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

by Spungen, Deborah

  She slammed the phone down.

  But she called again the next night.

  “Nancy, I don’t want you calling unless it’s an emergency. You’re supposed to write us.”

  “I can’t write you,” she snapped, very agitated. “They stole my stamps.”

  “Who stole your stamps?”

  “The sickies.”

  “What sickies?”

  “They’re all sickies here. They take twitch pills.”

  “Twitch pills?”

  “Tranks. Tranquilizers. They twitch out all over the fucking place. Have fits, shit like that. And they stole my fucking stamps and my stationery and … and my new Hendrix album. They’re all against me. They hate me. They’re all sickies. You have to get me out of here. You have to. You have to!”

  “You’re staying, Nancy.”

  She slammed the phone down.

  I was very concerned. She sounded as though she’d deteriorated, slipped back into her paranoia. I phoned Mr. Grant and reported what she’d said.

  “There may be a few more peer problems in general this year,” he admitted. “We have more students and we’re a bit understaffed. But let me assure you—there’s no specific campaign against Nancy by anyone. She’s making that up.”

  “She said the other girls are stealing from her.”

  “She’s imagining it.”

  “Is she going to be seeing Dr. Pritchard?”

  “Yes, she will. Not quite as often as last year. He’s doing his residency in Hartford now. But she’ll be seeing him at least once a month.”

  “Once a month?”

  “Possibly every two weeks.”

  “Wouldn’t once a week be better?”

  “Possibly, though not necessarily.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Grant. Is she … is she all right?”

  “Her schoolwork’s fine.”

  “But she sounds so upset.”

  “She’s been a little difficult, I must admit. She’s not getting on well with the other girls, and she’s disrespectful of authority. Hostile. Curses a lot. It’s most likely a readjustment problem. New faces, new environment. I wouldn’t worry.”

  But I did. So did Frank. We weren’t sure whether Nancy was deteriorating or Barton was. How could they be understaffed if we were paying them $850 a month? Nancy didn’t write us at all that fall. She phoned a couple of more times, agitated, and demanded to come home. When I said she couldn’t, she hung up on me.

  At Christmas she came home. She was nervous and unpleasant. She refused to do anything other than what she wanted. One of the things she wanted to do was work in my store again. I hesitated. Her manner was rude, her language foul. I told her I’d think it over.

  On her first day back, she and Suzy went into Philadelphia—supposedly to shop—while I was at the store. Suzy told me that night that she and Nancy never did go shopping; as soon as they got off the train Nancy took her directly to a storefront youth help center, where she requested legal help. Nancy claimed that her parents physically abused her, kept her locked in her room, and now had her locked up in a school. When the worker asked Nancy for her name, address, and phone number, she called him a “fucking pig” and stormed out, Suzy in tow.

  I decided to let her work in the store. She’d been so happy there during the summer. Maybe it would make her happy again. At least I’d get a chance to be with her. At least I’d know where she was.

  I wasn’t sorry. She was very friendly and helpful her first day on the job. She happily organized and shelved the stock. She made each customer, many of whom were young and long-haired, feel that their health and well-being were vital to her own.

  That night Frank, Suzy, and David met us at the store at closing time and the five of us went to the Chinese restaurant across the street for dinner—per Nancy’s request.

  The restaurant wasn’t too crowded yet. We took a round table in the middle of the room. Nancy happily began to list all the things we were going to order.

  “… and spare ribs and shrimp and chicken chow—”

  “Oh nuts,” I broke in.

  “What’s wrong?” Frank asked.

  “I forgot to call my vitamin supplier. Maybe he’ll still be there.” I got up to use the pay phone next to the kitchen.

  “Mom, where are you going?” asked Nancy, frightened.

  “Just to make a call, sweetheart.”

  “Why?” she cried, her fear suddenly becoming terror. Her eyes were wide and glassy. “Who are you calling?”

