The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words

by Staub, Danielle

  Flying in an airplane was another oddly familiar experience for me. I knew that first-class passengers boarded the plane before the other people even though I had never flown on an airplane before. Did it happen in this life when I was in my mother’s womb flying to the United States for the first time? Or did it perhaps occur in another life? My friends have told me that they believe that all of this relates to some kind of special insight I have into the past. But I prefer to believe that it directly relates to my experiences as an unborn child in my mother’s womb.

  Another important part of my heritage that I think I picked up prior to my birth is Italian food. I can be in another room, smell an Italian dish cooking in the kitchen, and know precisely what is being prepared. Is this a coincidence? My answer is no. I believe that all of my knowledge of and appreciation for Italian food can be traced back to my Sicilian roots and the place where I was conceived. I was never formally taught how to cook Italian food. Yet today I know how to prepare sophisticated dishes without using any written recipes and instinctively know how to season the foods correctly as well.

  The cliché is that Italians like to cook, eat, and reproduce. It’s not surprising that those are among my favorite pastimes. (My mood and the company I am with determines where each item falls on my list.) I crave Italian food all the time. I imagine that I love to eat the things my birth mother ate when she was pregnant. Today, my daughters crave the same Italian foods that I ate when I was pregnant. I believe the child in her womb takes on his or her mother’s tastes.

  This may sound a little off-the-wall, but I think I absorbed my religious beliefs as well while in my mother’s womb. I am close to my priest, Father Michael Lombardo of Our Lady of Consolation in Wayne, New Jersey, and consider my relationship with him special. I see Father Michael once a week. I have gone to church consistently throughout my life. My one stipulation to my parents as I grew up was that I had to be raised Catholic, even though I was living in a Protestant home. Luckily, I had friends who were Catholic, so I would go to mass with them and their families. I think my own children knew they were Catholic as soon as they were born. I blessed my belly all the time when I was pregnant.

  When your family is a mystery that you wish to unravel and you desire answers to what might have been, you connect with your inner soul and senses more than other people usually do. You want to know where you came from. You want to find out how and why you think and feel the way you do. The questions of that journey don’t stop there. It often takes years of denial before you have the strength to face certain problems, so you can’t expect to resolve them overnight. At forty-seven years of age, I am still continuing to piece together my past and remain committed to my voyage of self-discovery. To learn is to live.

  As a child, I spent every day of my life wondering if my birth mother would eventually contact me. Was she investigating my whereabouts and trying to seek me out? One thing’s for certain: I was constantly thinking about her. Was she thinking about me? Only she could answer that for sure, but as a mother, I know the deep emotional and spiritual connection that evolves from carrying a child. I can’t imagine what it would be like to never be in contact with one of my daughters, so I doubt my mother just gave me up and forgot about me completely. But again, I may never know.

  After my birth, I’m not sure exactly what happened to my mother next, except that she went back to Italy with my aunt. Over the years, friends have offered their assistance to help investigate her whereabouts for me. From what I have been told, my birth mother eventually settled right here in America. Further inquiries revealed that she eventually got married and that I’m now the oldest of six children. I know that if I chose to meet my mother and her new family, there would be extremely complicated issues and risks. For one thing, I’d be coming forward completely from left field as the oldest of all her children. Do I really want to alter my siblings’ image of their mother by revealing that she gave birth to an illegitimate child? After forty-seven years have gone by, how does a sister announce to a brother she has never known, “Listen, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you weren’t the first child born to our mother. I was.” I’ve never wanted to destroy someone else’s family unit, a group of innocent people who know nothing about me.

  I convinced myself that my mom probably didn’t come find me because she’d moved on and it would hurt her new family. Or maybe they all did actually know about me but I was part of such a hurtful memory from the past that my mother was forbidden by her current husband to acknowledge it. Or maybe she just didn’t care anymore. Of course, it could be a combination of all three. Or I could be completely wrong about all of these possibilities. One thing’s for sure: I am quite curious.

  Abortion was not an option for my birth mother for religious reasons, so her only choice was to eventually give me up for adoption. I admire her strength for coming all the way to the United States from Italy, giving birth to me, then walking away and believing that I would have a better life.

  If my birth mother decided to come forward, I would like to speak with her. I’d like to find out why she never tried to find me after all these years. I would also like her to meet my children. I’d even like her to cook a meal with my daughters and me. It doesn’t sound as if I’m asking for much, does it? Just an experience like what every daughter probably has with her mother. As a mom, I cook with my daughters often, and it’s always time well spent together—we share ideas and thoughts and talk about our lives and dreams. We make dishes together from start to finish, enjoy our accomplishments, and savor the taste of food cooked with love. I realize that this might sound simple, but I think these moments are extremely important to our development as women.

  I’ve spent a good part of my life wondering what the conversation would be like between my birth mother and me if we ever met one-on-one. All she would have to do is look me in the eye and say, “I’m sorry.” It seems like such a simple gesture. I would just want her to say something that would make me truly believe in my heart and soul that she feels bad that I had to go through even a minute of what I endured during my childhood. Once my birth mother offered me a heartfelt apology, I wouldn’t discuss the subject with her again. Not ever again.

