Like
any working mom, Hillary, the main family breadwinner in the years
when Bill was earning $35,000 a year as governor of Arkansas, had a hard time
juggling motherhood with her partnership in Little Rock's Rose Law Firm. Elaine
Weiss, an American Bar Association official who met Hillary in 1987, remembers
overhearing one strained phone conversation. "Well, Idon't know, Bill," Hillary
snapped. "Did you feel her forehead? Idon't know if she has a fever. I'm in
Chicago." Even Hillary's mother, Dorothy Rodham, would call her daughter
and say, "'What hat do you have on now?'" Rodham told PEOPLE in 1992. "'Are
you a lawyer today or running to the Indian princess play with Chelsea?'"
But Hillary's true priority has always been Chelsea, as was evident whenever
she wore -- over conservative business attire -- the gaudy, plastic-beaded necklace
that her little girl had made. At Little Rock's Forest Park Elementary
School, "right up front, Mrs. Clinton made it clear that Chelsea came first,"
recalls Sadie Mitchell, Chelsea's first-grade teacher. "She gave me all the
family's private numbers and told me to call them anytime." Mitchell also
recalls that Hillary helped perform science experiments with Chelsea's
classmates, took them on outings to theaters and museums and read stories to
the class with Chelsea curled up in her lap. Hillary's former press aide Mary
Ellen Glynn remembers one harried moment during the 1992 presidential campaign.
"Even though she had a million people sitting around her in this hotel room and
her schedule was backed up to eternity, Hillary called Chelsea, who was home
with a sore throat, and spent 45 minutes saying, 'How are you feeling? Are you
drinking lots of juices?' Everything else just stopped."
Hillary's greatest worries were over the bruises Chelsea might suffer in public
life. An already close mother-daughter bond also became a sanctuary from the
glare of publicity and attacks from Bill Clinton's political opponents. "Back
in 1986 . . . we started talking with Chelsea at dinner, telling her that
sometimes in political races people said mean, untrue things," Hillary told
PEOPLE in 1992. "Her eyes just got so big. She asked me, 'Like what?'" Shortly
after Clinton won the Presidency, Saturday Night Live mocked the gawky
12-year-old's appearance, and Hillary ordered aides not to answer any
inquiries about Chelsea. Recalls the First Lady's former press secretary Neel
Lattimore: "There was a line in cement that you didn't cross: We didn't discuss
Chelsea." And most of the time, Hillary didn't either. "I am not going to
answer any questions about her," she told Larry King firmly in 1996, when he
asked if Chelsea was dating.
Even so, on a videotape called The Man from Hope shown at the 1992
Democratic National Convention, Bill reported to the world that 11-year-old
Chelsea watched a 60 Minutes interview with her mother and father in the
wake of the Gennifer Flowers episode and then pronounced herself glad they were
her parents. Hillary also didn't hesitate to invoke Chelsea in her bestseller
It Takes a Village and in speeches ("I'd cry every year" on the first
day of school, she said, until Chelsea finally asked her not to come with her
anymore) or in her syndicated newspaper column. And the famous picture of
Chelsea-as-bridge-between-her-parents clearly came in handy after the
President's August mea culpa. "There is a certain hypocrisy here," says David
Maraniss. "For the most part they try to protect her. But when a political
situation requires using Chelsea, they will."
Hillary did make a point, though, of protecting Chelsea from being spoiled in
the White House. In 1993 in New York City she paid a social call on Jackie
Kennedy Onassis, who "warned her not to let adults -- no matter how
well-intentioned -- become [Chelsea's] handmaidens,"says author Carl Sferrazza
Anthony, who is working on a book about the history of First Families. "Jackie
gave the example of telling the Secret Service not to get into it when John Jr.
was in a fight in school, so that he could learn to defend himself." And
Hillary took the advice to heart. "I can't tell you how many times she used to
ask, 'Chelsea, is your homework done? Is your room clean? It doesn't look
clean,'" says a former aide. The First Lady would insist that Chelsea sweep up
the popcorn after a White House movie screening. She didn't let Chelsea off the
hook when it came to her wardrobe either. "`You're wearing that?' was
frequently overheard," says one Sidwell mother. It was all part of an effort to
create at least a semblance of normal domestic life. For Bill Clinton's first
Inaugural, Hillary invited five of Chelsea's friends from Little Rock for a
slumber party and put together a scavenger hunt. "They went all over the White
House," remembers an aide. "They were looking for a yellow bird on a picture in
the Red Room."
Chelsea soon found a balance between behaving with decorum at the White House
and enjoying its perks. When an aide invited her into the East Room after
finding her listening in on a performance by violinist Itzhak Perlman, Chelsea,
in jeans, scurried away in embarrassment. But at another small dinner, as the
Marine band was playing, "Chelsea came down to see what her parents were doing
and peeked in," recalls a former staffer. "She was wearing khaki shorts and
little tennis shoes and a top, and dancing on her toes."
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