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Valley was an idyll for the two sisters, who played amid the apple orchards and redwood trees, gathering walnuts and sweet chestnuts. Nick made a swing for the backyard and the family acquired a puppy. Natasha, who loved animals, adored her German shepherd. Remembers Olga: “I used to climb the hills with our dog, and pick cherries on cherry trees. We had rabbits in the back, that later ran over to the Canevaris’ because they had radishes.”
    Inside the cottage on Humboldt Street, the spectre of the Russian Revolution possessed the Gurdin household like a sinister spirit. Canevari, who lived across the street, “heard about” Nick’s drinking problem, “but I never saw it.” He remembered Natasha’s father as a “nice guy, used to rub my head and call me Butch.” Nick’s drinking, violence, and disappearances were the family’s dark secret. Maria claimed Nick never hurt her in Santa Rosa, though she conceded it was better if he was “someplace else” when he was drunk. As a child actress, Natalie would confide in juvenile actor Robert Blake, who was an abused child. “She had
a lot
to recover from. They use those catch-phrases like ‘dysfunctional family.’ I
know
that to be the case. And I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘Well yeah, her father was a drunk that beat her up’ or ‘Her mother was an unloving rat,’ because I’m not gonna give you any of those things.” Who knows what Natasha experienced inside her netherworld?
    Maria imagined the mother of a neighbor girl was conspiring to poison Natasha. “I don’t know why, but she always had that in her head. It was just a superstition,” recalls Canevari, who heard his mother and Mrs. Gurdin talk about Maria’s escape from Bolsheviks. He linked that experience to Natasha’s mother’s paranoia. “I don’t know what she went through in the revolution, but she was afraid Natasha was goingto get poisoned by this one and that one—just people in general.” Maria was “overprotective” to the point of “smothering” Natasha.
    Something about Natasha inspired others to want to take care of her. “Even the seventh- and eighth-grade kids loved her,” recalls principal Ethel Polhemus. “I remember we were doing the Virginia reel, and she got started the wrong way. I just took her by the arm and turned her the other way—oh, the youngsters were disturbed at
me
!” Natasha had a winsomeness that was endearing. “I can still see that little girl. Her eyes were dark. She was such a
pretty
little thing, a darling girl. She was just a doll… kind of dancing all the time, very sprightly.” Natasha was extremely tender-hearted, refusing to go fishing “out of pity for the fish.”
    That year, when Natasha was four, she and Olga took a walk for a root beer, their German shepherd puppy tagging along. On the way back from the store, the puppy and Natasha darted ahead of Olga to cross the highway. A truck suddenly appeared, crushing the puppy under its wheels as Natasha watched in horror. “I told her to look ahead and to never look back,” relates Olga. Natasha never made a sound, too traumatized to cry. It was to become a significant event in her life.
    In January, Santa Rosa’s movie theater, the California, held a special premiere for
Shadow of a Doubt
, attended by Hitchcock’s daughter and celebrating his discovery, Edna May Wonacott, who had signed a seven-year contract with producer Jack Skirball. Maria, a theater usherette, further fixated on Edna May as the precedent for Natasha’s impending fame. The Wonacotts sold their grocery store, moving closer to Hollywood. When the story broke in the Santa Rosa paper, “girls started standing on street corners in pigtails and glasses.” Maria was possessed that Natasha become the next Cinderella Girl, though how she hoped to accomplish that was unclear. Natasha was more excited about the kindergarten play than Hollywood. She came up with the idea of putting white powder on her hair to make