  The rest of us exchanged worried looks.

  “I … I have to place an order,” I said calmly.

  “With who!”

  “Vitamins, sweetheart. I’m ordering vitamins.”

  The waiter came by to take our order.

  “Go ahead and order what you want,” I said. I went to make my call.

  Nancy ignored the waiter. “Who is she really calling, Daddy?” she cried. “Tell me! Who?”

  “Just who she told you, Nancy. Relax.”

  “No, she’s not!”

  “Of course she is. Who else would she be calling?”

  I got to the phone and began to fish around in my purse for a dime. I waved reassuringly to Nancy.

  “She’s calling someone about me!” Nancy suddenly screamed. “She’s calling someone about me! They’re gonna take me away. Make her stop! Stop her! Daddy, stop her!”

  The other customers turned to look at Nancy, alarmed. The waiter flushed nervously.

  “Don’t let her call!”

  I went right back to the table without making the phone call. As I approached, Nancy jumped to her feet.

  “No! You told them to take me away! They’re gonna come get me!” She whirled, bowled over the waiter, and made a dash for the entrance, barreling into a couple who were coming in the door. Frank threw down his napkin and went after her.

  He found her down the block, trying frantically to get into my car, which was locked. He was able to calm her by promising to take her away in the car. The two of them went for a long drive into Bucks County while I took Suzy and David home in his car and made them dinner. Frank and Nancy stopped for a hamburger along the way. When they got home she went right upstairs to bed.

  “Nothing she said made sense,” Frank reported. “Just a lot of stuff about people being after her, like the ‘twitchies’ at school. She’s in trouble again, Deb. We’re right back where we started.”

  I sagged into Frank’s arms. He held me. We didn’t discuss it further. There was nothing to say that hadn’t been said already.

  Nancy forgot the incident the next day. She also forgot that she’d wanted to work in the store. She just stayed in her room, listening to records at full blast.

  That Sunday we had a cousins get-together in town, a holiday ritual. Nancy always enjoyed these family assemblages. She was big on holidays and especially liked to see her cousins Dean and Ellen, Frank’s sister’s children, who were in college now. The get-together was held at the new apartment of one of my cousins. It was a big place, and my cousin invited some of her friends to the party along with the relatives.

  Nancy strongly resented the presence of these nonfamily members. Even though they were extremely nice people, she refused to be introduced to them or speak to them. She was very uneasy. When we sat down to eat, she erupted.

  “What are you looking at?” she demanded of one of my cousin’s friends, who was sitting across the table from her.

  “Excuse me?” the man asked.

  “You heard me! I said what the fuck are you looking at?”

  “Nancy!” I said sharply.

  She turned to me. She had That Look. “He was staring at me! I saw him!”

  “No, he wasn’t,” I assured her.

  “No, I wasn’t,” he assured her.

  “Were too!” she screamed. “Goddamnit, you were!”

  All conversation and chewing stopped. Nancy became aware of the silence. She looked around, frightened, at the surprised faces of the s
trangers and the not-so-surprised faces of her relatives. She bolted.

  She grabbed my coat from the pile on the bed and took off out the front door.

  “Nancy’s a little uncomfortable with people she doesn’t know well,” I explained to the man.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said cheerfully. “Know just how she feels.”

  The party resumed.

  “Don’t you think you should go after her?” I asked Frank. “She doesn’t know this neighborhood.”

  “She’ll be back.”

  Frank was right. She slipped back in about an hour later. We didn’t make an issue of her return for fear it would start her up again. She went off in a quiet corner and talked to her cousin Dean until it was time for us to leave.

  Dean phoned later that night.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said, “but you have to promise me you won’t say a word to Nancy about it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Nancy told me tonight that she takes drugs. She said she’s been addicted to heroin for several months. She also said she’d been pregnant and had an abortion so you wouldn’t find out.”

  “C’mon, Dean. She was pulling your leg. She’s twelve years old.”

