~ Author’s Note ~
The character of Marie was based on my own experiences. Though all of the characters and most of the events in this book are fiction, the essence of my experience is very real.
Over thirty years ago President Spencer W. Kimball, issued a challenge to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to record our personal histories. I was serving on a Stake Relief Society board at the time and it was our president’s desire, that as an example to the women in our stake, we should all complete that assignment in a month’s time as one of our goals. I did try—I really did, but even thinking about my childhood at that time, was like opening a “Pandora’s box” of horrors. I couldn’t do it!
I remember how embarrassed I felt when I was the only sister who did not present my happy memories at our next meeting, and how my explanation that I just could NOT complete the task in a month, disappointed our beautiful, accomplished, goal oriented president. We moved to Denver soon after and I rarely ever had time to think of my unhappy childhood, and why would I want to. By then I was a very happily married young woman with a handsome, righteous husband who was, and is, the best thing that has EVER happened to me. We had just purchased our dream home and we were busy with five little children.
Then one day while preparing a lesson for the young women, with my fourth child in kindergarten and my baby asleep upstairs, I came upon President Kimball’s talk again from the “New Era, December 1980, pg. 26”—to keep journals and record our personal history! While I read, I knew I had to act on the promptings that had niggled at me since my Stake Relief Society President's challenge. That day I purchased my new electric typewriter.
My former, Relief Society President, never knew about the many used ink ribbons from my new typewriter, and the reams of crumpled paper in my waste basket. I was surprised at how cathartic this process was as I laid my soul bare on paper. I was stunned to read resentment, loneliness, and stark pain on that white paper—and to realize it was my own! I knew that I could not leave such bitterness to my precious family, so I repented, forgave, and plead for understanding as I steadily wasted a small forest of paper and re-wrote until my heart was right!
Because it came five years later, she never read the seventy-one, tear stained finished pages that resulted from her challenge. And so this book began as a memoir I titled “I Believe in Fairy Tales.” Up until that time I had never met another soul who had experienced a hard childhood. It seemed that everyone around me had loving parents and happy memories.
As I wrote my memoir, the Spirit whispered to my heart that there were thousands, upon thousands, of his precious children growing up in a wicked world, experiencing such pain as mine, and even far worse! I was astonished because I naively assumed I was almost the only one! Yet as I thought of the divorce rate, even in the Church, and the wickedness of our generation, I knew that I should not have marveled.
With that understanding, came an intense desire to share my story beyond my family, but I needed to make it more palatable—and thus this work of fiction, Joy Outweighs the Sorrow was born. It became my vehicle to share the story of how, as a lonely, impoverished, abused and neglected child, I gained a testimony for myself that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is true! It is the restored gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
I wrote for both young and old, to hopefully open the eyes of those who have never experienced my pain, so that they might gain understanding and compassion, but I also wrote to share hope with those who have experienced it. I feel somewhat like the Prophet Jacob did in the Book of Mormon when he had to speak with his people about abhorrent things, while at the same time he desired to preserve the tender hearted feelings of the innocent; and so I chose not to dwell on the worst abuse in this novel, realizing that those who HAVE experienced it will be able to “read between the lines.”
And for them my hope and prayer is that they too, can find this same solace and comfort and promise for themselves. I testify that my life has been transformed through my testimony of, and my association with, the congregation of the “Mormons”—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! I KNOW that JOY does outweigh the sorrow!
~ Prologue ~
A full moon shone through the sheer curtains of the French door, silhouetting Marie’s old ballerina doll leaning against the dining room table. A gentle breeze was moving the aspen trees outside, causing the light of the full moon to flicker. It made the doll appear to move in a slow jerking motion, seeming to dance in time to the melody of the trees, like an old silent black and white movie. But instead of piano music for accompaniment, the trees swooshed and whispered.
They whispered memories to Marie—memories of her childhood. Some of them were very painful, but they incessantly danced across her mind. As the doll seemed to dance, and the trees continued to whisper, they reminded her of how much she had loved to dance and how much she had loved to climb trees when she was a child, especially with her best friend. Marie could almost smell the musty earth from their buried treasure and feel the breeze in the trees they’d climbed together . . .
