I took the phone from Jim and began scanning the post for any mention of a rape. His search engine included a highlight feature, where keywords would show up in color. And midway down the page, there it was: the word rape in blazing yellow.
“Jim,” I said. “Oh my God. Jim.” I read from the screen: “The Piracci trial at which Mrs. D’Alesandro testified was immediately followed by a child gang rape trial against the mayor’s twenty-year-old son, Franklin Roosevelt D’Alesandro.”
My husband was visibly shaken.
“The FBI describes the ugly case in a January 30, 1961 memo as follows,” I went on. “During the summer of 1953, Mayor D’Alesandro’s son, Franklin Roosevelt D’Alesandro, aged twenty, was one of fourteen youths charged with having committed rape or perverted practices on two girls, aged eleven and thirteen, during July of that year.”
That was as far as I got before I started to hyperventilate. It was as if an unseen hand had closed around my throat. I stared wildly into my husband’s eyes, taking in ragged gulps of air, feeling as if I could not fill my lungs. My husband took the phone from my hands and pulled me tight against him.
“Jim,” I cried. “Jim! What if she was telling the truth?”
Chapter 17
UNTIL THAT MOMENT, my mother had always been a two-dimensional character to me: the heedless, thoughtless, selfish free spirit. The wanton one, the capricious one, who did just what she wanted, and it was my fate to land wherever her whims blew her. My mother who flitted like a moth from one man to the next, always high, in a world of her own. My mother: the woman with no impulse control, no empathy, at perpetual war with the expectations of society.
For as long as I could remember, the story of my life went like this: My mother was the villain, and I was the victim.
But this revelation changed everything. I thought back to the day she’d touched on it for the first time. It was possible I’d goaded her into it. You were never held captive in hell, I’d said to her then, trapped with sexual predators, used as a plaything by sick people, when you were no more than a helpless child.
And she had said: You’re mistaken.
What if my mother was a victim too? What if her formative ordeal was even worse than anything I went through? What if, unlike me, she was broken by it, her sanity crushed beyond recovery? What if my mother’s multiple personalities had emerged in response to that trauma? What if it had frozen her in time, at age eleven? Agnes was eleven. I thought of all the times I’d wanted to flee from Agnes: from her petulance and fretfulness, her relentless need, her childishness. Her conviction that she was pregnant.
Jim and I spent the weekend scouring online newspaper archives for information about this crime. It was in all the papers, my mother had said. While that wasn’t precisely true, it was in a lot of them: the Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune, the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cumberland News, the Morning Herald and the Daily Mail of Hagerstown, Maryland.
Fifteen males ranging in age from fifteen to twenty-three were ultimately charged in connection with this crime. Some were charged with rape, others with “perverted sexual practices.” The names of the men were: Franklin Delano Roosevelt D’Alesandro, Philip Sudano, Michael Sudano, George Baccala, and Armand Corridi. The names of the older teens were George Kincaid, Harry West, Francis Hart, Joseph Bednor, Michael Schertle, William Krug, and Charles Cooper. The fifteen-year-olds were not named in consideration of their youth.
These accounts were frustrating in their brevity, their dispassion, their lack of depth or detail or context. Taken together, they bear unequivocal witness to a few harrowing facts. On July 21, 1953, two girls aged eleven and thirteen were picked up in a car and taken by several men to an apartment on West Preston Street. There they were violated repeatedly by upwards of a dozen adult and adolescent males over the course of a week and a half.
The young men who violated my mother were white, wealthy society men. Fourteen of the fifteen defendants pleaded guilty, but the ringleader, the mayor’s son, Franklin D’Alesandro, was acquitted after twenty-five minutes of deliberation by a jury of twelve men. None of the others served more than two months for the extended gang rape of two children.
I focused on that injustice as a way of not dwelling on the rape itself. Whenever I tried to picture that eleven-year-old girl, violated by so many men over so many days, my imagination bucked fearfully, shied sideways, skittered away. My own daughter was eleven. I could not let myself think about her in such a situation. If, as an adult, I could not even bring myself to imagine it, how could a young girl ever recover from it?
“I NEED TO go see her,” I told Jim on Sunday evening. “Tomorrow.”
He was holding me in bed. He’d been holding me for most of the past two days. We were both all but undone by what we’d learned.
“Do you want me to cancel one of my meetings and come with you?”
“It’ll be better if I’m by myself,” I told him. “I mean, she doesn’t like you most of the time.”
“True enough. But I hate the idea of you going alone.”
“It’s okay. It’ll be different this time. Everything has changed for me now. I need to let her know that I finally understand everything.”
“Just be careful,” Jim said. “Everything might have changed for you, but nothing at all has changed for her. She’s still dangerous and mentally unstable.”
THE MOMENT I pulled into my mother’s parking lot, the apartment manager emerged from his ground floor office and hurried over to intercept me. I’d met him once before, when my mother took the place and I had to co-sign her lease. He was a small, balding man who always seemed to be in a cold sweat under his ill-fitting suits. His name was Bart.
