When we got into the park, we found ourselves amidst a swarm of young people with long hair, thousands and thousands of them. They were all heading for a large, open grassy area called the Sheep Meadow. Policemen were everywhere, setting up barricades, barking instructions to each other through walkie-talkies. Frank finally asked one of them what was going on.
It was a special event. The first anniversary of the musical Hair was being commemorated by a free performance of the show that day in Wollman Rink.
Needless to say, Nancy was thrilled at the chance to see her favorite rock album performed live.
“I wanna stay for it,” she said.
“We have to leave, Nancy,” I said. “It’ll be too late to head back when it’s over.”
“I wanna stay,” she repeated.
“Nancy, we’re leaving,” Frank said firmly.
The clinic people had told us to be firm and not get into an argument with her.
We didn’t get into an argument. Nancy simply evaporated. One minute she was there; the next minute she was gone into the crowd.
There were about 100,000 people sitting there in the grass in the sunshine. It seemed like all of them had flowing brown hair and wore faded blue jeans like Nancy. It was hopeless to try to find her.
We located a policeman and asked him to help us. He told us that the department had set up a temporary precinct headquarters behind the stage. He offered to take us there to talk to the district commander. Frank and I decided to split up. He took Suzy and David to the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel to wait. I went with the officer.
By the time we got backstage, Hair was underway. I reported to the district commander that Nancy was missing. He put out a general notification by walkie-talkie that there was a lost ten-year-old girl named Nancy in the park, with long brown hair, blue jeans, and a green and white T-shirt. Then he told me to wait there.
I did. I was terrified. What if she went off with someone? What if she were attacked? There were so many people out there. So much marijuana smoke. Who knew what could happen? I sat and waited.
At intermission the district commander asked Michael Butler, the show’s producer, to make an announcement about Nancy. He went out on stage, went up to a microphone, and said, “We’re looking for a lost little girl named Nancy Spungen.”
The immense crowd cheered derisively.
“That’s Nancy Spungen,” he repeated. “Age ten. If you’re out there, Nancy, come backstage. That’s where your mom is. She’s waiting for you.”
I waited there for her through the entire second act. She didn’t show up. Then the show was over, and the performers and musicians were leaving and the crowd was beginning to disperse. Still there was no Nancy. The district commander kept shaking his head and apologizing to me. There was nothing more that he could do.
About an hour after the show was over, just when the temporary police headquarters was being dismantled, a call came in. A patrolman had found a girl who answered Nancy’s description sitting on a park bench. He had asked her if her name was Nancy. She had failed to respond.
Somehow I knew it was her. A patrolman escorted me through the rapidly emptying park until we met up with another patrolman, who had Nancy by the hand. I was so relieved, so happy to see her, that I ran up to her and hugged her.
She didn’t return the hug. Her eyes were glazed. She didn’t talk, didn’t acknowledge my presence. The patrolman was concerned. He asked if I wanted him to call a doctor. I politely refused, thanked him for his trouble, and led Nancy away. We found Frank and the other kids at the Plaza fountain, where they’d been waiting for hours.
Frank was livid, until he saw That Look on Nancy’s face. He said nothing. We were all afraid to say anything to her, for fear she’d start screaming and lose control. So we didn’t punish her. We just plain didn’t speak the entire way home. Nancy stared out the window. When we got home, she got out of the car, went up to her room, closed the door. She didn’t come out or talk or eat for the entire night.
I was both angry and confused. Part of me felt that Nancy was in total command of herself, had run away because we wouldn’t let her stay for the concert, didn’t give a damn about the grief she’d put the rest of the family through. The glaze was a deliberate, calculated, defensive move to stop us from punishing her. She was simply a rotten kid.
Part of me wasn’t so sure. Deep inside I felt that something Nancy had no control over had pulled her, that she wasn’t responsible for her actions, that the glaze was a genuine one.
