Madeline was sitting in the Activity Room when I came in with Red this afternoon, I said hello and she asked me and Maria if we wanted to hear her story. I said we did, and Maria and I both pulled up a chair and sat across from her. I can tell you that Madeline’s story is true, it is archived online and in old newspaper stories, often on the front page.
She is a strong presence at the Mansion, she is always meticulously dressed and quick with a joke or wisecrack. She tells me every time she sees Red that his collar is too tight, and I always agree and remove it while we are there. When I return, she tells me his collar is too tight.
We turned down the boombox in the corner of the room – you good people bought it – and the room quieted. The day Activity Director had just left, the residents had painted for much of the afternoon.
Madeline said the story took place in the Bronx, in the late 1920’s, she lived in an apartment with her brother, Mother and father, who was a successful businessman, but was also a vicious alcoholic.
Madeline said her father repeatedly threatened her, her mother, and her older brother, who was 18 at the time. He beat all of them often, and their lives were filled with terror.
One day, her father came home drunk, and came into the apartment with an ax.
He said he was going to kill Madeline and her mother, and he raised the ax over his head as if preparing to strike. Her mother grabbed Madeline and both of them screamed for help, and her brother pulled out his pocket knife – it was large for a pocket knife – and stabbed his father once in the heart before her father gasped and fell down backwards.
He never got up.
Madeline’s mother called for the police and an ambulance, and her father was taken to a local hospital where he died shortly after his arrival. Her brother was arrested and charged with patricide, but was released three weeks later when a judge ruled the killing was justifiable and in self-defense.
He had killed his father to protect his sister and mother.
Madeline was four at the time of her father’s killing, she said, but she remembers every minute of that day, even as she often forgets other things in her life. She is 92, and has been at the Mansion less than a year.
A year after her father’s death, her mother died of a heart attack and since her brother was not able to care for her, she was sent to an orphanage in the Bronx, where she spent the next decade.
When Madeline spoke, the room was quiet, the residents still. I asked her if she loved her father, and she thought awhile about the question. “I’m not sure I was able to love anybody,” she said.
I thanked her for her story, and she said she was grateful to me for listening. I said our stories are important, they are who we are. She leaned over to pat Red and told me his collar was too tight.