When Ellie was born, nothing special happened- save that her father, a kindly man looked down at her small body cradled in her mother's arms and wept inconsolably. Her mother looked on in shock as the man she had loved for 20 years crumpled in on himself and collapsed in the delivery room as the nurses stood stock still unsure who to attend to first as if a spell had been cast and no one dared move lest something worse was to happen.
When Ellie was two, her father admitted to her mother that he had fallen in love with someone else and would be leaving her for this other woman, whom he would not name. Ellie's mother said that she understood and that she would forgive him if, and only if, he would explain that to his only daughter. Ellie's father, whose name was Matt Fitzgerald, stood at the foot of his daughter's crib and tried to tell his uncomprehending daughter that he would be leaving her and her mother for a woman whom he had been with since right before Ellie's birth. Matt stood there for almost an hour, not able to find the words, he told Ellie he loved her and returned to his wife to beg on his knees that she forgive him.
Ellie grew up in complete ignorance of this save for her mother, Glenda teasing Matt about the fainting fit and her father would squirm and look mortified that Glenda kept bringing it up.
Glenda and Matt remained together throughout Ellie's childhood, outside of the long silences that occurred between them from time to time. When these mysterious silences would happen, Ellie would stop playing and watch her parents eagerly waiting for a big reveal as they would stare at each other as if wanting to say something. They never did.
As parents went, Glenda and Matt were very loving and attentive; showering their daughter with all that she desired while sheltering her from much of the world at large. Ellie grew up, naive with the particular innocence that comes with being home-schooled for much of her educational years. She was a fragile child in truth being small and petite through much of it. She lacked the common hardiness of her neighbor's children and as a result played mostly inside as her differences in physique and temperament made her stand out as strange to them.
By the time, Ellie turned six, she had been ostracized from the neighborhood kids. She would run and hide in her room whenever her father suggested that she try to make friends. Matt would come to her door to try to reason with his daughter only to give up in frustration when Ellie would start crying. He failed to understand that his daughter suffered from depression and persisted on trying to extrovert his introverted daughter. Fortunately for both of their collective sanities, Matt gave up on this tactic by the time Ellie turned eight.
Glenda tried to intercede but also failed to perceive or grasp the extent of Ellie's anxiety and vulnerability to rejection and the torments of early childhood depression until Ellie turned nine. At that point, a friend of Glenda's took one look at this small frightened excitable girl and recommended psychotherapy. The psychotherapist informed the parents that Ellie suffered from extreme anxiety, several phobias and was in need of antidepressants that would make her more normal. All that and a constant run of psychotherapy sessions with him on a weekly basis. A fair amount of money was spent over the next year until Ellie, upon her tenth birthday refused to speak to the psychiatrist ever again.
In truth, Ellie would have been better off with a normal therapist who would have actually tried to help her cope with her depression instead of being psychoanalyzed until she felt more like a science specimen than a patient. Ellie used what had become her standard defense against her parent by running to her room, locking the door and refusing to come out until they gave into her demands. Despite the obvious emotional blackmail of such an action, Ellie seldom employed this tactic save in dire need. This was dire need to her. Her parents reluctantly agreed to take her out of psychotherapy, despite the protestations of the psychiatrist who had been making a tidy sum of money off of all of it. He did advise them to place Ellie in a public school as a final measure. Ellie was sure this was an act of revenge against her defiance.
Ellie understood she was an emotionally fragile child, being much brighter than most of her peers and their parents. From age five, she had grasped why this would make her the object of scorn and rejection. Thus, in a move that should have been recognized as sheer brilliance, this young girl had decided to preemptively remove herself from all that would have damaged her as a child. She had learned to gauge her parent's reactions to her condition plus their own discomfort when dealing with the "professionals" and actually developed a plan of action in order to avoid conflicts that she instinctively found threatening to her own well being.
So, anytime she suspected her parents were on the verge of a bad decision where she was concerned she would run to her room and refuse to be reasonable until they complied with her will. This tactic was used rarely as Ellie had learned from the fairy tales the consequences of overusing something to the point that it became useless. So, she chose to appear as a fragile child who had all these problems until the whole psychotherapy thing blew up in her face. She was shocked at first when she realized that she was smarter than the psychiatrist, then appalled at the fact that this did not put her in control of their relationship. When the psychiatrist turned to physical treatments like shock therapy, Ellie knew that she had to find a way out. So she added starvation to her room isolation refusing to eat for almost two days, her terrified parents gave into this and she never saw Dr. Whatshisname ever again.
