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

by Claire Fontaine

  I don’t want my own daughter.

  When Sunny’s singing wakes me up, I feel hungover. I was up till one doing homework, journaling about how I ended up here and what my actions cost me.

  We line up and when we hear 2001 start to play we perk up, rush to put on our name tags and find a seat, making mad-dash scrambles to switch seats if we sit next to someone we’ve sat next to before.

  The group is considerably smaller and I wonder how many of us will make it through today. David begins predictably, with broken agreements. No one stands and, amazingly, Sasha doesn’t have anyone to rat out.

  “Samantha!”

  We all jump—what the hell did she do? She stands, slumping over twice as much as usual. David walks over to her—and then smiles.

  “Samantha, I’d like you to wear a headband the rest of this training to keep your hair out of your eyes. You up to that?”

  Samantha looks at him for a second and then a miracle happens. She smiles and shakes her head yes. We give her the same feedback and she chews half her finger off. Go figure.

  “Great,” he says to her. He’s actually starting to sound like a normal person. Until he explains the next process—we have to go up to every single person in the room and hear feedback about ourselves, namely what behaviors they notice in us that hold us back. Four miserable hours later, he calls stop and walks up front.

  “You’ve all heard some pretty powerful feedback in the last twenty-four hours. There’s a lot that’s not working for you kids. How long has it been like this? Can you remember the last time you felt really happy? Truly carefree? You kids are in so much pain it immobilizes you, it’s so obvious, yet you try so hard to stuff it down, drug it away. When’s the last time you hugged your dad? Or yelled at him, pushed him away?”

  As he speaks, the lights dim and a song begins to play. He asks us to sit on the floor, apart from each other. Staff scurries around us in the dark, dropping something beside us.

  “Bring to mind a picture of your dad. Picture how he must have looked when he first saw you in the hospital, how it looked during a favorite memory of yours…Now bring to mind a picture of his face in a particularly painful memory. Maybe he looks hurt because he caught you drinking or in a lie, maybe he looks mad because he’s drunk, maybe he’s about to hit you. Whatever that painful memory is, bring it up.”

  I think of the night Paul pinned me to the kitchen floor when I had the screwdriver, that combination of confusion, fury, and pain.

  Then I think about my old dad. He’s a blank, a mannequin head with no features. All I can picture is the nightmares, the clown wig, the needles poking. This makes me madder than anything. Mad in a way that I want to cry. Almost. I can always almost cry.

  David’s voice is escalating now. “Picture his face during those painful moments, picture how he looked, what he said…Now reach down. There’s a rolled up towel next to you. Sitting cross-legged or on your knees, grab that towel and hit the floor with it, hit it as hard as you feel like hitting it. It’s time to let go of all that pain and anger.”

  Some kids have started crying, and before he’s even finished speaking, thuds can be heard across the room. In no time, it grows to loud, thundering thwacks accompanied by yells and cries. He’s talking over them, urging them to let go of it all, of all the anger, all the pain.

  I don’t feel the urge to do anything, cry, scream, hit. Numbness has become so familiar that any sort of feeling seems like a virus my body immediately rejects. Back home I did anything to make myself feel alive—fight, use, cut. Nothing ever worked for more than a few hours.

  As David keeps coaching, sounds start echoing that don’t even sound human. It reminds me of watching Derek go through withdrawal. I haven’t thought about Derek in so long. I guess when it comes down to it, all men just want sex. Shit, my own father did.

  I pick up the towel next to me, kneading it between my palms. What gets me the most about my old dad, even more than the molestation itself, is that he didn’t go to therapy, that he just gave me up. But only a sick fuck would do that, so what does that make me for wishing he had stayed in my life?

  After awhile, the energy in the room dies down; everyone’s exhausted themselves. Sensing the change of mood, David softens his voice and a song comes on. People collapse on the floor, some stay on their knees, heads bent over their knees. Looking at them makes me feel sad. That they can feel that intensely and I can’t. That they have a father to cry over and I don’t.

  He goes through the exercise again, this time with our mothers. When he asks us to bring to mind a particularly painful moment, I don’t even have to think about it. Her face after seeing me in the bathroom with the razor. I’ve never felt like such a freak in my whole life. Everything I had worried about was confirmed. I was a monster.

  I pick up the towel again. The first couple whacks are weak, soft flicks of my wrist that hardly make a sound. I try it again, harder. It makes a satisfying thud that echoes up through my wrist and into my arm. I do it again, harder, and then harder still. Before I know it, a long-sedated voice comes out of me that makes me hit and hit and scream and hit. All the times she looked at me with disgust, all those times she would explode when she was having a bad day, it all tumbles out of me.

  But then I start thinking of the life we had before I started distancing myself, before my model horses started collecting dust and my mom became too intrusive a presence. And I miss them, really miss them. I miss how close we used to be.

  And then, in spite of promising not to, I cry. I cry for all the times I couldn’t or wouldn’t, for all the times I cried without sound. I cry for what my dad did to me and for what I did to myself. I cry for waking up naked and confused on the Wilkinson sofa. I cry for myself and I cry for my mom, for all the pain he caused her, and then everything I put her through. I want to cry away all the fights, all the drugs. I’m sorry Mommy, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.

  I want to feel her brushing my hair, hugging me tight. I want my mommy. It’s amazing, I’m fifteen and I’m sitting in a room full of kids all crying for their parents, the ones we had before we became cool.

  At some point the rage and sadness drains out of me and I collapse and curl up in a ball. A pair of arms encircles me and I open my eyes and look up into Sasha’s. I lean against her and we just rock and rock and rock.

