Malignant Memories

Debra McKinney documents the spirited growth of three women as they transcend the tragedies of incest that haunted their lives.  Originally published in the Anchorage Daily News on June 6, 1993.

Twenty-five years have come and gone since Margie last visited the old man's farm. She's not sure she can even find the place. She's not sure she wants to.

The 51-year-old Anchorage travel agent has made a lot of progress lately confronting her fears. But she still has trouble talking about what happened in the barn.

So fragmented are the memories. She remembers her Uncle George carrying her piggyback across the horse pasture, her bony legs, black patent-leather shoes and white-lace socks poking out from under his arms. She remembers staring up at the barn's rafters, and how the hay scratched her skin. She remembers her ankles being strapped down, legs apart.

And then there's the time she was tied by her wrists and hoisted.

Did things like this happen a couple of times? Every visit? Why didn't her aunt come looking for them? Did she not want to know?

Margie wants to remember more. No, she wants to forget. But she knows she has to go back there if she ever wants peace. And so she studies a local map.

Although Uncle George has been dead for more than 20 years, the courage to go through with this comes from two friends.

A year ago they were strangers — Vivian Dietz-Clark, 41; Ezraella "Ezzie" Bassera, 44; and Margie (to protect their own privacy, her children asked that the family name not be used). Now they call themselves sisters.

Their demons brought them together. Within the past few years, memories have surfaced, forcing them to deal with what had long been buried — the sexual abuse they're convinced they experienced as children.

A tremendous amount of energy goes into locking things up inside, Ezzie's therapist, Joan Bender, explained. It's like sitting on a huge, bulging chest to keep it from popping open. Any added stress drains energy from that chore. The lid creaks open. Memories escape.

The three Anchorage women met in a support group for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse offered by STAR (Standing Together Against Rape). And when that group ended, they continued to meet on their own.

The Marvellas, a combination of their first three names, is what they call themselves now that they're a team. The melding of their identities is a metaphor for the journey they've taken on together.

That journey comes at a controversial time. Repressing memories has long been recognized by mental health experts as a way victims cope when events are too horrible to face. But more recently, some victims of childhood sexual abuse have been accused of concocting memories — and therapists of planting ideas in their heads. There's now a national organization, False Memory Syndrome Foundation, for people claiming they've been falsely accused of sex crimes, with some members fighting charges of satanic and ritual abuse.

Detective Bob Holt in Kent, Wash., who's been investigating child abuse cases for 18 years, warned the Marvellas this spring that going public wouldn't be easy: "I'm sure you realize there will be those who won't believe you."

In Vivian's case, the abuse was too traumatic to face, but she never once forgot it. And when she confronted her father last November, he confessed to abusing her as a child and to recent abuse of another child family member. Last month, he was arrested in Florida on felony child abuse warrants issued in California.

In Margie's and Ezzie's cases, the men they accuse of abusing them are dead, so there can be no confrontations. Nor can the accused defend themselves.
Margie and Ezzie have written and talked to relatives, neighbors — anyone they can think of who might have seen or heard something. But child abuse is veiled in secrecy. Witnesses are hard to come by.

These women trust their memories implicitly. And so they push themselves to remember.


Ugly Secrets

Remembering is vital. Because these are people who've been deceived — coerced as children into acting as if nothing happened. Remembering is the first step in the painful trudge toward recovery, a process that begins with shame and ends with a new sense of power and pride.

Recovery is when the person can say: It happened, it was not OK, and it was not my fault, according to Peggy Flascher, who led the Marvellas' group at STAR.

"Unless you've been there, you don't really understand the courage it takes," Flascher said. "It's a tremendous amount of work. A profound amount."

For Ezzie, the memories surfaced when her father died three years ago after she finally felt safe. Her gynecologist suggested counseling after finding her almost impossible to examine.

And for Margie, it's not as if she just realized the abuse happened. She first sought counseling 20 years ago, but quit when her therapist said something like "men will be men." She spent the next eight years drinking herself into alcoholism, putting on weight, letting herself go — not making the connection until this year.

