She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [65]
In Celeste’s journal, Tracey wrote a note of encouragement, trying to convince her to participate: “You have a lot of anger you are not in touch with. You are afraid of your anger because you are afraid of the power you will have when you feel less vulnerable and you will have more personal power. Please participate; just TRY.”
That day, both women were given assignments—to write about their abuse.
Tracey wrote about her father. In four handwritten, highly emotional pages, she repeatedly asked why he hadn’t stopped her abuse, why he’d turned his back on his own children and left them at the mercy of a madwoman. “Why didn’t he do something to protect me?” she wrote. “He probably didn’t know about the sexual abuse, but when I would lock myself in my room he would allow her to beat on the door with a baseball bat.”
Celeste’s letter was typed on a computer she’d had Steve send. It came to one and a half pages, a rambling and not always truthful account of her life. In it, she charged that Craig had raped her twice, that her marriage with Harald had ended not because of her wanton spending and temper but because she’d had two tubal pregnancies and ovarian cancer. She said she’d been unable to accept Jimmy’s love. When it came to Steve, she accused herself of ruining the marriage: “I freeze, withdraw, and manipulate any situation to avoid conflicts …I see my father on top of me. I feel him touching me. I feel him making me touch him. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t make it stop.”
When Tracey read Celeste’s letter, she was deeply touched. Yet, she disagreed with her characterization of her relationship with Steve. If Steve was as Celeste described him, he was at fault. They argued, Tracey contending that around Steve, Celeste made herself powerless. “Well, screw you,” Celeste said. “I don’t need this at all.” For days they didn’t talk. When they did, Celeste told Tracey: “Let’s just be friends.”
Despondent, Tracey agreed. Then, days later, Celeste kissed her on the mouth. “I forgive you,” she said.
On Fridays the twins drove the three and a half hours from Austin to Dallas. As soon as they arrived, Celeste put them to work. She ordered them to buy things, to smuggle banned goods onto the unit: razors, a cell phone, even cigarette lighters. More than once the items were later discovered, leading to arguments between the patients. “It was awful,” says Jennifer. “Here we were smuggling in razors to a unit where people were suicidal.”
One week the girls left Austin late, and Celeste was furious when they arrived. She ordered them to go to a convenience store. She had a cigarette order from the other patients and wanted a carton for each charged to her credit card. For Easter she sent them to Wal-Mart for baskets and candy eggs. They spent that night making fifteen baskets for Celeste to give the other patients. The next day they handed them out in the day room, and the patients with multiple personalities responded by acting like small children.
For all the complaining she did about the clinic, Celeste seemed to be having fun at Timberlawn. Often Kristina longed to be at a place like that, where she could rest. Between school and commuting to Dallas to do their mother’s bidding, both the girls were exhausted. The one time Jennifer and Kristina told their mother that they didn’t want to run her errands, that they’d spent hours driving to see her and didn’t want to be shuttled off, Celeste cursed at them, saying they didn’t understand all she’d been through, what it was like to have been abused as a child.
“You don’t love me!” she screamed,