  2

  STOLEN FLOWER

  I was five days old when my parents picked me up at the hospital in the summer of 1962. I was a big healthy baby with a full head of tight brown ringlets. My mother said my birth mother must have had a lot of agita during her pregnancy because that’s what happens to mothers who give birth to babies with a lot of hair. She also said that I was the most beautiful baby in the nursery and she was so happy to get me. They named me Beverly.

  When I arrived home with my new parents, they had playthings suited only for boys. They’d had six boys prior to my arrival and didn’t know if they would be adopting a boy or a girl, so they weren’t prepared for a female. They didn’t care if I was a boy or a girl, just as long as they got a healthy baby. However, it seemed that my mother didn’t quite know how to take care of a completely healthy baby. I suppose that’s understandable, since her own sons had all been seriously ill.

  My parents were struggling with the trauma of having lost five of their birth children to cystic fibrosis. At the time I entered their lives, they were trying to keep the sixth one, Ronnie, alive and were making frequent trips back and forth to the Children’s Hospital for Cystic Fibrosis in Philadelphia.

  Cystic fibrosis is a chronic, life-threatening disease that impairs the lungs’ capacity to hold enough air for normal breathing on one’s own. A thick mucus forms in the lungs and digestive tract, creating a blockage. This inherited disease strikes children and young adults. Some treatments and various oxygen tanks have been specially designed to combat it, but it’s a pretty tough illness to live with.

  I was told that as sick as he was, when Ronnie first saw me, he couldn’t take his eyes off me. He would say, “Mommy, she has the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen,” and he seemed fascinated that he now had
a baby sister. I was adopted when Ronnie was seven, and I spent approximately two years with him before he died. I know that he adored me; just having me around seemed to generate a great deal of happiness for him. I don’t think Ronnie realized how sick he really was because he always seemed so full of life. He had a zest for life undaunted by his disease, and it certainly did not affect his quality of life except temporarily when he was taken for his treatments to the Philadelphia hospital twice a week. I am not quite sure if it was more for Ronnie’s sake or my parents’ sake that I was adopted, but after Ronnie was born and diagnosed the doctor had advised my mother and father to stop having children because their genetics didn’t properly mesh.

  I’ve been told that at the time my father seemed to be happy on the surface, but a distinct sadness was behind his eyes. He’d lost five sons and knew that Ronnie was soon going to die. I think I was a breath of fresh air for my mother, amid all of the pain of loss and dealing with Ronnie’s illness. Compared to Ronnie, I was easy to take care of. She didn’t have to drive me to the hospital for oxygen or put me on medication. I was never sick. I know my mother loves me to this day, but I was always aware that I had to be independent and cause minimal trouble for her because as a mom she was already stretched too thin.

  One day, I tried to wake Ronnie from his nap, the way I normally did, by climbing up on the couch and giving him a big hug. I would never lie on his chest though—I would carefully put my head next to his, put my nose gently in his neck, and nuzzle him to wake him up. He didn’t move. I was young and confused, and at first I thought he was playing a game, but I didn’t find it funny. I was scared. Ronnie never woke up that afternoon.

  That was the first time someone I loved had died, and I was just two years old. Ronnie had lived to be nine, then the darkness set in and the dynamic completely changed at my parents’ house soon after he passed away.

  After Ronnie’s death, my family attempted to have a normal life. We lived in the small town of Athens, Pennsylvania, which was about three hours from Philadelphia and had one stoplight. Our house was close to the school where I attended kindergarten, and I spent a great deal of time alone, but didn’t mind. I would come home from kindergarten to an empty house because both my parents were working. I actually liked being alone when I came home. It was the nicest house we had ever lived in, with hardwood floors, cathedral ceilings, gorgeous moldings, and spacious bay windows. The kitchen was huge, with almost pantry-size cabinets. After school I would climb up on the countertops and get treats such as Suzy (Qs, Yodels, and Twinkies from the oversize cabinets. At the time, my mother was an insurance broker and my father was a minister and also sold real estate. We were doing pretty well, but this period of success lasted only a short time.

  Since my father was a minister, people frequently came to our home for counseling. It seemed that the bulk of them were women. Rumor had it that he was having affairs with several of them. My father was lost after Ronnie died. I think he needed to feel a new kind of love and wasn’t sure what it was supposed to consist of. The women were seeking guidance, and maybe my father took a little advantage of that. My mom told me years later that this is why he was asked to leave the ministry, and we had to move out of the town we lived in.

  From then on, it seemed that our family was always really poor. Everything I owned was a hand-me-down. When I was quite young, I would go to the local supermarket alone and thumb through fashion magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan and imagine what it would be like to own some beautiful dresses like the ones within their pages. While I dreamed of wearing fabulous and fashionable clothes, the fantasy and my life couldn’t have been further apart.

