E12. Junior High and Courthouse

We return to Sadie’s junior high, where shame and hunger shape the days. A simple lunch ticket becomes a symbol of belonging. The story turns to school staff, a juvenile courtroom, and a social service system that finally pushes back. A medical directive becomes the face-saving cover to intervene when family violence is hiding in plain sight. Thanks for listening, and feel free to share.

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Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Theme

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Sadie Green Story about an older adult looking back on her abusive childhood. It's a conversation between Sadie and myself, Pam Colby, her longtime friend. We are exploring how early trauma can affect a lifetime. Thanks for joining us. Hi Sadie. Hi Pam. Here we are on episode 12.

Junior High Hunger And Survival

SPEAKER_00 0:31

We are moving right along.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

And we're back in junior high again.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yeah, I talked some about that, but I had more to say. Junior High, what a time, what a time that was. Okay, let's go. At lunchtime, in Lincoln Junior High, students lined up in the hallway just outside their classrooms. When everyone was quiet and orderly, we filed down the stairs in strict formation, with our teacher in the lead. Most kids at Lincoln Junior High ate lunch with meal tickets, purchased every week in homeroom. For$1.25, you received a small pink card with five circles on it, one for each day of the week. Usually I had no pink lunch card to punch, and on those days I pretended I was not hungry. Some kids brought bag lunches to school. I could save myself embarrassment if I had one of those. So when I acquired a brown paper lunch bag, I treated that bag like it was priceless. I folded it over neatly on the top, careful not to wrinkle it too much, and carried it gently with the food inside. When the food was gone, I folded the bag smooth again to save it for next time. Then I collected food from the garden, or if I was lucky, stole leftovers from the fridge at night, and stuck those inside the paper bag before lunchtime to appear to have a normal lunch. Even if my stomach growled in hunger the night before, I saved the precious food for lunchtime because it was so important to be seen, eating like the others, to keep from standing out. The days I ate the best, however, were the days I ate in secret, the days I hid in bathroom stalls. Rows of skinny metal lockers lined both sides of the hallway. Most of them without padlocks on the doors. I'd glide out the bathroom door and move directly down the line of lockers, lifting latches quietly with deft, determined fingers. Once open, I'd glance quickly at the top shelf of the locker. If no lunch bag sat there, I'd move on to the next. If I heard footsteps, I'd act casual, as if this locker was my own. I'd closed the clanky locker door, as inconspicuous as possible, while my heart pounded so big, I wondered how my chest could hold it, and walk slowly to the nearest bathroom. On good days, I might get two or three lunches this way. I was hiding in a bathroom stall one morning when I heard someone enter the bathroom and go into the only empty stall. Then a second person entered the bathroom. I came out from my stall to let the second person in, and waited. I went through the motions of washing my hands and picked imaginary loose hairs from my coat sleeve. One person had gone into a stall, leaving her books on the sink. Sticking out from one of those books, like a bookmark, was a familiar pink card. Oh, so easy, I told myself, glancing toward the crack along the nearest stall door. I saw both her feet, planted firmly in the middle. This was no time to think slow. I reached toward the bar of soap and then snatched the card instead. I stuck my hand inside my coat pocket and walked slowly toward the door. It was scary and dangerous to leave during recess period between classes. I could pass a hundred faces before I made it up those steps to the second-level bathroom. I concentrated on moving one leg, and then the other. I kept my head down, my hands shoved in my pockets, and focused only on the steps, counting each one methodically as I went up. Once, safe inside a stall of the second bathroom, I looked eagerly at my reward. Three circles left on the lunch ticket. Three days of eating like a normal student. For three whole days, I could walk that line with pride.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

One thing that really sticks in my brain is the fact that you're in the bathroom all the time, hiding in stalls. And I'm wondering, did they send home reports then that you weren't in school that to your knowledge? Oh, I'm sure they did. But your parents didn't care.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

No, at that point.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

By that point, by junior high, they were no longer interested.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, my parents, I don't think, cared or was just another world, but the school cared. Yeah. And that's what so there was some con when I read through these letters today, there was some conversation about putting me into an institution. And my parents did not agree to it. Clearly, people were trying to do something. It was the school that took my parents to court. And I know that counselor was there in the courtroom.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Do you have any good memories of that school? Because I know you have a lot of good memories from grade school, the one-room schoolhouse.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah. And once I came to Minneapolis and I loved school here, it was such a blur. I just don't have a lot of memories, actually. It was survival and finding food. Yeah. And the humiliation and the shame. And I had no friends. I had I don't remember talking to anybody. Other kids. No. There's perhaps a lot that I don't remember repressed.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Because just at one point we did meet up with someone who knew you. Yeah, and she had memories of you, but you didn't have any memory of her.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Right. She remembers me standing at my locker, and we also shared some classes. I didn't remember her then, but we do get together sometimes now. And what's interesting is she was a surgical nurse much of her life and made many trips all over the world assisting with cliff palate surgeries on children.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

And speaking of children, now we're gonna move on to a pretty big event in your life story. Is that right, Sadie?

