by Lynda Chitwood

Created on: March 10, 2009

The woman who was instrumental in helping to raise my daughter became a family friend and trusted confidant. The betrayal I suffered at her hands is something that, 12 years later, I still struggle with. I understand the concept of "turn the other cheek." I know holding on to anger hurts me more than anyone else, and I try to be forgiving, but it's difficult.

When my daughter was 8 months old, I needed full-time child care and considered myself lucky to have a neighbor, two doors down, who was looking for work babysitting. My daughter took to her immediately and we began a 13 year relationship, becoming good friends, or so I thought. When I married, several years later, she also babysat my son. My children were adopted into her extended family, with my daughter becoming best friends with her niece and my son buddying up with one of the other boys she watched.
She had two older boys, who became like big brothers to my daughter.

As time went on, though, I began to see upsetting things about her behavior. She gossiped incessantly, spilling extremely personal details about the private lives of the other parents whose children she watched.
She regaled me with lurid tales of all her in-laws shortcomings, financial woes and personality flaws, real or imagined.

Her own marriage was bizarre. Her husband came and went as he pleased, treated her like garbage, and seemed to love belittling her in front of me or anyone else around. Once, I was visiting their house as they were working on a project, and she bought the wrong item at the hardware store. As she was loading the car to take it back, he screamed obscenities at her, calling her stupid and telling her he wanted to put her head in a vise and squeeze it till it popped.

She was constantly in conflict with the neighbors, and I began to see that most times it was her doing, or at least her boys. From throwing rocks at one neighbor's house, to stealing oranges from one neighbor and throwing them into the pool of another, it was always someone else's fault, never hers or her boys'. She built a "music room" in her garage, and allowed the boys and their friends to "jam" out there until all hours, never caring that the room wasn't sufficiently soundproofed and they disturbed the neighbors. She rationalized that the neighbors deserved it because they were always picking on her boys.

She was raised Catholic and even though she didn't attend church or observe Lent or any other church rituals, she considered herself an authority

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