Authors: Donna Mabry
Betty Sue came to help me with dinner, and the two of
us carried on with our usual mealtime routine. I said
nothing to her about the divorce.
Gene left without eating and was gone until
almost dark. When he came back, dinner was over. I’d
made him up a plate and kept it warm in the oven.
Gene waited until Betty Sue was finished helping with
the clean-up and left for home before he talked to me.
I was putting away the dishes. He sat at the
kitchen table and I put his dinner in front of him. He
stared down at the plate but made no move to eat.
“I got an apartment for me and Dad. Unless you
change your mind, we’ll move out tomorrow.”
I didn’t answer him right away. I wasn’t
surprised. I’d half expected that this was what he
would do. He was my boy and had been from the
beginning, but he loved his father as well.
I asked him, “What are you going to do about
Paul?”
“I don’t care what happens to him. He’s not
going with me.”
A tear fell on my cheek. I was stuck with Paul.
“I hate to see you move out, Gene, but I know you love
your Dad. I won’t try to talk you out of it.”
Gene shoved his plate away. His voice was so
low, I could barely hear him. “Mom, he’s seventy-six
years old, can’t you just forget it? He said he’d never
go back over there again.”
“If that was all there was to it, I would forget it,
but there’s other things, things you don’t even know
about.”
“What things?”
“Things that are between a husband and a wife,
things that aren’t any of your business. I’m not going
to change my mind, no matter what you say.”
Gene went downstairs for a few minutes to talk
to George and then back up to his room. The next
morning, he and George carried out their clothes and
moved to a small upstairs apartment a few blocks
away.
I wept from time to time over losing Gene. He
was still angry with me and didn’t even come to visit
for a while. I never wept for George. I didn’t miss him
at all and seldom even thought about him.
One afternoon, Donna came to see me, and we
talked about the state of the family. When Gene called
to tell her about his new address and the divorce, she’d
accepted it matter-of-factly.
Divorce was nothing new in her life, Evelyn was
single again. After that, Donna went to Gene’s
apartment to see him and her grandfather one time, to
my house the next.
After several months of going back and forth, she
told me about stopping in at her father’s one afternoon.
She played a few games of checkers with George, and
Gene made their dinner in the tiny kitchen, canned
tamales and Spanish rice. While they were eating,
Donna said, “Grandma misses you, Daddy. I want you
to go over there with me and see her tomorrow.”
Gene looked at George, who nodded his head.
“All right,” he said.
The next day, she stopped by her father’s and the
two of them walked to my house. Instead of just
walking in, Donna stood behind Gene, and he knocked
on the door. When I saw him standing there, I stopped
in my tracks. Neither one of us moved until Donna
stepped past him and pulled open the screen door,
holding it for him until he came in.
He wrapped his arms around me, and we held one
another for a long time. We talked for several hours,
and after that Gene came by once or twice a week.
Gene renewed his courtship of Evelyn. He hoped the
fact that he’d moved out of my house would help win
her over, but his hope didn’t last very long. She
married again, this time to someone named Gene
Fredette, who’d served in the Marines and fought in
Korea. He was a bartender at the corner bar she
sometimes went to with her friends, and that was
where she met him.
A few months after that, my Gene began seeing a
pretty neighbor named Helen. She was divorced and
had a small son. I hoped he’d finally given up on his
dream of winning Evelyn back, and found someone
who would treat him right.
One afternoon in August of 1962, Gene came to see
me with bad news. He’d been at Receiving Hospital
with his father all night.
It seems that George decided to go to the corner
store from his and Gene’s upstairs apartment while
Gene was at work. Misjudging the first step of the long
flight of stairs, he fell all the way to the bottom. He
couldn’t get up, and he lay there for two hours before
Gene came home from work and found him. Gene
didn’t own a car, so he called the ambulance. The first
time he called, it was around four o’clock in the
afternoon, and they said they would be there as soon
as possible.
He walked to the corner and called them again
every half-hour. He was told each time that they would
be there as soon as they could so he didn’t call a cab.
It was after eight that night before they showed up.
George was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital. He
had shattered a hip. A few days later, he developed
pneumonia.
What was left of the family, Gene, Paul, Donna,
and myself, gathered in the hospital. Totally unaware
of what was happening, George thrashed around the
bed, throwing off the blankets and pulling out his IV.