Ellie would revive Dr. Wahtshisname later as a character in her stage show.
Her victory was short-lived as she was thrust into a public school at age eleven and expelled within three days when the room tactic failed to motivate her parents to take her out. Ellie arrived for her first day of school to discover that she was shorter than almost all her new peers and her mother's idea of what she should wear immediately set her apart from the rest of the kids. What this was, was so basic that Ellie gave up trying to explain it to her mother after she came home in tears with a torn skirt and missing a loafer shoe.
The crime in question was that her mother was not much of a modernist and insisted that her daughter wears skirts from the 1950's instead of the pants and jeans of the 1990's. Ellie knew immediately that she was out of date as fashion went immediately upon entry to the school that morning. People stared at her like she was some kind of freak of nature in her poodle skirt, sweater, and loafers.
The funny thing was, Ellie liked the clothes her mother made for her, she would retain the preference for the 50's skirts and blouse and loafers into adulthood. However, it made her stand out and the looks of derision were more than she could stand at age eleven. She cried that night in secret, not sure who or what she was crying for but knowing that it was necessary for her well-being.
The next day of school, she spent with her head down to avoid the stares and in her student handbook studying until she found the least harmful was to get expelled. She almost escaped the school unscathed but found that she had to go before the last bell and asked to be excused from class to go. On her way out of the classroom, a girl who had sneered at her the most (Ellie was sure it was her) tripped her. She sprawled to the floor, her skirt up and her underwear exposed. Mortified she clambered to her feet but not in time to avoid that girl's comment that she was wearing granny panties. She fled the classroom in tears not even understanding the extent of the insult. She hid in the bathroom stall and refused to come out even after the principal came to fetch her. When she was sure the coast was clear she crept out and got a personal escort out of the building to her waiting bus. There she learned to her horror that the girl who had tripped her had somehow ended up next to her on the bus. The girl, whose name turned out to be Bernadette continued to make fun of her clothes and being such a baby as Ellie wept the whole miserable ride back to her block.
The next morning she decided she had enough of this experience. During homeroom, she walked over to Bernadette, tapped her on the shoulder and when Bernadette turned she punched the girl right in her nose. This was not the original plan which was to spread the rumor that she had contraband in her locker. However, the effect was both painful and rewarding.
She hurt her hand and nearly broke her thumb as she had never ever hit anything much less another person, having no idea how to even make a fist. As her thumb and palm throbbed, she looked up to see Bernadette look of shock and fear as blood gushed from her nose. Bernadette screamed an ear-splitting scream and tried to stop the blood gushing from her nose getting it all over her hands. Then the scream became a wail of terror and pain as she hit her own nose in the vain attempt to stop the bleeding. Then Bernadette fainted.
No one was ever sure that Bernadette had fainted from the pain, the blood or the embarrassment of the experience. All Ellie knew was a deep sense of justified satisfaction as the teacher also screamed and ran from the classroom to get help. She returned with a police officer who looked more amused than upset as the teacher pointed to Ellie who was anything other than threatening and tried to explain what she did. The policeman shook his finger and Ellie who could not stop grinning.
The teacher called the school nurse and came over with a wad of tissues to administer to the downed Bernadette. The school nurse rushed in shortly thereafter and the crime scene became an emergency ER as the teacher and nurse administered to Bernadette who regained consciousness long enough to burst into tears and make a bloody mess of her face. Ellie was escorted away by the police officer who managed to keep a straight face as he walked her to the Principal's office and made her wait while he reported the situation to the Principal. The Principal had Ellie come into to the office and sit in a chair while she called her parents.
A tense conversation followed with the principal calling first her home and then her father's place of employment, the local university where he taught philosophy. The principal hung up and said
"He's in class and will call back," to the police officer, who nodded understandingly and looked down at Ellie and winked. This earned him a glare from the principal whom he ignored. Ellie liked him a lot more after that.
"Why did you hit her?" The Principal asked.
Ellie sat for a long moment, measuring up whether a lie would work better or just tell the truth.
"Well?" The Principal asked, tapping her long fingernails onto her big desk.
Ellie shrugged and hung her head.
"She called me a bad name on the bus." She mumbled mostly at her knees.
The Principal made an exasperated sigh and Ellie could just see the woman shake her head through her bangs.
"Kids these days." The Police Officer said.
