Paula

I grew up hearing stories of my mother from my grandmother and aunts. They are just snapshots of a life, but they are all I have. Like one time, when Paula was about three years old, they took her to a park with a lake or a big pond (my grandmother Mary would change the details from time to time). Mary took her eyes off Paula for just a moment, and off she ran, right down the dock and straight into the water. “We simply had to jump in after her,” Mary said. “She was a real handful. You had to watch her all the time.”
Once when I was preparing this book, my grandmother told me, “Her dad went out the front door for something. It was after dark. He didn't shut the door tight. And I was in the kitchen. And so [Paula] went out the front door and was gone. I had no idea where she was. When I missed her, I went outside, but I couldn't see anything. I had to get in the car and drive around trying to find her. I had a sister, Jane, who lived nearby. You could go to her house if you went out my back kitchen door and across three or four yards to her backyard. Jane wasn’t home and here come Paula down Jane’s driveway. She was a handful.”
Paula was born April 4, 1956, the third of five children. Susy was the oldest. There was a brother, Michael, who died from a problem with his heart when he was only three months old. Paula came next, and she was about 18 months older than her sister Lisa. Since they were so close in age, Paula had a special bond with Lisa. The youngest was Molly.
Mary tells of the time that Paula, only about three years old, got into the candy jar, and of course she wanted to share the candy with her sister Lisa. So she jumped into 18-month-old Lisa’s bed and shared a chocolate bar. When Mary found them, Lisa was covered in chocolate, and Paula had a fair amount on her as well. I would say that was her age, but my grandma says it was her intelligence and her accompanying lack of sense.
This would play out with her and my father, Ronnie, and later with the man who would end her life.
“She adored her dad [Fred],” my grandmother tells me. “And he was never there. He finally left me there with four little girls. That was really hard on Paula.” When asked, Susy said that when Fred left, “It seemed to affect Paula a lot. She was a daddy’s girl, pretty much. But I don’t remember him being there.” Lisa said of her father, “We weren’t close. I don’t know if it was just how things were done back then. You divorced the wife and you divorced the family.” Fred was an alcoholic, the kind of guy who would just go off and do his own thing. He would leave and be gone for weeks at a time. Lisa added, “When the divorce and all that came [when I was] a young kid, it wasn’t that big of a difference because he wasn’t home much anyway. I only saw him once in a while. Him being gone all the time, I don’t remember it affecting me, which Mom says that it did. It was more of an impact for Paula and Susy.”
According to Mary, “Paula was scary smart. She excelled in almost every subject in every grade.” The way Mary tells it, Paula took Latin in middle school but struggled with calculus in tenth grade. However, as Paula’s teacher explained, “she was only a tenth grader and everyone else in the class were seniors. It was to be expected for her to have a bit of trouble.”
When asked if Paula was mature, Mary said, “Oh, yes, but, she didn’t have a lot of common sense. I’ve seen that so many times with kids who were smart.” My aunts Molly and Susy called her a “Brainiac, but not so smart when it came to men.” Years later, Paula met Ronnie Garrett in high school. He was two years older, and they dated for a while. By her senior year, she was pregnant with me. According to my aunts, being pregnant in school in the 1970s “wasn’t really that uncommon. So it wasn’t that much of a stigma.” Understandably, being pregnant in her senior year put a damper on her life. Paula attended the local “career center,” a kind of vocational or technical school, for her senior year. It was for students who weren’t going to go to college.
Paula and Ronnie got married right before I was born. According to Susy, she didn’t even know who Ronnie was before they got married. “I had never heard of him. It wasn’t as though he was coming to the house or anything.” Molly agreed. Ronnie “didn’t come around a lot. He worked second shift. Paula and Eric were always at [Mary’s] house. But I didn’t see him much and he was usually working or whatever. Drinking. He was a drinker. Causing trouble.” Ronnie was not a very nice person, particularly to Paula, and certainly with me growing up. He wasn’t abusive—at least, not with me and no one mentioned him hitting Paula—but one thing was clear: Ronnie spent much of his time somewhere else, drinking. My grandfather on Ronnie’s side was reportedly abusive to his family and children, which affected Ronnie. Susy knew very little about Ronnie, but she knew that “[Ronnie’s] father was horrible. There had been some abuse to Ronnie’s mother and him and her siblings. I don’t know the whole story, but Ronnie’s father might have been institutionalized for a mental breakdown. All of that affected Ronnie. He was not the nicest person to Paula. He would stay out and drink. He wasn’t abusive—but truthfully, she wouldn’t have told me if he was.”
Susy recalled something else. “There was a story about a telephone. One night when he was drunk, she hit him with that phone.” Paula was no stranger to violence, even just out of high school.
Ronnie and Paula were divorced by the time I was two and a half, when Paula was twenty.