They finally put restraints on him to keep him quiet.
Betty Sue was so upset she was like a crazy
person. She kept telling the nurses to take better care
of her father and complaining about everything from
the scratchy sheets to the bags on the IV pole not
getting changed before they went empty.
I finally told her she was doing more harm than
good because the nurses were avoiding George so they
wouldn’t have to listen to her. That calmed her down
for a day, but on the next visit, she was at it again,
shouting at the nurses, waving her arms, and
complaining. She left the children with a neighbor and
sat by George’s bed for hours, holding his hand.
“Ellis has been gone almost two days,” she cried.
“Paul came home without him hours ago. Come with
me, Mom. I have to go look for him!”
“No, you don’t. He’ll come home when he runs
out of money.”
“He might be sick.”
“You think that every time he up and runs off.”
“I know, but I have to go find him. Please come
with me.”
“Who’s with the children?”
“Paul. He doesn’t know where Ellis went after
he left him.”
I sighed and shook my head. “All right, just a
minute.”
I picked up my purse, and joined my daughter.
We made the usual rounds, asking first at the bars Ellis
frequented most often. He and Paul had been to some
of them the night before, but no one had seen Ellis.
One bartender told her he’d left without Paul shortly
before midnight the night before.
At the next place one waitress knew Betty Sue. I
waited while Betty Sue spoke with her.
She smiled. “Hi, Louise. I’m looking for Ellis.
Has he been here?”
“Yeah, he was here last night. The bartender ran
him out at closing time. He was pretty plastered.”
“He didn’t come home. Where do you think he
might have gone? Was he with anyone, maybe a
woman?”
“He was alone. Why don’t you go on home?
He’ll show up sooner or later.”
“I’m worried about him. What if he’s sick?”
Louise put her tray on the bar and leaned toward
Betty Sue. “If you don’t find him in one of the bars by
two a.m., you could check an after-hours place in an
upstairs apartment on Hillger Street. Number 1912.
Don’t let them know you got it from me.”
“Thanks Louise.”
We left the bar and headed down Jefferson. On
the corner of St. Jean, we waited with a crowd of
people for the light.
It was long past my bedtime. I pulled on Betty
Sue’s arm and said, “We aren’t going to find him
tonight. Let’s go home. I have to get up in the morning,
and you’ll want to go to the hospital to see your
father.”
She jerked away from me and spun around. “No!
I have to find him. I need him.”
She started crying. “Dad’s dying in that place.
Everything they do just makes him worse. Ellis ought
to be home with me, not out drinking.”
She threw her arms up as if she were appealing to
heaven. “I have to find him.”
I tried to reason with her. “It’s not going to do us
any good to go up and down looking for him.”
The more I talked, the more emotional she
became. She ranted, “Dad’s going to die, maybe
tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. I have to find Ellis. I
have to!”
Several people, including Betty Sue and myself,
stepped off the curb, expecting the light to change in a
few seconds. It finally turned green, and Betty Sue
stepped out. She was a foot or so in front of me to my
left…and then she wasn’t.
The convertible that ran the light was going so
fast it was only a blur. It grazed me and another
woman, knocking us off our feet.
It took me a minute to realize what had
happened. I pulled myself to a sitting position. A man
leaned over me and helped me to my feet. “Are you all
right, lady?”
I brushed the dirt off my dress. “I think so.”
I looked myself over. My left arm and leg had
scrapes from where I’d fallen onto the concrete, but
other than that, I seemed all right.
The group of people spoke angrily about the car.
One man said, “I’m going to get the police.”
I looked around for Betty Sue, but couldn’t find her. I
circled the growing crowd of people several times,
calling her name, but she wasn’t there.
I looked down the street and saw the convertible
coming back. There she was, sitting up in the back
seat. Then, when the car stopped at the curb on the
other side of the street, the young man in the passenger
seat jumped out of the car. He ran toward us and started
yelling, “I told him to stop! I told him! It isn’t my
fault.”
He went from one man in the crowd to another,
grabbing them by their forearms and yelling how he
didn’t do anything wrong. The driver just sat without
moving.
I limped over toward the car to see if Betty Sue
was hurt and maybe needed an ambulance. She sat
there, staring straight ahead. Before I could get to her,
she fell over in the seat. A bunch of people crowded
between us and gathered around the car. Then I heard
a man say, “This lady’s dead!”
