by Zane
“Anything’s possible, Zoe, but I don’t really think that’s the case. I think something occurred in your childhood that started the whole chain of cause and effect.”
I started laughing; he couldn’t have been further off base. “That’s ridiculous. Something like what?”
“Something traumatic maybe? Possible something that was sexually related? Something . . .”
I preempted the rest of his commentary. “Ummm, Dr. Graham, far be it from me to criticize you, but nothing like that ever happened to me. I had a very normal childhood, a childhood I remember extremely well.”
“Are you sure about that, Zoe?”
“I am positive! The most traumatic thing that ever happened to me when I was young was the death of my father. I was in junior high, and I remember it like it was yesterday.” Jason grasped my hand tighter; he knew talking about my father’s death was very painful for me.
“Hmm, I see. Well, maybe something occurred that you don’t even remember, Zoe. That does happen, you know.”
“Not to me, Doc. Nothing happened, and I would most definitely remember if it did!” I was getting mad offended. He was insinuating I was too dumb to recall my own childhood. Plus, I didn’t like what he was implying. I wondered if he was trying to say I was abused by my parents or something of that nature and hoped he wasn’t. I would’ve hated to get up off the hospital bed and give him a beatdown.
Then Marcella jumped into it. “Zoe, are you really sure?”
“I’m very sure! What the hell is this? What are you two trying to insinuate?”
Marcella replied, “Zoe, to be honest, I was thinking the same thing before Leonard even brought it up. Why do you think you were so obsessed with sex at such a young age?”
“Hell if I know!”
Jason sensed I was about to go off the deep end. “Zoe, calm down, Boo. It’s all good, and everything’s going to be fine.” I clenched my teeth and listened to my husband.
Dr. Graham took the conversation back over. “Zoe, have you ever considered being hypnotized?”
That’s when I broke out in hysterical laughter. I stopped when I realized no one else found it funny. “No, never thought about it and would never do something so silly. There’s no point to it, because nothing happened!”
My mother started squirming in her seat and then raised her hand as if she needed permission to speak. “Momma, you don’t have to raise your hand. What is it?”
Everyone’s attention turned toward her. “Are you doctors saying that everything my baby has done might be attributed to something horrible from her childhood?”
I didn’t even let them answer. “Momma, that’s what they’re saying, but it’s all bull. You and I both know nothing ever happened to me as a child that could even halfway be considered sexually traumatic.”
Marcella got up, went over to my mother, and sat on the wooden armrest of her chair. “Well, is Zoe right? Was her childhood free of such incidents?”
My mother stared at me and whispered, “Not exactly.” Then her tears began to flow.
chapter
twenty-eight
Never in my life had I cursed my mother, but there’s a first time for everything. “What the fuck are you talking about, Momma?”
She just kept crying, and Marcella was rubbing her back, so I turned toward Jason. “What the fuck is she talking about, Jason?”
He looked as dumbfounded as I did. “I have no idea, Boo!”
I wanted somebody, anybody, to make sense out of what I just heard. Confusion turned to terror as all kinds of shit starting running through my mind. Was I molested by my father as a baby? Another relative? “What the fuck is going on here?” I asked.
Dr. Graham swung into action, realizing he was about to lose control of the situation before anything could be resolved. He came over to the opposite side of the bed from where Jason was lying and patted me on my shoulder. “Calm down, Zoe. Just calm down, take a few deep breaths, and relax. It’s all going to be all right.”
I took my free hand and knocked his hand off my shoulder. “No, it’s not going to be all right, because I don’t know what the hell is going on! This shit isn’t making any sense! How the hell could something have happened to me, and I don’t even fuckin’ remember it?”
“Zoe, maybe if you let me hypnotize you, we can all find out the answers.”
I turned back to Jason, who looked more lost than I was. “Jason, I’m scared.” He released my hand, put his arm around me, and held me tight.
