Come Back With a Bonus Excerpt: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

by Claire Fontaine

  I don’t know who I was expecting at the Vienna airport, but it wasn’t Peter and Zuza. Maybe people more official looking, certainly older. Not attractive young blonds in summer togs with soft Czech accents. And they’re the heads of the staff at Morava. If I was looking to avoid a typically therapeutic setting, so far so good.

  Frankly, I don’t care if she never sees a therapist again. I don’t care if they use shamans and chants. I hope they bring in a Feng Shui master to rearrange her mental furniture, locate the seat of trauma, and reposition it to deflect the poison arrows Mia keeps aiming at herself.

  What a group we must make, the two of them flanking the two of us, Mia looking like a scrawny, pubescent streetwalker, me gripping her hand as if she were a toddler. I feel bad for her, to have this humiliation added to the anger that simmers beneath her tough surface. But, beneath the anger, where she’s pretending she can’t feel it, is fear.

  Mia has never liked feeling weak or afraid. Her profile now, the erect head, the forward chin, is the same one I saw when she was eight, on a visit to a friend’s farm in North Carolina. She hoisted Mia onto an old horse to mosey around the corral, but before she could get the reins on, he bolted toward the woods an acre away.

  We watched helplessly as Mia ducked down tight into the horse’s mane as he disappeared into the trees. After several frantic minutes, a black speck appeared far down the opposite field. Mia, approaching at a gallop. The horse looked like he was going to trample us all, but Mia yanked up on his mane and stopped right in front of us. With her head erect and her chin stuck out, as if to say, “I meant to do that.”

  When I was kissing her good night, I asked if she was scared. She pulled me close and whispered, “Ooooh, yes, Mommy, I was! And I knew he would run right to the trees so he could knock me off with the branches! So, I just ducked!” She shivered with excitement at the memory of it.

  If the drugs have done one thing most of all, they have made her forget what she knew as a child—to duck. To recognize danger and protect herself.

  After Peter locks Mia and Zuza into the back of the van, he says to me, “Only driver has door that can be opened from inside. We know that she is a runner, and very smart.”

  Someone finally gets it. As he walks me to my rental car, Peter says, with genuine caring, that Mia will be happy and healthy again, that I will have my real daughter back.

  It has been my fate to be comforted by young men in strange places this week.

  The van doors shut with a thud that echoes in my bones. I feel clammy, nauseous. I try to memorize the names of towns we pass to orient myself for when I run, but the Czechs don’t fucking believe in vowels. The view out the window gives me no landmarks to help, it’s one vineyard or sunflower field after another.

  The view begins to flicker and fade, I can’t tell if I’m watching a dream of this world or the real thing. I know the name of that big thing in the field out there is a cow, but I have to keep staring at it to remind myself. Cow. Spots plus udders equals cow, Mia. Fuck, I need a fix.

  I follow Peter’s speeding van past Brno, a blur of Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Nouveau architecture. As we pass through the suburbs into a rural outlying area dense with summer foliage, I begin to feel a strange exhilaration. I feel buoyed and jittery with purpose. I’m speeding closer and closer to Mia’s salvation. A place that awaits us with a system! With levels, seminars, consequences! With groups with names like Purity, Innocence, Clarity! They’ll isolate, modify, confront, reveal, redirect! They’ll do whatever it was that I couldn’t do to help her.

  We finally reach a lake ringed by low mountains and snake up into hills carpeted with sixty-foot fir trees so dense you can hardly see into them, Hansel and Gretel woods. Woods a girl could disappear into and never be found without a tracking dog.

  Buried in them is a Soviet-era hotel, a faux chalet that’s now Morava Academy. The glass vestibule has two sets of bolted doors, a good sign. A man joins Peter before they open the van door. He’s wearing running shoes. I love it already.

  And then Mia steps down from the van, dwarfed by the men, the building, the sky, her life. I’ve just been kicked in the heart. She looks so small and, for an instant, scared. I’m seized with panic and regret. She’ll be so far from anyone who loves her.