Her father called back after a fairly long wait. The principal took the call and then put her hand over the mouthpiece and signaled to the officer that she wanted privacy, so he gestured to Ellie that they should wait outside. The phone call was long, Ellie waited in a chair that was too big for her as the Police Officer regaled the office staff on how this petite little girl had 'laid out" a girl twice her size.
It was her mother who came to fetch her.
Glenda drove her home and Ellie felt bad for her. Glenda cried all the way back, insisted on carrying Ellie into the house, undressed her from her school clothes and into her pajamas and put her to bed.
Ellie lay in bed wondering what her fate would be, but being fairly sure she would never have to go back to that awful school again.
At supper, Ellie dared to creep downstairs. She found her mother red faced and puffy eyed sitting at the kitchen table. she looked down at Ellie sadly before getting up and making her a bowl of canned tomato soup. Ellie climbed into her special chair and watched her mother cook the soup on the stove and fetch a bowl and ritz crackers and a spoon. She placed the bowl of soup before Ellie and crumbled up the crackers for Ellie before returning to her chair. The look of utter misery returned to her mother's face. It was the first time Ellie knew what fear was.
Her father came home as she was finishing her soup. He was red faced but not sad. He walked into the kitchen and dropped his attache case on the floor and stared at Glenda. The long silence thing happened as if they were going to have a discussion. They did not.
An Eternity passed, Ellie watching them both one at a time waiting, hoping and dreading that they would finally speak to each other. Matt sighed, took off his glasses and rubbed the edge of his nose.
"Fine." was all he said before getting up and walking over to Ellie.
He took her by the hand and led her out of the kitchen as her mother began to weep.
It was the first time her father ever whipped her.
She never forgave him for it.
She was expelled the next day from the public school.
She did not leave her room for a week. She would not speak to her father. Her mother brought her food but all Glenda would say was "I'm so sorry, honey," before walking away. She would hear her mother crying each night. She did not see her father when she would creep out to go to the bathroom.
After the weekend had passed, she finally came down one morning to find her parents sitting at the dining room table talking to a man and a woman in dark clothing. She stood in the doorway in surprise. The pair looked at her and then back to her parents.
"Have you told her yet?" The woman asked and smiled down at Ellie.
"No." Her father replied. "We thought it would be best to wait until we were approved."
"Well, you are." The man replied as he smiled down at Ellie who managed to smile back.
After the pair had left, her father took Ellie by the arm leading her to the couch. He picked her up and sat her down there and looked into her eyes and said.
"You will now have a brother."
When Ellie was two, her father admitted to her mother that he had fallen in love with someone else and would be leaving her for this other woman, whom he would not name. Ellie's mother said that she understood and that she would forgive him if, and only if, he would explain that to his only daughter. Ellie's father, whose name was Matt Fitzgerald, stood at the foot of his daughter's crib and tried to tell his uncomprehending daughter that he would be leaving her and her mother for a woman whom he had been with since right before Ellie's birth. Matt stood there for almost an hour, not able to find the words, he told Ellie he loved her and returned to his wife to beg on his knees that she forgive him.
Ellie grew up in complete ignorance of this save for her mother, Glenda teasing Matt about the fainting fit and her father would squirm and look mortified that Glenda kept bringing it up.
Glenda and Matt remained together throughout Ellie's childhood, outside of the long silences that occurred between them from time to time. When these mysterious silences would happen, Ellie would stop playing and watch her parents eagerly waiting for a big reveal as they would stare at each other as if wanting to say something. They never did.
As parents went, Glenda and Matt were very loving and attentive; showering their daughter with all that she desired while sheltering her from much of the world at large. Ellie grew up, naive with the particular innocence that comes with being home-schooled for much of her educational years. She was a fragile child in truth being small and petite through much of it. She lacked the common hardiness of her neighbor's children and as a result played mostly inside as her differences in physique and temperament made her stand out as strange to them.
By the time, Ellie turned six, she had been ostracized from the neighborhood kids. She would run and hide in her room whenever her father suggested that she try to make friends. Matt would come to her door to try to reason with his daughter only to give up in frustration when Ellie would start crying. He failed to understand that his daughter suffered from depression and persisted on trying to extrovert his introverted daughter. Fortunately for both of their collective sanities, Matt gave up on this tactic by the time Ellie turned eight.
