Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  A number of years later when I was finishing high school I heard that he had gotten a job in a sporting goods store and that he’d been sober for some time. He liked to go fishing and the job seemed to be good for him. I think he was living with Grandmother then. I think mother was furious with Grandmother for helping Hal.

  One of the last letters I got from Grandmother included regards from Uncle Hal. Although I had spoken with Grandmother recently, she and I did not talk about him. She didn’t bring the subject up and neither did I. But my friend in Los Angeles saw them both and told me they were doing fine.

  It was after I’d moved back to California in the early sixties that I heard Uncle Hal had died. He was all alone then, living in a downtown hotel and working as a night clerk.

  Uncle Hal and Grandmother … I’ve often thought they were made to pay a terrible price for the early years of poverty they shared in common with mother. I think they represented only pain for her and I think she was ashamed of them. Sometimes I used to think she must have hated them.

  7 Later I learned the truth. Hal needed to borrow money. Mother told him to come to the house at an appointed hour one evening and she would lend to him one last time, making him promise never to ask her again. He promised and the time was set.

  When Hal arrived that night, so did the police and attendants from a mental hospital. Mother accused Hal of threatening her and being drunk. The police arrested him and the hospital attendants took him away in a straight jacket.

  I was there that night and heard it all. Mother had her brother, Hal, committed for three years without his consent just to get rid of him bothering her or being around.

  CHAPTER 8

  During the years I was growing up at 426 North Bristol, I came to depend rather heavily on the servants for some sense of continuity and for most of my everyday learning. The central person in my life on a daily basis was my nurse. A good deal of my happiness revolved around whomever that happened to be. When I was just a baby I had my Aunt Kitty. Several days before my fourth birthday a Scottish lady named Anne Howe came to take care of my infant brother and myself. Mrs. Howe was married and didn’t live with us but would leave in the evening after we were put to bed. It was Mrs. Howe who taught me to skip rope and how to ride my bicycle. She played “tea party” with me which was one of my favorite games. I would make dreadful concoctions out of sand and seeds and olive pits I found out in the yard and set a little table with my play tea set. Then she would be Mrs. Smith and I’d pretend to be Mrs. Jones and we’d sit around and gossip. I loved pretend games and could play them for hours, sometimes alternating between two and three characters at a time. Mrs. Howe had a hard time teaching me any patience because I usually wanted to have the game go my way. She also had a devil of a time teaching me to ride my bike because when I fell off time after time, I’d get mad and cry and vow I’d never touch it again. But her persistence eventually paid off and I learned most of the normal child’s skills. I was stubborn but Mrs. Howe was wonderfully tenacious and we had a good time together even though she made me mind her and stick to all the rules. She may have been firm with me but she always was honest and fair. It was Mrs. Howe who helped me through one of the first really serious punishments of my young life.

  I had to take a nap every afternoon and sometimes I just wasn’t very sleepy. Often I would lie awake in my bed and tell myself stories I made up that had elaborate plots and lots of running characters constructed from books that had been read to me and records I’d listened to. On this particular day I wasn’t falling asleep and I was bored. I was about five and sharing my room with my brother who was only two and still pretty much of a baby. My bed was up against the wall on one side and as I daydreamed I ran my finger over a seam in the wallpaper tracing the design.

  Without much real thought on my part I picked at the loose seam as I followed my daydreams on their private journey. Before I knew it, several little pieces of the wall paper had fallen away leaving a rather obvious blank spot in the wall. All of a sudden I realized what I had done and tried to retrieve the little pieces of paper and patch up the spot with the paper attempting to stick them back on the wall with some spit. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Worse still, where the wallpaper had gotten wet there were smudge marks so the whole thing looked even more obvious than if I’d left it alone.

  At about this time Mrs. Howe came in to get me up. When she saw what I’d done she slapped my hands and scolded me. She said she’d have to tell my mother about it. I cried briefly and then went out to play promptly forgetting all about it.

  When my mother came home, Mrs. Howe did tell her and mother went straight to my room to see the damage for herself. Right then and there she put me over her knee and spanked the daylights out of me. I really cried now. Mommie’s spankings hurt.

  But that was not to be the end of it. She was determined to teach me a lesson that no amount of spankings could accomplish.

  She marched herself into my dressing room and slid open the closet door. She reached inside the closet and withdrew my most favorite dress. It wasn’t the fanciest dress in my wardrobe nor the most expensive, but it was far and away my favorite and she knew it. It was a little yellow dress with white eyelet embroidery and it looked like a spring daffodil.

  Mommie held it up ominously. She took it off the hanger and went to a drawer where the scissors were kept. I looked at Mrs. Howe who was in the room with me, but she appeared to be as mystified as I was.

  When my eyes returned to my mother who was standing way across the room, I was horrified. Mommie had taken the scissors and completely shredded my favorite yellow dress! It was hanging in tatters with just barely enough left to indicate it had been a dress and not an old rag. Tears sprang to my eyes and I started to cry.

  Then as she marched toward me holding the tattered dress in front of her, the sound of hear voice stopped my tears. She told me that I was going to have to wear that shredded thing for one week. If anyone asked me why I was wearing a torn dress, I was to reply, “I don’t know how to take care of pretty things.” With that pronouncement, she dropped the dress at my feet and left.