  This is no relief, I don’t want this salvation, I’m choking on it. I want to go back, far back, I want to breathe her back into me, into my body again, the only place she was ever truly safe. Every mother knows this feeling. From the moment we let them go, we know they’re never safe again.

  This place looks like a bad dream after seeing too many shagadelic seventies films. Orange-flecked sofas, corny-ass posters, a tripped-out carpet hung up as art, and a coffee table covered in wood-grain shelf paper. I hope she’s beginning to realize how lame this whole idea is.

  No such luck. Zuza takes me to a room.

  “This is where you will be sleeping.”

  There’s nothing but two beds, a long empty shelf above each one and someone’s ratty teddy bear on one pillow. The walls are totally bare and hospital white, the only homey things are nylon lace curtains. Zuza starts going through my backpack.

  “Hey! Leave my shit alone.”

  She looks at me calmly. “Attitude is not tolerated here. If you want to do well, you will change it quickly.”

  If I was doing what I wanted, I wouldn’t be here in the first place, bitch. I hold my tongue; if I show I’m mad they’ll start watching me more closely.

  She tells me I have to be deloused and puts on rubber gloves before touching me, even with my clothes still on. I know it’s procedure, but still my cheeks burn.

  “I showered before I got on the plane, you know.”

  “This is to be on the safe side.”

  The safe side of what? Me?

  Mia’s led away from me quickly. The place is Spartan, Joan Crawford spotless, with handmade inspirational posters, very Phil McGraw, very Dale Carnegie. It is unnaturally quiet.

  A man appears from a dim hallway. He’s extremely tall, handsome, fair, about thirty. I know immediately that he’s (a) American, (b) Mormon and (c) not the director, Glenn. Brendan is a codirector from another facility, in charge till Glenn returns from having back surgery.

  “But, I need to talk to Glenn about Mia; there are some things she doesn’t know.”

  “Mia’s behavior will tell us exactly where she’s at,” he says, unconcerned.

  Like that’s supposed to be encouraging? I also wanted to meet the person I’m leaving my child with. I ask to see her husband, Steve, only to learn that he’s in Germany for two weeks, in special training with the famous sniff dog, who finished top of his class.

  “You mean, the dog’s not here, either?” I blurt.

  Who cares if it’s valedictorian as long as it can sniff out one fearless, foolish, fragrant girl? The honeymoon is definitely over. His whole demeanor says he’s used to scared, nervous parents, and he feels no need to explain or assure. This is either arrogance or confidence. He adds that Mia’s first two weeks will mainly be getting settled in, learning rules, getting her equilibrium. Equilibrium? It’s chaos Mia loves. I’m the one who needs equilibrium.

  He must have figured as much because he gives me a security tour. All doors are locked and guarded 24/7 (I notice staff with walkie-talkies posted all over), meds and drugs are locked and guarded, windows open only about five inches (I check most of them). There’s no interaction between boys and girls. The dog will have no contact with kids to keep their scent fresh. They think his name is Ify—they don’t know that’s just short for I’ll Find You.

  The Czech staff is young and university educated; many speak English. Like Zuza and Peter, they are soft-spoken, polite, more formal in manner than Americans their age. Fine with me. The less like American culture it is here, the better.

  The bedrooms are like college dorms between semesters. The lack of décor is deliberate; they want the kids to miss home. Throughout the tour
, I ask endless questions. How often is peer group, how long till she earns a visit, how long does it take to move up levels, what if she doesn’t pass seminars, and on and on. Most of it answered by a version of “It’s up to her.”

  “If everything’s up to her, then she’s never getting off Level 1,” I say as I follow him back through the lobby into the cafeteria, a large, airy room with beautiful views and Mozart playing.

  “Trust me, she’ll get sick of Level 1 quickly. No shoes, no dessert, no privileges,” Brendan says as I look out the window to a rec area just below.

  A group of teen boys with crew cuts sits in a circle on a blacktop with a staff member. One starts crying and two others put their arms around him; others kneel in front of him and touch his knee, his hand. It’s odd to see teenage boys acting like this.

  A very tall chain-link fence holds back the lush, towering woods pressing in on them from all sides. The setting’s both gorgeous and oppressive. There is no view to the outside world at all.