Court Day Through A Child’s Eyes

Why The Judge’s Order Mattered

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yes, going to court. I want to talk about that day. Court Day opened on a sunny January morning, five months past my fourteenth birthday. I dressed in the outfit assigned to me, a baby blue wool skirt gathered at the waist, a soft white shell with pale blue streaks, and a matching blue oversweater. I wasn't sure what we were doing. I knew it involved me or I wouldn't be here at all, especially not in this fine outfit. But nobody had clued me in, not Mr. Renshaw or the welfare woman who never spoke to me alone. And of course I was not privy to the letters that came in the mail from Ma and Pa. I guessed it was about my truancies at school. This was another public way from my humiliation. I had no idea it was my parents who would be on trial that day. The four of us, Ma, Pa, Grandma, and I, squeezed inside the cab of the old pickup truck. I did not want to sit on Ma's lap. What if I blocked her view or was too heavy? So I leaned forward toward the dashboard to place most of my weight on my crossed arms, with my behind barely touching on her knees. I dared not sit on Grandma's lap. The hostility between her and Ma that filled the cab was already suffocating. I don't see why it's necessary that I go, said Grandma. You should have thought about this first before you got on your high horse. You started this and now you're gonna finish it. Once we finally got to town and made it inside the doorway of the courtroom, Grandma and the three of us parted like the sea and moved in opposite directions. She turned to stand way in the back along the tall windows that rose formally along two sides of the high-ceiling room. Ma, papa, and I turned to the front, walking in slow motion, like the unemployed in a depression line. Perhaps half a dozen strangers sat in pairs or by themselves on benches like church pews that faced the judge and his assistants. We filed in behind the front row and sat down facing forward. Once seated between the two of them, I hung my head and waited for the next humiliation. My face began to burn while I wanted a shredding Kleenex in my sweaty palms. Shrinking small and smaller, and too scared to comprehend the details, my head spun round and round until I could succeed in shutting out the voices. I knew the men were talking. I knew Ma and Pa opened their mouths and said things. Their presence surrounded me. Pa in his self-conscious way, embarrassed to be in this place. And Ma radiating her dull, hard anger. What do the welfare people know? If they and everybody else took their nose out of our business, and if Susan did what she's supposed to, there would be no problem. What do you take us for? Ma was a fighter here, fighting for her pride and dignity, not for the daughter who was dead to her already. Do you like your mother? Do they take good care of you? I saw Ma's hands folded tightly in her lap. I felt Pa's awkwardness. Hard to bring my head up from the bench seat. The heaviness was pushing down that large hand that hovered over me, pressing, pressing, until the girl in the soft sweater suit shrank flat to almost nothing. Can you look at me? Three questions from the man on high. I counted. One, two, three, and pulled my voice up from the wooden pew. I knew the answers, if I could just bring the voice out loud enough. Yes. Yes, they do take care of me. Yes, sir. The thin man in the suit paced back and forth before the judge, gesturing with his hands. I knew grandma was unhappy. I heard the judge's words, extreme inferiority complex, as he informed his audience that delayed operations impact Susan's self-esteem. The judge issued his order that I return to University Hospital for a week of tests and preparation for forgotten surgeries. He set a deadline, banged the gavel at his desk, then gathered the black robes around himself and exited through a back door. As we turned out of the courtroom doorway, the January sun streamed through huge windows at the end of a long marbled hallway. As the four of us passed through the outside double doors and stood at the top of the wide courthouse steps, I wondered at the long view of map-like streets below. I noticed thin wisps evaporating up like magic from small patches of ice. Was it from salt? And if only for a moment's pause, did the tension too evaporate? Or is it simply a still picture in my mind all these years later, where the four of us stand, rose, side by side, facing outward without words? Eventually the four of us descended. We walked across the street toward the pickup in the parking lot, to begin what must have been a tense, but now unmemorable ride home. He used my face as an excuse. Did he really think I was this insecure from how I looked? Did he really think a one-week trip to University Hospital would bring me back to a changed world? Or did he read the truth, which mean the lies, and give me a way out? Was his ruling a way to save me from the deadly beatings that might follow if he had overtly blamed them? Annihilation was already near. I knew in my bones that I had to watch my every step. At the time I couldn't think wide enough to hope this courtroom scene might make a difference. I couldn't hope. I walked from that courthouse in the bruised body of an adolescent with utterly no sense of independent self. Now, when I look back, I'm so damned grateful for that one man's decision on that day, because I know more than anything I've ever known, regardless of anything they say, that public humiliation for my parents could have been the end for me. Preservation of her pride and her disdain for me were so entrenched by then, there was no other resolution. And I have that document from the juvenile court of Crowing County, state of Minnesota, in the matter of the welfare of Susan Marie Lasnick. It lists the other people that were in the courtroom, the school counselor, the principal of the junior high, the psychologist that did the psychological test on me the year before, and then the supervisor of Crowing County Welfare Department, and an assistant county attorney, in addition to me and my parents and my family.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Wow. And then we only had a picture of that day.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