  Mrs. Howe and I were both stunned. Finally it was Mrs. Howe who made the first move. She helped me change into what was left of my poor yellow dress.

  That week seemed interminable. I cried most of the time and kept to myself. I was mortified and tried to become invisible. Mercifully none of the servants ever mentioned the dress and in fact tried to behave as though there was absolutely nothing amiss.

  The one humiliating time I had to go downstairs and see company they were just a few old friends that I’d seen a lot and I simply stared at the floor and tried to get through it as fast as possible. My mother’s brief explanation regarding my rather shocking appearance was that she was teaching me a lesson. When I was dismissed, I scampered away and returned to the safety of my room. Within a few days the dress started to get soiled. I thought maybe then it would be washed and I wouldn’t have to wear it for a while. But that did not happen. I wore that dress everyday … all day … for one solid week. As the days went by it got dirtier and dirtier until it was nothing but a filthy rag. The material had raveled and there wasn’t much left to cover me. You could hardly tell that it had been yellow. As I lived through the disintegration of my most favorite dress and the humiliation of looking like a street urchin, I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better off in the orphanage. Mother seemed totally oblivious to my pain and humiliation. In fact, no one seemed to recognize what I was going through. No one comforted me and indeed no one seemed to want to even talk to me. I felt like a total outcast, my sins and transgressions too serious to be mentioned. By the end of the week what I’d originally done was totally overshadowed by this hideous, lingering, living punishment. At the end of the seventh day, after I had taken my bath and gotten into my nightclothes, I marched myself down to the incinerator and threw the filthy ragged remains of what had been my favorite yellow dress into the coals and watched as i
t disintegrated into the soft gray ashes.

  I didn’t find out until years later that Mrs. Howe had told the rest of the help what had happened. They’d all agreed not to ask me about the dress so I wouldn’t ever have to give the answer Mrs. Howe heard my mother prepare for me.

  CHAPTER 9

  The first real steady boyfriend mother had after Mr. Terry left was Uncle Greg. He was a boisterous, fun loving man that I thought was the most handsome and dashing man alive. He was very good to us and always took the time to be attentive. At Christmas and birthdays his presents were perfect, showing thought and taste. When he and mother had been going together for some time I asked him privately once if he was going to be our next daddy. Though somewhat taken aback, he leaned down to me and said he didn’t know about that but he was evidently touched that I had asked. I noticed that he had tears in his eyes but didn’t understand exactly why. I grew to love Uncle Greg and used to look forward to the days when he came to take mother out.

  There was only one part of their relationship that scared the daylights out of me. They used to have terrible fights late at night. My bedroom door was always left open and the light in the hallway was always left on. More than once I woke up with the sound of very loud voices downstairs. Then mother would come running up the stairs and into her room, locking the door behind her. Uncle Greg pounded on the door swearing at her. She yelled back but I couldn’t hear what she said very clearly. He continued to kick and yell until finally she opened the door and the fight continued in her room. While Uncle Greg was pounding and kicking at the door, I would lie totally still, afraid to move a muscle. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it went on regularly. I was scared because I hated screaming and yelling and kicking and pounding. I wasn’t scared for mother because she never seemed to look like she’d been hurt the next day and she kept on seeing Uncle Greg. A couple of times I thought about hiding under my bed but then I remembered how much trouble I’d be in if mother ever found out, so I just pulled the covers over my head and waited out the battle, hoping no one would think about me.

  One fight they had was a corker. After all the shouting and pounding at the bedroom door and the fight in her bedroom, which was the usual routine, I heard mother climb into the outdoor balcony that connected her suite of rooms with a door to my room. She was yelling something about calling the police and he was calling her dirty names. The whole neighborhood must have been informed about this lovers’ quarrel at this point. I don’t remember the details at this point but they used every four letter word ever invented. Uncle Greg followed her out the balcony whereupon she climbed up to the roof! At this point Uncle Greg must have thought better about the entire affair because he called her a few choice names and then left—through my bedroom door. The next thing I heard was the sound of his Cadillac peeling out of the driveway and down the street. Mother eventually managed to get down off the roof but I heard a lot of clattering and swearing in the process. Uncle Greg didn’t come back for days during which I heard mother telling her friends some very unkind things about this eligible bachelor and well known man about town. She even said she was damn sorry she’d bought him all those presents and mentioned some suits and jewelry. But eventually Uncle Greg returned and in front of me they acted just as though nothing had ever happened. I never dared mention to mother that I heard all these fights and she never acted as though I knew, which I always thought was positively weird. I mean, how could I help hear them when they took place right outside my open door? It didn’t really matter though, because I still adored Uncle Greg. Years later when I heard he was going with another movie star I knew that mother’s blood must be boiling.