“You have a funny china closet, grandma.”
Five year-old Jenni startled Marie. “What are you doing up honey?”
“I want a drink,” and before Marie could reply Jenni continued, “Our china closet has dishes. Why does yours have dolls in it?”
Without letting her grandma get a word in edgewise, Jenni kept asking questions, “Grandma, why is the light off?”
Marie knew she was sitting the dark because she couldn’t sleep. She had intended to have a snack and then go back to bed, but her ballerina doll standing by the door had caught her eye, so she sat down to watch her dance in the moonlight. The unexpected return of her old ballerina doll that afternoon had brought back so many memories.
But, to Jenni she merely said, “I don’t know—I think the moonlight is pretty coming through the window.”
“It scares me.”
Just then her mother walked into the room and flipped on the light saying, “Then we’ll get you a drink and off to bed you go.”
“But—I wanna’ see grandma’s dolls.”
Marie would have kept little Jenni up for snuggles and stories until her precious little granddaughter drifted off to sleep in her arms, but Jenni’s mother had other ideas. “No Jenni, you can see the dolls in the morning, off to bed with you.”
Jenni surprised her grandma with a kiss, gave her mother a mean look, and then obediently ran off to bed.
“I certainly couldn’t get my children to mind that well.”
Dianne just smiled and Marie said, “Couldn’t you sleep either?”
“No, and I’m so tired. But you know how a strange bed and house are.”
“Yes, I remember when I used to stay with my in-laws when we’d come in from California. How fun it was traveling with babies. We didn’t even have paper diapers! Would you like a snack?”
Without waiting for a reply, Marie poured her daughter-in-law a glass of juice and buttered some bagels.
As she began to eat, Dianne said, “It’s so odd, isn’t it, that your cousin sent your ballerina doll back after all these years.”
Marie picked up her old doll and touched her matted blonde hair reverently, then examined the doll’s right hand as she explained to Dianne, “My Uncle Jack’s dog, Popcorn, chewed her fingers off when I was six years old.”
She walked over to her china closet and stood the doll on the ledge, leaning her against the glass. “I guess it’s time to look for a better display case for my dolls. My old ballerina is much too large to fit inside.”
“Your dolls are so unique and beautiful. Whenever I see your Cinderella or Snow White, I remember my big sister reading those stories to me when I was a child. But, the bride and groom doll are the most beautiful of all.
“I don’t know too much about your fairy-tale dolls, except that they mean a great deal to you. How did you get them?”
Marie intended to give Dianne a brief accounting of the story—but the return of her ballerina doll, coupled with a willing audience, evoked too many memories. They were both oblivious to the chimes of the clock in the den, as Marie conjured up the image of an unhappy little girl perched in a wide crook of an old apple tree . . .
~ One ~
Refuge In The Apple Tree
At first glance the young girl, sitting in the grand old apple tree, was as silent and still as the rest of nature on that hot afternoon. Even her hair, which hadn’t seen a brush in a week and looked quite ready to yield to the slightest breeze, seemed perfectly frozen in its disarray. It was an unusual color, hard for most people to describe. Like a chameleon, it was moody—under artificial lights it was lemon colored, at twilight she was a towhead and now, in the bright sun, her short hair flashed with hints of strawberry red.
She was leaning back against the tree’s main trunk dressed in cotton short-shorts and a white blouse, wrinkled, but clean, in contrast to her skinny leg, which was stretched out on a branch. Her dirty bare foot hooked around the branch holding her securely in place, while her other dusty leg was propped up like an easel.
Below, her scroungy patchwork cat lay drowsing in the shade of a wild rose bush, which looked as bedraggled as the cat itself. The lone bush was nestled near the porch of a small house with weathered grey clapboards, exactly matching the dominant color of the cat. In fact grey seemed to dominate the entire scene; the dirt and weeds surrounding the old house were a dry dusty grey, like the decaying shed and corrals out back. The only contrast was the last June rose hanging near a small patch of yellow on the sleeping cat and the green leaves of the apple tree, standing alone off to the side of the house.
