It was cold enough to see your breath. The collar to my fuzzy peacoat was pulled up so I could keep warm and hide from the cold. We were outside and I was watching Mom make several trips to the house, loading the car with black trash bags full of clothing. Dad was there crying and trying to talk to Mom. Granny was in her wheelchair at the front door with a blanket tossed over her legs. I made a few trips inside, passing Granny’s sad face as I grabbed my favorite toys. I was happy to be going on a trip but Granny and Daddy didn’t seem to be happy about it.
Mom told me that were were going to see her friend, Mrs. Selena and her daughter Diana who was about my age. We’d visited Mrs. Selena’s house and stayed there before. Their home was two stories and they had horses and a pool. Diana was not my favorite playmate. Her blonde hair reminded me of the girl from Poltergeist and she was not a fan of sharing any of her toys. I was always willing to see past those things if it meant I could pet their horses.
I kissed Granny goodbye and hugged my Dad tight around the neck. I specifically remember telling him that we were , “only going to Mrs. Selena’s. It will be ok, Daddy.” He cried harder and I didn’t understand. Mom and I climbed into our 2 door black Caprice Classic and drove away. I loved riding and road trips. I squeezed my off brand Cabbage Patch doll, Genie and rode off with Mom.
It did not register with me that Rebecca was not there to say goodbye nor was she with us for this trip. I learned later that she knew the truth and was left behind by my mother once again to live with friends until she graduated high school.
My father’s story of this day is different. He claims to have come home to an empty house, surprised by our disappearance. I have asked my mother if my memory was correct and she verifies that he was there. I learned later that he may have lied in order to file a missing persons report, to protect his image or maybe the stress of the event caused him to put it out of his mind. I remember the day well and can still smell his neck, feel my coat and see the steam from the tailpipe of our car circle us as I hugged him.
Mom and I made our first stop at a trailer park I did not recognize. It was a small trailer park and each trailer had a driveway and carport for each home. It was a single wide trailer with light colors and wooden steps to the front door. I was told to stay in the car while Mom spent some time inside. I could see a small kitchen table from the bay window at the front of the trailer. She didn’t stay there long and came back out with Mr. Keith. I remember her telling me that Mr. Keith was “going to drive us to the state line.” I didn’t know what that meant but asked if we were going to Mrs. Selena’s and mom said, “No, go to sleep.”
This was not the first time I’d met Mr. Keith. When we lived in our red brick home on Arizona Street, Mr. Keith would come around occasionally. When Mom bartended, he would drive her home and I’d watch them in the kitchen from the couch, where I’d fall asleep some nights. I could hear them laughing and talking in the kitchen in hushed tones. Mr. Keith and Mom took me to a fair once. They both had too much to drink at the fair and Mr. Keith attempted to drive mom and I home. He was driving our black Caprice and I was snuggled in the back when I woke up to a hard thud and Mom panicking. He had driven us into a very deep ditch full of water. Several people pulled over to help us but Mom eventually had to call Dad. Dad was able to get the car out of the ditch, let them drive it home and put me in the truck with him. Looking back at this incident as an adult, I realize how well he handled himself. I’ll never know how this made him feel but I’m sure it added to the many issues we were having as a family.
Back to the same car on New Year’s Eve of 1989, I vaguely remember Mr. Keith driving us because I was probably asleep in the backseat as Mom ordered. I woke up and we were parked at a dark gas station. Mr. Keith was getting out of the car and Mom got into the driver’s seat. They hugged and he gave her some money and they said goodbye to one another. We left Mr. Keith at the gas station. I’m not sure what his plan was but he may have caught a bus or hitchhiked back home. It was 1989 and hitchhiking was still a legit way to travel back them.
We’d been driving for just a few hours and Mom told me that we had about 4 hours left. It finally resonated with me that we lied to Dad about where we were going. I had lied to Dad. I was heartbroken.
It was very late at night when we pulled into a suburban neighborhood. There were houses right next to each other and they all looked alike. I’d never seen anything like this before. Suburban development was not a normal concept in southwest Louisiana at that time. You purchased land, you built your own house the way you wanted it. The visual of sidewalks and parks in a neighborhood was just weird to me. Mom told me we were in Flour Bluff, Texas.
We pulled into the driveway of Rick and Linda Smith’s home where we were greeted by Rick, Linda, Roxanne, Jason and a very smokey house. Roxanne was a little older than me but not by much. Jason was her big brother. I was fascinated that my Mom and Mrs. Linda had the same name and they both named their sons Jason.
This thought led to, where is our Jason? Is he coming too since they have the same name? Oh, the wishful thoughts of a 6 year old. Jason was Rebecca’s full brother and my half brother that we rarely saw. Their father’s name was Billy Gable. He was my mother’s second husband. My one memory of our Jason was of a tall and thin young man standing in our kitchen at the red house on Arizona Street. His dirty blond hair was cut in a way that made it stick up in the front. As I looked up at him from my seat at the kitchen table, I don’t remember feeling any type of emotional attachment for him like I did with Rebecca and our oldest brother, Darren. Rebecca was around more often that Jason and when Darren visited, he would play with me. Darren was my mother’s first child from her first marriage to Henry Dutil. Darren was very young when they divorced, maybe 3 or 4 years old. Soon after that, she married Billy and had Rebecca and Jason. Then she divorced Billy when Rebecca and Jason were 3 or 4 years old. She’d lost custody of all 3 in each divorce. She was not allowed to see any of them for long periods of time. Her side of the story is that both husbands, her own mother and her brother, Glen, conspired against having the children removed from her custody and conspired to hide Rebecca from her. Mom claims she was also physically attacked when she tried to find the children.
I’ve only been told bits and pieces of why Mom never won custody of her children. One story is that she was deemed unfit because she had a naked poster of a man in her apartment that she refused to take down. Another story was that she left the children behind each time she left a husband for long periods of time which is considered abandonment. Another reason the courts kept her away may have been because she was dating a black man in the 1970’s in southern Mississippi. That black man was my Dad. In an effort not to stir up bad memories for my siblings, I never ask what they know or what happened. It’s their own story but sets a precedent for what happens in my story so I only tell the little bit I know. There were 3 children prior to me that were abandoned by my mother out there in the world. Seeing this family, the Smiths, made me sad that our family couldn’t be together. I had so many questions.
Saving Elizabeth 