  “I know she has a way of, well, exaggerating things sometimes. But she was so deadly serious about this that I thought I should tell you.”

  I thanked him for calling, told him I’d handle it and not to worry. She was telling tall tales. I was sure of it.

  But just in case there was even the tiniest grain of truth to it, I phoned Mr. Grant at the school the next day.

  “No, absolutely not,” he said. “Nothing of that sort is happening here. We’re very isolated. If drugs were coming in, we’d know about it. Believe me. And we keep close tabs on the boys and girls. These are youngsters. There’ve been no pregnancies here.”

  “So she made it all up?”

  “Yes. A form of boasting, I suppose. To get attention, seem more mature. It’s all a figment of her imagination.”

  I phoned Dean to set his mind at ease. I said nothing about it to Nancy. I’d promised Dean I wouldn’t.

  We took Nancy back to Barton after New Year’s. The phone calls home started immediately.

  “If you don’t get me out of here,” she vowed, “I’ll run away. You can’t make me stay here. I’ll leave.”

  “Nancy,” I reasoned, “you have to go to school.”

  “I’ll run away,” she repeated.

  I didn’t respond. She hung up on me.

  The following day Nancy ran away from Barton.

  “I’d not be too concerned,” Mr. Grant said over the phone. “One of our people is out in the car looking for her. She hasn’t been gone long and she only has two dollars. She’s probably walking into town. But I wanted you to know in case she calls you. If she does, try to find out where she is, so we can pick her up.”

  I agreed to. “Is there any specific reason why Nancy ran away?”

  “I’m not certain about that. I took away one of her privileges this morning for some disruptive classroom behavior. She spoke back to a teacher.”

  “What privilege did you take away?”

  “Her use of the music room for two weeks. Where the girls listen to records.”

  They found Nancy in town. She was by the side of the road, trying to hitchhike home.

  “She was very angry,” Mr. Grant reported to me over the phone. “Yelled and cursed. But they got her in the car and now she’s back safe and sound. Pretty calm, too.”

  “Will you discipline her?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid this means a grounding—no trips to town. And I’ll be taking away her phone privileges for two weeks. She won’t be calling you.”

  A few days later I got a letter from Nancy. It consisted of a terse one-line message:

  “They can’t keep me here.”

  She didn’t run away from Barton again, at least not that I was informed. But as spring arrived she got more and more disruptive. Mr. Grant’s evaluations grew increasingly negative. She was fighting with the other girls and with authority figures. For the first time her schoolwork was beginning to suffer. She refused to do it—as a form of rebellion.

  By the end of the semester, when we arrived at Barton for our Parents’ Day evaluation session with Mr. Grant and Nancy, the idea of her moving on to a small boarding school had been abandoned.

  “We feel that Nancy belongs in our Avon unit this fall,” Mr. Grant said. “The students are older, and she needs the scholastic level they can offer her there.”

  Nancy sat up stiffly in her chair. She was very angry. “You promised me I could leave after this year!”

  “Nancy,” he said. “You still need a structured environment.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” she commanded Frank and me. “He’s a liar.”

  Mr. Grant shook his head. “We told you you’d be able to leave if you continued improving like you had been. I’m afraid you didn’t keep up your end of the bargain, Nancy.”

  “I’m okay!” she insisted. “Mom, don’t listen to him! I’m okay!”

  “We don’t think she’s capable of handling a boarding school. If you wish to keep Nancy in the Darlington system, then she’s to go to Avon after she gets back from camp.”

  Darlington was still the only school system we’d found that was equipped to deal with Nancy. The Avon school was more expensive than Barton—$1,000 a month. But it was also closer, about forty miles from Huntingdon Valley in the Main Line suburbs. We agreed to enroll her there.

  It was at Avon that Nancy became involved with drugs. This time it was no figment of her imagination.