I asked myself if I was ever going to understand what was wrong with my child. I asked myself when this was going to end, how this was going to end.
The next day Nancy acted as if nothing had happened. She didn’t mention the episode. I honestly couldn’t tell if she was pretending not to remember so as to avoid my wrath, or if she really didn’t remember. None of us could tell.
She never once acknowledged that she’d seen Hair performed live, even though she played the cast album that day and every day thereafter.
I reported the episode to my social worker, who reported it to Dr. Blake, who said that Nancy had run away because she wanted to see the concert and had been forbidden to do so. She added that I should have punished her immediately and was negligent in not doing so.
My fault, again.
Dr. Blake said I also handled the beads incident wrong when I reported that a couple of weeks later.
A popular hobby with girls at that time was stringing tiny Indian glass beads into necklaces and bracelets. As soon as the hobby shop in the neighborhood shopping center would get a new color of bead, it would sell out immediately.
The girls used to gather in a circle on someone’s front lawn and string the beads. They let Nancy join them. She loved to string beads, in spite of her hand-eye difficulty.
One day I noticed Nancy with them on the lawn across the street. A few minutes later I heard Nancy scream.
“It isn’t fair!” she cried. “It isn’t fair!”
Then I heard the other girls scream.
I ran out of the house. They were standing around her, horrified and frightened. They parted to let me to her. Nancy was face down in the grass. She was screaming and crying and pulling her hair out at the roots, just like she had during her Atarax attack. I turned her over on her back and pinned her arms down with mine.
“What happened?” I asked as I struggled with her.
“Her … her beads slipped off the wire, Mrs. Spungen,” one of the girls said, eyes wide with fear as Nancy bucked and screamed underneath me. “Her beads went in the grass and she couldn’t find all of them.”
“She’s okay,” I assured them. “She’s just upset.”
Nancy’s sobs gave way to deep gasps for air. She began to hyperventilate.
“Could one of you please get me a paper bag?” I asked.
One of the girls ran into her house and came back with a brown paper bag. I put it over Nancy’s mouth and nose, but it didn’t stop her from hyperventilating. I gathered her up, got her into the car, and drove to the hospital.
She was still hyperventilating when I got her to the emergency room. The doctor had her stretch out on a table. He couldn’t find whatever it was he wanted to give her, so he left the room for a second to get it.
I was right outside in the corridor.
“She’ll be fine,” he assured me as he came out.
No sooner had he said that when Nancy leaped from the table like a panther and slammed the glass emergency room door shut in our faces and locked it. She stood there, pointing at us, laughing. She was having no trouble breathing now. Nobody could get the door open. A nurse had to send for a security man who had a key. When he got the door open, Nancy was sitting on the table, still laughing.
“I’m smarter than you,” she said to the doctor. “I’m smarter than all of you stupid motherfuckers.”
I’d never heard Nancy curse before and I was shocked. I scolded her but she totally ignored me. When
I got her home, she went upstairs and slammed her door and put on the stereo very loud.
The other girls were still sitting on the lawn across the street. I’d seen them watching our return and now I went over to them. I thought it was important to talk to them. I didn’t want them to ostracize Nancy or gossip about her.
“Sometimes things get to be too much for you,” I said. “And you have to blow off steam. Nancy’s pretty sensitive sometimes and she just got real upset.”
They nodded. They were shaken, but they seemed to understand. They were a couple of years older than Nancy, thirteen and fourteen. They made an extra effort to remain friends with her. I felt better for talking to them.
I didn’t feel better for talking to my clinic social worker. She took down my report of the episode, relayed it to Dr. Blake, and came back to me with the following counsel.
Of the beads seizure, Nancy’s therapist advised, “She’ll just have to learn how to control herself.” As for the emergency room lockout, Dr. Blake suggested, “She’s looking for attention. She’s acting out something she probably saw on TV.” Dr. Blake also suspected the cursing was acting out, possibly acting out something she read in one of her books. Dr. Blake’s response to my query about how I should handle a similar situation in the future: “You should have ignored her. Go about your business.”