  I turn back from the window. “Mia doesn’t care about dessert or shoes. She ran ten miles through the desert in flip-flops. Her feet are still swollen.”

  “Does she know you have such great faith in her?” he says, not without sarcasm, looking directly at me.

  They weren’t kidding about confronting attitude. Okay, so I’m faithless and cynical by now, you would be too, buddy, I want to say.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just worried. She can fake her way through anything.”

  I’m obviously still not getting something because he laughs.

  “Sure, because she’s had a lot of folks she could manipulate, like her parents and therapists. Who’s she going to fool here? The other girls were as bad as your daughter or worse. Kids here can’t hide out emotionally; they’ve got to take themselves on or they don’t get voted up. You’ll understand the process better when you’ve taken the seminars.”

  “The process,” “voted up,” “take themselves on.” I see what Maddy meant about the vocabulary. He’s called away and I’m left standing alone in the lobby, feeling useless and anxious, like I’m onstage awaiting my cue in the play called The Bad Mother.

  On impulse, I walk to a door and peek in. It’s a classroom full of girls working silently at their desks, fresh-faced, innocent looking. Oh, is Mia going to hate this place. One girl notices me, her eyes fly open and she gasps. The whole class notices me and they all start grinning and raising their hands excitedly. Uh-oh, I’ve done it now. The teacher introduces me, then says something I don’t catch.

  In a flash I’m buried in squealing teenage girls, all fighting for “a mother hug! Can I have a mother hug!” They take turns hugging the breath out of me: I got Level 3 today, ma’am! Oh, I miss my mom so much! You gotta do the seminars, they’re awesome! You shoulda’ seen me, Miss Fontaine, I was a gutterpunk! Oh, hug me again, Miss Fontaine! Don’t cry, Miss Fontaine, she’s gonna be fine! Please don’t cry, Miss Fontaine, we’ll take good care of her, I promise!”

  I come back from a shower to find my clothes gone and a uniform on my bed. If there’s a God, he hates me. Denim pants with an elastic waist and elastic cuffs, a red T-shirt I have to wear tucked in and Day-glo pink fuzzy slippers.

  Zuza appears. “It’s time to say good-bye to your mother.”

  “Just tell her I said bye and I hate her.”

  It doesn’t work, she leads me back to the lobby. I see her waiting for me and already feel that cloud of expected intimacy. She knows there’s nothing to say but talks anyway, some bullshit about thanking her in the end. She ought to be thanking me that I’m not strangling her on the spot. Her lips are moving, she’s crying, but all I feel is a cold fascination at how little I feel for this woman I’m supposed to love. That and an anger I can hardly control.

  I’m told I can’t come back tomorrow, it will “set Mia back.” I have to say good-bye now. I’m caught completely off guard, I thought I could visit the rest of the week.

  Mia’s brought into the lobby and stands there with wet hair, a scrubbed face, her eyes glassy with hate. I approach her awkwardly and put my arms around her. I try to hold her tightly, but her anger has condensed her into something hard and cold. She has disappeared into herself and left me this statue to hold.

  “I’m doing this because I love you too much to lose you,” I whisper to her. “You’re angry now but I know in my heart that you’ll thank us later.”

  Without moving a muscle, my stone-child whispers back to me, “No, I won’t, because once I get out of here you will never see me again. Ever.”

  I shut the car door and sobs burst out of me that shake the whole car. I cry like I haven’t cried since the Saturday night we found her. I thought the relief from knowing she was locked up safe would mitigate the pain, that it would finally yank out the spearpoint of fear that’s been jabbing so relentlessly in my back for so long.

  But finding and losing her all these months, the constant vigil and pursuit, has been like dancing on a fire pit. Bearable only as long as you keep it up. Relief in this situation merely means being able to finally collapse onto hot coals.

  “This is Lupe. She will be your buddy and teach you what you need to know.”

  Buddy? They can’t be serious, I haven’t heard that word since kindergarten. When my “buddy,” a stocky Latina with bright, black eyes, walks in, chest out, arms swinging, with two fat, brown braids like Princess Leia, I nearly laugh in her face. This girl’s probably never even had a cigarette.

