Such a Rainy Night in Georgia - Part 3
We met with the private eye, discussed what we would do. It took several days of planning - visiting the local police in Cumming, setting things up … just in case things didn’t “go down” as planned. The thought that guns could be involved - people could be killed … was terrifying.
In spite of everything - my being afraid for my own life, and everything I’d been through with Dale, I still didn’t want him to be killed. I just wanted my baby back … and I wanted to be left alone.
On Friday the 13th of May, 1977, the two gentlemen appointed with getting my daughter back for me picked me up early. We drove out to Cumming, into the countryside, and slowly past the trailer. No one was home. Dale had already left for work. We stopped at the trailer, and they quickly went inside, made an assessment of what was there, saw some young marijuana plants on the kitchen counter … and realized that they had just found the “honey pot” they could use to tempt the police into helping us. Those same plants nearly got me into trouble though, since it was going to be hard to prove that they weren’t also mine. Thankfully, because of their size, it was later determined that they’d been planted after I left.
Due to this new find, the police did, indeed, become interested in the situation … which later proved to be providential. With careful checks in place, we left the trailer, made our tour by the police station, and then continued on our way to the head of Post Road, where we parked in the lot of small, country store … and waited. We knew that sometime in the late afternoon, Dale would be coming down the street just ahead of us, making his way past us, and down Post Road, heading for the trailer. He would already have picked Dena up from wherever he was keeping her, and she would be with him. Chances are that he would still be unarmed … since the gun had been spotted near the bed back at the trailer.
The primary plan was to trap him at the trailer. The police would come arrest him because of the plants, and I would get Deneen by default. Plan B … was not as pretty. Every time I saw a car come down that long open road just ahead of us, my heart flew into my throat, suffocating me. The two detectives were very kind to me, and tried engaging me in conversation, but I’m afraid that I didn’t acquit myself very well in that department … I was too frightened of what was about to happen.
The hours dragged by … still no Dale. As dinner time crawled by, and the shadows got longer, I could feel that the detectives were becoming restless. They decided to run by the trailer, head into Cumming, grab a burger, and head back by the trailer again. They promised it wouldn’t take long … and I remember one of them jokingly saying that Dale had all day … surely he wouldn’t pick that particular half hour to come home.
At the time … I thought that it was exactly what he’d do …
…and I was right.
We headed back to our ambush location via the road the trailer was on less than 40 minutes later. In the gathering darkness, we could see that the trailer door was wide open - there were no cars in sight. He had been - and gone.
Frustrated cursing filled the car as they threw open their doors and ran into the trailer … with me timidly trailing behind. The gun was gone. There was clothes everywhere, as if someone had hurriedly done some packing. A piece of paper near the phone with a California telephone prefix seemed to tell the tale. We had lost them.
A very apologetic Mr. Perdomo explained that there was nothing else he could do. He told me that I should go home, try to find out through family and friends where he could have gone, and trace him down from that end. His guess was somewhere in California, if the number by the phone was to be believed. As wily as Dale was … I wasn’t so sure.
In a haze, feeling as if the sandwich I’d just eaten was going to forcibly fight its way out of my stomach, I turned my back on what had so recently been home, and silently got into the car. As we headed back for Roswell, to everyone’s intense discomfort, strains of “Mother and Child Reunion” filled the vehicle. The words dropped like bricks into an awkwardness so thick it almost had its own hue.
No I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reu-nion
Is only a motion away.
Oh, little darling of mine.
I can’t for the life of me
Remember a sadder day
I know they say let it be
But it just don’t work out that way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again
No I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reu-nion
Is only a motion away,
Oh, little darling of mine.
I just can’t believe it’s so,
and though it seems strange to say
I never been laid so low
In such a mysterious way
And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again
But I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
When the mother and child reu-nion
Is only a motion away,
Oh, oh the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away
Oh the mother and child reu-nion
Is only a moment away
Words & music by Paul Simon
One of the most difficult things for me over the span of time that Deneen was missing were the unspoken words. I could feel the discomfort of whomever I was with. The younger women, almost all of them with babies of their own, empathized to the point of agony. It was painful for them to be around me, and vice versa. The young fellows … just felt awkward. No one ever knew what to say. Pain would radiate across any room I was in like an electrical charge. I can’t count the silent, knowing looks I saw people exchange.
Dotty wasn’t like that. She never gave me time to feel sorry for myself … made sure I ate - even if I couldn’t keep it down … and kept us moving so fast that I barely had time to think. She had tirelessly taken me from one government office to another, one overnight nursery to another … trying to get help, trying to find my baby. She was relentless … “unsinkable,” in spite of the fact that we were getting absolutely nowhere.