After harboring such an ugly secret for so many years, just telling is healing. But it can cost dearly.

Although all three Marvellas have suffered for bringing up a subject relatives didn't want to hear, Ezzie has lost the most. Her family doesn't believe her:

"You've got a lot of nerve accusing dad of molesting you," her youngest sister wrote last August from Tennessee. "I never want to hear from you again."

She's received similar letters from her mother, an uncle and others. Only her brother, Ernie Logan, is willing to even consider the possibility.

"I'd much prefer it weren't true," he said in a telephone interview from Arizona. "But I just don't know. I can't talk to my dad about it.

"For me, the biggest problem was when she started contacting my dad's sister and brother. Even if he did what she says he did, they aren't a part of it. They don't need to be hurt that way."

Ezzie and her family have disowned each other; now the Marvellas are the only family she has.

These women are driven to transcend the bitterness, but not if it means pretending nothing happened. Most recently, they've been trying to file charges against the men they have no doubts about — even though Uncle George and Ezzie's father are dead. Just having something on record would bring a sense of justice.

Their efforts took them to the Seattle area this spring to confront family and fears, and to be there for each other.

The first attempt at finding Uncle George's place ended in the Big Brothers Bingo parking lot. Could the farm have been paved over? No, this wasn't right. Margie tried hard to remember. The next hill over looked familiar.

Vivian turned the rental car around, crossed over the freeway, took a left at the top of the hill and ended up in the middle of a subdivision.

What now? They drove on.

At the end of the last row of houses was a gravel road. They took it. Halfway down Margie turned white.

"That's it," she said.

Vivian stopped the car at the top of a long driveway. The three of them sat in silence a moment.

"Let's go down there," Vivian said.

Margie groaned.

"We're going," said Ezzie.

Slowly the car headed down the gravel drive. At the bottom, Vivian stopped in front of a little yellow farm house, the kind you'd expect to have an apple pie cooling in the windowsill.

"Amazing," Margie said.

The place was just the way she remembered it. There was the chicken coop. And the old chopping block. And the big pear tree the guinea hens used to roost in. And there, behind the little house, beyond the gate with the "Keep Out" sign, was the barn.

"I don't want to get out," Margie said.

Vivian put an arm around her and hugged her. Ezzie gently rubbed her back.

They all got out of the car.


Celebration of Life

One of the most important Marvella celebrations of all was at Ezzie's in January — a combination birthday, apartment-warming and coming-out party. Ezzie had such a strong desire to change her life, she shed her Catholic heritage, her identity, her past. After two years of study she converted to Judaism. And after working through the abuse and the loss of her family, she officially changed her name. The Terry Lee Logan she despised became the Ezraella Bassera she honored.

Ezraella is Hebrew. It means "helped by God."

"Without the building of my Jewish foundation I would not have survived," she said.

This party marked the first time ever that Ezzie felt comfortable enough to invite, not only the Marvellas , but an array of people from all the different aspects of her life. People from work, people from Temple Beth Sholom, old friends, new friends. Potluck dishes covered every inch of table and counter space. The chairs, couch and floor were full of young and old.

"Let's see if I can get this all out without crying," Ezzie said to her guests, offering a toast of sparkling cider. "I honestly could not have even started this endeavor without all of you. Thank you for all your support."

An Ezzie party wouldn't be right without some kind of surprise. This time, it was inviting two belly dancer friends. By the end of the evening, she had many of her guests up belly dancing — shimmying and swiveling about, but mostly pointing and laughing at each other.

The last of her friends didn't leave until around 2 a.m. The Marvellas , who had packed their pajamas and toothbrushes, stayed on through the night.

Jo Gottstein, a friend from the temple who's watched Ezzie go through all her changes, was among those attending the party.

"I still call her Terry all the time," Gottstein said. "It's really hard for me to think of her as someone else — although she is.