Marcella was bent over my mother’s chair, whispering in her ear, and I didn’t appreciate the hush-hush going on over there at all. Enough of the secrets and lies! “Momma?”
Silence befell the room, and I could hear Marcella whisper the words, “Tell her.”
“Yes, Momma, tell me!” Half of me wanted to know, and the other half wanted to crawl up in a hole somewhere with a pair of earplugs so I wouldn’t find out a damn thing. Whatever it was had my mother crying, and it was obvious I wasn’t going to like it.
She got up from her chair and came over to the bed. I reached out for her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed so her hips were touching mine.
“Zoe, something did happen when you were younger. I don’t know all of the details because you never really told me. Not me or your daddy. All I know is it happened.”
She rubbed my hand rapidly like a mother trying to warm her toddler up outside in the dead cold of winter. “All what details, Momma? I’m so lost! So completely lost!”
“I know you are, darling. Something happened, and somehow you managed to bury it deep inside you. It was the reason we really moved to Atlanta from Dallas in the first place.”
“Momma, you aren’t making any sense.” I kept looking-from her to Jason and back, wishing someone would throw me a life jacket because I was sinking fast.
“You remember how we moved in the middle of the year and you were a transfer student and all of that?”
“Yes, of course I remember. Daddy got a job in Atlanta, and we had to move right away.”
“Actually, your father accepted the job because we needed to move right away. We needed to get out of Dallas.” She broke out into wails, but I couldn’t cry. I was petrified.
“What happened to me in Dallas, Momma?” I sat up further on the bed, let go of her hand, and started shaking her. Not because I was angry with her, but because I wanted her to tell me the freakin’ truth. “Momma, look at me. What happened to me in Dallas?”
Jason and the two doctors weren’t saying a word. Then again, I guess there wasn’t anything for them to say. They were just as confused as I was. “Zoe, baby, I don’t know exactly what happened, but—”
“Yes?” I let go of her shoulders and clasped her hand. I started rubbing her hand like she was the toddler. “Go on, Momma!”
“One day, about a month into your fifth-grade year, you came running in the house crying, and your clothes were torn.” My eyes bulged out of my head, and Jason put his arms around my waist to try to brace me for whatever was about to come. “You were late coming home from school, and I was worried. I called your father at work, but he told me to calm down. He figured since you walked home from school everyday, you probably just stopped over a friend’s house for a little while, lost track of time, and forgot to call.”
I didn’t remember any of the things she was talking about, and that made me ten times more scared than I was before. “What happened to me on my way home from school, Momma?”
She grabbed both of my cheeks in her frail hands and pulled my face all the way up to hers until our noses were touching. Her tears were rolling down both of our cheeks, not just her own. “I don’t know, baby! You would never tell me. You would never tell your daddy or anyone else. All I know is I felt so bad that I didn’t call the police or try to look for you, even if you were only an hour late. I should’ve realized you wouldn’t go someplace and not call. I should’ve realized something was wrong, and I’ve lived with this
guilt ever since.”
I threw my arms around her, almost yanking the IV needle clear out of my arm to do it. “It’s not your fault, Momma. It’s not your fault!”
Jason gathered both of us in his arms. “It’s going to be okay.”
My tears started flowing, and I wasn’t sure they would ever stop. Never had I been so utterly confused. I thought the whole situation with Quinton, Tyson, and Diamond was fucked up. Now, I come to find out something happened to me when I was just a child that was the underlying cause of it all. “I had to have told you something. What did I say?”
She started shaking her head, and Marcella came over with a tissue for her to blow her nose out. Once she completed the task and wiped some of the tears from her face, she replied to my question. “Zoe, the only thing you ever said to us was, ‘Why did they hurt me?’ ”
“Why did who hurt me?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” She was screaming, and Dr. Ferguson bumrushed into the room to make sure everything was under control. Dr. Graham politely showed him to the door and assured him things were fine. He reluctantly departed.
