“I felt like it was us again and that everything was going to be all right,” she said later.
Michelle was heartsick during the visit, but she didn't show it. Mary Kay was so upbeat and energetic that it didn't mesh with the reality of her situation in Seattle. She was in the trouble of her life. Moreover, she wasn't telling Michelle every detail, either. There was one detail in particular that she hadn't shared with her best friend. It was the identity of the baby's father.
“I knew she was pregnant by someone other than Steve when she got pregnant, but I didn't know who. She didn't tell me. I knew who Vili was, she talked about him, but I didn't know he was the father. But going from here to there was like crossing two galaxies to me. Taking it from this kid, to being a father, was a leap that I couldn't even fathom.”
Chapter 45
THE SPRING OF 1997 had not been easy on Soona Fualaau. Her beloved father, just fifty-nine, died, leaving her with a broken heart and a grieving mother. Her hands were also full—overflowing, really—with her youngest son's imminent fatherhood and the criminal case facing the mother of his baby. And if she ever doubted things could get worse, they did. The last thing the soon-to-be grandmother needed was any more trouble with the police. But that is exactly what she got that spring, when Vili and his brother shook down a kid for his Fila jacket and a basketball jersey at Cascade Middle School. According to a police report filed after the second-degree robbery incident, one victim was clobbered with a broom handle, the jersey and jacket “ripped from them.” The other was left with the threat that if he called the police “he would be killed.” The boy wanted his jacket returned badly enough to risk it. The police were called, and the Fualaau boys were identified by pictures in the school yearbook.
Later that same day Vili and his brother were read their rights, booked, and fingerprinted at a local police precinct.
One of Vili's lawyers later dismissed the seriousness of the charges and considered it nothing more than “stupid kid stuff.”
* * *
The stress and violence also intensified inside the Letourneau home. Each day closer to Mary Kay's baby's delivery date turned the flame up another notch. By May it was a blowtorch. Normandy Park police officers responded to a 911 call from Mary Kay on May 9. They found the pregnant woman with a red mark two inches wide and four inches long across her stretched stomach. She said her husband had hit her.
“We want to see the law bury you and it can't happen too soon,” Steve had said, according to Mary.
They had argued over the spiral notebook she kept of his threatening remarks and he grabbed at her and struck her.
“The battle has begun,” he said before leaving.
Mary Kay refused to press charges and the officers departed.
But later that day Steve returned. Mary Kay later said she met him outside in the driveway. While Steve stayed in the driver's seat, Mary Kay told him that the police had been to the house earlier and had taken a statement. She didn't think it was a good idea for him to be there. He could be arrested.
A police report chronicled what happened next:
“… Steve suddenly pulled away and she felt the vehicle bump her and knock her down… She said she struggled to crawl toward the house and at some point [a neighbor] came and took her to the hospital.”
Mary Kay Letourneau was admitted to a Seattle hospital for observation overnight. Her pelvic bone had separated, her left shoulder was bruised, and her left leg and elbows had been scraped by the fall. A day or so later she talked with Steve.
“He said he wished he had killed her and the baby”
Weighing in at nine pounds, ten ounces, Audrey Lokelani Fualaau was born on May 29, 1997, at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. Named for a beloved aunt of Mary Kay's and given a Samoan middle name meaning “rose of heaven,” the baby's hair was as black as her teenage father's. And just as John Schmitz had done some sixteen years before when Carla Stuckle gave birth to their son, Vili Fualaau emerged from the waiting room and held his baby in secret.
But Vili wasn't alone, and neither was Mary Kay. Her music teacher friend from Shorewood, Beth Adair, was there to support and encourage Mary and Vili on their happy day. Also in attendance were scads of Vili's relatives—brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles.
“Every Samoan in Seattle was there,” Mary joked later.
Strangely, presiding over the scene was not the new mother, but the mother of the boy who had just become a father. “She's the Samoan Queen,” Mary told a friend. “She's the matriarch of the family in any way that you can imagine. No question. She is in charge of every move that family makes.”
Before her baby was born, Mary Kay wrote a message that she hoped would someday help the child understand her love for Vili and how difficult it had all been. “People are putting me down. Accusing me of being mentally unfit because I allowed him to love me and I returned that love… ”