"She never stood up for herself before. If something went wrong, she would blame herself and not say, 'Wait a minute, this isn't fair.' Now she's a lot more self-assured."

Vivian's therapist Kathleen Holmes said she hasn't met an abuse survivor yet who hasn't blamed herself.

That's why she and other therapists urge women to go look at a 4-year-old or whatever age and realize how small and powerless that person really is. Or, dig up old photographs of themselves as little girls.

"As children," Holmes said, "they were true victims; they couldn't say no. They couldn't do anything.

"People heal when they are able to take charge and do something," she said. "In order to get past this . . . they need to do something different, like confront the perpetrator and say, it wasn't OK that you did this."


A Rough Beginning

That initial session at STAR was awkward, tense and first names only. Vivian, Margie and Ezzie along with a couple of others, sat stiffly in a windowless room, wondering if they could really go through with this.

Then Flascher asked them to sign a contract promising they wouldn't commit suicide.

"Pretty melodramatic," Vivian thought.

But in truth, all three had entertained such thoughts, including Vivian, so depressed as the memories surfaced, she found herself wondering what a gun would feel like in her hands.

Signing that contract was the precursor to telling total strangers the darkest, most private details of their lives. Margie and Vivian were so uncomfortable talking about this, they didn't even tell their husbands they'd signed up for the group.

But the following week, all three of them were back. Remembering was excruciating. But keeping it buried was worse. They'd already spent 30-odd years doing that. The price had been self-loathing, depression, health problems and nightmares.

"Something just wasn't right," Ezzie said. "I felt dirty."

Except for the fact they were all flat-footed and had been raised Catholic, these three seemed to have little in common. Vivian, who acquires land easements for the city and is married with two daughters, was perpetually jovial. Ezzie, a computer programmer at the time and twice divorced, was morose. Margie, an independent travel agent, married with three grown children, was quiet, timid and reluctant. Vivian was licensed to set off fireworks displays and was a "retired Catholic." Ezzie wrote poetry and had recently coverted to Judaism. Margie ran a molded ceramics business and was a born-again Christian.

Midway through the 12-week session, other group members had dropped out. By the final session, these remaining three felt like they were just getting started.

"We weren't ready to say goodbye," Vivian said.

So they didn't. They started meeting each week for lunch, picking places that wouldn't be too crowded, where waitresses wouldn't bug them too much. They'd sit down, chat a bit, order lunch, then talk about what their fathers and uncle did to them as little girls and the impact it's had on their lives.

Making reservations under the name "the Marvellas ," those lunch tables became a sanctuary they looked forward to all week. They could talk about things they couldn't talk about with anyone else, like Ezzie remembering her father prying her legs apart and how Vivian can't stand the sight of men's undershirts after seeing her father ejaculate into one.

The Marvellas never have to worry about offending each other.

They've talked about how Ezzie can still smell her father's cigarette breath, and how, for Vivian, just seeing her father's car parked in her driveway once made her throw up. They've talked about Margie mindlessly doodling at a women's prayer breakfast, looking down and, to her horror, seeing a stick person bound spread-eagle.

Sometimes in the middle of talk like this, the waitress will come along and suggest dessert. Moments later, she'll cart out the goods: ice cream, Key lime pie, and more often than not, some decadent form of chocolate.

"We're into comfort food," Ezzie explains. "When we get talking about this stuff, we eat dessert."

It's not the most pleasant table conversation to sit in on. But as the Marvellas would say, try living it.

For Ezzie, living it has meant going through a phase of incredible rage, wishing her father weren't already dead so she could personally "blow the son-of-a-bitch off the map."

She found her biggest release in writing both prose and poetry. A major turning point came the day she sat at her computer for three hours pounding out a raging hate letter to her father in huge type that turned out 42 pages long:

"I can't think of words disgusting enough to describe you! . . . I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. . . "

"The night before, I was literally sitting in the bathroom ready to slit my wrists," Ezzie said. "Once all the rage came out, I started feeling like I wanted to live again."

