Love Me or Else

by Colin McEvoy

  From the age of six, Rhonda wanted to be a teacher. She spoke about it so often, her father used to joke that it was all she ever talked about. And her enthusiasm for the career didn’t dampen with time. In the years immediately after she graduated from high school in 1984, Rhonda worked in a number of jobs, ranging from newspaper typist to customer service representative for a phone company. But by 1986, she had saved enough money to enroll in Northampton Community College, making her the first in the family to attend college.

  In 1988, Rhonda graduated from the community college with an associate’s degree in secretarial science, and she moved on to Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, about two hours northwest of her home. She continued working throughout school, mostly as a cashier at Acme Markets, and paid her student loans all by herself, a source of great pride for her father. Rhonda started to travel like she never had in her youth, visiting cities like St. Louis and Las Vegas, and places like Niagara Falls and Mexico City. Within three years, she was student teaching and on track to graduate in December 1991 with her teaching certification in business education.

  But in the months approaching her graduation date, signs started to emerge that something was dreadfully wrong with Rhonda Smith. With each passing day, she was increasingly losing her appetite, to the point that she was barely eating at all. Long periods of insomnia kept her awake at all hours of the night. She started to develop strong feelings of paranoia, growing convinced even her closest friends could not be trusted.

  Between her grueling college schedule and the growing irrationality of her thoughts, Rhonda was dimly aware that she might need to take a break, to put her education on hold and take a semester off. But she couldn’t. She told herself her teachers and colleagues would think less of her, but in reality, the pressure was coming completely from within. For Rhonda, failing to meet that December 15, 1991, graduation date would make her a failure, plain and simple.

  But Rhonda’s tortured feelings only grew worse as the weeks passed. She reached what she later described as her “total emotional breaking point” early one November morning, during the two-hour drive to Mansfield University to take her national teaching exam, one of the many tests required for her eventual certification. She was traveling on the highway, a car swerved into the opposite lane in front of her, and Rhonda was convinced she was about to crash, thinking to herself, I’m a goner!

  There was no crash, but Rhonda pulled over to the side of the road and broke down crying, believing for the first time that she would never be able to earn her teaching certification. Nevertheless, she forced herself to continue on to Mansfield, and despite the panic she still felt from earlier in the day, she passed the exam.

  Eventually, Rhonda’s increasingly erratic behavior began to draw attention. One of her friends knocked on the door of her apartment to check on her one evening, but Rhonda, her paranoia increasing each day, was convinced it was somebody trying to break into her apartment. On another occasion, Rhonda called the police in tears, claiming somebody was trying to break in, but when they arrived it proved to be untrue.

  Rhonda also started to believe there were hidden cameras in her apartment walls, filming her every move. One afternoon, Jim Smith was working at the Lehigh Valley Railroad when he received a call from his daughter.

  “Dad,” Rhonda said.

  “Yeah?” Jim replied.

  “You’d better call A Current Affair,” she said, referring to the television newsmagazine program.

  “For what?” Jim asked, completely baffled.

  “You’d better get a hold of Maury Povich,” Rhonda said, referring to the show’s host. “You’d better call him, because they have cameras in my room. Watching me.”

  Jim was overwhelmed with feelings of fear, worry, and sympathy for his daughter. He had known she was under pressure, but the full extent of Rhonda’s suffering had been a mystery to him until this phone call.

  It’s over, he thought sadly to himself. Rhonda was only a few short weeks away from her graduation date, but suddenly, her longtime dream of becoming a teacher seemed nothing short of impossible.

  “Rhonda,” he said. “Pack your things and come on home.”

  “Yeah,” his daughter’s sad, weak voice replied. “’Cause I’m scared.”

  “Come on home,” Jim said again.

  But by now, Rhonda was in no state to drive, and others at the school had taken notice. Two of the university’s psychiatrists convinced Rhonda to check into the Geisinger Medical Center, just fifteen minutes away from Bloomsburg University.

  Rhonda eventually agreed to go, but upon arriving, her paranoia had reached dangerously high levels. She threw away all the contents of her purse before entering the hospital so nobody would know who she was. Upon entering, she ran to a payphone to call her father and, when security tried to restrain her, she screamed, “Rape!”

  Rhonda was calmed after speaking with her parents, who assured her she needed to agree to a seventy-two-hour stay for her own health and safety. But the calmness was not to last. Later that day, when she was brought to her room and introduced to her roommate, Rhonda was convinced the black-haired, dark-eyed woman had “the eyes of the Devil.”

  During the night, Rhonda awoke to find her roommate sleeping peacefully, and fled to the bathroom to avoid looking at her. Staring into the mirror, Rhonda removed the tampon from her body and, after washing some of the blood from it, used it to draw a cross on her forehead, believing this would prevent evil spirits from harming her.

  That next morning, the doctors discovered Rhonda alone and naked inside her room, shouting and threatening her roommate whenever she tried to come back inside, calling her a devil. Rhonda believed if she wasn’t wearing her clothes, she could not be seen, and she pulled open all the drapes on the windows to allow as much sunlight as possible into the room to ward off the evil spirits.