  Mother had other dates as well. No matter what time they were supposed to pick her up she was never ready. She would be up in her dressing room with just her underwear and makeup on when the doorbell rang. It was my job to go downstairs and greet the date, fix him a drink and depending on my instructions, either bring him upstairs or sit in the bar and talk to him. Even though I was not yet ten years old I’d had a good deal of practice being a bartender and could make most of the ordinary mixed drinks. In fact I took a sort of secret delight in making drinks just a little too strong at parties just to see what would happen to the adults within a short time. Usually they got drunk.

  So when I asked the date of the evening what he’d like to drink, if he was new he seemed surprised but if he was one of the regulars he told me not to make it as strong as the last time. I never paid any attention to his instructions even though I smiled charmingly and vowed to follow his wishes.

  One night the doorbell rang and mother told me to go down and answer the door. The man’s name sounded like Brenner and I’d never met him before.

  I skipped down the stairs, knowing the entire routine by heart. I opened the door and gasped. Some bald-headed gypsy man wearing yellow satin pantaloons, sandals and nothing else was standing at our front door. Except for a necklace, he was naked from the waist up. I slammed the door in his face, locked it and dashed upstairs to tell mother to call the police immediately! Instead of being upset she asked me to calm down and tried to explain that the man at the door was Yul Brynner and he was making a picture called the King and I and he must have come from the studio in his costume. I stared at her and thought: the fights with Uncle Greg are one thing but a half naked, bald-headed gypsy man at the front door that I’m supposed to fix a drink for and be nice to is something else altogether.

  Against all my protestations, I found myself headed downstairs for the front door again. I tried to be polite to Mr. Brynner but it was very embarrassing for me. I fixed him a whopper of a drink and left the room immediately.

  I didn’t mind so much that mother wasn’t ready when it was friends like Uncle Willie and Uncle Jimmy (William Haines and Jimmy Shields). They were wonderful good sports and always filled with jokes. Uncle Willie had been a big movie star in the silent film days and he’d done a couple of pictures with mother when she was first starting out at Metro. The studio had given Uncle Willie an ultimatum, however, and Uncle Willie had to choose between his career and his relationship with Uncle Jimmy. Uncle Willie left pictures and became an enormously successful interior decorator. (It would be years before I understood the meaning of homosexual.) He and mother were great buddies. He called her “Cranberry” and she would laugh. It was some old joke about how much she hated the name MGM won for her in the magazine contest. Uncle Willie had a very cutting sense of humor and I always enjoyed sitting with the three of them and listening to the gossip.

  My Uncle Butch (Caesar Romero) was the same. He would take mother to parties and they’d go dancing together. Uncle Butch was a tall, dark-haired, handsome man that mother had met originally in New York when they were all in a Broadway musical chorus together. We all adored Uncle Butch. He was like a brother to my mother and like a member of the family to us.

  Somehow it was okay for these men to see my mother getting dressed because they were such old friends and really like members of the family. But the others, the dates we didn’t know very well, that was uncomfortable. Mother would have her underwear on and a light robe wrapped around her. Then as she and her date sat and talked over a drink she’d put on her stockings. I always tried to find other things to do about that time.

  After a while I began to tire of this constant parade of “uncles”. It got to be that everywhere we went, there we’d find another “uncle” appear out of no where. When we went on a vacation to Camel or to Alisal Ranch … Surprise! There was an “uncle” waiting for us. Supposedly this always came as an unexpected bonus but I couldn’t believe in that much coincidence after a while.

  Once on what was called a family vacation, mother left my two sisters and myself to fend off reporters in a San Jose motel while she drove to San Francisco to see someone, and she left no instructions except not to let anyone into the rooms. I didn’t know how to contact her in case of emergency. The girls were about three years old and I was eleven. I didn�
�t know what the hell to say to the reporters who showed up rather mysteriously so I just said that we were on our way to Portland to meet some friends (which was true). That particular trip was really a zoo because we met one “uncle” (lover) in Carmel and a different “uncle” in San Jose and yet another different “uncle” in San Francisco. I don’t think any of them knew about the others. I felt that the twins and I were merely a camouflage for all the other activity in which she engaged. I was treated like the maid or a secretary as I took messages, washed clothes and packed endless suitcases every time we moved.

  Finally I put my foot down. I refused to call any more of these latter day Don Juan’s “uncle”. It would be “Mr.” from here on in unless I particularly like them or they lasted more than a couple of months. There was something about looking into the eyes of a perfect stranger who couldn’t care less about me and having to smile and say “uncle” that couldn’t bear any longer. It was all so shoddy and such a sham. The caliber of dates and escorts seemed to me to have declined steadily and it appeared that mother was getting desperate when I noticed that some of the men were from the east coast or the Midwest and couldn’t even speak proper English. Mother had always been such a stickler for good grammar and proper pronunciation that I was a little shocked with the “deese, dems and dosser’s” that had started hanging around of late. I didn’t like them and I certainly didn’t want to call them uncle. They were not my uncles and I was no longer going to call them that. Mother was furious with me, but nothing she did made me change my mind and finally she gave up. As long as I was polite to each and every one of them, she never said another word about the uncle business. I don’t think she really liked these men very much either because she said dreadful things about them after they left, even though she always kept the jewelry they gave her.

  After the dark-haired eastern types vanished from the scene, mother seemed to stick with her directors as dates and lovers for the next few years.