Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love (22 page)

William looked puzzled. “I don’t know. How is a boy Danny spelled?”

“D-A-N-N-Y.”

“I think we should spell it like a girl. How would that be spelled?”

I got out a piece of paper and wrote down “Daniel” and “Danny.” Then I wrote “Danielle” and “Danni.” Dannie? Dani? I showed them to Willie and asked him which he thought was best.

“Well, I think when it’s time for her to learn how to write her name, it would be easier for her to write D-A-N-I.”

One minute Willie could be driving me batty with endless questions, and the next he could knock me out with his thoughtfulness. What a great way to look at it! I told him it sounded good to me, but that I’d just like for us to run it by his dad first.

At the dinner table that night, I prompted Willie to bring it up. “Willie, why don’t you tell your dad what you were thinking about Danielle’s name?” Bernie put his fork down. Willie was a little bit nervous, and, after he took a deep breath, his proposal came out in one sentence.

“You know how I’m a Willie even though I’m William, and you’re a Bernie even though you’re a Bernd, and I was thinking that Danielle could be a Dani, spelled D-A-N-I, and that way her name will be easier for her to write than ‘Danielle’ and also when Mom is mad at her, she can say, ‘Danielle Ann Lierow,’ like she says, ‘William Christian Lierow,’ and that way Dani will know that Mom means business and she could be in trouble.”

When Bernie looked at me, I winked, our signal for “Okay with me.” He turned to Willie and said, “That sounds like a well-thought-out plan, Willie. I like it.”

Willie grinned, then turned to Danielle. “What do you think, Dani? Do you want to be called Dani? Do you like that name, Dani?”

Danielle, now Dani, kept eating. Food was still her focus, and what we chose to call her was not her concern.

Halloween was the next day, and thanks to the trip to Tampa, we still didn’t have a costume for Dani. Willie had been working with Paul for weeks, planning an interpretation of Captain Jack, and from what I had seen so far, it was going to be pretty outrageous. Dani needed to be equally spectacular. After dinner, we drove to the Disney store at the Fort Myers mall, along with dozens of other families who had waited until the last minute to get a costume. It was madness, and I just wanted to grab an Ariel and be done with it. Bernie was more patient, walking around with Dani and showing her all of the different options. Willie was also scouting, so I stood at the entrance of the store to make sure no one slipped away with our kids, although I’m pretty certain that if anyone took Dani, they’d bring her right back.

“Dad! Mom! Come here! Look at this one!” I followed Willie’s voice to the Peter Pan display, where he stood beside a mannequin in a gorgeous burgundy satin tunic, trimmed in black brocade, over aqua satin pants. A black sash went around her waist and a gold-embroidered vest topped the tunic. Dani reached out to touch it and smiled. That was all it took. Bernie bit the hook, and she reeled him in. I gulped when I saw the price tag and hoped that Dani didn’t mind being a Pirate Princess for the rest of her lifetime of Halloweens.

The next night, Paul came over to help transform Willie into Captain Jack Sparrow, while I dressed Dani in our bedroom. With all of the time we had spent outdoors that summer, Dani’s hair had turned golden blond, and it shimmered against the vest. The colors of the costume complemented her tanned skin, and she looked every inch the beautiful princess. Bernie came in to check our progress, and his mouth dropped open. He stood her in front of the full-length mirror to see herself, and her eyes opened wide. “Dani, look at the pretty princess! Who is that pretty princess? It’s Princess Danielle, isn’t it? You are such a pretty princess!” As Paul and Willie watched from the door, Dani stepped up to the mirror and kissed her image, as if to say, “Oh yes, I am pretty, aren’t I?”

With Princess Danielle in her colorful splendor and Captain Willie Jack in a long wig, black eye liner, a menacing goatee, and a swashbuckler sword, the two made quite an impression as we looped the neighborhood. Everyone wanted to take a photo, and very uncharacteristically, Dani was patient, as if doing her adoring audience a magnanimous favor. She caught on quickly that all she had to do was open her bag after Willie said, “Trick or Treat!” and the nice people at the door would drop in some candy and tell her how pretty she was.

Willie as Captain Jack and Dani as a Disney princess.

 

Bernie and I were walking several paces behind them, letting Willie lead the way. Bernie put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “They make a pretty good team, don’t they?” I had to agree they did.

The week before Thanksgiving, we got a brown government envelope in the mail from the State of Nevada. I pulled out two sheets of paper. The one on top was very simple: a cover letter from the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services. “Attached is the original copy of the birth certificate for Danielle Ann Lierow. Please store in a secure location with other vital records.”