  Eventually, the doctors wrapped her in blankets and took her into isolation, which consisted of a room with only an uncovered mattress and a red call button in case she needed help. Rhonda was calmer, having been provided with antipsychotic medication, but she still felt evil spirits were all around her. During one instance in the bathroom, she smashed her head against the mirror, shattering it, and giving herself a permanent quarter-inch scar above the eyebrow. At the time, she felt as if a higher power was pushing her into the wall against her will.

  Two days after Rhonda was first hospitalized, Jim, Dorothy, and Gary came down to see her. Her parents assumed she had suffered a nervous breakdown, that the stress of college had proven too much for her. It was only when they finally saw Rhonda for the first time that they realized the severity of the problem.

  Rhonda sat there almost in a trance, barely able to speak or acknowledge her parents’ presence. She stared straight ahead with a glassy, distant look to her eyes. It was those eyes that bothered Jim the most, causing him to break down and cry right there at the hospital, in despair that this had to happen to his daughter when she was so close to reaching her dream of becoming a teacher. Dorothy hugged Rhonda and grasped her hands, which felt cold to the touch.

  It was November 21, 1991, when Rhonda Smith was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. What Rhonda had previously dismissed as “mood swings” were actually abrupt periods of mania and depression that were typical symptoms of the psychiatric diagnosis. The agitation, poor temper control, reckless behavior, lack of sleep: All of these symptoms of Rhonda’s life for the past several months were symptoms of bipolar disorder.

  It was difficult for Jim and Dorothy to believe, especially considering that Rhonda never caught so much as a fever or a cold growing up, but they soon learned it was common for the illness to strike in a person’s early twenties. As hard as it was for them to accept, however, it was nearly impossible for Rhonda. She refused to believe the diagnosis at first, just as many people don’t when they are first diagnosed with the disorder.

  When December 15, 1991, came, Rhonda would indeed graduate from Blooms
burg University, but not with the teaching certification she had so desperately sought. Instead, her degree was in business administration, for which she had already earned enough credits long ago. Jim and Dorothy came out, took pictures with her, cheered her on—provided all the moral support their daughter could want. But in Rhonda’s mind, she was a failure.

  Rhonda struggled against the idea that she had bipolar disorder in those first months, still clinging to the hope of earning her certification. “I don’t have bipolar,” she would repeatedly insist. “I don’t have bipolar, I don’t have bipolar, I don’t have bipolar.” She tried three times to take the teaching certification test after she graduated, but whenever the time would come, the illness would take over. The best way she could think of to describe it to her family was to say that her “mind was racing.” Her thoughts were so fast and so jumbled it was impossible to concentrate, and Rhonda would end up just sitting in place, almost comatose, just waiting for her racing mind to stop.

  Some days, you could hardly tell there was anything wrong with Rhonda at all. She’d be laughing, smiling, joking; Jim would give her a call in the morning and his daughter’s bubbly voice would reply, “Up and at ’em, Dad-e-o!” But other days, her mind would start racing again, and that starry-eyed look that had so saddened her parents at Geisinger Medical Center would return.

  You could follow her mood swings by the fluctuation in her weight: When she was happy, she slimmed down, and when the illness took hold, she became heavier. By now, Rhonda was on medication, and she never returned to the rock bottom levels she reached in those darkest days at Bloomsburg and Geisinger. Nevertheless, she had to be hospitalized several times over the next few years. On some days, like the day she visited that shooting range, she considered ending it all altogether.

  But as the years passed, Rhonda worked hard to build a life for herself. In the first few years after her diagnosis, her father had to help her manage her finances because, as Rhonda put it, she was “bouncing checks like a rubber ball.” She worked a number of jobs, again most often cashier work or customer service: jobs that allowed her to talk to people, which she enjoyed. Sometimes she would get down on herself, regretful that she wasn’t teaching, and would say to her father, “Jeez, I’m not going nowhere.”

  Keeping a job for more than a few years was a challenge due to the illness, and so Rhonda was often in dire financial straits, but she insisted on living on her own and paying rent for her apartments herself, which made her family proud. She never lived more than five miles away from her parents and, although the illness sometimes led to fights, they were a source of strength for her. The Easter before she died, Rhonda wrote a four-page letter to her father, thanking him for inspiring her never to give up despite her illness. She also wrote a poem for her mother, which ended with, “I am very fortunate because she shows me the truth when all I see is black. My mother is the best gift of all.”

  It was the winter of 2005 when Rhonda and Dorothy first came to the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Jim himself never joined them. When Rhonda would invite him, he’d shrug and reply, “I went when I was young.”) They had gone to several other churches in the area, but still hadn’t found one that really suited them. This congregation was fairly small, and most of its members were much older than Rhonda, but she and her mother both liked the place right away. They especially liked the music from the choir, and the friendly new pastor, who managed to keep his sermons funny and enjoyable while maintaining his strong spiritual convictions.

