Mommie Dearest

by Christina Crawford

  I decided to go for another brass ring … I wanted to be a cheerleader. In order to do that, you had to get together at least one other girl and work out several full routines. Then, during one pre-announced day, everyone had to audition in front of the whole student body. You had to go through the entire routine, in matching costumes complete with pom-poms and then the student body voted on which girls they thought were the best. I held my breath after the auditions while the votes were counted. Sandy and I had worked very hard for several weeks but the other girls were good too, and in some respects this was also a popularity contest. When the votes were counted … I’d won a position as cheerleader. The confidence I’d gained on the swimming team and in the classroom had enabled me to take the next step. I was very pleased because this accomplishment required the voice of student opinion and for me it was a long awaited vote of acceptance.

  My college entrance exam scores were in the top ten percent of the national average though I was only a junior. That meant I didn’t have to take the test in my senior year and could apply early to the finest colleges.

  Everything I did these days seemed to turn out in my favor. Not that I hadn’t worked for my success, I certainly had worked as hard if not harder than anyone in the school. But it was such a new feeling, such a new experience to be successful that it still had all the earmarks of strangeness.

  After being elected as a cheerleader, though, I began to ease into a more casual acceptance of my position. I made friends among most of the new students, was elected an officer of my class and was thinking of running for a student body office next year. I had also begun exploratory talks with Mrs. Chadwick about which colleges would be the best bets for early application.

  Mother had followed her musical with a western called Johnny Guitar. It wasn’t a very good movie but it was good publicity and an adventure to make since most of it was on location. She’d brought Chris out to Arizona to visit her during the summer while I was at camp. He liked Nick Ray, the director, very much and had a good time around the cowboys. Nick’s son, Tony, was also at Chadwick so Nick had no trouble relating to my brother Chris. There was a young actor in the picture named Ben Cooper who befriended Chris as well. My brother had a good time with the cast and crew. It was also good for Chris in another way. He was the only family member included in this visit and it was an important event for him to feel special. Chris had his share of problems with mother and growing up in a house full of women. He’d run away from home numerous times, once for almost a week during which he lived down at the Santa Monica pier.

  Mother was entirely too strict with him. She made no allowances for him, for the normal energies of a growing teenage boy. Chris stood nearly six feet tall by the time he was thirteen and still she treated him like a baby. He had to be the perfect gentlemen with proper manners and a quiet demeanor. All the spirit of boyhood got bottled up in him and exploded momentarily beyond his control.

  The Chadwicks, particularly Commander, worked with Chris. They tried to make him feel a part of the family both at school and at home. Commander was the closest father figure Chris had known. Phillip Terry left when Chris was so young he barely knew him. As part of the divorce agreement Phillip had agreed to give up all rights to see Chris or participate in his future development on the condition that a trust fund be established to send Chris to college and assure that he had some financial security when he grew up. Once Phillip left the house, it was 15 years before Chris saw him again.

  The week before Thanksgiving vacation, I called mother one afternoon to find out if I should take the school bus home or if someone was coming to pick me up. I knew immediately that she was in a foul mood and wished I hadn’t called. She was being picky about minute details and generally irritable. Just as I was about to say goodbye to her she asked me about my Christmas card list. That stopped me short. My Christmas card list? I honestly had to say that I hadn’t even thought about it yet. That was all she needed. She launched into a tirade about how thoughtless I was, how disorganized, how sloppy. She started planning Christmas six months in advance, she said, and I couldn’t even get my Christmas card list prepared without her having to remind me.

  First of all, it wasn’t true about her starting six months in advance for Christmas … it was one of those things she made up that sounded good to anyone who didn’t know any better. It was just like those publicity stories about how she scrubbed her own floors on her hands and knees. Bullshit! I scrubbed the floors … Chris scrubbed the floors … the fans scrubbed the floors … all she did was give the orders. All this turmoil over the Christmas card list was ridiculous. Things had been relatively peaceful for months. I hadn’t been home for a while but there had been nothing other than glowing reports from Mrs. Chadwick about my progress. There was nothing wrong, at least not on my part. I’d made sure I called her several times a week and was careful not to get into any arguments with her. But there was nothing I could do about this.

  The Christmas card list was one of those leaps into insanity that plagued my life and my relationship with mother. They sprung out of nowhere and there was nothing you could do to protect yourself against them because there was no way in the world to anticipate them. There was no warning except a tone of voice. It was like a tidal wave destroying everything in its path.

  I had known the moment she said her first words over the phone that this was going to be a precarious conversation. I tried to walk the tightrope of politeness and deference in order to avoid anything unpleasant. But here it was anyway. This was just another unpleasantness which always made me feel as though I’d done something wrong even though I knew in reality I hadn’t. This was a direct confrontation. It slowly dawned on me that she was setting up a direct confrontation … a fight. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know why. It only mattered that I found some way to deal with it and fast. I told her that I’d try to have my Christmas card list made up in the next two days. She said I’d better have it done tomorrow. Okay … I said, tomorrow then … I’d have it done tomorrow.