Even though Susy said it, everyone agreed. “[Paula had] really terrible taste in men. When dad was gone permanently after our parents’ divorce, Paula was terribly hurt. She was the kind of girl who needed a strong male figure in her life. She would do what dad said, but not anyone else. [After Paula’s divorce], she saw a counselor. He agreed she was looking for a father figure.”
Susy said, “[Paula] had a very easygoing manner. She didn’t have a temper. But she would only listen to [her father]. Well, I think some kids as they’re growing up, they’re either closer to their mother or their dad. And she would listen to dad. She wasn’t disrespectful to our parents. She was a very good kid, she really was.”
Molly and Lisa had another memory of Paula. Molly said, “She was friendly, had lots of friends. She was [easy] to get along with. And she was smart, and protective of us [Lisa and Molly]. What I remember was that she was that she was fun loving and really funny. It’s hard not to miss that.”
I asked my family what Paula was like as a mom. Susy said, “She was a great mom. [You were] the first boy to be in our family. We were a house full of women. [Paula] was crazy over you.”
There was no question my mother adored me. My grandmother Mary, a former schoolteacher, even said so. But in the same breath, she said, “[Eric] was a handful. So was Paula, but for different reasons. We’re talking about a boy and a girl. There’s a difference. Paula excelled in every grade in every subject. Eric could have done a lot better than he did. Especially in the earlier grades. Maybe some boys do, but boys don’t like school and they don’t do as well. Paula was never like that.”
Paula started dating Richard Green around the time of her divorce. My family didn’t know exactly when she met him. However, Susy told me the story that one time, not long after Paula and Ronnie were separated, Fred went over to visit Paula and me, and Richard was there at the house, sitting at the kitchen table. This was a surprise to me. I had never heard that story before.
One thing that did become obvious, apart from Paula’s poor taste in men, was that she was secretive about her relationships as well, although that wasn’t how my family phrased it. Susy felt that Paula didn’t want to worry anyone.
Another thing that my family repeated consistently was that Paula would believe anything anyone told her, especially from men. Susy said, “There were things that she told me about Richard, and I’m thinking, are you sure that’s right? Are you sure he’s telling you the truth? So she would believe, especially men, she would believe everything that Richard told her, just about. I mean, she believed a lot of what he said.”
This combination of being a sweet, compassionate, intelligent person who was also a bit gullible and not very smart around men, I believe, was what led to her death at age 22.

Paula

I grew up hearing stories of my mother from my grandmother and aunts. They are just snapshots of a life, but they are all I have. Like one time, when Paula was about three years old, they took her to a park with a lake or a big pond (my grandmother Mary would change the details from time to time). Mary took her eyes off Paula for just a moment, and off she ran, right down the dock and straight into the water. “We simply had to jump in after her,” Mary said. “She was a real handful. You had to watch her all the time.”
Once when I was preparing this book, my grandmother told me, “Her dad went out the front door for something. It was after dark. He didn't shut the door tight. And I was in the kitchen. And so [Paula] went out the front door and was gone. I had no idea where she was. When I missed her, I went outside, but I couldn't see anything. I had to get in the car and drive around trying to find her. I had a sister, Jane, who lived nearby. You could go to her house if you went out my back kitchen door and across three or four yards to her backyard. Jane wasn’t home and here come Paula down Jane’s driveway. She was a handful.”
Paula was born April 4, 1956, the third of five children. Susy was the oldest. There was a brother, Michael, who died from a problem with his heart when he was only three months old. Paula came next, and she was about 18 months older than her sister Lisa. Since they were so close in age, Paula had a special bond with Lisa. The youngest was Molly.
Mary tells of the time that Paula, only about three years old, got into the candy jar, and of course she wanted to share the candy with her sister Lisa. So she jumped into 18-month-old Lisa’s bed and shared a chocolate bar. When Mary found them, Lisa was covered in chocolate, and Paula had a fair amount on her as well. I would say that was her age, but my grandma says it was her intelligence and her accompanying lack of sense.
This would play out with her and my father, Ronnie, and later with the man who would end her life.
“She adored her dad [Fred],” my grandmother tells me. “And he was never there. He finally left me there with four little girls. That was really hard on Paula.” When asked, Susy said that when Fred left, “It seemed to affect Paula a lot. She was a daddy’s girl, pretty much. But I don’t remember him being there.” Lisa said of her father, “We weren’t close. I don’t know if it was just how things were done back then. You divorced the wife and you divorced the family.” Fred was an alcoholic, the kind of guy who would just go off and do his own thing. He would leave and be gone for weeks at a time. Lisa added, “When the divorce and all that came [when I was] a young kid, it wasn’t that big of a difference because he wasn’t home much anyway. I only saw him once in a while. Him being gone all the time, I don’t remember it affecting me, which Mom says that it did. It was more of an impact for Paula and Susy.”
