Eva
He could be tender and loving one moment, encouraging
his then youngest daughter and giving her the attention we all know little
girls crave above all else. In the next moment, the temperature dropped
and he teased and taunted her and then would walk off and not speak to her
for several hours — only to revisit his gentler, sweeter self the
next morning as if nothing had changed.
I don't know every detail of Jesse Carl's abuse of Eva,
but I suspect it was entirely emotional. He never raised a hand to his daughters.
My mother told me that her father would often tickle her, a normal, healthy
interaction between parents and their young children. Jesse Carl, however,
would persist until little Eva broke into tears, and then scold her the
whole time "for being such a baby." It's a small event, yes, but repeated
several times over what to a child must seem like an eternity, and you can
understand why my mother feared as much as loved her father.
I'm sure that Jesse Carl was absolutely certain that
he loved his daughters and he would never intentionally hurt