  I didn’t have to tell Mrs. Chadwick about the conversation because when I saw her that evening, she’d already gotten her own phone call from mother. Things had been going so well that mother’s rage over the list caught even Mrs. Chadwick by surprise.

  That night I sat down and tried to make up an appropriate list. I didn’t have most of the addresses, but I thought that the names would be sufficient. There wasn’t enough time to get all the addresses anyway because most of them were at the Brentwood house.

  When I called her the next day she was still furious with me and ripped the list into verbal shreds. She told me that if I didn’t have the right list with all the addresses by the next day, I couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving. At this point I was beginning to feel a sense of hopelessness. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many months went smoothly, there didn’t seem to be any way to get along with her.

  That night she and Mrs. Chadwick and I had a three-way phone conversation that degenerated into a total disaster. Even Mrs. Chadwick couldn’t hold her temper with mother. Mother was drunk and crazy and angry. She had deliberately caused this whole turmoil and now she was using it as an excuse to unleash venomous insults at both Mrs. Chadwick and myself. It had started out awful and was getting progressively worse. It was one of the only times I ever heard Mrs. Chadwick raise her voice or express any real opposition to mother. She was trying to explain the situation over and over again to mother who was too far gone on her own track to listen.

  Finally mother yelled at me that she didn’t want me home for Thanksgiving or any other time. “Fine”, I said … “That’s fine with me.” Under the circumstances I’d rather be almost anywhere other than home.

  My reply sent her into a new fit of rage. She accused Mrs. Chadwick of turning me against her. She absolutely couldn’t stand it that Mrs. Chadwick was trying to help me, or that the Chadwicks had come to genuinely care about me. I’d been at the school over five years and it was w
here I felt I belonged.

  Then mother dropped the final bombshell. None of us were coming home for Thanksgiving. Cindy, Cathy, Chris and myself were all staying at school over the vacation. After that … we were all leaving Chadwick. She would decide later where we were going to be sent … but she was taking all of us out of that school.

  At that point I hung up. In that moment I hated her so much I wanted to kill her. I think I would have tried to kill her if we’d been in the same room. It didn’t even matter to me that I’d have to spend the rest of my life in jail. Just the thought of being able to rid the earth of her evil should be enough satisfaction. I hated her so much I was shaking all over.

  Mrs. Chadwick met me half way down the stairs. Her face was ashen and I could see her hands shaking. Commander was with her.

  The three of us sat in silence in the large Spanish living room. It was a cool November evening and the room had a chill to it. I looked carefully at each of their faces. This was not the usual meeting between us. Commander and Mrs. Chadwick looked different than I’d seen either of them before. It was as though the three of us were family and the enemy lurked all around us. The room was in semi-darkness and no one spoke for a long time.

  Finally, Commander said in his gruff voice, “Tina … I don’t know if there’s anything we can do to help you, but we’re going to try.” Mrs. Chadwick was near tears but she was a woman of great inner strength, determination and courage. “This is wrong, Tina … this was not your fault.” We talked about what had happened until there was nothing left to say. I wondered if, indeed, the Chadwicks could do anything to help me. No one else had even been able to, that much I knew. Evidently they were working toward some plan that would have allowed me to remain in their custody until I finished high school, which was another year and a half. Through the parents of various students at the school, there was a considerable community of influential people, not all of who was show business.

  Two days later, it was Thanksgiving. My sisters had been staying in the Cottage where I’d lived when I fist arrived at Chadwick. Commander picked them up and Mrs. Chadwick tried to make it as festive a day as she could for all of us. We did our best to enjoy the meal, but every bite of food stuck in my throat. As I looked around the table at my sisters, my brother and the two elderly people that had come to be my parents, I could hardly imagine life without them. I could hardly imagine another school, new people when I’d fought so long and hard for a place here. I belonged somewhere now … I had friends and people who respected me.

  Someone came to take my sisters home before the weekend was over. I didn’t see them again, after that Thanksgiving, for almost a year. Then someone came to get Chris. I had tears in my eyes the entire time I was helping him pack his things. I think I felt worse for Chris than I did for myself. We’d been so close and I felt badly about leaving him. I also felt that all this was my fault and that they were being punished for something they didn’t do. Mother was making all of us pay for what should have been just between her and me.

  During these few days, Commander and Mrs. Chadwick were rarely off the phone. I think they must have called half of Los Angeles trying to find a way to keep us in school. I remembered the name of the juvenile officer that had visited me the night mother had tried to kill me and I talked to him at some length. I even tried to be made a ward of the court, released in the Chadwicks’ custody, but he said he couldn’t help me.

  In desperation, the Chadwicks called Martin Gang, a prominent attorney, to see if there were any laws or legal proceedings that might be able to help. If I’d been sixteen, there would have been a few avenues to pursue, but since I was just fifteen and a half, I wasn’t old enough to go out on my own.

  Mother owed the Chadwicks an enormous amount of money at this time. She hadn’t paid full tuition for Chris or me in two years. She also owed the money for my sisters’ first year. The Chadwicks had been carrying all of us on credit for years during which Mother had consistently cried poor and been unable to pay. Evidently there wasn’t much they could do about that either except sue her.

