Teenage years...

Life in the home just became normal to me after awhile. Janet was only there for 1-2 years before she graduated from high school. She was able to go to nursing school and later become a register nurse. I was always so proud to have a sister that was a nurse. When we still lived at home during her freshman year, she attended school at a convent. She wanted to be a hospital nun. I think she just did it to get out of our house. Dad used to take us to visit her once a month in Riverton, IL at St Francis. I really was proud to have someone so 'holy' in our family. In my family on my mother's side, were many nuns and priests. Later in their lives they also quit the order. Everyone married and had children, it was quite an honor in a Catholic family to have someone in the religious order. The convent that Janet attended closed down after her freshman year. She came back home to live until we went to the home. I missed seeing her everyday but it made me even more independent in the long run. Linda went to a airline school located in Kansas City after graduation. Her dream was to become a ticketing agent not necessarily a flight attendant. She decided not to pursue that line of work after completing the school and moved to Florida instead. I was so proud of her because I thought she was so brave to move away from Decatur. She would move to many locations in her lifetime and loved to travel too. With my sister's both out of the home, I felt truly alone. I was still the fat girl with no dates. My friends were finding boyfriends but I never did. I remember the embarrassment I felt in gym class on the days that the middle divider was opened in the gym. We would have to share the gym with the boys. We wore navy gym suits that snapped up the front and had elastic around the legs. The elastic made a bubble look to the top of your legs. I thought that everyone was looking at my fat thighs. I felt like I was enormous. I covered my shame with laughter. I poked fat jokes at myself so I could laugh at myself first. I have kept that up my entire life...always the funny one. I was terrible at gym. I didn't know how to play the simplest of games. We didn't play baseball, soccer, hockey or any other sport. I was never around boys so I only knew girly things. I hated the day we had to do the 600 run on the track. It was like the worst day possible. I was always last.

Mrs Pratt had retired the last year I lived in the home. I was glad to see her go. She was still wearing her squeaky shoes the day she left. We got new houseparents after she left. Mr and Mrs Shales, they had a house built in the back yard of Webster Hall. They had two children of their own so they didn't want to live in the actual building that we lived in. I thought things would be better when they took over and to a point it was better. I was still my bossy self and my attitude had gotten much worst. I didn't want to live in the home anymore and 2 more years seemed like a lifetime. I think we all felt pretty jealous because the Shales had a home and a real life and we didn't. Mrs. Shales seemed to be the one in charge for the most part but I think Mr Shales really did the dictating and she followed his command. Mr Shales had a heart attack and had to be in the hospital for awhile. Even after getting out of the hospital he had to stay home and take it easy.

I was in charge of the dish washing room for the month. It was my job to be sure all the dishes were clean and put away. It was run like a military operation. One to scrap, one to rinse, one to run the dishwasher, two to put away dishes. It usually worked well. That is accept for this one day...Melinda, was on ketchup and mustard detail. That involved taking small dishes of mustard & ketchup and scrapping the remains back into the large jars. After emptying the small containers she was to bring them to the dish washing room so we could wash them. This day as most days she was very slow. She always marched to her own drummer anyway. I kept telling her to hurry up and get them in there so I could shut down the room. She didn't listen to me after many attempts to get her to hurry. I told her that she would have to wash them by hand because I was shutting it down. I did what I said. We all finished up and went back to floors for the rest of the evening. That night, Mr Shales, decided to come over to the main house and do a surprise inspection. He was still very fragile from his recent surgery. I had heard he was down in the kitchen...I knew it was a matter of time for I got called down there. Sure enough I heard my last name being called over the loud speaker..."Layton get down here!" I didn't hurry, in fact I think I said, 'I'm not going down there'...I knew he couldn't walk the stairs. I waited for quite awhile and then I finally went down to the kitchen. He was waiting for me and he was very angry. He grabbed me by the arm and started to yell at me. I snapped. I grabbed him and threw him against the wall and told him to keep his hands off of me. Now honestly, no one was more surprised than me. I didn't let my fear show though. I stood tough and defended my ground. I did wash the dishes but I wasn't happy about it. He left and went home. I went back upstairs to watch TV. What I didn't know is that they had to call the ambulance to his house because he almost had another heart attack. Later that night, Mrs Shales, called me out of the TV room. She was crying and she got in my face. She shouted, "I hope you know my husband almost died tonight." I looked her straight in the eye and said, "I wish he had died." It just kills me to know I could be so hateful to someone in such pain.

