Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (25 page)

I was definitely going to be okay. Before I knew it, there I was sitting in front of the famous CNN “Light Brite” set with all the blue dots. And there was Larry King, sitting right across from me. On TV, the desk looks bigger than it really is. When you do the show, he is right there in your face. And like many celebrities, he has a really big head. Huge, out of proportion to the rest of him. It’s one thing on TV, but in person it has the startling effect of making one feel that one is being interviewed by a giant praying mantis. I couldn’t stop staring at his head.

There I was, trying to deal with talking for the first time in public about having been sexually abused at age six, trying to remember all the important things about the law and the bill and all I could think was,
Wow, he’s
really
got a big head.
Perhaps it took my mind off the scary stuff and made me calmer. At any rate, I managed to spit it all out.

LARRY KING
: Why talk about this now?

ME
: I have avoided talking about this for years. I’ve seen a lot of celebrities go on television shows and come out about this kind of thing, and I’ve always sort of cringed and said “Oh, I just don’t ever want to do that.” But I’ve always said if I had to, if there was some compelling reason—in this case, I’m now on the advisory board of an organization called PROTECT, and we have a bill that we introduced in Sacramento….

Then, after the first segment, Larry King turned to the camera and said “That’s www dot PROTECT dot ORG!” I almost swooned. He kept it up, too, stopping at nearly every break to shout, “PROTECT dot org!”

When we finished taping, Larry asked someone (apparently in the ceiling) when this was going to air. A mysterious disembodied voice said it was “evergreen,” that they could show it whenever they wanted. I started to panic. This had to get out now so it could help us with Sacramento. If they held it, we would be screwed. I felt a lump in my throat.

Then Larry turned to the voice in the ceiling and said, “Run it Thursday!” I could have kissed him.

People logged on to the PROTECT Web site from all over the world. And what did they see when they got there? All the senators from the Public Safety Committee who had said no to our bill to overturn the incest exception. Not just their names, but photos, with banners across them reading “BETRAYED.” And below that were their phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses.

The politicians were quickly inundated with faxes, e-mails, and phone calls from voters yelling at them, “What the hell is wrong with you! Are you sick?” The popular onslaught had the desired effect. Senator Battin reintroduced the bill in California. If nobody in Sacramento gave a shit that I was molested before, thanks to Larry King, they certainly did now. The bill began to pass, one committee, then another, first the Senate, then the Assembly, and finally to the floor. And when it went to a floor vote, the politicians did what they always do.
They passed it unanimously.
On October 4, 2005, the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed it into law. I was happy. Really, really happy.

And then I cried. I only really cry when I’m happy; I’m kind of nuts that way. I had fought city hall—no, the entire California state legislature—and won. I had helped to change an unjust law that had been on the books for decades and had hurt thousands of children. I had succeeded, not because I was a politician or a lawyer or a psychiatrist, not even because I had been a victim and spoken out. I didn’t have the education or experience some of the others who fought alongside me did. But I succeeded because I had something going for me that the others simply didn’t. I was someone people knew, someone who had been in their living rooms. Even better: I succeeded because I was Nellie—and that bitch sure could open up doors.

CHAPTER TWENTY

HAPPY EVER AFTER

THE REAL THINGS HAVEN’T CHANGED. IT IS STILL BEST TO BE HONEST AND TRUTHFUL; TO MAKE THE MOST OF WHAT WE HAVE; TO BE HAPPY WITH SIMPLE PLEASURES; AND TO HAVE COURAGE WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
.

—
LAURA INGALLS WILDER

O
n New Year’s Day, 2010, I went to see Melissa Gilbert say “I do” again. Not to a new guy—thank God! She and longtime hubby, Bruce Boxleitner, were renewing their vows on their fifteenth wedding anniversary. For the record, Bruce is the only guy Melissa’s ever dated that I could stand, and I think I can safely say she’s given up dating idiots for life.

It was a small ceremony, at the Little Brown Church in the Valley, followed by a reception at Dupar’s coffee shop, where we all got eggs and hash browns. Melissa table-hopped around the pie counter, in her high heels and lovely multicolored, tulle wedding gown, a strapless number that showed off the enormous heart-shaped “Bruce and Melissa” tattoo on her shoulder. For a girl who was so hoity-toity as a child, she’s so down to earth now, I swear she’s practically gone trailer. And I love her as much today as I did back then.

Yes, I still love my
Little House
family. Of course, we lost Kevin Hagen (Doc Baker) and Dabbs Greer (Reverend Alden) in the last couple of years, and Victor French (Mr. Edwards) some years back. They’ve all gone off to join Michael and Steve. But the rest of our gang is still going strong and, amazingly, still speaking to each other. Well, most of us. I admit, Melissa Sue Anderson and I haven’t exactly been hanging out together at the beauty parlor getting our nails done, but sometimes I think maybe we should. Now that I’m older, I have a sneaking suspicion we probably have a whole lot more in common than either of us used to think. I’ve always said, if she wants to be friends, I’ll buy the first pitcher of margaritas.