  As the days of Thanksgiving vacation ebbed away, I saw my sisters and then my brother taken away, I knew the time for me wasn’t far off. It seemed ominously close. Mrs. Chadwick was getting frantic as the hours ticked off and the realization that no one was going to help us became clearer. I seriously thought about trying to run away. The trouble was that I knew I’d be hounded until I was caught and then it might be even worse for me.

  So when I went to bed Saturday night, I couldn’t sleep. I dreaded what would happen the next day. Late that afternoon, the secretary had called to say that she would pick me up Sunday after lunch. I was to have everything packed. I was going home.

  Sunday morning I woke up with a dull, sick feeling in my stomach. There was still a part of me that couldn’t come to terms with the facts as they now were. Outside it was cool and crisp, a slight breeze was blowing through my half-open window. Lying in bed the cool air blew across me but it didn’t matter. I felt an oppressiveness … a heaviness that made me feel as though I could barely breathe. I couldn’t believe this was the end. It still didn’t make any sense to me that what had started out as a minor flurry over something as unimportant as a Christmas card list could have turned into a major catastrophe for me.

  I tried again to follow the slim threads of reality through the events of the past week and each time I ran headlong into the abyss of insanity. That black hole where nothing followed logically, where fabrication and anger and turmoil ruled supreme. That place where there was no help and no peace … no escape from the juggernaut of chaos. From her throne in the eye of the hurricane, brandishing her magic wand of obsession, ruled the queen of chaos herself: my mother.

  I could find no reason, no logic, no justice, no solace. Powers far beyond my control seemed to have taken possession of my life, my future. I was a being without volition, without a voice in my own future.

  I thought about the years I’d struggled to overcome the shame of my childhood folly. I thought about the hundreds of hours of manual labor and mental anguish. I thought about my slow, gradual, determined climb to a place of respect, trust, admiration and accomplishment over the past five and a half years. One third of my entire life had been spent with these people in this place. These were the people who love me, who had spent years helping me, encouraging me to excel, working with me to assure a successful future. The Chadwicks had become my parents and the school my extended family, my home. At long last I knew I belonged here … and now, through a chance misspoken word, a few bottles of alcohol and a lot of tears, it was all being whisked away. We were all powerless to stop it. Our thoughts, our feelings, our years of hard work were being swept away while we stood by helplessly watching with horror and disbelief.

  Legally she had the right. Questions of morality or cruelty held no sway. Legally she had the right and no one c could stop her.

  At breakfast I could see that Mrs. Chadwick had been crying. Commander was more gruff than usual, but I knew that was just his way of trying not to show undue emotion. I couldn’t say much either and we ate in silence.

  Strangely, it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It was the silence of three people in pain. It was the silence that happens when someone dies and no one can find the words of solace. It was the silence of sharing a moment of mutual anguish. It was the silence of defeat too.

  I finished packing and took the sheets off my bed. I cleaned my room thoroughly so Mrs. Chadwick wouldn’t have to go to any extra trouble. I could hardly manage the last of the ordinary little tasks of leaving. My eyes were filled to the brim with tears. Every once in a while they would fall randomly on the sheets I was carrying to the laundry room or the dresser top I was dusting. My tears fell onto the clothes I was packing in the suitcase and on my own hands as I put on my shoes. I didn’t try to stop them now because I was determined not to let anyone see me cry when the time came to leave.

  The morning hours flew by faster
than any I remember. I couldn’t hold back the time any more than I could change the situation.

  When lunchtime arrived, the three of us reassembled in the kitchen but no one could eat and we didn’t even really try. There were no more words. Each of our minds was racing in different directions wondering how we would manage the final moments of our togetherness. Finally, Mrs. Chadwick suggested that I might want to say goodbye to the next door neighbors who were good friends. Their daughter, Paulette, had been at my fifteenth birthday party just five months before.

  More for something to do than any real desire to start saying the good byes, I walked the short distance to the Frankel home. The big Spanish house looked as gracious as ever and the Frankels themselves were lovely people that had been very kind to me. As I walked in and saw the sorrow on their faces it was nearly impossible to hold back the tears. I said a few halting words before they both embraced me. Now I had to fight hard not to just break down and weep. They must have realized that this wasn’t helping even though it was well meant and they initiated their good byes.

  As much as I’d tried to prepare myself for the moment, it came as a terrible shock to see that the station wagon had already pulled up in front of the Chadwick house. I had one last fleeting urge to run for my life … to run anywhere … to escape this dreadful moment. It took all my will power and courage to continue walking down the road toward Chadwick house.

  As I approached I saw three people standing by the car. Betty, of course, was there. Betty, the fan who had finally cajoled her way into our household and over the objections of many, had made herself indispensable as mother’s secretary. There was a man who was evidently the driver since he wore the cap of a chauffeur and a nondescript blue suit. But there was another man whom I’d never seen before, standing apart from the rest looking ill at ease. He was slightly heavy set and had eyes that continually darted from one face to the next. Mrs. Chadwick was standing at the front door and Commander was talking to Betty.