The girl in the tree appeared to be as motionless as her cat sleeping in the yard below, except for her eyes. They were wide open and moving rapidly back and forth devouring a book propped on her leg. As though to defy the decree of the sun that all should be obediently still in her grey world, she earnestly escaped into a world of mystery and magic and beauty and joy.
“Ma—rie, Ma . . . rie.” Like an unwelcome alarm clock interrupting a deep sleep, her mother’s voice yanked the young girl so abruptly from her fantasy she nearly fell from the tree. Before she could adapt to reality, her mother’s voice rent the silence again.
“Marie! Ed . . .na Ma—rie! Are you in that tree reading again when there’s work to be done? I have another batch of clothes ready for you!”
After trying to climb gracefully out of the tree Marie finally jumped, picked herself up, and limp-hopped around the side of the house trying to pick stickers out of her bare feet. As she hurried, she chafed at the thought of her mother calling her Edna. How she hated that name. Her mother was the only one who called her Edna and she only called her Edna when she was mad or impatient or worried. These days she got called Edna a lot!
By the time she reached the back step she couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes, because she didn’t want her to see the tears she was painfully trying to squeeze back. Marie knew her mother’s impatience sprang from worry, which hurt more than the stickers in her feet.
A part of Marie wanted to shout at her mother in anger and tell her how bad it made her feel, but the tender, obedient side of her nature kept her head hung low as she walked toward the basket of clothes. As she hoisted the big basket onto her hip her eyes briefly met those of her mother.
If Marie’s eyes were filled with tears, her mothers were the more to be pitied; her beautiful dark brown eyes held such a look of tired, resigned despair. They didn’t speak and yet that one glance said so much.
“Marie, I’m so sorry.”
“Mama, I’m sorry! Is it my fault you are so unhappy?”
That brief moment passed as her mother silently straightened her swollen body and pressing her hand into her back, waddled back to the old farm house.
As Marie lugged the bushel basket down the dusty path toward the clothes line, she felt a noble sense of protectiveness toward her mother and was glad she hadn’t added to her misery by voicing her own.
Halfway there she had to stop and pick up some of her little brother’s socks that had squeezed through the hole in the side of the basket. She shook out the dust and set them off to one side. Then hung as many clothes as she could on the makeshift line she had helped her mother string between the sagging sheds behind the farmhouse. They had used old twine and even rusty bailing wire that Marie had searched out from among the rubble around the dooryard.
Soon she had to set the clean clothes aside because the lines ran out. Carefully, so she wouldn’t drop them in the dust, she began to gather the dry clothes.
“Ouch, that darn line!” Marie cried out as she snagged her thumb on a piece of rusty bailing wire where they had spliced the clothes line.
“I hate this place! I hate living in Walker and I want to move home!” Marie shouted as she stomped her foot making a little dust cloud sift into the sun.
For a second the little girl in her made her want to run to her mother for comfort, but she quickly fought down the impulse as she remembered how much her mother already had to worry about. Besides, they rarely had bandaids anyway. Instead, she rinsed her hand off in the hose and wrapped a clean sock around it, tying it with an old piece of twine lying on the ground.
She resumed her job of hanging clothes with the sun beating down on her back as she methodically hung sock after tiny sock. Finishing the socks, she picked up her favorite school dress; it was getting much too small and she feared her mother wouldn’t let her wear it again this year.
“I’ll wear it anyway,” she thought defiantly without too much hope of success.
As Marie tenderly pinned it on the line she remembered when her mother had bought the dress. Though her family had never had much money and never spent it on foolish things, like dancing lessons, in times past they could afford a few necessities like clothes. At least then her mother had been happy. And in those happy days, which seemed so long ago now, she had rarely called her daughter Edna! It took Marie back to the day she had learned about the significance of her first name.
“Do you know why they named you Edna?”
Marie didn’t know, but she instinctively knew it was for some bad reason. She’d never liked or trusted her Uncle Jack, who was only a few years older than Mare, and she liked him even less as she remembered how he had enjoyed telling her the secret.
“It’s after yer’ ole man.”
When he hadn’t gotten the desired result from her blank look, he continued, in a “how dumb can you be” voice, “You know—your dad—your fa-ther, your real father? His name was Ed and he was a real jerk. They coulda’ named you Jerk too, but instead they named you Ed-na!”