This past year, working with their individual therapists, as well as each other, a lot of mysteries have started to make sense. Like for the longest time, Ezzie would wake up in a panic between 1 and 2 in the morning, and lie for hours unable to sleep. She now believes that's when her father would come into her room. And Margie's terrible fear of elevators; she never could figure that out until she remembered Uncle George locking her in the well house — dark, dank and full of spiders.

"He locked me in there because I wouldn't be good or something. I mean, good to him. I can remember being in there screaming 'Let me out! I'll be good. I promise I will!'"

"And your aunt never heard you?" Vivian asked.

"No, no she never heard me."

The Marvella meetings aren't just for exchanging war stories; they're a time for celebrating any and all victories. Ezzie finally being able to sleep without a light on. Or Margie finally getting angry, picking up a cup and throwing it against a door. It felt so good, she picked up another, and that felt even better. By the time she was through, she'd gone through a half-dozen cups.

Their initial awkwardness is hard to imagine now that these women's lives have become so intertwined.

"Remember those first sessions?" Vivian said. "Margie kept scooting her chair back into the wall. Ha! Remember that? We'd start talking about sex or something, and she'd just have that chair pushed all the way back into the corner."

Looking back, they see themselves as Vivian, the logical one; Ezzie, the angry one; and Margie, the kind one — all parts of a person, but all incomplete. Now, sometimes it's Margie's turn to be the logical one or Ezzie's to be kind. Now, they see themselves as whole.

"When you guys started finishing my sentences for me, that's when I knew you really understood," Vivian told her friends.

In honor of their friendship, the three women bought a Town Square brick together immortalizing "The Marvella Sisters." They've adopted as their official Marvella mascot a ceramic statue of three "cow-yotes," heads together, howling at the moon, lips and hooves painted bright red.

Their meetings have expanded to include birthdays and holidays and any other excuse to spend time together. They've been photographed sitting on Santa's knee. They've toasted in the New Year with sparkling cider. And at Passover, Ezzie invited the other two over for a feast, then surprised them with Easter baskets of goodies on her doorstep.

They've gotten seriously into slumber parties, including one at Margie's where they stayed up until 2 in the morning eating junk food and watching "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes."

At times, it's like they're girls again, tapping into those childhoods that were cut short. And sometimes, Vivian said, they get the urge to do "something really stupid." Like sing the theme song to "Peter Pan" in public places. Or have a dinner party without utensils — a spaghetti dinner party.

They've learned to use black humor to keep from feeling crazy. Like the time they ceremoniously ripped up an old photograph of Uncle George with his horse, and Vivian rearranged the pieces so that the horse was eating Uncle George's head. They joke about publishing The Perpetrator Gazette, a supermarket tabloid with headlines like "Seven-Year-Old Rapes Defenseless Grown Man!" and reviews of such films as "Honey, I Screwed the Kids."

A year ago, there was no way they could have made light of any of this. Now, when things get too heavy, they find ways of making themselves laugh. They've been known to toss back their heads and howl, just like the "cow- yotes."

"I don't know if I'd have my sanity if we didn't meet every week," Vivian said.


Celebration of Life

One of the most important Marvella celebrations of all was at Ezzie's in January — a combination birthday, apartment-warming and coming-out party. Ezzie had such a strong desire to change her life, she shed her Catholic heritage, her identity, her past. After two years of study she converted to Judaism. And after working through the abuse and the loss of her family, she officially changed her name. The Terry Lee Logan she despised became the Ezraella Bassera she honored.

Ezraella is Hebrew. It means "helped by God."

"Without the building of my Jewish foundation I would not have survived," she said.

This party marked the first time ever that Ezzie felt comfortable enough to invite, not only the Marvellas , but an array of people from all the different aspects of her life. People from work, people from Temple Beth Sholom, old friends, new friends. Potluck dishes covered every inch of table and counter space. The chairs, couch and floor were full of young and old.

