Do the Crime, Pay the Time

Food is a necessity of life; it allows us to fuel our bodies to live. It is the center of our society.  We gather for holidays that revolve around food. We gather for birthdays that revolve around cake and ice cream. We gather as families to celebrate and food is the spotlighted. We get married and the new couples spend hours deciding what to serve the guests and what kind of cake to have. People die and we have meals to celebrate their life. We have parties and we plan to the finest detail what we will serve our guests. We go to sporting events and we eat hot dogs and drink beer. We have picnics, we pack coolers. We take meals to the ill, we take meals to families that have lost a loved one, and food is our comfort.

Our mothers give us food when we are hurt or sad. Our loved ones send us chocolates to proclaim their love for us. We give candy for Easter, Halloween, Christmas and Valentines. It is attached to everything we do. But for many, food is evil. It cannot be controlled.  It is craved and it provides comfort.

Worm was not fat when I married Killer. She was like any other child that age. She was pleasingly plump. Her face was round and she had a little meat on her bone, but she was not fat. Killer thought she was though. She was entering that awkward age of coming out on the other end as pretty or again, pretty ugly. Killer insisted she diet.  That is when the food inventory began.

Worm had just lost her Mother.  Killer did not allow her to attend the funeral.  Killer did not allow her to visit her Mother in the hospital. I am betting, while he was at the hospital with his wife, she had been carded into her room while he was gone as he did not believe in babysitters.

Within six weeks after she lost her Mother, he brings this woman home that he spends a considerable amount of time with and she is ignored by him. She was the “hired” help that wasn’t paid.  Clean the house, pick up the clothes, do the dishes and attend school. 

Killer didn’t talk about Molly.  I came to his house for the first time about seven weeks after he lost his wife.  He told me he had to remove all the photos of her before I came over. I don’t know why. I didn’t ask him to, but he insisted. My Bill has been gone for eight years and I still have photos of him around the house and I do not put them away when others come over. So I understand why Worm turned to food for comfort. He was not there to offer her comfort.  He removed anything that reminded him of her immediately. He did not talk about her and he did not encourage her to.

She would eat dinner in her room behind closed doors.  He and I ate in the library.  We did not sit down to the dinner table, it would have required him to turn the heat on in that room and he kept the house very cold.  Each room had its own individual thermostat and if we didn’t use the room, the heat was so low that you swore you were in a meat locker. But I will expound on that later as that is worth a blog of its own.

When Worm would gather our dishes and return to the kitchen, she would eat the leftovers on the plate.  Killer caught her doing this and all hell broke loose.  He called her names that are not repeatable. He pointed out how fat she was and how no one would love her if she were fat. So, the controls were tightened.

When you apply controls  people rebel, ask me, I know all about it.  She started sneaking food.  Things that you would not even think that she’d eat without preparing them, she ate.  She’d sneak frozen TV dinners into her room and hide them under her mattress to eat later. She’d open up cans of beans and hide them in the back of the refrigerator drawer with a spoon in the can so she could grab a quick bite when necessary.  She’d have open cans in the cupboard with baggies over it and forget it was there.  I would notice ants crawling everywhere and start tearing in to the cupboards to discover a can that was tucked away covered in mold and critters.  I would go ballistic! This was probably why I spanked her.

I would walk into her room and the stench would knock me over.  I’d start ripping into her room knowing somewhere I would find something lurking and hoping it had not grown eyes and fur.

But what set me off the most is that when I asked her if she knew anything about this, she’d look at me with those big brown eyes and without hesitation claim she had no idea how this stuff happened.  She was as surprised as I was that I would find these mountains of mold growing between her mattresses or in cupboards. If you are a parent, you know what I am talking about.  Things mysteriously happen and no one knows how.

Worm invented the milk moustache long before Got Milk came along. There was a door that separated the kitchen from the hall and one from the dining room. Both remained closed to keep the heat in each room but if I came through the door from the hallway, she could hear the door handle as I grabbed to open it, but the other door was a swinging door, so I could surprise her with no sound but the swish of the door and the gasp in her breath.

One particular night I was watching her through the crack of the swinging door.  She was taking forever to do her dishes and I was growing impatient with her lollygagging so I watched to see if she was being productive or daydreaming.  She was in the refrigerator; eyes glazed from the variety of treats laid before her.  All she would have to do is ask, but she chose to sneak.  In those days I bought food for the week and I cooked more often than eating out, so I might have bought something for a meal and all I asked was that she ask me if she wanted something so I would not go for something to discover it was missing.

She grabbed the milk carton and removed the lid, she looked around, knowing she was sneaking and when she felt safe no one was watching or coming, she drew that milk jug back and took a swig of that creamy white delight just as I swung that door opened, my head spinning similar to my Mother.  “What are you doing?” “Nothing.”  “Did you just take a swig of milk out of the carton?” “NO.”

NO? Just as clear as you could say it, she spoke it without hesitating or choking on the milk as she swallowed it.  Milk clinging to her upper lip and a drip on the edge of her lip, she looked me in the eye and swore she did not drink any milk. She challenged me with her sneaking of food like I challenged my Mother with the curfew. I would be so angry with her.  Killer told me she had to lose weight and it was up to me to see that she did it.  I was giving her portion control but she was craving comfort and she found it in food.