  Sexual abuse entered my life when I was extremely young. I would go to bed thinking that it should be a time when I could just go to sleep. But bedtime for me was different from the way most children are able to go to sleep. I would lie in bed and worry if this night would be a repeat of other nights prior. Then my bedroom door would quietly open in the middle of the night at different times and in would come a relative or family friend—one of my abusers—who’d climb into bed with me and treat me with no regard. I was a little girl, scared to death and in so much pain from what they were doing to me. The creak from that door slowly opening still haunts me to this day. I eventually gave up fighting the advances. I just let it happen to me, submitting to the abuse.

  As soon as the door opened, my dog, Suzie, would immediately jump from my arms, off the bed, and hide underneath, cringing in fright. I would bury my head in my pillow and tightly grip the side of the mattress with one hand while my other hand would hang off the side of the bed so that my puppy could lick it from below. It helped us to comfort each other. Suzie and I were both scared.

  I guess that I eventually became numb to the abuse. Can you imagine what it feels like to be tied down, but you don’t actually have restraints on you? That was exactly how I felt when I was being touched. I felt completely helpless, as if I were paralyzed. I could only imagine my abusers justifying these sick scenes to themselves and saying, “Well, I didn’t have to tie her down.” Of course they didn’t have to tie me down. They were violating a child!

  I remember when my dreams as a child turned from hopeful and happy to extremely dark after the abuse started. In fact, I no longer had dreams. Now, they were always nightmares. In my dreams prior, there were vast orchards filled with apples and berries where I played hide-and-seek and ran through freely. Now they were just dead fields. The friendly dream figures that once bore only bright, big smiles were now distinct with recognizable faces—the faces of my abusers. I could clearly hear them and see them, and it was scary. There were only broken branches on the barren ground and nowhere to hide. I was completely exposed and easy prey. As a young child, I couldn’t find sanctuary, not even in my dreams.

  The psychological damage to me as a child was unimaginable. I would go to school the day after being sexually abused bleeding from my crotch because I’d scrubbed my privates in the shower that morning with Brillo. I’d scrubbed and scrubbed, trying in desperation to remove the sense of shame and the evil smell of them from me. I remember taking a wooden spoon and scraping my insides clean. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get rid of the dirty and repulsive feeling of their being inside me.

  I loved Barbie dolls as a kid. Early on, before the abuse started, my Barbie dolls were dressed beautifully and had flowing hair. Later, in the midst of the horror show of abuse, I cut their hair off and covered their butts and private areas with Vaseline. I must have covered my dolls’ private areas with Vaseline because that’s what these men used.

  I have been asked why I never tried to run away from home. Honestly, I thought I had nowhere to run to because I assumed that this kind of sexual abuse was happening to kids everywhere. I was so naive that I didn’t know how to define what was happening to me, much less label it as “sexual abuse.” At that point in my life I was still very young.

  Little did I know, while most kids had members of their families singing lullabies to help them fall asleep, I was being told to hush up and be quiet so that no one would hear my cries.

  With no hope for a change in reality, I resorted to a coping mechanism that has carried me through for far longer than most people maintain relationships with imaginary friends. I am not exactly sure when Nicky first came into my life, but I think she might’ve first appeared when Ronnie died. Since then, she has always been there for me.

  I invented Nicky when I was a young child, and her appearance seemed natural to me. When I was in kindergarten, I got into a lot of trouble for making up Nicky. My teacher said, “Nicky is not here and doesn’t really exist. You need to stop scaring the other kids.” In all innocence I replied, “I’m not trying to scare anyone. Nicky is here to make sure that I’m not scared.”

  Nicky was usually standing right next to me as a child, holding my hand tightly and guiding me through life. Nicky was the opposite of me. She had blond hair and blue eyes. I have brown hair and
brown eyes. She was happy when I was sad. She had no fear and I was afraid of everything. She was strong and I was weak. She pushed herself and I didn’t. She was aggressive and I wasn’t. She was a fighter and I was more of a lover. Nicky didn’t care if she was accepted, when all I ever wanted was to be accepted. She was really beautiful and I wasn’t. Nicky was never judged, and I was judged all the time. Nicky was never misunderstood while I was completely misunderstood. She was the girl next door and I was the girl nobody wanted to live next door to. Nicky was everything I wished I was and couldn’t be. The exception was that Nicky could never and I could always cook really well. That was pretty much the only advantage I had over her. Nicky was always talking to me and encouraging me. She would continually tell me that I was sweet and pretty, and she had the amazing ability to dispel negativity. She would say to me, “You don’t have to hate those people who are against you. I’ll hate them for you.” Nicky would also never let me take the blame for anything. She always accepted responsibility and tried to leave me feeling no guilt whatsoever. For instance, when I was sixteen years old, my dad and mom went away for the weekend. My dad had recently bought a brand-new truck, which I decided to take for a joyride to get a milk shake and fries. I had only a learner’s permit and didn’t realize how difficult it would be to drive a big truck across a small bridge. The truck had huge side mirrors mounted on long extensions. I was driving across the small bridge quickly, and at the end of the bridge, the road sharply veered off to the right. I was not an experienced enough driver to successfully make the turn and ripped the chrome and the mirror right off the side of my father’s brand-new truck.