She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [6]
The tricks she played often came back to haunt Celeste. By high school some teens didn’t want her around. Gail Sharkey, one of her best friends, found Celeste full of life and exhilarating. She was perplexed by how others responded to her. On weekends when they circulated from house party to house party, they were often told to leave by teenagers who didn’t like Celeste. Gail grew angry, but Celeste laughed and shouted curses at those who’d kicked her out.
“Why doesn’t anyone like you?” Gail asked one evening, stating what she thought was the obvious. Celeste looked crestfallen. “Before, she never acted like she cared, but she looked as if she didn’t realize it, and that I’d hurt her feelings.”
Years later Gail would also remember her friend’s recklessness. One afternoon they drove in Craig’s Toyota truck, listening to Fleetwood Mac on the radio, when Craig and some friends came after them in a car. Laughing, Celeste gunned the engine and took off just as the passenger door flew open. Gail fell out. Her pant leg caught on the door and she was dragged for three hundred feet before Celeste pulled into a driveway. “I had a heavy jacket on, or I would have been hurt,” says Gail. “My whole body was shaking.”
Weeks later that same truck was a pile of scrap. Celeste chuckled telling Gail how she and Craig argued. She said she pulled on the steering wheel and drove it off the road, where the truck rolled. Uninsured, it was a total loss. For weeks after, Celeste wore a thick cervical collar and claimed her neck was broken.
Meanwhile, in the courts, the Johnson divorce ground painfully on, the proceedings progressively more bitter. On the stand, during testimony, Edwin was startled by one question in particular. Nancy’s attorney asked: “Mr. Johnson, did you ever stab Celeste?” Edwin insisted he hadn’t.
Later, testifying for her mother, Celeste insisted that her father had stabbed her. Edwin suggested his attorney ask where. Celeste pointed under her eye.
“Here,” she said. “But the scar disappeared.”
Not long after, Gail asked Celeste why she hadn’t been at school. “I had to go to testify against my father,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”
Gail wondered why her friend never mentioned the attack before. They were together nearly every day, and she had never seen bandages on Celeste, except the cervical collar. All that was forgotten just weeks later when Celeste had yet another crisis: She discovered she was pregnant and dropped out of school. As usual, when she told Gail, the story was far from ordinary. It wasn’t just a case of teenage pregnancy, it was a miracle. “I was told I could never get pregnant,” Celeste said.
“I couldn’t imagine why any doctor would say that to a healthy seventeen-year-old,” says Gail. “The whole thing just seemed really, really odd.”
On December 6, 1980, Celeste Johnson married Craig Bratcher. The seventeen-year-old bride was heavily pregnant with what by then doctors predicted would be twins. She wore a sleeveless red gingham maternity dress with a tuck-pointed front trimmed in white cotton lace that hung loosely across her rounded abdomen. The groom, by then nineteen, wore a blue and white shirt and jeans. It was a small affair, just family and close friends, and the cake had two tiers, with wedding bells and a brave little pouf of white netting at the top.
After the wedding, the young couple moved into a rented flat in nearby Oxnard. Gail visited during the day when Craig was at work. On February 6, 1981, she drove up to find Celeste, who’d been ordered by her doctor to stay in bed until the births, walking down the street on her way home from a liquor store, where she’d bought junk food and candy. Gail parked the car and they went inside.
“I don’t do bed rest,” Celeste said. “But I’ve been feeling