"Let's see if I can get this all out without crying," Ezzie said to her guests, offering a toast of sparkling cider. "I honestly could not have even started this endeavor without all of you. Thank you for all your support."

An Ezzie party wouldn't be right without some kind of surprise. This time, it was inviting two belly dancer friends. By the end of the evening, she had many of her guests up belly dancing — shimmying and swiveling about, but mostly pointing and laughing at each other.

The last of her friends didn't leave until around 2 a.m. The Marvellas , who had packed their pajamas and toothbrushes, stayed on through the night.

Jo Gottstein, a friend from the temple who's watched Ezzie go through all her changes, was among those attending the party.

"I still call her Terry all the time," Gottstein said. "It's really hard for me to think of her as someone else — although she is.

"She never stood up for herself before. If something went wrong, she would blame herself and not say, 'Wait a minute, this isn't fair.' Now she's a lot more self-assured."

Vivian's therapist Kathleen Holmes said she hasn't met an abuse survivor yet who hasn't blamed herself.

That's why she and other therapists urge women to go look at a 4-year-old or whatever age and realize how small and powerless that person really is. Or, dig up old photographs of themselves as little girls.

"As children," Holmes said, "they were true victims; they couldn't say no. They couldn't do anything.

"People heal when they are able to take charge and do something," she said. "In order to get past this . . . they need to do something different, like confront the perpetrator and say, it wasn't OK that you did this."


Confrontation

Still, without all the Marvella support and understanding, Vivian doubts she would have had the courage to face her father.

"They gave me my voice," she said.

Vivian, who says her abuse began around age 6 and ended at 11, confronted her father mostly out of her growing fear that he was preying on other children. Among others, she was concerned about the daughter of a vendor her father had met at the Tanana State Fair, followed to the Palmer State Fair and later visited in California.

Vivian talked to Anchorage police Detective Anne Newell, who opened an investigation a little over a year ago. The girl was interviewed and made no allegations against Vivian's father.

Last fall, Vivian asked him to come to Alaska to talk about her own abuse.

She was surprised he agreed to come. But he did in November, saying he was doing it to help her.

By then, Vivian was certain there were other victims in the family. Her concerns were convincing enough that a judge issued a warrant allowing her to be wired during the confrontation. She and her father talked for 2 1|2 hours while Newell, hiding in the next room, listened in and recorded every word.

"It was the weirdest conversation I've ever had," Vivian said. "To have a conversation with your parent saying, 'Gee, Dad, I remember your penis . . .' "

At the end, Vivian persuaded him to go to the police station to be interviewed by Newell.

It's all on videotape now, how unhappy he was with his marriage and how he used Vivian as "a crutch." How he'd walk in on her in the bathroom. How he'd visit her in her bed.

Vivian wasn't there during that interview, but Newell gave her a copy of the tape. Hearing him go on and on made her realize how much she'd managed to repress. She doesn't remember him coming into the bathroom. All she remembers is refusing to use the bathroom when her father was home. Being so constipated as a child, her mother had to take her to the doctor. She remembers hating her room, her bed, her life.

That tape also confirmed Vivian's worst fear. Her father talked freely of abusing another child — Vivian's step-niece.

Vivian wanted Ezzie and Margie to watch the videotape with her. So they did in true Marvella fashion. They'd already planned a weekend getaway at the Regal Alaskan, booking a room on the second floor so Margie didn't have to deal with an elevator. That night, they huddled together on the bed to watch the tape, calling room service at one point for hot fudge sundaes, and sending the bellhop back for extra fudge.

Halfway through the two-hour tape, Margie's cheeks turned bright red.

"I went and looked in the mirror, and I had like whisker burns," she said, remembering how scratchy Uncle George's face was late at night. "I had to put a cold cloth on them.

"What my therapist says is, the body always remembers. The mind can play tricks and make you think this and that and the other thing, but the memories the body has are real. The body can't lie."

Like the time Margie jumped out of a sound sleep at 2:45 in the morning, trying to flick the hay out of her nightgown. And the way Ezzie's wrists used to ache at night, until she remembered her father holding them tight over her head.


