Walking on Broken Glass

by Christa Allan

  “My mother never discussed sex, didn’t see herself as a sexual being, and certainly didn’t want to see me that way,” I said. “She warned me so often about being touched and how it could lead to pregnancy, I thought feeling good had to be bad.”

  “You talked about connecting the dots with Carl, sex, and alcohol. Other dots needed to be connected. Like the ones we talked about last week,” Melinda propped a small white board on her desk. She drew circles with a marker as she talked. “Like this dot. Your mother's inability to feel good about being sexual and intimate.”

  A few inches away, she made another circle. “Then, that experience in high school. God watched over all three of you girls that night. Maybe you haven’t even thought about that, but I hope you thank Him. You were assaulted by drunks, who threw beer on you, degraded you, and one put his hands between your legs. Just because his hand never reached his intended target didn’t make the whole incident any less invasive or repugnant.”

  Those hands, from all those years ago, crawled on my skin. I looked out the window. “Well, he didn’t rape me.”

  Melinda closed the marker. “Listen to me. Sexual assault is rape without penetration, but the stress disorders are the same. Clearly, this incident didn’t ‘go away.’ And it's the source of some of your avoidance or withdrawal behaviors.”

  “I’ve tried to bury that night for over ten years,” I said. “The only people who knew were in the car with me. For certain, I wasn’t going to tell my parents. I shouldn’t have been there at all. I already knew how my Mom felt.”

  “You didn’t cause this by being there, Leah. This was done to you. I want you to understand this connection of that experience not being your fault because the sexual abuse in your marriage isn’t your fault either.”

  Confusion. A disconnect in my brain signaled an alarm. “I don’t think you understood Ron's file. Carl didn’t abuse me.” I shifted in my chair. Why didn’t she have candy on her desk? My hand itched.

  Melinda moved to the chair across from me and crossed her legs, still holding her two-dot board and marker. “You weren’t sexually abused in your marriage?” She drew another dot. A small silver cross swung away from the hollow in her neck when she leaned toward me. “Really? So explain to me what I may have wrong.”

  I stood and edged my hands into the pockets of my skirt. I rocked heel to toe, heel to toe.

  Melinda sat back, her hair a black curly pillow pressed against the chair. “What's this all about?”

  “It's uncomfortable, sitting so long. I need to stretch.” My trembling voice couldn’t make the lie sound like the truth.

  “No problem. You can still explain to me what happened between you and Carl. Help me understand.”

  “Do we have to do this? You obviously don’t believe me. What do you want me to say?” Isn’t living it enough? Do I have to talk about it too? I paced in front of the desk.

  “Just tell me whatever you need to.” Melinda's soft voice spread itself like a blanket on my cold fear.

  I sat again and kneaded the back of my neck, pushed my fingertips into my muscles.

  “Abuse is different. It's not like he hit me. He didn’t.”

  “No, of course not. Do you think that's all abuse is? “

  I shrugged. “Well, I guess I did, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me that's not true.”

  “You were sexually abused in your marriage. No is no is no.”

  “But what's that submit to your husband passage in the Bible? Not that we spent much time in church or in God's word, but Carl remembered that one. He’d tell me wives were supposed to please their husbands.”

  Melinda reached for the Bible on her desk. “Listen to this passage from Ephesians 5:22-25: ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it …” She left the Bible open to the passage and placed it back on her desk.

  “Does that sound like God said husbands should force their wives to have sex? Was there anything about ignoring your wife when she tells you to stop? No. We serve an equal opportunity God. Husbands and wives have different roles, but one is no less a person in God's eyes than the other. Submission isn’t slavery. It's not about allowing someone to rule you with abusive control. Would Christ love the church as Carl loved you? Being under someone's protection means feeling safe, honored, respected. Is that how you feel?”

  I didn’t answer. I curled my hands into fists. I wanted to curl my entire body into one.

  “It wasn’t your fault. Do you hear me? Just like that incident at the lake wasn’t your fault. It's not unusual for victims to feel responsible and take the blame for what happened to them. That's exactly what their abusers want them to think. If you feel guilty, then you’re going to continue in the cycle of abuse because you think you’ve done something to cause it. You’ve blamed yourself. It's time to stop.”

  I collapsed inside myself like a fluttering parachute at descent, covering broken images. My soul clenched, hands tugged at silk sheets, breaths pushed against pleading. Biting my lips until they bled. When I tasted the iron sweetness of blood, it was almost over. I could close another curtain.

  But the curtains of memory wouldn’t stay closed, they were shoved opened by something unexpected. A word, the short click of a locked door, a certain touch. I’d carried Alyssa to our bedroom to nurse her. Carl was eating breakfast. I drank in Alyssa's softness. Her urgency and persistence in feeding delighted and amazed me. Propped in bed, my back to the door, I didn’t know Carl walked in. I didn’t know he had undressed until I felt him slide next to me.

  “Alyssa's nursing,” I said.