In her mind Marie could still hear her uncle’s laugh as he sauntered off that day. She was only four or five years-old when he’d told her that. The story had unfolded, through the years, of her horrible father who had abandoned his wife and baby. She couldn’t remember him at all, but she remembered when her mother married again and they had moved into their first home.
She had been glad to move away from Uncle Jack, until she’d realized she didn’t like or trust her new stepfather any more than she had her uncle. The only man she had ever loved or trusted was her mother’s father “Grandpa Daddy” and she didn’t love him at all anymore, because he went away, just like her real father had. Yes, the name Edna must mean she was not wanted, and not good enough to stay with, or pretty enough to love.
But, she felt a shiver of joy as she remembered her mother’s happiness and delight in her first home. She remembered how her mother had taught her to mop the floor; each crevice and corner had to be cleaned carefully. She had delighted in helping her mother make beds; not a tuck or a bump would be allowed. Her mother had painted and cleaned their little house, and acquired some modest new furniture. Marie’s bedroom had been painted lemon yellow with a border of flowers all around the top.
Then her stepfather lost his job at the coal mine and her mother became worried and argued a lot with her new husband. And then that day, just two weeks ago, she had been told they were moving because her stepfather had found a job in another town. Thinking of the abruptness of the move, and the fact that they hadn’t told her in time to say goodbye to her friends, brought tears to her eyes. They had sent her to spend the week with her grandma and she had arrived home to find everything packed and ready to move in the morning!
A tear spilled from her eye to think she would never play kick the can with the Barretts across the street, or never walk to school with Debra again.
“What if I never have friends again?” Marie shuddered even in the heat as she hung clothes and cried and remembered some more.
She remembered that sad, long, last night in their pretty home. She lay in bed thinking about her mother. She would never forget the look on her face as she saw her best furniture being loaded onto a truck to be taken off and sold.
She remembered that sad, long, last night in their pretty home. She lay in bed thinking about her mother. She would never forget the look on her face as she saw her best furniture being loaded onto a truck to be taken off and sold.
Of course none of her stepfather’s stuff had been sold. He kept his hunting rifles and of course his television and his statues of horses. Worst of all was his frightening, horrible old dear head. She had nightmares of it coming down off the wall, chasing her, and waking up just before it gored her with its enormous sharp antlers. That dead animal loomed over their tiny living room, always watching, always gloating, over her mother’s pretty things and her toys. The pain of that memory was too great, so she shut it off and wiped her damp brow with her hand. As she continued to work she tried to focus solely on hanging wet clothes, but the memories refused to stop.
She remembered the shadows from the large old oak tree that she loved to climb, and how they had danced in the moonlight that last night. Another tear slipped away as Marie cried for that tree—sometimes she loved trees more than people. As far as Marie was concerned they all had personalities, and that old oak was grand. It had always listened to everything she had to say as she sat high and protected in its wonderful branches.
Marie swatted a fly that rebelliously dared to buzz about the hot still yard, and wiped her tears and nose on her shoulder. She knew her mother would scold her for that if she’d seen it, but just now she didn’t care. Why didn’t her mother tell her about the move sooner? Feelings of anger at her mother and mean stepfather for making them move to this awful place boiled inside her small breast, as she grabbed another wet shirt.
“I hate this place, I hate it!”
Marie jumped at the sound of her own voice. She looked guiltily toward the house hoping she wouldn’t see her mother. As bad as she felt she’d do anything to spare her mother more pain. Tired of the miserable direction of her thoughts, Marie squared her shoulders, put her hands on her hips, and stomped her foot in the dust. She paused to watch the little dust cloud she had made sift into the sun, intrigued by the filmy patterns it made.
“Well,” Marie said to the dust, “I can’t stand being sad. I’ll just have to think of all the nice things about moving.”
So she moved to the next clothes line and grabbed the wet clothes with a new determination to get them hung. With a little half-smile of satisfaction, she thought, the nicest thing would be that she wouldn’t have go to old Grandma Giovanni’s for dinner anymore, now that they had moved so far away!
~
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