The other sheet of paper was the new birth certificate we had been waiting for. The same time and date of birth, hospital, city, county, state, and physician were listed. The same State of Nevada seal was displayed across the top. But on this version, the child’s name was Danielle Ann Lierow, the mother was Diane Lee Lierow, and the father Bernd Lierow.

I had never been to Las Vegas, had never even been in the state of Nevada, and now I seemingly had given birth there. But it could have said Mars, Universe, across the top, for all I cared. I pressed it to my heart, so very relieved. We didn’t need a piece of paper to confirm that Dani was our daughter, but for the first time since we had brought her home at Easter, I felt legally secure as her mother. We would not have to be afraid anymore that someone could take her away from us. I showed the document to Bernie that night, then filed it away with the birth certificates for me, Bernie, Shawn, Ryan, Paul, Steven, and Willie. And Dani makes eight.

Chapter 21

Baby’s First Christmas

Dani was tolerating school better—she loved her speech therapist Leslie Goldenberg and was warming up to her primary teacher—but she still had mini-tantrums when she saw the backpacks by the door on Monday mornings. Home was where her heart was, being with her family and the dogs. Toilet training was going well. When Dani wasn’t in school, she wore underwear until it was time for bed. Bernie or I reminded her or took her at least once an hour to go to the bathroom. She would pull her own pants down and sit on the toilet until something happened, even if it was just a tiny trickle. I usually handed her some toilet paper; otherwise, she wouldn’t use it at all and would drip dry, or she would unwind an entire roll onto the floor.

Dani learned not to swipe things from other people’s plates—not that she always resisted the temptation, but she knew it was wrong. We made her use her spoon and fork, which slowed her down and kept her from stuffing more food in her mouth than she could chew. I think she finally realized that there would be another opportunity to eat, and she didn’t have to hoard.

With speech therapist Leslie Goldenberg, whom Dani loved. Obviously.

 

Though she couldn’t play board games with Willie, as he had hoped, Dani and he had fun together, swimming and riding their bikes, with Willie constantly reminding her, “Pedal, Dani, pedal!” He could get her to hold Bebe’s leash when we walked the dogs if he held Cece’s and walked beside her. The Easy-Bake oven we got Dani for her birthday was a huge hit. Dani wore the apron and stirred; Willie measured and poured. It was amazing how much of the dry mix she could get everywhere but in the bowl. When the timer went off, she knew exactly what it meant—cake!

We got a battery-powered riding jeep for Willie, who spent a good part of one afternoon washing it and tricking out the bright-red body with flags and stickers. It was just big enough for the two of them to squeeze into. Willie drove and Dani rode shotgun and pushed the button for the horn. When Dorothy saw them coming, she hollered, “Here comes Willie, driving Miss Dani!” Dani would have been happy to ride around like that all day, every day. All that she lacked was a tiara, a sash, and the classic beauty queen wave.

Dani on the stairs at the Lierows’ house.

 

In the jeep with Willie.

 

I cut back a bit on my hours with my part-time job at a property management company. It brought in a little extra money for things like Building Blocks speech therapy and dinner out a couple of nights a week, but I also needed to be available to take Dani to Building Blocks which was in Naples, about a 30-minute drive from our house. Luckily, my boss was very flexible, and I was able to be home for the kids before and after school. On weekends, we went to arts or music festivals, to outdoor flea markets, and to window shop in old Florida communities near where we lived. I gave Dani some of my old purses to play with, and she loved to carry one while we shopped, just like a big girl.

As a Yankee, I still hadn’t adjusted to shorts and balmy weather in the winter, but it was preferable to boots, gloves, and long underwear. Christmas was different, though. I think that wherever you have grown up, you dream of that miraculous white Christmas. It was the only time of the whole year that I missed the north.

To get myself into the spirit, as soon as I put away the Thanksgiving gourds and the turkey platter, I pulled all of our decorations out of storage and turned the house into a combination of Bethlehem and the North Pole. This year I had to be more cautious about the smaller items that might end up in Dani’s mouth. When we trimmed the tree, she kept batting at the ornaments, so she and Bernie sat in the daddy chair and watched Willie and me decorate from a safe distance.