  “I know,” he said, “but you have more than one breast, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure when I’d started crying. I wasn’t sure when I’d stop.

  Ironic. Carl and I both are so needy for attention. What I wanted from my mother, he wanted from his own parents. After losing Vic, they discarded their emotions and replaced them with control. Melinda said Carl sought in me the affection he craved from them. And in the same way his parents controlled him, he controlled me. Powerlessness bred control.

  “The Carl you fell in love with was the Carl more like your father. You recognized what Carl felt for you as love because it's what you felt from your father. Taking care of someone and letting someone take care of you, that's what you defined as love. But, ultimately, you can’t marry your father.”

  Melinda waited quietly as the sobbing gave way to uneven shuddering breaths. She held my hands in hers and prayed.

  Then she asked me, “What was in all this for you?”

  I wanted to slap her. Manipulation. When had it acquired a zip code here? “I can’t believe you’re saying this to me,” I said, my words strangled with anger. “What are you talking about? You already told me it wasn’t my fault. You changed your mind? I don’t get it.”

  “Sexual abuse—no abuse—is never the victim's fault. That's not what I’m talking about—being victimized. I’m asking you about this role you have as a victim. What's the payoff?”

  “I don’t understand. Payoff? Are you saying I got something out of being controlled? Sure, I was … what … being paid by Carl to stay powerless?”

  I opened another curtain. Memory flashed.

  I remembered the day at Brookforest when Matthew told me about the other session with Ron. I’d pouted and said I was being punished, no one gave me choices, allowed me decisions. Why did everyone pick on me?

  “Your being a victim of sexual assault, the subtle manipulations, that's something else entirely, do you hear me?” Melinda said. “This ‘Leah as victim’ is the Leah your brother Peter saw overtaking his sister. You need to own this Leah too. When you wrote checks that bounced, what did you do?”

>   How many curtains, God? How many?

  You can do all things I ask you to do. Christ gives you strength and power.

  “When you overspent on the credit cards, what did you do? When you backed into the mailbox? When you got drunk at company dinners? How did you make it all go away?”

  “I chose to not make decisions. I asked Carl what he wanted me to do. Should I buy this or that? If this didn’t work, then it certainly wasn’t my fault. I didn’t make the decision,” I said.

  Deciding not to decide is a decision.

  I learned, through my years with Carl, how to maneuver my way through his world. To get what I wanted, I’d give him what he wanted. Alcohol was my key. It opened the door to falseness that could buy me peace.

  I didn’t have to like having sex to understand and know what it could do for me when I was sober.

  46

  After my marathon session with Melinda I told Molly that my drive home was sobering. Neither one of us laughed.

  As close as I felt to Molly, I couldn’t share any more than that. I didn’t even know how I would share it with Carl. The delay in his finishing the project proved to be a blessing. It bought me time.

  Carl couldn’t come with me to Dr. Nolan's, so I asked Molly if she’d go with me. I didn’t want to be alone when Dr. Nolan told me pink or blue. As thrilled as I was about this baby, I’d already spent weeks and months collecting passport stamps out of “what if?” land. I tried to reconcile my joy and my pain. My excitement about the baby felt like betrayal when I thought of Alyssa. But yet I couldn’t deny the happiness I felt carrying this child. I prayed not to be consumed with worry. Some days I did better than others. Some days the questions stung like bees. What if the baby's a girl? What if she looks like Alyssa? What if she doesn’t? What if she's not as cute as Alyssa? What if she's cuter? What if … ?

  This pregnancy was different, not just emotionally, but physically. Dr. Nolan mentioned toxemia and the issue of pregnancy-related diabetes. I didn’t remember gaining weight like this when I was pregnant with Alyssa. Not that I’d stopped to calculate the gallons of ice cream I’d consumed since the beginning of July. I trusted Dr. Nolan to figure it all out.

  I changed into my fashionable, crinkled paper, baby chicken yellow exam wear and waited for Dr. Nolan. Molly amused herself with the assortment of dolls, bears, and toys around the exam room.

  “You’d think she was a pediatrician,” Molly remarked, opening a quilted cotton ark filled with finger puppets of Noah, his family, and a few animals. “This is too cute.” Molly giggled as she slipped Noah on her finger. She started to slip on more of the ark, when Dr. Nolan stepped in.

  “Hey, isn’t that a clever thing? Watch this.” Dr. Nolan showed Molly how the ark became a carrying pouch, handed it to her, and said, “All the way from Peru.”

  “Are we on Jeopardy?” Molly looked at me with eye-rolling confusion.

  “That ark was made in Peru,” Dr. Nolan said. “From all over the world—Africa, India, Kenya, Vietnam, Bangladesh— handcrafted. God blessed me when I opened my practice here. I wanted to bless mothers who didn’t have the advantages we have. I found A Greater Gift, and I’ve been gifting ever since.”

  Molly was entranced. She traded Noah for a parrot flute.

