them out of the house and calm their fears.

  I stayed with Nancy. By the afternoon she was totally recovered and had no memory of the episode.

  I ran into Dr. Blake in the corridor at the clinic when I went for my individual session that week.

  “It was the Atarax,” she repeated. “It was a drug-related psychotic episode.”

  “What should we do?” I asked.

  “Don’t give it to her again,” she snapped, then turned and walked away.

  I didn’t view this as particularly constructive. But the people at the clinic failed to offer much explanation of what happened in New York City a few weeks later, either.

  Frank had a weekend convention there, and his company didn’t mind if he took his family along. We got a family room with two double beds and a rollaway at the City Squire Hotel. On Saturday I took the kids shopping and sightseeing while Frank worked. Nancy was excited and happy the whole day. She bought some rock albums. She seemed to like New York. Saturday night I got a baby sitter for the kids while Frank and I went to dinner with some of his business acquaintances. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, the sitter reported. They ordered up from room service and watched TV. Nancy was no trouble. Sunday proved to be a gorgeous April spring day. The blossoms were on the trees; the sun was warm. After breakfast we took the children for a walk in Central Park so they could get some exercise before the drive home.