  New attendees always created an atmosphere of excitement and curiosity around Trinity Evangelical, and this proved to be doubly the case for Rhonda Smith, who was attractive and didn’t quite fit into the church’s age demographic. From the morning of that first service, when Rhonda and Dorothy joined the church members for some after-service coffee and conversation, Rhonda immediately clicked with the congregation, particularly with longtime member Judy Zellner. Soon, Rhonda was singing in the choir, spending more and more time at the church, and joining the other ladies for shopping and other social engagements.

  But her bipolar disorder proved to be a challenge for Rhonda even during these happy times, and soon she was having difficulties with her finances again. She confided these troubles to Pastor Gregory Shreaves who, although he didn’t know Rhonda particularly well, provided her with counseling on a handful of occasions. The church had an informal network of congregants with stronger financial means than the others. It was Shreaves who, around the Christmas of 2007, decided to reach out to that network and see if they could help Rhonda out.

  It wasn’t much, maybe a couple thousand dollars in total, but the gifts they gave Rhonda allowed her to pay her rent, electric and phone bills. Rhonda was extremely grateful for the assistance from the church, which had already helped her overcome so many difficulties in her life. Rhonda asked Shreaves whether she could stand up at the next service and thank the congregation for their generosity, and he agreed. This is what a church is, he thought. It’s helping others and giving thanks.

  And so, during a Sunday morning service in January 2008, just weeks before her death, Rhonda stood up in front of the entire congregation and thanked them for their moral, spiritual, and financial assistance. She spoke about her bipolar disorder, how difficult her life could be, and how much she appreciated their understanding and support. She thanked them all, especially the pastor, and expressed how much better it made her feel to know she had friends she could truly count on.

  “You helped me out,” Rhonda put it simply. “I was sick, and you helped me.”

  Although clearly emotional, Rhonda remained stoic and dry eyed as she sat down following the announcement. But Judy Zellner’s eyes swelled with tears of pride to see how far Rhonda had come in the two years since joining the church. As Judy looked around the church, she saw others had been moved to tears as well, while some were smiling and nodding in Rhonda’s direction. One longtime congregant, Paul Rose, was impressed with Rhonda’s courage. He believed Rhonda’s life had changed for the better during her time at the church, and he felt joyful that she had been given that opportunity.

  Amid all the happy and emotional expressions in the crowd, however, one woman sat motionless, staring straight ahead, with no visible reaction on her face.

  It was Mary Jane Fonder.

  CHAPTER 11

  “How are you going to feel sitting in that pew alone?” Pastor Shreaves asked Dorothy Smith on a visit to the Smiths’ house in the days after Rhonda died.

  “She won’t be alone,” Jim Smith chimed in. “I’ll sit with her.”

  Although he had never regularly attended the church, Jim Smith kept his word. He started going to church with his wife every week, starting with a memorial service at the nearby Trinity United Church of Christ the morning of Friday, January 25. Jim felt it was his responsibility to be there for his wife by taking Rhonda’s place at her side in the pew.

  More than sixty people went out to Trinity United that morning. It was a somber service where members of the community said prayers, sang songs, and silently reflected on the tragedy that had so shaken their spiritual home. Serena Sellers, the assistant to the bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, spoke to the congregation about how their presence at the service proved how loved Rhonda was in the community.

  “There are so many questions,” she said at the service, according to a report in The Intelligencer, the local Bucks County newspaper. “But despite all the things we don’t know, we know the truth of life. In the midst of all the suffering, the pain and sin, we know Jesus.”

  Sellers strongly urged the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church congregation not to let the murder deter them from coming together to worship, nor from welcoming strangers and new members into their midst.

  “Somewhere, someone felt a need to do this,” Sellers said. “But our prayers need to be strong enough that God will be stronger than sin.”

  Pastor Shre
aves took a few moments to speak as well and echoed Serena’s words.

  “We are grieving the loss of a sister and disciple of Christ,” he said. “There is disbelief, anger, and sadness. I invite the members of our tiny congregation down the road to affirm every emotion we feel.”

  Shreaves also pointed out that the theme of his recent pastors’ retreat, where he was when he learned Rhonda died, was “Solid Word, Shaky Ground.”

  “How true we know both of these to be today,” he said. “This death is not the final victory.”

  The service was hard for Jim and Dorothy, both of whom sat silently in the pew and tried, not always successfully, to hold back their tears. It was doubly hard on Jim, who was suspicious as well as mournful. He looked upon the other church members around him with an almost unexplainable feeling of mistrust and disdain. It wasn’t that he suspected they hurt Rhonda, not really. But they were the ones closest to her in the days before she died, and he couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about them.

  Mostly, though, he just missed his daughter. After all that she had been through and survived in her life, Jim hated that her life had come to an end this way.

  Leaving the church, Jim and Dorothy were approached by a reporter from The Intelligencer, who asked them whether they thought Rhonda’s death was a homicide or a suicide. Jim’s answer was instant and unequivocal.

  “She did not do this to herself,” he told the reporter. “She was brought up to believe in God. A self-murderer does not get into the kingdom of heaven.”

  “It’s impossible,” Dorothy agreed, then reflected on the horrific nature of the murder.

  “Someone goes into a church and kills someone,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess they don’t like churches.”