Glenda tried to intercede but also failed to perceive or grasp the extent of Ellie's anxiety and vulnerability to rejection and the torments of early childhood depression until Ellie turned nine. At that point, a friend of Glenda's took one look at this small frightened excitable girl and recommended psychotherapy. The psychotherapist informed the parents that Ellie suffered from extreme anxiety, several phobias and was in need of antidepressants that would make her more normal. All that and a constant run of psychotherapy sessions with him on a weekly basis. A fair amount of money was spent over the next year until Ellie, upon her tenth birthday refused to speak to the psychiatrist ever again.
In truth, Ellie would have been better off with a normal therapist who would have actually tried to help her cope with her depression instead of being psychoanalyzed until she felt more like a science specimen than a patient. Ellie used what had become her standard defense against her parent by running to her room, locking the door and refusing to come out until they gave into her demands. Despite the obvious emotional blackmail of such an action, Ellie seldom employed this tactic save in dire need. This was dire need to her. Her parents reluctantly agreed to take her out of psychotherapy, despite the protestations of the psychiatrist who had been making a tidy sum of money off of all of it. He did advise them to place Ellie in a public school as a final measure. Ellie was sure this was an act of revenge against her defiance.
Ellie understood she was an emotionally fragile child, being much brighter than most of her peers and their parents. From age five, she had grasped why this would make her the object of scorn and rejection. Thus, in a move that should have been recognized as sheer brilliance, this young girl had decided to preemptively remove herself from all that would have damaged her as a child. She had learned to gauge her parent's reactions to her condition plus their own discomfort when dealing with the "professionals" and actually developed a plan of action in order to avoid conflicts that she instinctively found threatening to her own well being.
So, anytime she suspected her parents were on the verge of a bad decision where she was concerned she would run to her room and refuse to be reasonable until they complied with her will. This tactic was used rarely as Ellie had learned from the fairy tales the consequences of overusing something to the point that it became useless. So, she chose to appear as a fragile child who had all these problems until the whole psychotherapy thing blew up in her face. She was shocked at first when she realized that she was smarter than the psychiatrist, then appalled at the fact that this did not put her in control of their relationship. When the psychiatrist turned to physical treatments like shock therapy, Ellie knew that she had to find a way out. So she added starvation to her room isolation refusing to eat for almost two days, her terrified parents gave into this and she never saw Dr. Whatshisname ever again.
Ellie would revive Dr. Wahtshisname later as a character in her stage show.
Her victory was short-lived as she was thrust into a public school at age eleven and expelled within three days when the room tactic failed to motivate her parents to take her out. Ellie arrived for her first day of school to discover that she was shorter than almost all her new peers and her mother's idea of what she should wear immediately set her apart from the rest of the kids. What this was, was so basic that Ellie gave up trying to explain it to her mother after she came home in tears with a torn skirt and missing a loafer shoe.
The crime in question was that her mother was not much of a modernist and insisted that her daughter wears skirts from the 1950's instead of the pants and jeans of the 1990's. Ellie knew immediately that she was out of date as fashion went immediately upon entry to the school that morning. People stared at her like she was some kind of freak of nature in her poodle skirt, sweater, and loafers.
The funny thing was, Ellie liked the clothes her mother made for her, she would retain the preference for the 50's skirts and blouse and loafers into adulthood. However, it made her stand out and the looks of derision were more than she could stand at age eleven. She cried that night in secret, not sure who or what she was crying for but knowing that it was necessary for her well-being.
The next day of school, she spent with her head down to avoid the stares and in her student handbook studying until she found the least harmful was to get expelled. She almost escaped the school unscathed but found that she had to go before the last bell and asked to be excused from class to go. On her way out of the classroom, a girl who had sneered at her the most (Ellie was sure it was her) tripped her. She sprawled to the floor, her skirt up and her underwear exposed. Mortified she clambered to her feet but not in time to avoid that girl's comment that she was wearing granny panties. She fled the classroom in tears not even understanding the extent of the insult. She hid in the bathroom stall and refused to come out even after the principal came to fetch her. When she was sure the coast was clear she crept out and got a personal escort out of the building to her waiting bus. There she learned to her horror that the girl who had tripped her had somehow ended up next to her on the bus. The girl, whose name turned out to be Bernadette continued to make fun of her clothes and being such a baby as Ellie wept the whole miserable ride back to her block.
The next morning she decided she had enough of this experience. During homeroom, she walked over to Bernadette, tapped her on the shoulder and when Bernadette turned she punched the girl right in her nose. This was not the original plan which was to spread the rumor that she had contraband in her locker. However, the effect was both painful and rewarding.
