shirley told her, says renee, she was born to a prostitute drug addict named geri. that shirley saved baby renee, raised her as a daughter. but kept renee in line by threatening to abandon her. did she ever threaten to do that? yeah, many times. we d do something wrong, and she would say, well, you stop doing that or i m going to send you off to geri s house. and so they lived a life of packing up and fleeing state to state, one flop house to the next, searching for the cheapest place to stay and then skip out of. hunger constant. medical care, nonexistent. when money ran out, as it often did, shirley drove to the nearest truck stop. the girls would bed down in the car and watch shirley sneak off to do well, they didn t know. and alone and frightened, they held on to each other and watched the shadows of strange men pass by their car until the
am i really seeing this? it was a woman claiming to be the biological mother of both pepper and renee. claiming to be the woman who, according to shirley and barbara, was a child abandoning drug addled prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim allred could take on simple faith. i asked her to come in and see me the very next day, which she was very anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring whatever evidence she had. in that meeting, the woman presented her evidence. she brought some photos that she had of pepper and renee when they were very little. she told allred she had been a waitress when the girls were little. brought a photo of that, too, and a picture of shirley and also a photo of a man she said was the girls father, long since dead. she said her name was geri. i asked her immediately,
both of them. and they drifted one dump to another across any number of state lines for years. and then some time in the early 80s they settled down, here. shirley pulled up to this motel in los angeles county and took a job at the motel s cleaning woman in exchange for a free room. and if it wasn t much, at least it gave them some measure of stability. and they signed up at a local school, junior high for pepper, high school for renee. much to shirley s disapproval. shirley would tell us, girls don t go to school. they get married. why do you want to go to school? i didn t like being late to school. i didn t like being absent all the time. so they got themselves up every morning and went to school and kept going. and then, pepper was 12. eight of those years with shirley when she saw her chance to escape and seized it. she made herself useful as a
i m getting old. and it was like a miracle. geri s story that shirley who took the girls had been her friend turned roommate turned babysitter. she said i ll babysit for you. i ll take care of her while you work. i said, well, that s great because i really thought i was blessed. first it was renee she looked after. then renee and pepper and then two years later little brother raymond leonard smith jr. wait. brother? it wasn t just the two girls. there was a younger brother the girls never knew they had. the father wasn t around very much. geri supported them all with what she could make as a waitress. and shirley made a change, a positive one, it seemed, at least financially. she got this job supposedly at the motel managing, which was further from where i worked. so i arranged with her to watch
shirley told pepper that renee was her sister. the two girls listened wide-eyed as shirley explained to strangers that she was their grandmother. that their parents had been killed in a car accident. i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age. why had she been taken? she didn t know. not for money, certainly. there were no ransom demands. and without pepper s birth certificate, shirley couldn t use her to score public assistance. though she did use renee that way. frightened, compliant renee, eager for a mother s love, even if that mother figure was shirley. i never wanted to do anything wrong. i felt like if i did something wrong or whatever, she wouldn t love me. she would give me away. wouldn t love me? shirley told her, says renee, she was born to a prostitute drug addict named geri. that shirley saved baby renee,