And then the order is physical and mental condition of said child is to be evaluated at the University of Minnesota hospitals. I was born in Lawful Wedlock, and that the said child is without special care made necessary by her physical and mental condition because her parents neglect to provide it. Now, therefore, it is ordered and a judged that the above child be placed under the protective supervision of the Crowing County Welfare Board in her own home, that arrangements be made for a complete medical and psychological evaluation at the University of Minnesota Hospitals and the report be made to the court that said order shall continue for one year or until further of the court. And then Judge Longfellow signed it.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Was that determined or was that issued after?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I think it was issued that day. I remember s him saying something about inferiority complex. Don't remember seeing paperwork at the time. This is dated. Oh, oh, actually it's dated January 30th. Oh, yeah, that's when I went to court. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

So you went home then after that was issued with your parents and then began to make plans for a social worker to take you to the University of Minnesota.

Leaving Home With A Social Worker

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yeah, and why don't I read about that next. Seven weeks after the January court day, on March 23rd, 1970, I left the gray farmhouse. I came out wearing skinny green and black plaid pants, a dark green turtleneck sweater, and a lightweight jacket. I got into the car beside the social worker, whom I barely met. She sat in the middle while her husband drove, both of them spending their one-year wedding anniversary driving me to University Hospital in Minneapolis. I sat stiffly in the padded seat, my shoulder close to the side window, and looked straight out in front of me. How should I be with these two strangers for the long drive? A paper bag rolled on my lap, holding a change of clothes and a nightgown, all of my possessions now, except the round glass jar of ammo lotion clutched inside my hand. Why did she stuff that lotion in my hand at the last minute? After repeated slaps and dragging me through outfits in the basement, while I tried to guess at what she wanted, after being thrown across the room if I guessed wrong. Did she want me to smell nice for city doctors? Did she want to make up for the bruises? Or did she ever love me, this woman who seemed to only hate me now? While I rode beside the strangers, thinking I was en route to a one-week stay on a pediatric floor to undergo a litany of tests. I clung to the small round jar of lotion, as if it were a precious private anchor. Even when we stopped for ice cream, and the social worker insisted that I choose one of those malten milks in a huge paper cup like she had. Didn't feel anything except the constant numbing, shame, a robot and kids' clothing. I had no way to know this was the end of living with my family. My arm pressed into the armrest cushion on the door as the car's transmission shifted and began its slow course forward. It didn't occur to me to turn around or wave goodbye.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

How do you feel after reading that? I feel okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah.

unknown 19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

I could feel in your voice the that some of the feelings were coming back up a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I still remember that day. I don't remember having feelings at the time. Maybe I did. Maybe it was just this overwhelming insecurity, really.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

One of the things that struck me from the very start of your story today was just how innocent and vulnerable you were. And just the fact that you had no idea why you were getting in that pickup truck with your parents and your grandma, but you could feel the tension and the judge trying to talk to you about your own.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, were they good to me?

SPEAKER_01 20:08

And between them.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

And you just kind of changed.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah, you just had no idea what was going on, even.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah. I remember Mr. Renshaw, the thin man in the tie. So that was your teacher was there in the courtroom. He was actually a school counselor. Counselor was there. Okay. He's probably the one that initiated the whole court thing. It was the school. I don't know if there was some marriage with the welfare department. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

But the reality was your parents hadn't gotten you back to the University of Minnesota to get the surgeries for at least three years. For your birth defect. And so that's the excuse they used to take you out. Yes. And you felt extremely grateful they had that excuse because your mother needed something to save face with. Yes. Wow. It's a very just the way you tell the story is I felt on pins and needles just hearing it.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

I don't know what to say.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Okay. I think we can keep going. So you have the memory of your mom getting you dressed to go to the University of Minnesota. And do you did you have a real idea of what was happening? That it was a social worker taking you?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, the social worker was taking me, and I was only going to be gone for a week. That was my understanding and my parents' understanding. But when I got there on the pediatric floor, I would hide under the bed. I had bruises. I had red scaly skin on my lower extremities. I was terrified of people.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

And you have these records now. You found the records.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

And so they had a psychiatrist come down to visit me, and then they decided that it wouldn't. Make more sense for me to move up to the psychiatric floor and have the medical doctors come visit me up there instead of the way around. So I really was on the pediatric floor for only a week, but then I was moved up to station 64, where I lived for the next six months.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Okay, so we're gonna hear more about that time in the psychiatric ward, but it's so interesting to me just the idea of you leaving that farmhouse and not really having an idea that liberation was about to happen.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

And I remember that ice cream, they stopped pulling to a dairy queen, and she got this big malt, and she told me to get one also, and it was such a treat. And the fact that they it was on their one-year wedding anniversary, that was really a gift. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Shout out to social workers.

Episode 13 Preview And Closing

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Shout out to social workers. Okay. So in the next episode, episode 13, I do want to introduce some letters from that social worker and also records from the medical and psychiatric doctors. So that is what we will be reading from in episode 13.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Ooh, that's gotta be interesting. I'm looking forward to that, Sadie.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yeah, I love the number 13. That's a good number. Okay, we'll hold on to that.