“You’re here to see Miss Florence, aren’t you?” he said. “I’m glad to see someone from her family. She’s been out-of-control crazy lately. I don’t know how much longer we can keep her here if this doesn’t turn around.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What has she done?”
“She’s been getting into fights with the other residents,” he said. “Cursing them, spitting at them, pulling their laundry out of the dryer before it’s finished and throwing it on the floor of the laundry room, screaming that it’s her turn to dry her clothes. People are afraid of her. She’s a liability for me, you have to understand.”
“I do understand,” I told him. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell her she has to stop.”
If she got kicked out of here, where the hell would she go?
I reached her apartment and knocked before realizing the door was slightly ajar. As usual, she was lying on the couch in her living room. Thinner and paler than ever, blue eyes blazing in her drawn face.
“Where have you been, Stephanie?” she demanded, pulling herself upright. “I haven’t heard from you in days. I kept calling the house but Jim said you were away. Where were you?”
Had it really been just a week since I’d checked into the Heathman? It felt like a lifetime ago. I sat down in the armchair across the coffee table from her.
“Jim and I were having some trouble,” I told her, wondering why I was bothering to disclose this. “So I decided to spend a weekend apart from him. But I’m home again now. We worked it out.”
“Too bad,” she said. “You’re better off without him.”
Just a week ago, this would have sent me into a controlled frenzy. Mom, that is so ridiculous, I would have snapped. You should be ashamed of yourself for saying that. After all he’s done for you!
But not today. Now I could sit there and remember she was mentally ill, with good reason. I didn’t have to take it personally anymore.
“Mom, your story. The one you said was in all the papers,” I said, ignoring her jab at Jim. “The one you told me to look up.” For some reason I could not bring myself to say the word rape.
“What about it?”
“I did look it up. Jim and I found it together.” I heard my own voice crack a little, saying this. “I read what happened to you
, Mom.”
She raised her head and met my gaze. “You read it?”
“I did. We did.”
“Do you believe me now?”
“I do believe you, Mom. I’m sorry I didn’t before.”
She stared at me for another moment and then her face transformed before my eyes. Relief filled her eyes and softened her jaw.
“You believe me,” she said, almost to herself. There was a note of wonder in her tone.
“I do. Jim and I, we both believe you. And I’m so sorry, Mom,” I said. I started to cry.
She sat there without saying anything, eyeing me warily.
“I can’t imagine anything more traumatic,” I said, swiping at my eyes.
“I don’t like to think about it,” she told me.
“Of course not. Those men were evil.”
“I never wanted to remember it.”
“I understand. It was the most brutal thing that could happen to anyone, let alone a child.”
Then without warning, my mother was on her feet and lunging at me, fists flailing.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Shut up!”
I sprang from the chair, almost toppling it. I caught her by the wrists and tried to still her arms, but she wrenched away and came at me again. Her strength was shocking. As thin and frail and riddled with cancer as she was, I could not contain her. She managed to land several frenzied blows before raking at my neck with her nails.
“Get out!” she shrieked. “You heartless bitch! Get the fuck out of my house!”
NO SOONER HAD she pushed me out the door than the building manager materialized again, as if he’d been lying in wait.
“Did Miss Florence attack you too?” he demanded.
“Oh . . .” I said. I struggled to catch my breath and compose myself. “She did, but it wasn’t the first time, and it likely won’t be the last.” I was trying to sound flippant, but my hands trembled as I smoothed my hair back into place.
“Call the police,” he said.
I made a gesture of dismissal, tears still running down my face. “No, it’s okay,” I said shakily. “I’m used to her. She’s my mom.”
“Please,” he said. “I’ve called so many times, they don’t take me serious anymore. But a classy lady like you, they’ll listen to you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“For her own good,” he urged. “It might be that she stopped taking her medicines. Maybe the police can make her take them. I’m afraid she’ll hurt another tenant next, and then what?”
Reluctantly I pulled my cell phone from my purse.
“This is 911, what is your emergency?”
“I was just attacked by a resident of the Commons of Hawthorn Village,” I told the dispatcher, referring to my mother’s apartment complex.
“Bless you, ma’am,” Bart said when I completed the call. “I need to keep all my renters safe, and I want to keep Miss Florence safe too.”
Within minutes several police cars pulled into the parking lot, and at least half a dozen uniformed officers joined Bart and me on the sidewalk.
“Oh, that Florence,” said a red-headed female cop. “What is she up to today?”
“You’re on a first-name basis with her?” I asked. “It sounds like you guys are here a lot.”
“We are,” she told me. “We’ve had several calls about her these past few months, bless her cantankerous heart.” She took a pen from her clipboard and held it poised over an incident report form. “All right, so what is your relationship to Miss Haskell? Are you her social worker?”
“I’m her daughter.”
The cop did a double take. “Her daughter?” she repeated. “You?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She and her partner turned to each other and exchanged glances of disbelief. While the policemen approached my mother’s apartment, I stayed with the female officers, who cooed over my earrings, my handbag, and my shoes. “Honey,” one of them said, “if I had to find Florence’s daughter in a lineup, I sure wouldn’t pick you.”
