It wasn’t clear exactly what pushed Kimberly, but life with Robert Mays and his third wife, Darlena, didn’t seem to be going swimmingly. In November Kimberly was moved from an Englewood, Fla., public school to a private one. A couple of weeks ago she ran away and checked herself into a YMCA youth shelter. A family spokesman insisted then that Kimberly was just having normal adolescent problems unrelated to her custody battle. One girl who also resided at the shelter told a TV reporter that Mays was angry at Kimberly for allegedly dating 12 different boys. Some of her friends also said Mays was very strict about letting Kimberly go to parties and stay out late.
If Kimberly was acting quite the adolescent, the adults handled the matter with level heads. Bitter adversaries ever since the baby mixup was discovered in 1988, the Twiggs and Mayses worked out the new plan together, along with Kimberly. The shelter let Kimberly stay for only two weeks: while she was there, says David Denkin, the girl’s court-appointed attorney, the Mayses actually approached the Twiggs. The move, says Denkin, is “temporary and informal”; Robert Mays retains legal custody of Kimberly.
Given the unusual circumstances of her life, there seemed nothing extraordinary about the way Kimberly acted. According to family and adolescent psychologist Mario Hernandez of South Florida University in Tampa, Kimberly’s anguished court plea last summer was a natural reaction to the threat of losing the only home she’d ever known. With that secured, “anything is possible,” he says. In stepfamilies, adolescents often run back and forth between their two sets of parents. As in Kimberly’s case, Hernandez observes, “it’s part of the way teenagers make decisions. There’s a lot of impulsivity and confusion.” And just in case there’s any doubt that Kimberly is struggling with her identity, she has made it startlingly clear in the time-honored teenage mode-by getting herself a dramatically short new haircut.