She hurt her hand and nearly broke her thumb as she had never ever hit anything much less another person, having no idea how to even make a fist. As her thumb and palm throbbed, she looked up to see Bernadette look of shock and fear as blood gushed from her nose. Bernadette screamed an ear-splitting scream and tried to stop the blood gushing from her nose getting it all over her hands. Then the scream became a wail of terror and pain as she hit her own nose in the vain attempt to stop the bleeding. Then Bernadette fainted.
No one was ever sure that Bernadette had fainted from the pain, the blood or the embarrassment of the experience. All Ellie knew was a deep sense of justified satisfaction as the teacher also screamed and ran from the classroom to get help. She returned with a police officer who looked more amused than upset as the teacher pointed to Ellie who was anything other than threatening and tried to explain what she did. The policeman shook his finger and Ellie who could not stop grinning.
The teacher called the school nurse and came over with a wad of tissues to administer to the downed Bernadette. The school nurse rushed in shortly thereafter and the crime scene became an emergency ER as the teacher and nurse administered to Bernadette who regained consciousness long enough to burst into tears and make a bloody mess of her face. Ellie was escorted away by the police officer who managed to keep a straight face as he walked her to the Principal's office and made her wait while he reported the situation to the Principal. The Principal had Ellie come into to the office and sit in a chair while she called her parents.
A tense conversation followed with the principal calling first her home and then her father's place of employment, the local university where he taught philosophy. The principal hung up and said
"He's in class and will call back," to the police officer, who nodded understandingly and looked down at Ellie and winked. This earned him a glare from the principal whom he ignored. Ellie liked him a lot more after that.
"Why did you hit her?" The Principal asked.
Ellie sat for a long moment, measuring up whether a lie would work better or just tell the truth.
"Well?" The Principal asked, tapping her long fingernails onto her big desk.
Ellie shrugged and hung her head.
"She called me a bad name on the bus." She mumbled mostly at her knees.
The Principal made an exasperated sigh and Ellie could just see the woman shake her head through her bangs.
"Kids these days." The Police Officer said.
Her father called back after a fairly long wait. The principal took the call and then put her hand over the mouthpiece and signaled to the officer that she wanted privacy, so he gestured to Ellie that they should wait outside. The phone call was long, Ellie waited in a chair that was too big for her as the Police Officer regaled the office staff on how this petite little girl had 'laid out" a girl twice her size.
It was her mother who came to fetch her.
Glenda drove her home and Ellie felt bad for her. Glenda cried all the way back, insisted on carrying Ellie into the house, undressed her from her school clothes and into her pajamas and put her to bed.
Ellie lay in bed wondering what her fate would be, but being fairly sure she would never have to go back to that awful school again.
At supper, Ellie dared to creep downstairs. She found her mother red faced and puffy eyed sitting at the kitchen table. she looked down at Ellie sadly before getting up and making her a bowl of canned tomato soup. Ellie climbed into her special chair and watched her mother cook the soup on the stove and fetch a bowl and ritz crackers and a spoon. She placed the bowl of soup before Ellie and crumbled up the crackers for Ellie before returning to her chair. The look of utter misery returned to her mother's face. It was the first time Ellie knew what fear was.
Her father came home as she was finishing her soup. He was red faced but not sad. He walked into the kitchen and dropped his attache case on the floor and stared at Glenda. The long silence thing happened as if they were going to have a discussion. They did not.
An Eternity passed, Ellie watching them both one at a time waiting, hoping and dreading that they would finally speak to each other. Matt sighed, took off his glasses and rubbed the edge of his nose.
"Fine." was all he said before getting up and walking over to Ellie.
He took her by the hand and led her out of the kitchen as her mother began to weep.
It was the first time her father ever whipped her.
She never forgave him for it.
She was expelled the next day from the public school.
She did not leave her room for a week. She would not speak to her father. Her mother brought her food but all Glenda would say was "I'm so sorry, honey," before walking away. She would hear her mother crying each night. She did not see her father when she would creep out to go to the bathroom.
After the weekend had passed, she finally came down one morning to find her parents sitting at the dining room table talking to a man and a woman in dark clothing. She stood in the doorway in surprise. The pair looked at her and then back to her parents.
"Have you told her yet?" The woman asked and smiled down at Ellie.
"No." Her father replied. "We thought it would be best to wait until we were approved."
"Well, you are." The man replied as he smiled down at Ellie who managed to smile back.
After the pair had left, her father took Ellie by the arm leading her to the couch. He picked her up and sat her down there and looked into her eyes and said.
"You will now have a brother."
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