Family Scrap Book

By Diane Payne

At times, all murders seem like a David Lynch movie, claustrophobically surreal and creepy. This particular murder involves a fourteen-year-old girl whose mother has been arrested for the death. The mother allegedly set the daughter’s bedroom on fire. My daughter asks why this murder isn’t broadcasted on our local station. I tell her these kinds of murders go on everyday all over the world. She looks sick, devastated. I wonder if I should’ve lied.

The Key:

mother’s name: = X or insert your best friend’s name

dead 14 year old daughter = Z or any teenager’s name

X told authorities she was halfway to Yourtown when she received word of the blaze. X also told detectives she remembered seeing a gas can in Z’s room the day of the fire.

Mother strolls down hallway, sees a gas can next to daughter’s computer and rollerblades. “At least the dirty socks are in the hamper,� she thinks before leaving for the mall thirty miles away from home. It’s her turn to get out of the house, just like her daughter does on those expensive rollerblades.

“It certainly sounds suspicious, but I don't know if I can call it arson. We've not found a reason why anyone would want to hurt Z."

Many nights I’ve woken up certain my brother-in-law has killed my sister. This week my sister’s e-mail says:

I wonder what happened to change her from the favorite daughter to being hated by X?

Still haven’t responded, nor pointed out Z was her only daughter. Will never tell her of my dreams either.

Sometimes I dream my brother has killed his son while hunting, or the ice breaks while my brother is fishing and he disappears, or my brother chokes his wife to death in bed. His e-mail says:

The deal with X is like one step forward and then two steps back. Continues to get worse but hopefully it will get better. She has a good attorney so I hear.

A good attorney can perform miracles, or so I hear. Surely his wife has some doubts about her friend, some lurking fear that X may have set the fire, then driven over to her house and picked her up to go shopping, just like all those other shopping trips, except X had just one more task to do before departing on this particular morning. I wouldn’t want to think my closest friend set her child’s room on fire, then picked me up for an outing. I remember hearing about the phone call from her husband telling her to hurry back, the hysterics, and my sister-in-law driving them back home to find the daughter dead on the front lawn.

But I never imagine mothers killing their daughters in my dreams. Or daughters killing their mothers. I just dream about the women and children in my family being murdered by their husbands and fathers.

When the murder doesn’t feel Lynchian, I’m certain I’ve heard about in class, another student writing a story based off some HBO show. The characters are bland; yet, they remind you of your own neighbors,

In many ways Z, the daughter of X, was a typical teen-ager. She enjoyed listening to music, Rollerblading, going to the mall and chatting with friends on the telephone. You remain intrigued.

Police allege she started a fire outside of her daughter's bedroom while the girl slept then left for a shopping trip to mall. Firefighters found the girl dead of smoke inhalation next to her bed.

She also told friends that she "hated" her daughter, and "did have a violent side ... and that she mostly directed that toward her daughter, Z," he said.

Returning from the fridge, you hear the show begin:

While some say the mother and daughter did not get along, others couldn't imagine that she would harm her daughter.
If I say, the story doesn’t seem believable, the students scream that’s how it happened on TV and it was based off a real life event. I sigh, and continue reading. I sigh, and wish I were on my way to the fridge for a beer. I sigh, and know all too well these things do happen.

In a Dutch restaurant while eating balken brij, my cousin says, “Nah, she didn’t kill herself. She got into some trouble, but she didn’t do it. I keep imagining who could’ve come up from behind the house, by the creek, but can’t think of anyone. Yah, yah, I know the mother was locked up a couple times this year for rehab. Z called the police several times and said her mother was trying to hurt her.�

“Yah, I heard that too,� her mother says.

“From me, Ma.� Everyone laughs. Everyone remembers other things. Everyone eats a little more. Move the coffee cups. Drink water.

“If she had to waitress to buy that expensive skateboard, there’s no way she would’ve set it on fire. This I know,� I say.

“You don’t know that,� my sister cuts in.

I, too, waitressed at those cheap Dutch restaurants when I was her age, and even relatives wouldn’t tip because they had already paid enough for the meal. “She would’ve set her parents’ room on fire, not her own.�

“I heard she probably did it to teach her parents a lesson, but she didn’t think she’d die. Just did it to get out of going to that cottage next week,� another cousin adds to the whodunit conversation.

“Ya? She didn’t want to go up north? I didn’t know that, did you, Grettie?� my aunt asks.

“Nobody tells me nothing. I only know what I see on TV and read in the paper. Nobody calls me anymore.�

Just like that, we become a part of the movie, the murder. We know this mother, her father, this girl, but we distance ourselves and act as if we’re solving some mystery murder, playing Clue, anything to spare ourselves from more suffering, from admitting that we look at all mothers differently now, even those sitting at the breakfast table. No longer is anything the same.

We finish our breakfast, some ready to go on and get to their canning, others wanting to tell their stories about what they know, yet, like those going to get something from the fridge, worrying they’ll miss something if the show begins before returning, we walk out to the parking lot, disturbed, distrustful of others and ourselves. No longer are we the same.

If my daughter and I hadn’t been in my hometown for our annual visit when this murder took place, I probably wouldn’t be getting so many e-mails, because only family members would’ve known my connection with these people, not friends.

