Finding Vivian Maier Page #6

and just disappeared.

The police finally found us.

I think she wanted to scare us.

I remember getting lectured by the police.

"You can't leave your baby-sitter. "

And me saying, "No, no!

"My baby-sitter left me!"

There were some accidents...

which I knew weren't accidents,

everybody knew weren't really accidents.

All of a sudden,

there's a kid screaming

in the basement with the door

shut and the lights off.

Yeah. That kind of thing.

She was mean. I don't

know how else to say it.

I don't know, she had,

like, a dark side.

I remember one time she said...

"These men, they'll have

you sit on... on their laps.

"And then you'll feel

something poking you. "

And I can't remember the

context of when she said that,

but it just was, she had this,

like, anger in her towards men.

And now, I know exactly

what she was talking about,

but as a kid, I really... I knew what she was

saying was dark, and a little not right.

I've seen her more than once jump

back in fear, you know, from a man.

She said several times

over the several years,

men, all they were out

to do is ruin you,

stay away from them,

be careful of them,

you know, that all they want is sex.

She was always afraid

of being touched.

I remember she was

standing up at this dump,

taking a picture of

some sort of incident.

The man apparently

thought she was falling.

He reached up, and all she saw

was a man reaching for her,

and she decked him.

She thought he was attacking her,

and gave him a concussion,

and sent him to the hospital.

I would bet money that she was...

brutalised in some way,

attacked in some...

I mean, or, you know...

molested, whatever.

I hate to say that, but something

happened to her that was awful.

Because nobody would act,

like, the way she did.

I remember some of the more strong

emotional things, I'm afraid.

It takes... It's harder to

remember some of the other...

I don't know if you want to go

into this, but I will. I will.

I mean, there were things that

happened to me that were not good.

Miss Maier was force-feeding me.

Forcing me to eat,

because I wasn't finishing my plate.

My parents found out,

and my dad got angry, but...

My dad found out

exactly how it was...

She would hold me down,

she would shove the food in my throat,

and then she would choke

me until I would swallow it.

And she would do that

over and over again.

There was very much

of a dark side to her

that I have not gone into.

She would lose it sometimes.

The first time she hit me was

when I was five years old,

because I was trying to

learn to tie my shoelaces.

And I wasn't doing it right.

And she got very frustrated with me,

and so she started slamming my

head into the side of this bookcase.

I mean, she wouldn't hit me in the face,

obviously, I didn't have bruises there,

but she'd grab me by the wrists

and swing me around the room

and slam me into things when she

got really upset about something.

And I was eight years old

before I could break her grip.

After that, she didn't do that again.

I was strong enough.

I mean... she was a brilliant person,

and I think she really cared,

and I think she tried.

And I don't know if any of the others

will ever talk about that, if they...

if it ever happened to them.

I don't know, maybe she got

it together. I'm hoping she did.

I really hate saying

these things about her,

because I've always felt guilty

about not keeping Viv for longer.

My husband and I were talking

then about having a foster child.

Viv said "If you want to take care of

somebody, why don't you take care of me?"

And then she kind of laughed,

but she meant it.

I think she really wanted to be brought

in to be a member of our family.

But that... wasn't really

what I had bargained for.

So there it is.

Then this little house...

Miss Maiers lived upstairs.

My father did provide a room

for her above his office.

I only... only had a

chance to see it once.

Back when I...

I snuck up behind her.

Cos she kept a padlock on it.

So, yeah, this is totally different.

This was the forbidden zone.

No one was allowed to see

where Miss Maiers lived.

Huh.

Miss Maier went in there and she left

the door open enough for me to see,

and the room was literally filled,

floor to ceiling, with newspapers.

See how the floor is sloped?

I told my dad, and he said,

"That's why the floor is sagging so much. "

He ended up having to put

a steel post in his office,

because the floor was sagging

and he didn't know why!

It was just totally full.

This floor was Viv's domain.

It occurred to me that maybe I would need

to go up there when she wasn't home,

so she grudgingly gave me a key.

And... And so I went in.

You could tell where

she had been walking,

and it was just this narrow path that

you could just barely traverse like this.

And where would the bed

have been right here...

stacks of newspapers,

almost to the ceiling.

You may think I'm exaggerating.

No. I am not.

Just stacked. Stacked, stacked,

stacked, stacked, stacked, everywhere.

High, you know, high stacks of paper.

How she even could

get to the paper...

I don't even know how much

she even looked at the paper.

I began to see that she was stacking

newspaper elsewhere in the house.

In the basement, and in the back,

we have a little back entryway,

and she would stack

newspaper out there.

Now, the idea was always that there

were articles she wanted to save,

for the day when she did get around to

cutting out the parts she wanted to keep.

I... It concerned me,

but I thought, "Whatever.

"Whatever. "

I gave her a ride to her

place of employment.

I looked at her desk,

and piles of stuff there.

She was certain that her employers

were coming into the room she had,

and going through her items.

She would rig the books

and so forth on her desk,

so that if they were

moved half an inch,

she would know that

when she got back,

or so, that was Vivian's story.

And she was also certain that people

were looking through binoculars

and could see through

the window of her room.

She was progressively getting

more and more reclusive,

more and more of a hoarder.

Everybody was saying, resoundingly,

"Oh, my God, you've got

to get rid of your nanny. "

I don't think that Mom

and Dad really realised

the extent to which she was

living with mental illness,

cos she was.

She was. She was. She...

She...

Yeah. It was...

it was a little past eccentric.

My neighbour said, "I'm painting the

bathroom, do you have newspaper?"

I said, "Sure!" There was a huge

stack right by the back door.

I gave him a big chunk like this,

I said, "Sure, go ahead. "

Well, when Viv came home, she saw

that that stack of newspaper

was shorter by three feet,

or two feet or whatever,

and she was angry and horrified.

"Who took my papers?

Who took my papers?"

And she just went berserk.

I mean, she went crazy.

She was... I remember an outside

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