Dotty was not going to allow me to be alone. I was screaming silently inside for privacy … but she insisted on talking to me, trying to bolster me. Urging me to make plans. I simply couldn’t function. To me, the next several hours were like an indistinct blur … Dotty talking … phone calls to Maine to let my brother know what happened … plans for briging me home - without my baby. Just about midnight, Dotty decided to trundle me off to bed. Finally! I was going to have a bit of privacy - space - to take it all in.
Before I could find the shelter of my little bed … and the now nearly empty box of tissues beside it, the phone rang … it was her mother, back in Cumming. She had Dena.
Afraid to hope, fearing a sick joke, it seemed to take an eternity to make our way to Cumming from Roswell.
Dotty’s parents did, indeed, have Dena. She looked like a little shadow, in a white pajama top, and light green bottoms … so tiny, confused. I squeezed her until she protested. I’m not sure she even knew who I was at first …
They told us what had happened …
The police had apparently been to the trailer almost immediately after we’d gone for our sandwiches. Dale had either seen them there, or seen that things were disturbed. It had spooked him, and he’d packed up his stuff, and headed out. Not too many minutes later, we’d found the trailor door open, and realized we’d lost him.
However, before he’d gotten too far, he realized he’d forgotten something back at the trailer that he apparently felt he couldn’t do without, and he’d turned around - and headed back for Cumming. While he was there, which I’m sure was not for very long, the police, who were now looking out for him, happened to drive back by … and they saw him. I don’t know if they had any difficulty, but they arrested him for the marijuana plants.
Meanwhile, there was the problem of what to do with Dena. The police had acted on their own, and could have cost me my daughter. Dena couldn’t go to jail with Dale, and I wasn’t there to claim her. Dale didn’t want to leave her with our friends, Curtis and Debbie, because he didn’t trust them to not bring her to me. In fact, when he’d visit them, he would block their cars so that they couldn’t leave. The only other people he knew in town were Curtis’ grandparents, whom he thought might be able to be browbeaten into not saying anything. He was wrong. He left her with them. Within minutes, they had called their daughter with the news.
Once there, I was determined to take my daughter and leave, but before I could do that, I was forced to speak at length with an officer over the phone. He tried his very best to get me to agree to give her up to a foster home until some court could decide what to do with her - for her own good, of course. I would be forced to stay in Atlanta, in danger, have my baby there, and live … how? … until God knows when … and I would have to trust some court to decide the fate of my daughter? I was determined to not allow that to happen.
Once off the phone, I picked up Deneen, and headed toward the door. Marcus, Dotty’s step father asked me where I was going, and I told them: “I’m going to the airport.”
I must have been quite a sight. Pregnant, emaciated, sick … holding my 18 month old baby … and heading for the door. I was going to carry Deneen the 50 or so miles between Cumming and the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, south of Atlanta. I didn’t care what it looked like … I didn’t even stop to think that I would never have even made it a mile in my condition. All I knew was that I had my baby, and no one was going to take her away from me again - ever.
Dotty decided that it would be no good to try to reason with me. She packed me into the car, and we headed back to her appartment to pick up Deneen’s clothes, and what few other things I had managed to take with me. There were a few hours before my flight, which had been pre-arranged by my brother, and Dotty insisted we lay down.
Deneen had begun to cry, but it wasn’t one of those “tired baby” cries … it was a definite “I hurt!” cry. I thought she might need a fresh diaper … and I couldn’t believe what I saw when I undressed her. She was filthy! Not just grubby little kid dirt, but her skin actually had a brownish-gray crusty layer in some places. Dotty and I were shocked. She immediately grabbed Deneen, and ordered me to lay down … and then gave her a bath.
We’d known about some of the things Dale had been doing with Deneen … we were sure he was drugging her. There were drops her pediatrician had given us which made her sleepy … I don’t remember what they’d been for now. Dale and I had had vicious arguments over using those drops on her. He wanted to get some peace and quiet … even if it meant drugging the baby when it wasn’t necessary.
Some of our young friends visited him during the time he had Deneen, and they would later tell me what they’d seen. It broke my heart and filled me with fear when I heard that during one visit, my happy, mischief filled little lady sat in a chair, staring straight ahead, not playing or talking. Another time, a friend told me that when they’d visited, seeing them had made Deneen think of me, and that she’d spent the entire time they were there, going back and forth between her chair and the door, saying “Mummy. Mummy.” … expecting me to show up with them.
A cleaner, but still very unhappy little girl was placed next to me on the bed, and she and I had about 2 hours to sleep before we had to get up and leave for the airport.
By dawn, thanks to Dottie’s care and my brother’s support, we were on a jet, headed for Boston. My baby was with me … and everything was going to be OK … or so I thought.