  Lupe smiles and rattles off some rules in a thick New York accent.

  “You can’t speak at any time unless the staff says so. You gotta line up heel-to-toe and do a head count before leaving any room. You can’t smoke or drink. Until you’re on the upper levels, you’ll never leave this building except for PE or fitness. Looking out the windows is considered run plans, so you can’t look outside. I don’t even remember what the moon looks like.”

  The rules all drone into one big “you can’t, you must, you can’t, you must.” I could give a shit. So far, all the doors have been bolted and the fire exits are guarded, so the windows are the best way to go.

  As if reading my mind, Lupe says, “Don’t bother, you’re never left alone and even so, they only open a few inches.”

  As she points to the window, I notice a large gang tattoo on her upper arm.

  The Santon Hotel is a squat, white splat on a verdant hill sloping into the lake opposite Morava. Nirvana is playing in the lobby. American rock is ubiquitous in this country. My room comes with a lake view and Aretha Franklin. Playing from a radio inside the wall with the knobs sticking out of two crudely made holes. Talk about theft prevention. It won’t turn off and my head is splitting from crying.

  English and Czech share no common word roots, not Latin, Greek, Romance, Germanic, nada. Yes = an, ice cream = zmrzlina, there you have it. Which renders the phone useless. Back downstairs I go, where I’m reduced to making knob motions and humming “Love in a Pink Cadillac” to the desk clerk, a stunning young woman who knows all about us, we shell-shocked Morava parents. She nods sympathetically and comes with me to do whatever it is one does to turn off a Czech wall.

  Normally, I’d be amused by this, but I’m so cracked and fragile now it’s just aggravating, it feels like a punishment, a further indictment. My life as a Santon Hotel room, nothing works. For some reason, I think of Anne Lamott, the “cranky Christian” whose books have been pressed on me by a friend who thinks her spiritual wisdom and humor will help. The things she endured, the accoutrements of addiction—vomit, snot, fear, poverty—would have made me a pagan, a witch, an atheist at least. I can hear Annie now, exhorting me in her best church voice to do what she always does when troubled, “Pray, child!”

  What, I have to tell Him? Like it isn’t obvious even for the non-omnipotent? Some deity.

  Well, now I’ve done it, I’ve snapped at God.

  “Dear God, forget I said that, but more important could you watch over Mia, please knock some s
ense into her before she—”

  Stop, this is stupid, disrespectful. I have no idea how to pray properly, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in the epistolary manner. Once again, Claire, and this time at least bow your head and use proper language: Lord, cleanseth my child of evil substances. Maketh her thoughts of me not vile, that she may gaze upon my countenance with gladness, for it is not right nor holy that a little lamb should desire to killeth the ewe that hath nursed her.

  I hateth this. I sound like Latka’s half-wit sister auditioning Shakespeare. Religion’s supposed to be a comfort; instead, it’s turning out to be a skilled profession for which I am singularly unqualified.

  I feel so throbby and irritable, I leave to take a walk around the lake. Fifteen minutes later, I realize my mother was right. Czechs really don’t smile much and they don’t have a taboo against staring the way Americans do. My sisters and I always thought it was just her. Growing up, we’d be embarrassed when she’d stare at someone. “What do you people have against looking at someone?” she’d huff. “You people” being Americans, like her children, for example. She also smiles less than most. “You Americans are always smiling. Only a fool smiles all the time.”

  Well, I’m sure as hell not smiling today, and I don’t dress like a typical American tourist, so why is everyone rudely staring at me? I stop by a woman my age to make restaurant gestures, but she quickly shakes her head and hurries away like I have the plague. This happens two more times. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Is misery like drugs, exuded from the pores? Do they think it’s contagious?

  Then it hits me that, yes, I have experienced this. Every time I’ve skirted a smelly homeless person and avoided their gaze. As if their misery were contagious. Surely, they felt my unease and rejection, just as surely as I now feel the Czech’s. Do I have to get this lesson now, TODAY?