Yesterday’s e-mail said:

A saga of sleaze, addiction, murder, and betrayal seems to be unfolding inexorably in the heart of Christian Reformed country and shows no signs of slowing down in its downward spiral toward Hades… who was jealous of whom (daughter of brother etc.), who let whom down (husband divorces wife before trial etc.).....but at another level, does it not point to something rotten at the very core of this self-righteous just-minding-my-own-stuff "community"? ......an outwardly prettified world---------

Today’s e-mail says:

It’s got to be X, though, don't you think, who did it, if she only left the house 5 minutes before the fire was noticed...All the stuff to set the fire must have been there in the hallway already... ? Have you ever met her? Was your sister with X when they got back from shopping, or did they never get there that day? (was your sister-in-law with X when she got to the house after she found out about the fire?... I guess that was what I wanted to know... ). EEugh, how could somebody try to kill their kid, burn their house down, and then just go shopping as if nothing was up..

A year ago, when my daughter and I visited my hometown, Ania spent the afternoon with her cousin playing with a girl who was later murdered by her mother just a few weeks after we returned home. The mother figured the world was set for doom and gloom, and in hindsight, she seems fairly prophetic now. She tried to force her ten and five year old daughters to drink turpentine, and when that plan failed, she killed the girls with a knife to spare them from the world tragedies she believed were about to come our way. They died on September 10, 2001. My niece grieved, received counseling, and mothers seemed different from that day on.

****** There will be a new book advertised during TV commercials: Prophetic Changes In Mothers Since September 11. Heart-wrenching essays and frightening confessions from mothers. Hurry, books won’t last long. *********

Mothers.

The mother of the dead fourteen-year-old girl remains in jail under twenty-four hour guarded watch so she can’t commit suicide before the hearing, so she can stay alive to receive the divorce papers from her husband’s attorney. Maybe the preacher visits. Maybe her mother. Maybe no one. Even though the rule is innocent until proven guilty, the accused mother is already included in articles filled with psychobabble revealing the hidden secrets and illnesses that have driven these mothers to murder their children. They haven’t had much, if any time, to meet X. Yet, the answers are all there. There’s always an explanation, a psychiatric diagnosis. Afterwards everyone says, I always feared something like this would happen. Afterwards everyone remembers when the mother was in the living room at the last Tupperware party, telling those funny jokes. Afterwards, memories play tricks.

I wonder if the mother really wants to kill herself? After her daughter died, and she wasn’t locked up in jail, this was the hushed fear in town. My brother even bought a cell phone so she could be accessible to his wife, just in case. Would she set herself on fire? All that symbolic heat. The wretched flames. When I was a young girl, I’d hide beneath the blankets trying to avoid those nocturnal flames that appeared every night. Night after night, that old man with the large white hands dropped me in those flames, my punishment for masturbating or some other dreadful sin. No matter what I did, he lifted me from the bed and held me above the flames.

Another e-mail:

........this murder has suddenly brought some of these creepie-crawlies to the surface, and the community has responded in a frantic search for somebody to pin the blame on.....the suffering of the family that has been caught in the middle of all this has only been compounded in the process.......father, mother, son, daughter have all served as convenient scapegoats for the good folks so they can get back to business as usual -- flag-waving, mall-shopping, bible-thumping.......Too abstract? Perhaps.

The fact that these two murders took place in a small Dutch Reformed dry town where everyone thought they knew everyone, just adds fuel to the accusations, the guilt, the confusion, the loss, the fear. Now we all know that we know no one. A small town filled with people who don’t know each other. A small town fearing everyone. A small town gathering at church, PTA meetings, football games, weddings; a small town wondering what really goes on behind closed doors; a small town that knows what goes on behind their own closed doors.

Fourteen-year-old nephew who was born one day after the girl who is now dead writes:

yeah thing are out of the ordinary here. X’s trial is on Friday. Yes, my mom is very worried about tomorrow. She still has confidence in X but is thinking about what could go wrong. I dont think they are calling in Z’s friends, but i will look around school tomorrow and see if they are gone

Yeah, things are out of the ordinary. His mother’s closest friend may have murdered his friend, his classmate. Last year his sister’s closest friend was killed by her mother. Are things really out of the ordinary?

I remember watching the dead girl play. She was one day older than my nephew. That’s how close the mothers were. I babysat the kids while the mothers went out for lunch.

Just this spring, I heard the girl had been calling the police to say her mother was abusing her. The police would come. The girl stayed with grandparents a few days. Then she’d return home. And this continued. Like the mother, she, too, was seeing a counselor. I wonder why my sister-in-law didn’t know her friend was an alcoholic. She says she never saw her drink. All will be looking at my sister-in-law, the closest friend to the alleged murderer, during the hearing, wondering how she didn’t know her friend was capable of murdering her daughter? But she’s like that. She probably never told her friend about being beaten by my brother. Things are like that sometimes. Unfortunately, that’s not out of the ordinary. Why see the ugly? Sometimes it’s easier just looking for a good bargain, making small talk.

I’m writing this story. Someone else will write a movie. We’re all talking now. Sending e-mails. Anything to alleviate guilt, even if the guilt is unfounded. Somehow, afterwards, it seems like there was something we could have done. Someone could’ve done. But what?

This is just like a movie with a lousy ending. Did the mother kill the daughter? I don’t know. These trials go on and on, like the lingering trials of understanding why mothers kill their children.

I’m a mother. My friends are mothers. My aunts are mothers. The woman who stabbed her daughters to death is a mother. X is a mother. The world is filled with mothers.

I spent my childhood afraid of the bogeyman, and now I fear our children will be fearing their mothers. Who is there left for anyone to trust? Who is there left for us to trust? Such a devastating decay of motherly love, of kindred spirits, of the belief that mothers are universally connected by that love of our children.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Mothers.