  “Don’t even think about it, girlfriend. This baby's already wiggling all over the place,” I only half-jokingly warned her.

  “Speaking of advantages,” Dr. Nolan laughed, “how's Princess Leah? And where's Jean Luc?”

  Molly's eyebrows met in the middle when she heard Dr. Nolan's name for Carl.

  “He's on a mission in Pine Knoll, sent by the Federation Thorntons. They’re opening a new enterprise there. Lowercase ‘e’ enterprise.”

  Dr. Nolan gooped up my growing belly with gel. “This stuff wasn’t always heated, you know. Now everything's supposed to be some kind of spa experience. How are we doing, Princess?”

  Molly picked up a little drum. “No, you can’t play with that either,” I said.

  “She's no fun,” said Molly.

  “I hope that's a pretend pout or no Snickers Blizzard for you on the way home. And, to answer your question, Dr. Nolan, I don’t know. I’m not feeling like I did with Alyssa. Maybe I don’t remember feeling swollen. ”

  “Um-hm. Hm. Yes.” Dr. Nolan scanned and looked at the ultrasound screen. The probe glided through the gel like a rollerball.

  She scanned the screen. “What do you think, Molly?”

  Molly squinted, tilted her head from right to left, poked the screen, and then leaned in. “Well, I’m not really sure.” She reached for my hand. “I think I’d have to say, based on the equipment, a girl?”

  I closed my eyes as I felt the sting of bittersweet joy. God, I don’t want to cry in this room with my very best friend who is desperately trying to have a baby. I opened my eyes wide and hoped nothing would drip out.

  “Can you do this?” Molly knew. I didn’t have to pretend to be brave.

  I tapped Dr. Nolan's arm. “My turn.”

  “Now, wait a minute.” She turned the monitor toward me. “Tell me what you think.” The probe skated across my tummy again.

  “Molly, you either need glasses or biology class. That looks like a boy,” I said.

  “Well, well,” Dr. Nolan said, and gently squeezed my arm. “God is quite the character. When He tells you all things are possible, you’d better listen, sister.” She set the probe down, stripped off her gloves, and grabbed one of my hands and one of Molly's. “You’re both right. Twins.”

  Somehow between the hysterical teary-eyed blubbering and the spontaneous open-mouthed giggling, we made it to my car.

  Dr. Nolan practically had to kick us out of her office. “No more baby viewing. Buy your own ultrasound machine. I hear tell some of those Hollywood types have. The Thorntons could buy one for every room in their house. Now take these pictures.” She handed them all to Molly. “Leah, you make an appointment for when Mr. Man's in town. Having two babies is a new game.”

  In the car we called Carl, Devin, my dad, Peter, my in-laws. They all had the same reaction: stunned silence followed by questions, screeches of excitement, and more questions. I also called the staff at Brookforest and Rebecca with the same results. Carl wanted to drive home that afternoon. I reassured him I could email the pictures. Otherwise, I looked the same.

  “Gloria's probably already calling Ivy League schools to find out if they can get a discount,” said Molly. She volunteered to drive my car home, so I could start multiplying by two.

  “Glad I had that brilliant idea to get in touch with the contractor,” I said. “Now we have to figure out where these babies are … Babies.” My heart pounded with grateful disbelief. “Babies, Molly. I’m having ba-bies. Can you believe it?”

  “It's so incredible. God is good, isn’t He?”

  Her eyes were fixed on the Post Oak Road traffic, but I knew that hard stare was not simply concentration. “Molly, you’re so right. God is good. He put you in my life, and you’ve saved me over and over again. I feel like I can never repay you. I pray for you and Devin all the time. Your blessing will come, too, I know it. Little Molly and Devin babies …”

  She held up her hand, “Stop. No little babies.”

  “But, Molly, you and Devin will go back to in vitro or you could adopt. A private adoption.”

  Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Leah,” her voice was raspy, “we postponed in vitro because … because I have breast cancer.”

  “Believe me, this isn’t what I had in mind for telling you. It was too much to hide, especially when you’d go for broke talking about babies.” She said, “But you’re my crazy best friend, and I expect that from you.”

  We stopped about forty-two seconds after Molly dropped the news because I threatened to throw up if she didn’t. We still sat in the car in the parking lot of a nail salon, a dry cleaners, and a bakery. A perfect setting to discuss your best friend's almost accident-inducing announcement of
cancer.

  My best friend has cancer.

  Sky-high joy followed by plummeting pain.

  Molly explained she’d gone for a routine mammography because of her family history. “The Breast Center called after the first mammogram and asked me to come back. That's happened before, so I didn’t think it was anything to be concerned about. But after that appointment, they said I needed a needle biopsy.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Call me?”

  Molly smiled at the question. “Your dance card was full, sister. Besides, the biopsy could’ve come back clean.”

  “But it didn’t. And you still didn’t call. Now I’m sad, and I’m puzzled.”