I don't know what happened exactly after that. I was called to the front office the next day. I was told that I was going home to live with my dad & Juanita in their apartment on a trial basis. If it didn't work out I was going have to go live in a convent until I was 18. I secretly began thinking of all the things I could do to the nuns. I didn't care what happened to me anymore.

I packed one suitcase and my dad picked me up. Now I was back with the same family that didn't want me. We lived in a two bedroom apartment on Wood St. We actually lived in that apartment house 3 different times in my life. I am not clear on what happened but Juanita didn't stay with dad long after I moved in. This time there was an actual divorce. I know that dad was still drinking and I am sure that played a very big role in that final breakup. Also it had been the first time they had ever lived alone, now she had me again. Only the girl that came back to live this time was not the chubby little girl that had once lived with her. Now I had a big dose of attitude. It must have been hard on her.

After she moved out, I became the 'wife'. I made the grocery list, cooked the food, cleaned the house and I liked it. I felt so grown up. I could watch TV whenever I wanted. I was still in the same high school with my same friends. It was a fun time in my life because my dad was so busy drinking in the bars he left me alone a lot. He would call me and tell me what to fix for dinner. That was my time to learn to cook, by trial and error. I didn't have anyone to teach me so we had some pretty nasty meals. I would take the bus after school and then go to a friends house or go downtown and hangout. I would take the bus home making sure that I got home right before dad did. He never knew what I was doing. It was frustrating at times because I would fix dinner and then he wouldn't come home to eat. I was to put his dinner in a pie tin, covered with aluminum foil, in the oven on 'warm'. He would come home drunk and eat his dinner after I had gone to bed. I hated it, I felt like a wife waiting for her husband to come home. Once I decided, hell with it, and I threw his dinner away. When he came home that night he woke me up and made me cook him a whole new dinner. I never threw his supper away again.

He used to sit at the kitchen table and drink Mogan David wine out of a big jug. He would have me sit at the table with him while he talked and talked. He would smack his lips together while talking....I hated it. I hated the way he smelled of booze. He bounced into the walls and walked around in his underwear. It was very uncomfortable for me. But it was better than being in the home. I can't be sure because my memories refuse to let me know but I think he molested me during that time. I remember him whistling at me in my shorty pajamas at night. It made my skin crawl. I remember being in bed one night and he came into my room. He sat on my bed and kissed me. I don't know what happened next but I remember sitting at the top of my bed with my arms folded and my knees drawn up to my chest. I was rocking back and forth. Maybe I was just scared or maybe something happened. I try not to dwell on it. I do think he left a terrible imprint on my life though.

During this time I also remember the best years of my life. My girlfriends and I had great slumber parties on the weekends. We took turns staying at each others house. It was great. We learned all kinds of things. We did fun things like doing each others hair and nails. We ate like pigs talked about boys and could split one small bottle of Sloe Gin between 12 girls. We learned how to kiss from one of the girls' older brother's. We put each other into to trances. Such wonderful friends, such great friends and most of us are still friends even to this day. These are the things I choose to remember about my teenage years.

Of course, all good things come to an end. Dad had found a new step-mother for me. Her name was Kathryn and he thought she had money because she had a nice home. Kathryn thought he had money because he had a good job...a marriage based on deceit. We moved out of our apartment and moved into her house. I was to now become the daughter again and she would be the wife. That was a very hard transition for me. I had lost my freedom once again. I did have one week to myself while they went on their honeymoon though...that wasn't good.

I was sixteen, I was angry and I had lost my place in life. Kathryn was very nice to me but she was a stranger. I no longer needed nor wanted a mother in my life. I introduced her as my father's wife, never my step-mother. She was very particular about her home. She was a very neat and orderly person. I also gained another step-brother Gary and a step-sister Carol. They were much older. Carol was married and had three children. Gary was divorced and a misfit in life per his mother. I didn't know Gary well at all. I was told while they were on their honeymoon I was not to let Gary in the house because he wanted his gun. I was not to give him his gun under any circumstances. Guess who came over to visit when he knew Kathryn was out of town? Gary! Guess who got his gun back? Gary! I wasn't going to stand up to someone I didn't know and I sure wasn't going to fight someone over a gun!