  Chapter 9

  The Avon unit was called Lakeside Campus. Its ten-acre grounds were situated in countryside that was giving way to suburban development. The students lived in two old mansions, one for the boys, one for girls. Joint classrooms and a gym had been added on. There were forty boys and forty girls at Lakeside Campus, ages fourteen to eighteen. Nancy was the youngest. She was thirteen.

  Most of the girls were already there, slouched on sofas in the mansion’s downstairs living area or on the floor, smoking cigarettes and catching up on summer news. A stereo blasted the Jefferson Airplane from somewhere upstairs. They were unkempt girls, barefoot and braless, wearing patched jeans, torn T-shirts or workshirts, and hostile expressions on their faces.

  Some of them paused to check out Nancy, the newcomer. She stood next to us in the front doorway, clad in a clean, puffy peasant blouse, jeans, and sandals. She looked uncomfortable. So did Suzy and David, who had come along to say good-bye.

  I looked around for the supervisor. There were no adults anywhere, so I tried to find one of the college students who were supposed to be around part-time as child-care workers. I approached the only clean-cut girl in the room, who sat alone on a sofa.

  “Do you work here?” I asked.

  She stared straight ahead, eyes glassy. She was in some kind of fog.

  “Hello? Excuse me?” I said.

  She blinked. “Huh?”

  “Do you work here?” I repeated.

  No answer.

  “Hello?”

  “I live here,” she replied.

  I tried one of the other girls, who wore a paisley headband and was deep in conversation.

  “Excuse me?” I said. “Could you direct me to the supervisor, Mallory Brooke?”

  The girl pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “In her office. Brooke’s in her office.”

  I signaled to Frank and the kids and we went to the back of the house, where we found Mallory Brooke, girls’ unit supervisor, in her office. She was in her mid-thirties, tall and thin, with close-cropped hair and no makeup. She looked like a gym teacher. She gave Nancy a firm handshake.

  “Hello, Nancy,” she declared. “Mallory Brooke. Call me Brooke. Everyone does. I’ll take you up to your room.” She pushed past us and marched through the living area. We followed.

  The gi
rls sitting on the great curving staircase parted grudgingly to let us pass. Three or four stereos blared upstairs. Several girls were taping psychedelic posters to the corridor walls.

  There were three beds in Nancy’s room, two of them already made up. The furniture was chipped, the curtains were shabby.

  Nancy looked around at all of this, then glared at me. “I got no fucking room here,” she said.

  “We’ll make room,” Brooke said. “Plenty of it.”

  Frank went back downstairs to get the rest of Nancy’s things from the car. We left quickly. Having us hanging around was making her feel like even more of an outsider.

  “Mommy?” Suzy said as we got in the car. “Mommy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mommy, I don’t like it here.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as Suzy. I had an uneasy feeling about the place, too. But I knew of nowhere else for her to go.

  She phoned that night.

  “The food is crap here,” she said. “Nothing but fat. Total crap. And the kids are sickies and weirdos. I don’t like it here. I wanna come home.”

  “Do you have permission to phone, Nancy?”

  “What’s wrong, don’t you wanna talk to me? Your own daughter?”

  “That’s not the point, sweetheart. You’re supposed to be getting settled and—”

  “I wanna come home,” she demanded.

  “You can’t.”

  “How about this weekend?”

  “You just got there. I don’t think you’ll be allowed home yet.”

  “Brooke gave me permission.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. She said it was okay.”

  “Well …”

  “Don’t you wanna see me?”

  “I’ll talk to Brooke, see what she says about it.”

  “She said it was okay. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Of course I do. I just—”

  Nancy slammed the phone down angrily. I dialed Brooke.

  “No,” she said emphatically. “I absolutely did not give Nancy permission to come home. Certainly not this weekend. She’s not even set up in her classes yet. Absolutely not.”

  I spoke to Nancy, told her Brooke denied having given her permission. She called Brooke a liar and hung up on me again.