And where are the Olesons? Nobody ever really knows exactly where Willie is. Jonathan Gilbert took off and started roaming the world a couple years back, and he’s been just about impossible to keep track of since. It’s like a bizarre game of Where’s Waldo? But I heard from him a while back, and he’s still smart as a whip and enjoying driving us all crazy.

My “dad,” Richard Bull (Mr. Oleson), lives in Chicago and still acts. And Mrs. Oleson? Come on, you know women like that never die. Indeed, Katherine MacGregor will be celebrating her eighty-fifth birthday this year. My guess is she’ll outlive us all. She hasn’t changed a bit, I mean, not at all. She will always be my mother, and I am convinced she will continue to try to boss me around to her very last breath. But how can you not love someone like that?

The Baby Carrie twins are now old enough that I can finally tell them apart. (They talk just fine now, too!) Rachel lives not far from me in Los Angeles, and I see her often. Karen Grassle (Ma) and Charlotte Stewart (Miss Beadle) moved up north near Napa, so I have to be satisfied with e-mail most of the time, but we all try to get together at least once a year for cast reunions.

I think I’m going to need my
Little Home
family more than ever as the years go by, particularly given that I’ve now lost all of my real family. It wasn’t until almost a year after my mother died, in June 2002, that my father and I were able to spread her ashes in the Strait of Juan de Fuca like she wanted. But she’s there now, with the killer whales and dolphins leaping around all day. In the spring of 2008, good old Jess Petersen, the caustic, chain-smoking other half of my dad’s company, Arngrim and Petersen, the man who had somehow become my “third parent,” finally succumbed to those damn Salem cigarettes he wouldn’t give up and died. He had taken care of me when my parents weren’t available and often did a better job of it. As my manager, he was involved in setting up my trust fund, a precarious position of great responsibility. He watched that money like a hawk and complained to the bank when the account failed to produce sufficient interest. Who ever heard of a guy breaking into a child actor’s bank account to put more money in it? Jess loved to travel and used to tell me that one day he would take me to his favorite place on earth, Venice. Ultimately, it was I who wound up taking him. It was hard getting his ashes into the country at first, but I finally got him a nice spot at the cemetery on the Island of San Michele. It’s got a beautiful view of the Grand Canal.

But this last loss was the toughest. On December 16, 2009, the world’s craziest, most shamelessly publicity-loving stage father, the guy who clawed his way up from the Salvation Army orphanage all the way to Broadway and, eventually, Hollywood, took his final bow. My dad was eighty-one when he died. He had bravely battled Parkinson’s disease and a severe heart condition for many years, firing up the electric wheelchair to go for oysters and martinis at five o’clock on weekdays and brunch on Sunday. After my mother died, he lived alone but entertained regularly. He attended all possible theater openings and political and charity events. Some people who met him were unaware that he was even ill. But eventually the disease did what it always does and began to attack his ability to speak, to swallow, and, ultimately, to breathe.

What made it hard for me wasn’t just losing my last parent. It was that he’s also the person I most resemble—in all too many ways. They say all girls turn into their mothers. No such luck in my case. Friends of his used to laugh and call me “Thor in Drag.” The physical similarity was alarming. When my husband, Bob, asked me if there were personal items of my father’s that I wanted to keep to remind me of him, I said, “It’s okay, I have a mirror.”

Dad and I were alike in more than looks. Having been in the orphanage during the Great Depression, and having suffered not just abandonment, but also malnutrition and neglect, my father had developed a survivor’s mentality. He used to say that the thing about being an orphan is, “even if you get adopted, even if you have a family, you always know in the back of your brain: you’re on your own.” Whenever he said this, I always knew exactly what he meant.

I don’t believe he or my mother intended to make me feel the way he felt, as an orphan. But when you’re left all alone to fight for your life and sanity, it doesn’t matter if it’s on purpose or an accident. A child’s soul doesn’t know the difference. My father was left alone at the mercy of strangers in the orphanage. I was left alone at the mercy of my brother in my own living room. But we both learned the same thing. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how loud you scream—nobody’s coming. The only one who can save you is you. This sort of trauma affects people in different ways as they grow up. Sometimes it makes the scrapper, the fighter, the artist. Sometimes it makes the psychopath. And sometimes it makes the bitch.

My father had years ago made me the enforcer of his medical directives. He had always been adamant that he did not want to be put on life support. “If you ever come to the hospital and find me on a goddamn machine, pull the fucking plug! Trip over the damn cord if you have to!” he’d say. All of his instructions were quite detailed, sometimes bizarrely so, like the form I needed to sign and have notarized giving me permission to authorize the use of physical restraints if he should become mentally incapacitated and violent. I asked him what on earth he needed this for. But I should have known: he had thought it all out and done his research.