I reeled to my left and a man caught me. “No!” I
cried. “No!”
The man holding me up had to put his arm around
my waist and hold tight to keep me from falling. I tried
to get to her, but I couldn’t even put one foot in front
of the other.
I thought they must be wrong. Betty Sue was
knocked out, was all. I was sure she’d be all right in a
minute. All those people should get away from her and
let her have some air.
I cried, “Get out of my way! Get out of my way!
I’m her mother! I have to help her!”
Someone held me back and half-dragged me to a
bench on the sidewalk. A police car came and then an
ambulance. The medics worked on her for a minute,
then lifted her out of the car and put her on a gurney.
It wasn’t until they pulled a sheet over her head
that I realized the man was right. My daughter was
dead. My head started swimming, and I fell over. The
man who’d taken me to the bench yelled out, “Hey,
doc, over here.”
I remember someone putting a bottle of smelling
salts to my nose. I didn’t pass out, but I stayed in a
daze through the whole thing. The medic wanted to
take me to the hospital, but I told him I wouldn’t go.
The police station was right across the street.
They asked me what happened, and I told them what I
could. More squad cars came, and other police talked
to the people in the crowd. I saw them take the two
young men from the convertible away in handcuffs.
I didn’t try to get up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to
stand. Different people kept trying to help me.
Someone brought me a glass of water and I took a few
sips.
Gene and Betty Sue and those grandbabies were
the only things in this world that mattered to me, and
now Betty Sue was gone.
I didn’t understand how God could allow this to
happen.
Asquad car brought me home. The police officers kept
saying they should take me to the hospital, but I didn’t
want to go. I knew there wasn’t anything a hospital or
doctors could do to help me. I sent one of my boarders
who was home to go to Betty Sue’s place and tell Paul
to bring the children here if Ellis still wasn’t home.
Paul came in and said Ellis had just walked in the
door, and he wasn’t even drunk. “Go back and get
him,” I said. “Betty Sue is dead.”
Paul ran out and came back with Ellis and the
children a few minutes later. If I had been able to stand,
I would have gone to the kitchen and got the biggest
knife in there and stabbed Ellis to death. I didn’t have
the strength.
I told Paul to go to Gene’s apartment to tell him
what happened. I closed the blinds and lay down in my
room to let myself cry. My head was hurting so bad I
thought it might blow up.
Gene arrived at my door only a few minutes later.
He called the doctor, who came right away and gave
me a shot of some kind. I slept most of the next few
days.
George was seventy-seven and his injuries and
the pneumonia were too much for him to survive. He
died the next day, never knowing our precious
daughter had gone first.
Gene was devastated. Donna grieved. Paul
wailed for his father. He sounded like a lost child.
My heart was broken over Betty Sue. As far as
George was concerned, I mourned for what should
have been, but wasn’t.
Paul lost what little spark of life he had and
retreated into himself. He had no one to lean on now. I
had no sympathy for him. His father and his brother
Bud and now his sister were gone. Gene had erased
him from his life.
Donna had long ago forgiven him the fight that
ended with her trip to the hospital, but she was off
living her own life.
Even though we had a TV, Paul spent hours each
day sitting in a kitchen chair pulled up to the front
window looking out at the traffic.
Gene had to make arrangements for both
funerals.
Ellis was in a stupor of some kind. He kept
saying, “It’s my fault, it’s my fault,” until I couldn’t
stand it anymore, and I answered, “You’re right. It’s
your fault. You killed her.” That finally shut him up.
Betty Sue’s body was shown for one day at the
funeral home, and she was buried at Forest Lawn, a
short distance from where we buried Bud.
The next day, there was a big article in both
The
Detroit News
and
The Free Press
. The car that hit
Betty Sue had sped away down Jefferson.Although his
friend tried to persuade him, the young man driving it
didn’t intend to stop. He was afraid he’d have to go to
jail.
When his passenger turned his head to look
back, he saw Betty Sue sitting upright in the back seat.
The passenger screamed then and insisted the
driver stop and he pulled over. At first they thought she
was alive and offered to take her to a hospital. When
they realized she was dead, they turned the car around
and took her back to the scene of the accident. They
got there a minute or so after the police arrived