No Refuge in Denial

The Marvellas took care of a lot of business in Seattle. For starters, Margie's relatives had planned a big reunion in honor of her mother's 90th birthday, and Margie wasn't up to facing her family alone. So the Marvellas came as her date.

And then there was the foray to Uncle George's farm.
It was also a chance for Vivian to confront certain members of her family, specifically, her brother, Rick, whose former stepdaughter is the other victim their father admitted abusing.

Vivian asked her mother to fly up from California, as well. Vivian says she tried to tell her mother about her own abuse when she was about 14, but her mother was making dinner and kept turning back to her chores. The message she got was: This is stuff we don't talk about. She finally made her mother listen last year.

Her mother refused to be interviewed or photographed for this story.

Vivian brought the video along to ensure there would be no refuge in denial. That's a subject she knows a lot about.

"In my case, my denial was so deep that I denied my own experience. I didn't even want to know in my own mind what happened to me. Now that I look back, I think 'Oh my God, how could I have not saved my (step) niece? How could I have not seen this was happening to her?' "

The rendezvous took place on a Saturday night at a Best Western motel in Kent, Wash. Vivian looked a wreck after being up all that previous night from a red-eye flight and being much too nervous to eat. But the other two Marvellas were in place, posed like guard dogs to defend their friend if need be.

For two hours the Marvellas and Vivian's family listened to this unkempt, white-haired man speak casually, arms crossed, about how his violations years ago were "not life threatening," and how it really wasn't Vivian's fault — it was her mother's for being such a bad wife.

"It didn't take me long to realize I was doing wrong," he said of Vivian's abuse.

"Six years!" Vivian shouted at the screen.

And then Newell asked him about Vivian's step-niece, Rick's former stepdaughter.

"She initiated something I didn't know how to stop," he said, looking rather bewildered. "But it's not all her fault."

The child was only 7 at the time.

When it was finally over, nobody said a word. Vivian's mother sat staring into a soda can, facing away from her daughter. Her brother, looking disgusted, fiddled with his cap.

Vivian turned to him. "Well, what do you think?"

"Oh, hard to say," he sighed. "I dunno. Hard to say."

She asked if he believed his stepdaughter.

"She hasn't told me anything," he said.

"Well, do you have any questions?" she asked him.

"No, not really."

Rick's reaction, or lack thereof, disappointed Vivian but didn't surprise her. This never has been an emotional family.

"We have the strongest emotional armor I can imagine," Vivian said.

Before Rick left, Vivian asked him to come to the police station that Monday morning to talk about pressing charges against their father. Her mother had reluctantly agreed to go. But Rick said he was too busy with work.

"Aren't these people taking this seriously?" Vivian wondered.

She spent the next hour pumping her mother for details. "Where were you? What was he doing when you came home? Did you ever see anything?"

"I really don't remember," her mother kept saying.

In an effort to reach her, Vivian read her an essay she'd written in therapy, describing her first memory of abuse. She wrote it in the third person. Detachment is a technique she learned at an early age, since survival and emotion don't mix:

The man explained that it was time the girl learned what's different about men and girls, did she know the difference? . . .He then takes his white T- shirt off, unbuckles his black belt and takes off his blue-gray pants and his shorts together . . .He goes on to ask if she knows why he looks that way (an erection) . . . He explains that he misses the mother, that's how men show that they're thinking about girls and women. Does she want to touch it? . . .It was horrible — horrible to feel, horrible to see, horrible to be involved in. It wasn't normal and the girl wouldn't feel normal again . . .

When Vivian finished, her mother just looked at her, teary-eyed. She said nothing.

Vivian couldn't get angry. To this day she can't. That frustrates her husband, Rodney.

"I think had (the Marvellas ) not gotten together, this whole process would have destroyed our relationship," he said.

Vivian never told him about the abuse. He found out one day while digging in her purse, looking for a checkbook and coming across the essay.

