If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood(16)

Could it?

Indeed, wherever she lived, Shelly decorated with a homey country motif, decidedly more Holly Hobbie than Martha Stewart. Her favorite color was blue, so the dark oak furnishings in their new home were either upholstered in a faded denim blue or draped with blankets appliquéd with hearts and flowers. Some pink. Some blue. Baskets and doilies were everywhere. She had a penchant for knickknacks; Precious Moments, with their wide-eyed figurines, were a favorite. She could scarcely resist a teapot with flowers or butterflies. It seemed that if there was a space available for something cheerful—and country—Shelly would find something at the mall or through a mail-order company to occupy the space. She’d take great joy in setting it out, admiring it for a beat, before moving on to whatever she had her eye on next. Shelly also decorated nearly every room with an astonishing array of family photos. There was no surface left without pictures of her girls or, later, their cousin Shane, peering from the walls. Dozens of portraits hung around the redbrick fireplace.

“Yeah,” Sami recounted many years later, “Mom had a thing for putting up pictures of us. It was weird to see Nikki’s smiling face on the wall. It broke my heart. Seeing those pictures and knowing how she’d been punished, how she’d been abused. It hurts and makes me sick to even think about it.”

Hundreds, if not thousands, of photos of the sisters exist. Each with a smile that was not only hopeful but often genuine. Years later, it would be hard for others to look at the images and wonder how a beautiful young girl like Nikki could manage a smile in front of the camera.

The girls watched their mother put up heart-themed wallpaper borders and dusty-rose wainscoting in the dining room. They gave their two cents as she tried out a lighthouse figurine on the mantel or a collection of scented candles on a side table. Those times were fun, and while later it would be easy to roll their eyes at their mother’s design aesthetic, the girls knew that there was something within their mother that craved the kind of warmth and charm this style evoked. Yet it was, they also knew, completely at odds with the way she lived her life—and raised her daughters.

The truth was never far, of course. It was always easier to do what their mother asked than to fight it. Each day, each time, there was always the hope that the craziness would be over. That Shelly Knotek would just, inexplicably and without any fanfare, be the mom they dreamed she’d be.

That was a childhood fantasy that was beat into submission by a new punishment.

Shelly called it “wallowing.”

It was her way of proving she was the supreme being over the entire family. Like all her best inventions, wallowing was a mix of humiliation and physical pain. It was also the kind of punishment that she could direct from the sidelines.

Wallowing was a nighttime activity, and an all-seasons endeavor.

Nikki was almost always the primary focus.

It started with Shelly flipping on the bedroom lights.

“Get up! Clothes off! Get the fuck downstairs. You are a worthless piece of shit!”

Tears came instantly as Nikki complied. There was something about her mother’s voice, the force of it. It was loud, guttural. It scared her. Behind her words was the kind of rage that made Nikki think that anything could happen and that, whatever form that took, she’d be on the losing end of things.

“I’m sorry!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Nikki would squat naked in the mud as her father sprayed her with the hose. Dave was mostly mute as he went about what he’d been told to do. Nikki cried and begged for a second chance.

Her mother watched from a few yards away, telling her husband what to do.

“Make her wallow! She’s a pig, Dave! Teach her a lesson!”

More water tumbled over her shivering body.

“Wallow, Nikki!” Dave said.

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Wallow!”

On one occasion, as she tried to lift herself, Nikki’s fingertips felt frozen shards of ice. It was the depth of winter. The mud puddle of the wallowing hole was frozen at its edges. She was all but sure she’d get pneumonia and die.

Dying, she thought, is the only way out of what is happening to me.

From her window on the second floor, Sami watched the scene below. She wished she were there too—not to rescue her sister, exactly, but to be punished in the same way. Sami was keenly aware that, for some reason, Nikki’s punishments were so much worse than the ones Shelly meted out to her. It wasn’t fair that Nikki had to endure that kind of trauma for the same kinds of transgressions that would merit Sami the ripping sting of a belt or a hard slap from the back of a hand.

“I remember thinking that it was unfair that I didn’t get the same kind of treatment,” Sami said years later. “I knew that whatever she’d done didn’t deserve the wallowing but that’s what happened to her. That’s what my parents did to her.”

After what seemed like a very long time, Shelly dragged Nikki up to the bathroom, berating her the entire time. She switched on the hot-water faucet and filled the tub. No cold water. Just hot. Nikki was tough, but she cried the whole time.

“You are a pig,” her mother said. “Clean up. Go to bed.”

It was hard for Nikki to recall how long it went on. Or how many times she was made to wallow. Dozens? More? Some stretches were longer than others. It could have been twenty minutes. It could have been two hours. She’d crawl around in the mud in the dark, feeling the roots of the bushes, the spray of the hose, and the sting of her mother’s cruel remarks.