“Would you please explain something to me?” I asked Frank that evening while we lay in bed, both of us too upset by the day’s events to sleep. “Would you please tell me how I’m supposed to ‘go about my business’ while my oldest daughter is pulling her hair out at the roots on our neighbor’s front lawn?”
“I’ll be goddamned if I know,” Frank said, heaving a sigh. “I don’t know what to do. To tell you the truth, I’m beginning to wonder whether they do, either. We do everything they tell us to do and none of it has any impact on her. I wish I knew what the hell was going on with her. I wish I knew what the story is. This is just so goddamned frustrating and confusing.”
It was. Here she was, getting reputedly topnotch professional care, yet her behavior was getting worse. We feared Nancy was periodically not in control of herself. Her therapists still saw her as a smart, headstrong girl who knew exactly what she was doing. There was no acknowledgment from the clinic that any other diagnosis or treatment might be required, even though Nancy wasn’t responding to anything they were prescribing. The clinic was either unwilling or unable to deal with Nancy as anything besides a bright, sensitive child who came from a troubled home. We couldn’t exactly blame them. Ours was a troubled home. But was Nancy the source of the trouble or the result? Was her behavior our fault? Or was it, once again, simply outside the realm of experience of those treating her? We didn’t know. We were young and naive. We trusted the medical community. We didn’t challenge the doctors, didn’t press for answers, didn’t take Nancy elsewhere. We left ourselves in their hands and accepted our feelings of doubt and helplessness as a fact of life, something we’d have to live with.
Our daily life was a total misery. Typically, I had put out two or three brushfires by the time Frank got home—brushfires started by Nancy. On one particular afternoon the flames started over a pen.
Nancy and Suzy were doing their homework in their rooms after school. I was downstairs.
First I heard Nancy yell, “You fucking brat!”
Then I heard Suzy yell, “Mommy!”
I went upstairs. Nancy was in Suzy’s room. She wanted to borrow a pen, the very pen Suzy was doing her homework with.
“You stupid fucking brat. Give me the pen.”
“It’s my pen,” whined Suzy. “And I’m using it. Make her leave me alone, Mommy. Please make her.”
“Why don’t you borrow a different pen?” I asked Nancy.
“I want that pen,” Nancy said.
I sighed. “All right. Suzy, why don’t you give her that pen and I’ll give you another one, okay? How would that be?”
Suzy looked down at the floor, reluctantly nodded, and handed over her pen to Nancy, who smirked triumphantly.
“Got ya, ya fucking brat.” She laughed.
“Nancy, I’ve warned you about your language. I won’t tolerate it. I don’t like it.”
“Who gives a fuck what you like, you stupid bitch.”
“Nancy!”
She went in her room, closed the door, and put on Hendrix full blast.
I went downstairs, got Suzy another pen, and brought it to her.
“I don’t know what to do, Mommy,” she said. “I try to be nice but it doesn’t make any difference at all.”
“I know. Just try to, well, try to avoid being a troublemaker.”
“But I do try.”
I gave her a hug. “I know you do.”
I felt so badly for Suzy. She always seemed to get the short end. So did David. Frank and I did our best to give them special, undivided attention. Once or twice a month Frank would take David to a ballgame, just the two of them. Or I’d take Suzy shopping. Sometimes Frank took the two of them for a drive in the country and lunch while I stayed with Nancy. We made every effort we could to give them what was our idea of a more normal childhood. But it meant fragmenting the family unit. It meant getting them away from Nancy.
I went downstairs to make dinner. Ten minutes later Nancy started hollering at her sister again.
“Fucking crybaby brat!”
“Mommy!” Suzy yelled.
Back up the stairs I went. Nancy was in Suzy’s room again.
“Mommy, make her leave me alone,” Suzy begged. “I’m trying to do my homework.”