Willie had outgrown sitting on Santa’s lap with his Christmas list, and I wasn’t sure how Dani would handle visiting Santa in a crowded mall. But Grandpa Bill had a Santa costume, and he volunteered to dress up for Dani. I don’t think she really understood what was going on, who Santa was, or what he was doing at the Kennys’ house, but she gobbled up Doris’s Christmas cookies.

It was getting dark early enough that when we walked the dogs after dinner, all of the Christmas lights in the neighborhood were on. Dani loved that, especially the ones that twinkled on and off. She was drawn to the inflatable Santas, elves, and snowmen, just as she had been to Bill’s Easter bunny, and she wanted to hug and kiss them all. Bernie, Willie, and I were so excited about Dani’s first Christmas, we could hardly stand it. Willie helped me pick out and wrap her presents. He was so patient, showing her how to make a garland out of strips of red and green construction paper and paste.

December was an especially frenetic month in our family, because on top of the normal Christmas frenzy, three of our five boys were December babies—Ryan’s birthday was December 15, Willie turned ten on December 16, and Paul was born on December 24.

Paul and his girlfriend Angela came over for his birthday dinner on Christmas Eve, and we had the Lierow family birthday ice cream cake for dessert. After they left, we watched
A Christmas Carol
, the Muppets version, then I read
The Night before Christmas
before putting the kids to bed. Dani was a little restless, but we attributed it to the cake and the cookies, if not visions of sugarplums dancing in her head.

It was our tradition to put all of the family gifts around the tree on Christmas Eve after the kids went to sleep. While I pulled bags and boxes out of closets and from under our bed, Bernie got the bigger presents we had hidden in the trunk of the car or at Bill and Doris’s house. There was always something to put together. This year it was two new bikes. Dani had outgrown the one we got from the neighbor in the fall. Willie’s was a couple of years old, so we picked one out for him that we thought he might grow into. We parked the bikes on each side of the tree and piled the packages around those.

It wasn’t yet dawn on Christmas morning when we heard Dani shrieking, loud and frantic. Both of us leaped out of bed and ran toward the sound, knocking into Willie, who was doing the same. Dani was in the living room. She had stripped off her pajamas and pull-ups. Her hair was every which way, and she was crying, biting her arm, hitting herself in the thighs, and pacing on her toes. She looked terrified. When Bernie approached her, she ran screeching through the kitchen to the dining room. Her eyes were open, but it was almost as if she was sleepwalking. I could see that Willie was scared, and I asked him to go get one of Dani’s fuzzy throw blankets from her bed, mostly to get him away from the sight of Dani having a buck-naked meltdown. I poured a cup of juice for her, while Bernie quietly reassured her, letting her know everything was okay and that she was safe. She began to calm down. Willie handed his dad the blanket, and Bernie wrapped Dani up in it and carried her whimpering like a baby back to her room.

She had no way of telling us what had happened or what had frightened her so much. We think she must have had a nightmare that woke her up. Then when she came out of her bedroom to find someone to help her, the living room probably looked so unfamiliar with the bikes, the toys, and the tree that she got completely disoriented and terrified. What compelled her to take her clothes off was a mystery, as many things still were with Dani.

I put her in another pull-up and clean pajamas. While Bernie and Willie stayed with her in her bedroom, playing with her stuffed animals, I went to the kitchen to start coffee and put a pan of cinnamon sweet rolls in the oven. I plugged in the lights on the tree and turned on a CD of Christmas carols. The sun was coming up when the three of them came back into the living room. The smell of cinnamon buns wafted from the kitchen, and the sweet, sad words of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” filled the room. Dani sat cross-legged on the floor beside Willie. Her eyes were still teary from crying, but she gave him a tentative smile when he handed her a package wrapped in Santa Claus paper and tore a corner off to get her started.

In all of the chaos of the morning, neither Bernie nor I remembered to take photos. I didn’t realize it until that night after we flopped into bed. I bolted upright and said, “We forgot to take pictures of Dani’s first Christmas! She will never have a first Christmas again!” He looked at me like I was nuts. “Diane, which picture did you want? The one where she was running naked through the house like a crazy girl? The one with the red blotches all over her face from her crying fit? The one with the ornament in her mouth? The one with the little candy cane stuck in her hair? Or the one where she tried to eat Willie’s clay?”

He was right. So, it wasn’t a Hallmark Baby’s First Christmas. It was our first Christmas with Dani, and we sure didn’t need photos to remember it. As many occasions were with Dani, it would be pretty unforgettable. I lay back down and turned my head to look at him. “Video might have been fun, though.” The very idea cracked us both up.