She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [7]
That evening at 7:27 P.M., two months early, Celeste gave birth to identical twins. Jennifer Lynn Bratcher was born first, followed by Kristina Ann Bratcher. The infants were tiny, weighting only two pounds seven ounces and two pounds eleven ounces. Doctors had hoped that on bed rest Celeste could have carried them longer, and now they feared the infants weren’t breathing well. An ambulance rushed them to a larger medical center, where they were put on respirators, but the girls were strong and recovered quickly.
Months later the twins sat for a family portrait, the kind taken at department stores in front of a marbled blue background. In it, they wore matching yellow terry-cloth sleepers, their identical little faces flushed and red, eyes wide and intense, hands reaching toward the camera.
That day, Craig looked young and happy. Next to him, Celeste, dressed all in black, smiled shyly. Her dark blond hair framing her pretty face, she appeared the prototype for a content young mother. Barely more than children themselves, they were embarking on what should have been an exciting adventure: building a family with two perfect baby girls. A hint of what lay ahead, however, was also in that photo. While Craig wrapped a protective hand tightly around Jennifer, Celeste’s grasp on Kristina looked reluctant. In the photo, Kristina frowns, her face red and her brow heavily furrowed. Perhaps she already sensed she would never be secure in her mother’s arms.
Less than a year after the wedding the marriage was troubled. Young, with no money and two small babies, they lived like nomads, moving seven times in six months, from Craig’s father’s house, to sharing apartments with friends, to a guest house next to Craig’s grandfather in Washington State, and back to California. When they were happy, friends say Celeste was all Craig could have asked for, vibrant and exciting, full of plans and launching schemes, sprinting through life. She had great dreams—to go to college, to get a good job and buy a house. Yet as quickly, she became distracted, usually by another man, the next door neighbor or somebody she met while waitressing. At times she ran off, leaving the twins behind, with only Craig to care for them.
When she wanted him to take her back, Celeste explained away her behavior by saying she had demons in her childhood, dark secrets that haunted her. “From the beginning when she did something awful, she blamed it on what happened to her as a kid,” says Craig’s mother, Cherie. “Celeste told us her father sexually abused her and that was why she acted like she did.”
Craig felt sorry for her and, despite everything, took her back.
Years later the Johnson family had conflicting theories on what happened between Edwin and Celeste and whether the abuse ever occurred. Edwin categorically denied ever sexually abusing either of his daughters. “It didn’t happen,” he says. Cole and Eddy agreed, insisting they saw no indication of anything improper. “It was a small house, and I saw nothing that even vaguely suggested it,” says Cole. “As nosy as our mom was, she would have known. If Dad did anything wrong, he catered to my sisters too much. Did my father molest Celeste? No.”
Nancy was less sure.
Recounting how she’d tried to get psychiatric help for Celeste, never understanding what was wrong with her, she would say, “I can’t confirm the abuse, but I don’t discount it.” She remembered once walking in to find Edwin in bed with Celeste, yet both were clothed and he was on top of the blanket and sheet with Celeste underneath. Her most troubling memory, perhaps, was waking to find Edwin watching television—in the early hours of the morning—with their youngest daughter, Caresse, on his lap. “He said he couldn’t sleep and got her up to keep him company,” says Nancy.
“It started when I was five or six and went on for a long time,” says Caresse. “Right up until he was thrown out of the house. He’d wake Celeste and me up and want us to watch television with him. Then he sent me to bed, and I heard Celeste crying. I don’t remember it