Food was the root of all evil for Worm.  Because she was considered fat to Killer, he refused her breakfast and lunch.  Anyone would be famished by dinner time, but Killer wasn’t budging on this.  When she went to high school, there was an open campus and Worm did what any child would do that is controlled, she figured out how to eat and she didn’t care what happened.

It was late one afternoon in her sophomore year, when I got a call from the school and the East Lansing Police.  She had gone to lunch off campus. Walking from the high school to the 7-11 in downtown East Lansing, she helped herself to food.  For a while she got away with it, but in time you will get caught.  She got caught and the pieces to the puzzle were put together.

She would go to 7-11 and help herself to whatever she was feeling like having that day and then she would skip the class that followed lunch.  Killer was livid! How dare she drag the Henshaw name through the mud.  Henshaw’s were not thieves!

I knew she felt bad, who wouldn’t it, but she was hungry and he could have agreed to allow her to have a meal before dinner time each night. We ended up going to juvenile court to address this issue before the court.  He rode her non-stop until that court date arrived and he reminded her almost daily of what a disgrace she was to the Henshaw name.

She was just shy of turning fifteen when this happened. She was shaking like a leaf when we walked toward the building that housed the court room.  Killer had pretty much convinced her she’d be dragged away in cuffs and would be eating bread and water from now on.  Honestly, she was probably thinking this was a better deal than what she had at home, but any child would be scared.

The Judge slapped her wrist and told her that if she saw her in her court again, the consequences would be more intense.  I had thought this would have been enough to curb her new found habit, but it wasn’t.  The Court had informed her she could end up in foster care if this continued but she didn’t seem to care.  Food is a requirement to living and Killer was not providing sufficient food for a growing teenager.

At fifteen, she apparently didn’t believe the Judge and she did this once again. It was about this time that Killer dropped the bomb that she was not even his.  He had adopted her when he married her mom and he didn’t even want her.  This is not how you tell a child who has been led to believe for fifteen years that she is your daughter that she was adopted and not wanted.

Worm and I went to Juvenile Court the second time without Killer.  He was done.  She was an embarrassment to him and he wanted nothing to do with her.  Now, don’t think for a minute that he gave up his control; he just shifted the disciplinary responsibility to me and he controlled the strings to this puppets.

Things were not looking good for Worm when we went to the Courtroom.  It had not been that long ago that she had her hands slapped and the Judge was going to take her matter into consideration.

Killer made the decision before the Courts could.  She was moving out of East Lansing as soon as he could make the arrangements.  He really was done with her and her lying and stealing.

He called Mollie Belles brother and sister in law and explained to them some of the situation.  He wasn’t completely honest with them about the extent of the issues that we were confronted with.  It wasn’t just the stealing and lying, but there were issues at school as well that were going to blow up sooner than later.  Killer thought it was best to pull her and place her where there was less opportunity to screw up.  Her Uncle Chuck was such a nice guy. He was Mollie Belles brother and he and his wife took her into their home in Alabama with open arms.  They remembered Worm as this cute little girl who pulled at your heartstrings when she was living in her single digit days. That little girl disappeared and probably when her Mother died.

I had written to them without Killer’s knowledge to give them the whole story.  I could not allow her to manipulate them and I knew that she would.  She no longer knew the truth from a lie and she could be so convincing when she wanted to be.  They gave her the benefit of the doubt and allowed her to change, but when you go from a very controlled environment to a slightly controlled environment, you go crazy and she went crazy nuts.

Within five weeks, Chuck’s wife Saundra had called me in tears and said that they could no longer do this.  They had raised their son and they were too old to deal with this girl. They lived out in the middle of nowhere in Alabama, but it didn’t keep her from finding trouble.  She’d sneak out of the house and take off with the boys.  They would go into town and hear others talking about their wild niece. This was not acceptable and she was more than they wanted to handle.  Saundra was just so upset that they couldn’t take care of her since she was Chuck’s niece, but it was what it was.

I had to tell Killer. Again he flew off the handle.  He pointed out that I was always standing up for her and he was right about her. What could I say? I had hoped that she would see this as an opportunity to change.  I thought she’d see this as her opportunity to free herself from the chains that had bound her. This was her free get out of jail card and she too young to see the door that was opened for her to fly as fast as she could from East Lansing.

Killer called Chuck.  It was summer time and he made arrangements to come pick her up.  She was not to be informed of this change in plans that would again rock her world and throw her back into his control.

We had to re enroll her in East Lansing High School.  We had to meet with the Courts to inform them that she was returning. They were considering foster care, but I promised them that I’d take full responsibility of her and that she had improved in her time away.  Lord, I needed help. Killer was not in favor of this arrangement, but he had to pick her up as her “own blood relatives” didn’t want her.

We drove down to Alabama to pick her up.  They had taken her somewhere knowing about our estimated arrival time.  She came in to the house and the look on her face was that of terror, for there we sat at the dining room table waiting for her to return to take her back to her living hell.