According to Mary, “Paula was scary smart. She excelled in almost every subject in every grade.” The way Mary tells it, Paula took Latin in middle school but struggled with calculus in tenth grade. However, as Paula’s teacher explained, “she was only a tenth grader and everyone else in the class were seniors. It was to be expected for her to have a bit of trouble.”
When asked if Paula was mature, Mary said, “Oh, yes, but, she didn’t have a lot of common sense. I’ve seen that so many times with kids who were smart.” My aunts Molly and Susy called her a “Brainiac, but not so smart when it came to men.” Years later, Paula met Ronnie Garrett in high school. He was two years older, and they dated for a while. By her senior year, she was pregnant with me. According to my aunts, being pregnant in school in the 1970s “wasn’t really that uncommon. So it wasn’t that much of a stigma.” Understandably, being pregnant in her senior year put a damper on her life. Paula attended the local “career center,” a kind of vocational or technical school, for her senior year. It was for students who weren’t going to go to college.
Paula and Ronnie got married right before I was born. According to Susy, she didn’t even know who Ronnie was before they got married. “I had never heard of him. It wasn’t as though he was coming to the house or anything.” Molly agreed. Ronnie “didn’t come around a lot. He worked second shift. Paula and Eric were always at [Mary’s] house. But I didn’t see him much and he was usually working or whatever. Drinking. He was a drinker. Causing trouble.” Ronnie was not a very nice person, particularly to Paula, and certainly with me growing up. He wasn’t abusive—at least, not with me and no one mentioned him hitting Paula—but one thing was clear: Ronnie spent much of his time somewhere else, drinking. My grandfather on Ronnie’s side was reportedly abusive to his family and children, which affected Ronnie. Susy knew very little about Ronnie, but she knew that “[Ronnie’s] father was horrible. There had been some abuse to Ronnie’s mother and him and her siblings. I don’t know the whole story, but Ronnie’s father might have been institutionalized for a mental breakdown. All of that affected Ronnie. He was not the nicest person to Paula. He would stay out and drink. He wasn’t abusive—but truthfully, she wouldn’t have told me if he was.”
Susy recalled something else. “There was a story about a telephone. One night when he was drunk, she hit him with that phone.” Paula was no stranger to violence, even just out of high school.
Ronnie and Paula were divorced by the time I was two and a half, when Paula was twenty.
Even though Susy said it, everyone agreed. “[Paula had] really terrible taste in men. When dad was gone permanently after our parents’ divorce, Paula was terribly hurt. She was the kind of girl who needed a strong male figure in her life. She would do what dad said, but not anyone else. [After Paula’s divorce], she saw a counselor. He agreed she was looking for a father figure.”
Susy said, “[Paula] had a very easygoing manner. She didn’t have a temper. But she would only listen to [her father]. Well, I think some kids as they’re growing up, they’re either closer to their mother or their dad. And she would listen to dad. She wasn’t disrespectful to our parents. She was a very good kid, she really was.”
Molly and Lisa had another memory of Paula. Molly said, “She was friendly, had lots of friends. She was [easy] to get along with. And she was smart, and protective of us [Lisa and Molly]. What I remember was that she was that she was fun loving and really funny. It’s hard not to miss that.”
I asked my family what Paula was like as a mom. Susy said, “She was a great mom. [You were] the first boy to be in our family. We were a house full of women. [Paula] was crazy over you.”
There was no question my mother adored me. My grandmother Mary, a former schoolteacher, even said so. But in the same breath, she said, “[Eric] was a handful. So was Paula, but for different reasons. We’re talking about a boy and a girl. There’s a difference. Paula excelled in every grade in every subject. Eric could have done a lot better than he did. Especially in the earlier grades. Maybe some boys do, but boys don’t like school and they don’t do as well. Paula was never like that.”
Paula started dating Richard Green around the time of her divorce. My family didn’t know exactly when she met him. However, Susy told me the story that one time, not long after Paula and Ronnie were separated, Fred went over to visit Paula and me, and Richard was there at the house, sitting at the kitchen table. This was a surprise to me. I had never heard that story before.
One thing that did become obvious, apart from Paula’s poor taste in men, was that she was secretive about her relationships as well, although that wasn’t how my family phrased it. Susy felt that Paula didn’t want to worry anyone.
Another thing that my family repeated consistently was that Paula would believe anything anyone told her, especially from men. Susy said, “There were things that she told me about Richard, and I’m thinking, are you sure that’s right? Are you sure he’s telling you the truth? So she would believe, especially men, she would believe everything that Richard told her, just about. I mean, she believed a lot of what he said.”
This combination of being a sweet, compassionate, intelligent person who was also a bit gullible and not very smart around men, I believe, was what led to her death at age 22.