"She was carrying it around and I read it," he said. "I was pretty enraged. What a disgusting son-of-a bitch he was. It's so disgusting.

"I've gone through periods of rage and thought about revenge and all that sort of thing. I think it's fortunate that I'm 41 instead of 25 because I probably would have acted out this one.

"But she's never ever gotten mad. I think all that is part of that training she had for not showing emotion."

Vivian wishes she could rage about it. Or even just cry, the way Ezzie can. Both she and Margie are envious of her ability to do that. Vivian has only cried once about the abuse. Margie, not even that.

They've tried renting the saddest movies they can think of just for practice. They've tried coaching each other. But for those two, it's been an emotional desert.

The confrontation with Vivian's family lasted six hours. When the door finally shut behind the last to leave, the Marvellas let out a collective sigh.

"Was my real family kidnapped by space aliens?" Vivian wondered. "Or are we stuck in a Fellini film?"

Ezzie, who'd been biting her tongue all night, let it go.

"What IS it with these guys," she said in disgust. "They can't even say I'm sorry this happened to you? My God! I didn't know?

"At one point, I just wanted to get up and shake Rick: 'Listen to your sister!'

"And your mother, the same way."

It's 2 a.m. by now. It's been a long, long night. But before the Marvellas sleep, they follow tradition and reward themselves for their hard work. They climb into swimsuits and T-shirts, and head down the hall to the hot tub, only to discover the door locked. Closing time is 10 p.m., but Ezzie manages to talk the night desk clerk into opening it up for them.

"We've had a really intense evening," she said.

Inside, they slip into the hot, swirling water and turn into noodles. They lean back and lift their toes up out of the water, wiggling them in unison. They laugh as bubbles blow up their T-shirts, turning them into Pillsbury dough women.

They don't indulge long. They have a big day ahead of them tomorrow.


At Last the Tears

At Uncle George's farm, Vivian knocks on the door of the little yellow house, and explains to the woman who answers that her friend used to stay there as a girl. Would it be OK to look around?

Margie, who's stayed by the car, needs a cigarette. She lights one, hoping the woman will say no. She doesn't.

Vivian and Ezzie push because they want their friend to remember. If she can remember, if she can confront her fears, she can learn to be strong.

They escort her to the top of the driveway, as if she were a schoolgirl again just getting off the bus to visit her now late aunt and uncle.

"He would walk with me to the back of the barn like this," Margie said, cinching her arm around Ezzie's waist. "He held me very tight and the horse would follow because he had sugar or something. I'd be squirming because I didn't like being held. And he would tell me if I didn't stop squirming the horse would stomp on me.

"And so I was always afraid of horses."

"But you showed me a picture of you sitting on a horse, and he was next to you," Vivian recalled. "You said you could remember your thighs being chafed after being here because you'd ride your horse."

"No," Margie says.

"From him?"

"Wasn't that just the perfect excuse to be sore down there?" Margie said.

Nothing shocks the Marvellas anymore. They agreed: Yup, the perfect excuse. Then they put their arms around each other's shoulders. Next, they were skipping down the driveway, giggling like kids, not caring what anybody might think.

Margie remembers only bits and pieces of being fondled in bed at night. Vivian decided to walk her through it, using those fragments to pry more memories loose.

"You sleep right here in this corner?" Vivian asked, gesturing toward a small window.

"Uh-huh. I remember times when I was sleeping in that little bedroom and he would go in and stoke the fire, and he'd come in my room and she would call out to him, 'George, aren't you coming to bed? What are you doing?' His whiskers were long late at night.

Margie's cheeks began to flush.

"So, you're laying in your little bed and what's he doing? Touching you?"

Silence.

"Kissing you?"

Margie stared at the ground. Her cheeks were now bright red.

"I mean, you're getting whisker burns. And you've talked about his breath. Do you feel his breath?"

Margie couldn't answer.

By then, Vivian had her by the shoulders and was staring into her face. The prodding was more than Margie could handle.

