When We Were Sisters by Emilie Richards Read Free Book Online Page A

was born, even though the other kids probably made that hell.
    Afterward, when Alice wanted to place me for adoption, Olive took custody instead, most likely so I would be a constant and visible reminder of her daughter’s sin.
    I don’t think Olive believed my mother would have the courage to leave home, but immediately after graduation Alice disappeared for good. Olive transferred her disdain from her daughter to me.
    The foster home where I was taken the day Cecilia and I met wasn’t the first I’d lived in. Olive was ill for almost two years before she died, and at the first sign of cancer she had surgery. Since there was no family to take care of me, I was placed in care until my grandmother was able to resume custody. Each subsequent time she was hospitalized I became a foster child again until she was well enough to claim me once more.
    Prior to Olive’s illness, I slowly became mute. Normal speech, which my medical records claim I developed as quickly and normally as any child, almost disappeared. To combat this, my grandmother did her best to scare words out of me. I was sent to doctors and speech therapists, but any progress I made disappeared at home.
    Of course the explanation is simple. Nothing I had to say was welcome or correct. Why speak when I would be instantly challenged or shamed? Selective mutism was a simpler solution.
    To make matters worse I was painfully shy and terrified of new situations, even though I badly wanted to escape my daily life. I was frightened that everyone would treat me the way Olive did, so I rarely made eye contact and preferred escaping to places where nobody could judge me, often inside my head.
    Olive was a great believer in diagnoses but not in therapy. She simply wanted an excuse for the way I behaved. One psychiatrist labeled me autistic, but once I began first grade I excelled at written work and scrupulously followed the most complicated directions, disproving that diagnosis, which was then traded in for the more generic “depression.” This one, with its finger pointed straight at my grandmother, surely pleased her less.
    Rather than being traumatized during Olive’s hospitalization, I began to interact with other foster children and to slowly speak again. Not often or fluently, but well enough to get by. Each time my grandmother underwent more treatment, my speech temporarily improved. Each time I went home again I regressed.
    My grandmother died when I was nine. I had been placed in emergency care two weeks earlier when she was rushed to the hospital. Just before she passed away I was taken there to say goodbye. I brought flowers the sympathetic foster mother and I had picked from her garden. Olive took one look at them and me, then turned toward the wall to block out the sight of such a common gift and useless child. My foster mother explained that my grandmother was too sick to know what she was doing. But I knew better.
    None of the homes I had stayed in previously were available after Olive’s death. The county looked for mature, experienced parents committed to helping me and thought a therapeutic foster home with one other child would be helpful.
    The right parents were Dick and Lillian Davis, and the other child was Cecilia Ceglinski, nearly thirteen. Within moments of our meeting Cecilia demanded that the speechless me call her CeCe. By then she had already decided that someday she would be famous enough to jettison her last name.
    On the day I was taken to the two-bedroom concrete tract house in an older neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, social workers were still attempting to find my mother, whose rights hadn’t been formally terminated. I knew from conversations I overheard that my chances for adoption were slim to none. I was too shy, too withdrawn, and while authorities no longer believed I was autistic, that diagnosis remained as a question in my records and was guaranteed to give even the most enthusiastic adoptive