“Well, if I become incapacitated and have to go to a full-care type of facility, there are two kinds—the really good expensive ones and the cheap ones. The expensive ones know better. They won’t take you if you’re violent and crazy, unless they know they’re allowed to legally restrain you. The only places that will take you in that condition without the restraint order are the horrible cheap places in the bad neighborhood.” As always, with my father it was all about avoiding a bad address.

Well, what could I say? “Fine then. Will that be leather or latex?”

One time, I did ask, “Why, oh why, in the name of God, did you select me to be the one to make all these horrible decisions?”

He snorted with laughter. “Because you’re the only person I know who’s got the balls to kill me if you have to.”

I suppose he was right. It didn’t actually come to that, thank God. But I did have to sit with the doctors and go over the horrendous details of every possible artificially life-extending procedure and every possible outcome, and make the final call. His medical directive was quite explicit. When they finished offering to perform every single item that he had listed under “Do Not Do Any of These Things to Me EVER,” my decision became pretty clear.

I told him that I wouldn’t let them hurt him. I assured him there would be no more tubes, and that there would be lots and lots of morphine. At the end, I left him alone in his dressing room to prepare privately for his final performance. His last words to a family friend were simple, poignant, and, like my dad, a little weird: “I’m happy.” And then after a thoughtful pause, “I don’t know why.”

Like I said, I’m my father’s daughter. So in the midst of mourning, when my editor called to ask, “Alison, I’m so sorry for your loss. Do you think you’ll be able to finish writing your book?” I cheerfully replied, “Are you kidding me? Not finish the book because my father died? Ha! If I don’t finish it, the crazy bastard will come back and haunt me!” Stunned silence on the other end. Then we both laughed.

That’s just me. I always manage to find ways to be happy, even when things are awful. It’s more than just a “well, the show must go on” attitude. I just always see the humor in situations, no matter how dark. My husband says I’m the only person he knows who can figure out how to have fun doing absolutely anything. He says I can turn going to the supermarket for cat litter into an adventure.

True, but now when I’m happy, I’m
just
that. There’s no static on the line now. It’s not “I’m happy, but…” or “I’ll be really happy when….” I am just ridiculously, stupidly happy. I am often cheerful to the point of being annoying as hell. I don’t know if this is a sign of good mental health or recovery, or if it means I’ve finally snapped and just gone the rest of the way to completely batshit crazy.

How? Why? If I knew, I would bottle it and sell it. But I have an idea. I read a study a long time ago about the effects of volunteering and activism on people with HIV and AIDS. It found that those involved in AIDS-related political activism and other activities that helped people with AIDS had higher numbers of disease-fighting T-cells, lower amounts of the virus, and lived longer than those who did not. Fighting back and helping others actually helps. I had figured it would certainly help psychologically, but it was nice to see it did something physically as well.

I wondered,
Could the same kind of activism work for survivors of severe physical and sexual abuse?
Apparently, the answer is yes. Back at the hotline, Bob told me that depression is defined as “learned helplessness and anger turned inward.” I had learned I wasn’t helpless. I learned it was okay to get mad as hell and scream my head off—especially if the cameras were rolling and an Ingalls was on the receiving end or some politicians who needed straightening out.

I don’t have anything to do with my brother, Stefan, now. I don’t go in for this faux forgiveness pop-psych nonsense that keeps getting foisted on incest victims. I just don’t think it’s fair. Nobody asks a robbery victim, “So, how are you and the burglars getting along now?”

When my father was ill, I did get stuck in the emergency room with my brother for several hours. I was focused on my father and in no mood to have a heart-to-heart with Stefan, so I just let him babble. It was like having an out-of-body experience. I decided it would be best if I just pretended I didn’t know this person. I told myself I was a scientist doing a field study of crazy people, or perhaps more fittingly, Jane Goodall among the chimps.

I didn’t see him after that; the night in the emergency room was enough. I can’t do anything about the “outcome” of my situation. Time has passed, the damage has been done, the statute of limitations has come and gone. But I don’t sit around pondering the injustice of what happened to me. I have been given the opportunity to affect the outcome of millions of other cases, many far worse than my own. This is a gift that has given me such healing, words cannot describe.

I owe it all to the bitch on the prairie. When I played Nellie Oleson, she allowed me to scream, to howl, to throw things, to pour out all my pain and rage over and over again in a safe place. All of us who have lived through abuse are terrified of our anger. Nellie taught me that I could be angry, and the world would not open up and swallow me. She also gave me a family for life that I made on the show, and she gave me friends all over the world (especially in France). When my friends began dying of AIDS, Nellie gave me the means to help them—to raise money for their care, to advocate for their rights, to educate their friends and loved ones about their illness. And when it was time to go to war for abused children, she gave me the means to do that as well. When Nellie talks, even Larry King listens.

So I’m happy, just like my dad. But unlike him, I
do
know why. I’m happy because I’ve finally realized this incredible gift I’ve been given and what I can do with it. I’m just getting started.

And now, I don’t even have to put the wig on….