"I just want him to go away!" she said in a little girl's voice. She burst into tears, put her head on Vivian's shoulder and sobbed, her body shaking.

At last.

Margie has always said she'd crack a bottle of champagne the day she finally cried. But since she no longer drinks, the Marvellas made do later with chocolate.

"Oh my," Margie said, pulling herself together. "That's enough for me right now."

Later, thinking the Marvella's were on a nostalgia tour, the farm's new owner led them through the barn. While he chatted away cheerfully, Margie systematically looked things over. Looking down on the stalls instead of up, she realized how small she was back then. The barn, which seemed cavernous back then, seemed so tiny. But no new memories came.

An hour and a half after first pulling down that driveway, the Marvellas were back in the car, debriefing.

"It wasn't scary going into the barn because you were with me," Marge told her friends.

And the scene under the bedroom window?

"I just wanted you to stop," she told Vivian. "I just went, 'No, don't; I don't want to remember this.'

"I feel a little heavy chested. But I do feel like I went and conquered something."


"To Our Exodus!"

The Marvellas have had a lot of celebrating to do lately. The meeting with the police detective in Kent, Wash., went better than they had hoped. Before they even left his office, he'd agree to pursue the case against Vivian's father.

That case is now under review by King County prosecutors. But another investigation in California has ended in an arrest.

On May 5, the Santa Clara Police Department issued a warrant for Frederick Roland Dietz Sr. on felony charges of child molestation. Santa Clara is where the most damaging abuse of Vivian's step-niece allegedly took place. The majority of the evidence came from an interview Anne Newell did with the victim in California and the videotape she made of the father, in Anchorage.

Dietz was found in Clearwater, Fla., where he was visiting his father in a convalescent home. Police there arrested him on the California warrant May 26, according to Santa Clara police Sgt. Mark Kerby. Dietz was being held under a $100,000 bond, and Santa Clara authorities are pursuing extradition.

For Ezzie, all the physical ailments she suffered when she first started this process — the allergies, the sore joints, the headaches — have gone. She and her family still disown each other. But in addition to the Marvellas , she's developing a new one through members of her temple. She's been asked to be the local president of the worldwide Jewish women's organization Hadassah, and is planning a trip with congregation Beth Sholom to the Holy Land in the fall. And she continues to write.

Ezzie no longer sees herself as weak, or as she used to put it: "a wimpy- ass little broad."

Now, she wakes up every morning and says her favorite prayer, thanking God for making her a woman and allowing her to feel emotion and still be strong.

For Margie, a breakthrough has come. Since returning from Seattle, she's remembered everything that happened in the barn. She's still not ready to talk about it publicly. But just remembering has made a big difference.

"I feel more wonderful about myself than I ever have in my life," she said. "I've gotten rid of it."

Margie's also discovering she's stronger than she ever thought and capable of making her own decisions. Like insisting her husband go on vacation without her this year, so she could attend Ezzie's birthday and coming-out party. A year ago, she wouldn't have thought of saying no to anyone.

Never have they seemed so at peace with themselves than since their return from Seattle. At a Passover celebration at her place, Ezzie opened a bottle of sparkling cider and poured each of them a glass. "To our exodus!" Then they dove into a feast of kosher dishes, followed by a round of chocolate.

At this point, Ezzie believes she's 95 percent through healing, which she describes as living without fear.

"I'm not afraid to open my bedroom door," she said. "I'm not afraid my father is going to be on the other side. For the longest time, I was afraid he was going to be there and he was going to be very angry that I told."

It's been a long haul, and not all the work is done. But one thing is for sure — the Dark Ages are over.


1994 Dart Award Final Judges

Steve Begnoche
News Editor, Ludington Daily News, Ludington, Michigan

Elizabeth Brett
President-elect, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS)

Ed Chen
Washington D.C. correspondent, Los Angeles Times

Linda Harkness
Director, Michigan Victim Alliance

Susan Watson
Columnist, Detroit Free Press