“Nancy, why don’t you let Suzy do her homework?” I asked, in my reasonable voice.
“I want her to listen to a record with me,” Nancy replied.
“But she’s busy.”
“I don’t care.”
“You have to care.”
“Says who?” she demanded.
“Says me,” I declared.
“What do you know? You don’t know a fucking thing about anything. You married Frank, didn’t you? He’s a bastard. He’s a fucking shithead bastard.”
I almost slapped Nancy in the face, but I stopped myself.
“Go ahead, hit me. Hit me, bitch.”
I walked away. Dr. Blake had told me to ignore her when she was like this. I went back downstairs. She followed me, the expletives and abuse spewing out of her, just like when she was two and had threatened to cut up everything in my closet. She followed me right down the stairs.
“Why don’t you get rid of him? Throw him out! You don’t need to be married to that son of a bitch! We don’t want him here! Get rid of him!”
I chewed my lip and busied myself in the kitchen.
“He doesn’t love us! He’s not a nice man! He’s mean. He’s a mean fucking bastard.”
Mercifully, she stopped short and went outside. She came back a minute later with David, who had been playing outside. She pulled him up the stairs by the scruff of the neck. He was too little to fight her.
“Where are you going with David?” I demanded.
She didn’t reply. She went to Suzy’s room and pounded on Suzy’s closed door.
“I don’t need you, brat! I have David! David and I are gonna listen to records!”
Then she dragged David into her room and put a record on, leaving the door open so it would annoy Suzy more.
After a few minutes she let David leave.
Then Frank came home from work, exhausted. He slumped onto the sofa with a drink and turned on the news on TV. He couldn’t hear it because of Nancy’s stereo, even though her door was now closed.
“Does she have to listen to her records that loud?” he complained.
“Believe me, this is the quietest it’s been all day. Let it be.”
He nodded with weary resignation and made the TV louder. We stared at it for a few minutes, too tired to move.
Then it was time for dinner. I called the kids to the table. Suzy and David and Frank were alread
y seated at the dining room table by the time Nancy came down. She had left her music on upstairs.
“Nancy, why don’t you turn that off when you come down?” Frank asked.
“I want to listen to it.”
“Well, I don’t,” Frank said.
“So?”
“So, you’re not being fair. It’s our house, too.”
“If it’s your house then why don’t you throw her out?”
“Throw who out?” asked Frank confused.
“Mom. She hit me today. In the face, hard.”
“Nancy, I did not,” I protested.
“She’s a liar. She hit me. She hits all of us. I think you should throw her out. Get rid of her. Divorce the ugly bitch.”
Frank threw his fork down. “Young lady, I told you I’m not going to have you talk that way in this house!”
She whirled, glowered at Suzy. “What are you staring at?”
Suzy quickly looked down at her plate. “Nothing.”
“You were staring at me! I saw you!”
“I wasn’t!”
“Were!”
“Nancy, leave her alone,” I ordered.
“Not until she stops staring at me!” Nancy hurled her full dinner plate against the dining room wall. It shattered.
“Tell her to stop staring at me!”
I sighed. “Suzy, stop staring at your sister.”
“But I wasn’t.” She began to sniffle.
“Don’t be a troublemaker,” I warned.
“Crybaby,” gloated Nancy.
Suzy ran, sobbing, to her room. I ran after her, apologized, and calmed her down. I tried to explain, but I was putting her in an impossible situation, asking her for more comprehension than she was capable of at age nine.
We dried her tears and came back downstairs to the table.
Frank was pointing to the mess Nancy had made with her dinner plate.
“Nancy, pick that up!”
“There’s the crybaby!” laughed Nancy at Suzy, ignoring her father. “Look at the crybaby!”
Suzy sat down and resumed eating, eyes glued to her plate.
“Pick it up, Nancy!” Frank repeated.
“Make me, you son of a bitch.” She sneered.
“Do it!”
And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) Page 11