“You came home crying with your clothes ripped, and I called your father back immediately, telling him to get off work and come home. You kept saying, ‘Why did they hurt me?’ over and over again, but you wouldn’t say anything else. It was like you were in a trance or something. My immediate thought was that you’d been raped, but you wouldn’t even let me touch you down there. Every time I tried, you pushed my hands away violently, so we took you to the emergency room. They had to strap you down to examine you. You put up one hell of a fight, kicking and screaming and—”
“And? Was I raped?” I clamped my eyes shut and waited for her to reply, hoping the answer would be one I could live with. Jason was crying too by that point, but they were silent tears. No noise was coming out with them.
“According to the doctors, you were not raped. They did say you were bruised down there and red. No penetration though. They were very definite about that point.”
Dr. Graham jumped in and asked, “So Zoe was the victim of some type of sexual trauma other than rape?”
“Yes, Doctor, she was.” For the next few minutes, my mother and I were tightly intertwined in a bear hug, consumed in wails. All of those years, she’d blamed herself for something beyond her control. “Doctor, I wish I could be of more help, but after a couple of weeks, Zoe started acting real strange. She acted like nothing even happened, and when my husband and I broached the subject, she gave us the impression she didn’t remember. He and I decided the best thing was to just move away and leave it all behind—especially since we never discovered who harmed her. In our eyes, that meant they could do it again. We didn’t trust anyone after that. Everyone was suspect.”
Jason, who loves my mother almost as much as he loves me and wanted to comfort her, told her, “It’s not your fault. Zoe’s going to get through this. We’re all going to get through this together.”
My mother glanced up at Jason. “She almost lost you because of this. She almost lost everything. My baby even tried to kill herself, and all these years I thought she was faking about not remembering. I thought she pretended not to know just so she wouldn’t have to talk about it. When she fell in love with you, I was so happy, because I was scared she would never lead a normal life and find someone who truly loved her.”
“I do love Zoe. You know that more than anyone.”
“Yes, I do know that, and I’m so very grateful that she has you, Jason.”
I was totally unnerved. “For the life of me, I don’t remember any of this.”
Marcella walked closer to the bed, looking wearier than I had ever seen her. I guess we were all emotionally drained. “There is a way you can bring it all back, Zoe. There is a way to find out what really happened to you that day. Let Leonard hypnotize you. We’ll all be here for you, and when you wake up, this entire nightmare will be over.”
“Will it be over, or will it be worse?” I pondered out loud.
“Let him do it, Zoe.” My mother made her request. “I wish I could fill in all the missing pieces, but I can’t. You have to do it.”
Finally, I looked at Jason to get his opinion. He kissed me on the forehead and then whispered in my ear, “I love you, and this is forever.”
Dr. Graham was standing at the end of the bed, waiting for my decision. “Well, Doc, I guess if I ever want this to end, I have no choice. So, bring it on.”
It all happened so quickly. I remember his pocket watch swinging back and forth in his hand like a pendulum, and I remember him softly speaking some words to me. He didn’t say the comical shit I was expecting like, “You’re getting very, very sleepy!”
Whatever he did say worked like a charm, because the next thing I knew, I was ass out.
chapter
twenty-nine
I have no idea how long I was in a hypnotic trance, but after I woke up and took a quick survey of everyone’s face, I wanted to be put the hell back out. Dr. Graham looked as if he had just been on the receiving end of an enema. Marcella looked as if she’d just found out she had fibroids the size of grapefruits. My mother looked like hell froze the fuck over, and poor Jason looked like someone had just chopped his dick clear off. All of them had their mouths hanging wide open, and if a bumblebee had been in the room, it could’ve stung each and every one of them on the tongue before they even saw it coming.
I couldn’t decide which one of them to ask, so I directed it to the love of my life. “Jason, is it that bad?”
He broke out of his own hypnotic trance, pressed his thumb under my chin, and gave me a kiss on the lips. “It’s bad, Zoe, but nothing we can’t fix together.”