“I’ve been hearing that all my life,” I said.
“How did you . . . ?” She didn’t voice the rest of her question, and I could only guess what it would have been. How did you survive having her as a mother? How did you survive at all? How did you turn out like this? Well-heeled and presentable and apparently okay?
“I bet you’ve been through a lot, growing up with her,” she said.
“I have been through a lot,” I conceded. “But as it turns out, so has she.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the cops had taken off. I’d declined to press charges.
“She seems calm now,” one of the policemen said when he emerged from her place. “But the manager is worried about her, and to be honest, he’s right to be. If we get another call like this, we’ll have to commit her. She can’t keep terrorizing her neighbors.”
“I understand,” I told him, as I’d told Bart not half an hour ago.
Now I eased open the door to her apartment once more and stood just inside the entrance, wary of going further. My mother was back at the far end of her living room sofa, huddled into the corner of it, a blanket drawn around her bony shoulders. She looked spent and small.
“Mom,” I said. “Andrea will be getting out of school soon. I need to go pick her up. I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”
She looked up at me. All the rage was gone from her face.
“I’m sorry I was mean to you,” she said.
She looked so vulnerable. She looked like a child. I had never been able to look at my mother and see the vulnerable child inside her, but now I could. Had she been there all along?
“I’ll come back soon,” I told her. “In the meantime, Mom, please: You have to stop fighting with people. I know you like it here. I want you to be able to stay.”
She nodded and dropped her gaze to the coffee table, where prescription bottles were cluttered alongside a makeshift coffee lid ashtray, an incense burner, and a paper bag from Starbucks.
“I need to hear more of your story,” I said. “The one you told me to look up, but I’ll wait until you feel ready to tell me.”
“Next time,” she said. “But come back soon. Don’t wait too long.”
“I won’t,” I promised. She didn’t have long. We both knew that waiting was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
Chapter 18
TWO DAYS LATER, the call came from Bart.
“I’m sorry, Miss Stephanie,” he said, “but I had to call the cops on your mother again.”
“What did she do now?” I asked, cringing at this news.
“She threw coffee at another resident in the gazebo,” he said. “Luckily it wasn’t hot enough to burn, but I can’t have her here anymore.”
“Wait,” I said, clutching the phone with one hand and my head with the other. “It sounds like she needs an adjustment of her meds. That’ll happen if she’s committed to a psych ward, which is probably happening as we speak. She’ll be in there for a few weeks, so you don’t have to worry for now. Then she should be fine for quite a while once she’s out again.”
“For a while, maybe, but sooner or later she’ll be up to her old tricks,” he said. “When that happens, she’ll be the same liability to me.”
“Listen, she’s not going to live much longer.” Tears came into my eyes as I said this.
“I know she’s sick, Miss Stephanie. I’m sorry about that.”
“She isn’t just sick,” I said. “She’s dying. Like I said, she’ll be out of your way for two or three weeks and in the meantime, I won’t let her payments lapse. Just—can we let her get treatment and see how she does?”
“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I feel for you. I’m not a heartless man. But if she hurts someone, that’s on my conscience too. I could be sued for all I’m worth.”
“You’ve already done the right thing,” I pleaded. “You had her arrested. They can’t let her out if they believe she’s a danger
to herself or others. It’s her doctors’ job to make that professional assessment. And if they’re wrong, that’s on them, not you.”
I hated to hear myself badgering, begging, but I had to keep my mother’s place in the complex. It might be the last place she ever lived. I wanted her to be able to die in a place she liked.
“YOU’RE QUIET TONIGHT,” my husband said that evening. We were on the sofa in the living room, with my feet on his lap. It had been a long day. I managed to learn by noon that my mother had been committed to the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in southwest Portland. I also managed to convince Bart to let her return once she was out, at least on a trial basis.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said.
“About what?”
“This story about my mother changes everything.”
“It’s tragic beyond belief,” he said. “But what does it change? Aside from the level of empathy we might have around her bad behavior?”
“It calls all her other delusions into question. What if all her crazy rants aren’t as crazy as we’ve always thought?”
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “You mean, what if she’s a direct descendant of George Washington?”
“I know you’re joking,” I said. “But I’m not. Seriously, what if she is?”
“Come on.”
“I’ve always thought we were no one,” I said. “I mean, we were strays. Drifters, grifters, lawless, homeless, and broke . . . but my mom is smart. She talks like an educated person. I went over to her place once when Jeopardy! was on and she knew all these obscure world capitals. How on earth would she know those?”
“All kinds of people are self-educated. She’s always liked to read.”
“It’s more than that. She talks as if she came from some kind of high society. She’s always complaining that there are no acceptable suitors in her apartment complex. Suitors! Who uses that word anymore?”
“That’s still something she could have picked up from a book.”
I sat there thinking for a moment.
“You know, when I was a kid,” I said slowly, “and we were living in that motel? One day we were at the pool and she dove in and started swimming like an Olympian. I never forgot that. It didn’t fit with what I knew of her life. How did she learn to swim like that?”
American Daughter Page 16