I didn’t say another word. You could have heard a pin drop until Dr. Graham broke the silence in the room. “Umm, Zoe, the reason we’re all shocked is, as it turns out, there wasn’t just one incident in your past that came out during hypnosis. There were two.”
“Two? What the hell?” I looked at my mother, but she could be of absolutely no help to me. She was too busy fighting demons of her own, thinking I was perpetrating a fraud all of those years by pretending nothing happened when the entire time to me it never did happen. All of it had been suppressed somewhere in the deep, dark crevices of my mind.
Marcella finally spoke up. “Zoe, the best way to clear all this up is by letting you hear it in your own words.” She pressed the rewind button on her mini cassette recorder and asked, “Ready?”
Jason still had his arm around me, and I laid my head on his chest, hoping I would still have an ounce of sanity left after I listened to the tape. “Ready!”
When the tape first began playing, it was about what I expected. Dr. Graham was asking me a bunch of questions about my life, gradually working his way back to my childhood. We got back to when I first moved to Atlanta, across the street from Jason, and of course I mentioned the ass-whupping I gave him, since it was one of my most shining moments.
Then he asked me about Dallas, and with the mere mention of the city’s name, my voice on the tape changed to one even I would’ve been hard pressed to recognize if I didn’t already know it was me. As an adult, if you were to tape record yourself and then play it back, you would probably wonder to yourself, “Is that me?”
That was the case. It was me—the younger version of Zoe, who had disappeared once puberty set in. I hadn’t heard the voice in almost two decades. My mother and Jason recognized the voice of my youth. I heard my mother on the tape, sounding frantic. “Zoe? Doctor, what’s happening? That’s what she sounded like when she was a little girl!”
Dr. Graham responded, “I’m sure it is, but please calm down. That’s the Zoe we need to talk to.”
I heard Jason jump in, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Dr. Graham, if this is something that’s going to damage my wife in any way, I want this shit to stop right now!”
“Jason, it won’t harm her. It’ll make her better. She has to get the secrets out, or they’l
l destroy her, like they almost did this past year.”
Jason’s voice lowered, but I could hear him breathing heavily, and I could sense the fear. “Okay, Doctor. As long as you understand I don’t want my wife harmed.”
“I understand, Jason, and I promise you that won’t happen.”
Everyone fell silent, allowing Dr. Graham to continue. He asked me several questions about my early childhood. I was amazed, listening to the tape, that I even knew the answers to half of them. We all sat there while the little Zoe described her first day at kindergarten and how she won the biggest smile contest in the schoolyard, how most of the other kids had cried when their mothers left them there but not her, and that’s why she won the lollipop. Then, little Zoe talked about how much she liked finger-painting and playing ring-around-the-rosy, she talked about the various dolls she had as a child, including the black Barbie I still have stowed in the attic to give Kayla Michelle once she’s old enough to appreciate it. She talked about how she used to make new dresses for it from old pieces of clothing around the house and how she always wanted to be an official member of the Mickey Mouse Club. She talked about the piggyback rides her daddy used to give to her and how he used to sit her on his lap in his recliner and read Dr. Seuss books to her. Little Zoe talked about how much she used to hate carrots and how she would sneakily feed them to her dog, Spot, underneath the dining room table, and how he got ran over by a car when she was in the third grade.
Then, the first incident came to light. Since the incidents seemed to be running in chronological order from kindergarten on up, it appeared to have happened sometime during my third-grade year—an incident my parents obviously never knew about, one that preceded the incident in the fifth grade that ultimately made my parents relocate to another state.
I still had my head resting on Jason’s chest. I tried to let his heartbeat comfort me while I listened to the little Zoe on the tape begin to recall the story. “It was a holiday. I’m not sure which one, but it was one where everyone has cookouts and get-togethers at someone’s house so all the kids can play. Momma and Daddy took me to one of Momma’s friends’ houses from college. Her name was Lisa or Laura or something else with an L .”