  David tells us softly to close our eyes and picture ourselves as children. A photograph comes to mind of me at age four, smiling in my pink dress that Bubbie made, with food all over my face and my eyes squinted up with laughter. Even in the photo you can almost hear the childish giggles. My little self jumps down from the chair and I take her hand and walk her to a forest, the kind I pictured when I still believed in unicorns.

  I see myself galloping in Agnews meadow, at my first day at Hopkins when I was still excited about this new private school, swimming in the ocean waves, rubbing my pierced finger against my cousin Rosie’s to become blood sisters, building forts and picking blackberries. Suddenly, I become conscious of light, joyous music playing.

  As it gets louder, the lights brighten and I notice for the first time everyone around me, blinking hard as they uncurl from the fetal position like newborns. We all stare at each other as though for the first time and smile. Not polite, cool smiles but big baby ones. We start laughing and hugging and dancing around the room. Jared and I hold hands and spin until we’re dizzy. I roll into Sunny and we giggle and then giggle at our giggling.

  David gently tells us to crawl to our small groups. Every time I look over at Samantha we both start laughing again. I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy. I stand up and start sharing with my group before David even gives us any instruction.

  “I had no idea I had that much pent up inside of me! No wonder I felt dead all the time, I was only allowing a tiny, dark fraction of myself room to breathe.”

  I listen to the room become a chorus of “I didn’t know I could feel this good,” and it occurs to me how littl
e we truly know people, even those we live with. We go through the motions during the day and return each night to our own private hell.

  When I crawl into bed tonight, I think about how last night I was the same person in this same bed but in twenty-four hours something’s changed. I think of us all romping around and try to imagine that happening in the real world. It’s sad but I can’t.

  And that worries me. That what’s created here can never fully translate into the real world. I push those thoughts out, I can worry about all that later. For now, I just want to fall asleep while I can still hear the laughter and giggles of twenty toddlers trapped in teenagers’ bodies.

  “Claire, it’s not working,” my producer says with both regret and frustration.

  He’s back from Europe, and we’re sitting in his dining room.

  “You know I love your work, but you keep getting behind, this thing with your daughter.”

  He’s right. First Mia’s diary, now my job. Losing this project isn’t just a blow emotionally, but financially. I’ll lose the remaining sixty thousand dollars of my contract. And I’m in no shape to look for another job at this point.

  I hit Sunset and follow its green curves to the ocean. As populated as LA is, large stretches of beach are always empty. A perfect place to feel completely unmoored.

  I’ve managed to cover half of George Polti’s “Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations” all in one lifetime: Erroneous Judgment, an Enemy Loved, Falling Prey to Cruelty or Misfortune, Self-sacrifice for a Kindred, Disaster, Pursuit, Recovery of a Lost One, Deliverance, Discovery of the Dishonor of a Loved One, and, finally, Conflict with a God…

  What exactly do you have to say for yourself now, God?

  I’m a writer to the bone. I make sense of the world narratively. There is always an overarching design, with recurring motifs, underlying motivations, opposing forces, fallen heroes, and fitting ends. A dramatic structure. Mine has unfolded thus:

  Our cheeky heroine meets the unexpected, she suffers trials and tribulations, she wrestles the beast and rescues her only child! A period of calm ensues before calamity strikes again, but she’s up to it! She pulls her from disaster’s door, not a moment too soon! Happiness is on the horizon once again, but wait, wait! There’s a major reversal, A Twist, oh, you clever scenarist! Just as the limo pulls up to paradise, the child, the one our heroine risked all for, the child herself becomes the beast! A changeling who vanquishes our gal with two swift blows! Oh, what a world what a world, all was for naught, the forces of evil have triumphed!

  PAN across an expanse of beach as the sun disappears. To the lone figure seated at the water’s edge. MOVING IN we see it’s a WOMAN, with her head on her knees.

  16.

  Dear Mia,

  This is very hard for me to write and will no doubt be hard for you to read. That’s tough luck for both of us…You have done what your old dad never managed to do—you have gutted my heart entirely. And if this makes you feel guilty, well, it should…Claire

  My seminar high just ended. The sense of shame and stupidity I feel reading this is so overwhelming that I put it down several times. I’m such a shit. I want to cry but even that seems selfish.

  I always assumed my connection with my mom was permanent. She was my mother, mine. It never occurred to me that mothering is voluntary. When I was little, even up to the time I first ran away, any sort of argument with her really upset me. We had a special closeness, and the thought of that changing or being lost terrified me. Then in the past year I shut her out and shredded the cord. But, I just wanted her to back off, not stop caring altogether.

  She’ll never forgive me, she shouldn’t, what sort of masochist would want me for a daughter? The worst part, though, is where she wrote that until I take accountability for my actions, “I’m just a dirty kike, not your mother.” This crushes me. I had no idea what Brian and his friends were until it was too late.

  Her letter seems to have set the tone for the next two weeks. Coming out of Discovery I was on fire. I felt like Wonder Woman, I was never going to break a single rule, I’d graduate and live happily ever after—a great fantasy for the two days it lasted.

  All the seminar did was open Pandora’s box. I had so much shit come to the surface, Sasha and I made a list of my issues, so I could deal with them one at a time and not get overwhelmed. Group has become like a Jeopardy game for me, I’ll take incest for 400, Alex, no, make that self-mutilation for 1,000.

  The whole dynamic in the family’s changed, too. We’ve all pretty much realized we’re full of it and it’s not only uncomfortable to be in our own skin, but embarrassing to be around everyone else who saw you pre-Discovery in all your shit and glory.

  It’s been almost a month now and she hasn’t written a word since that awful letter. I must have apologized and begged for a response in a dozen letters by now, but still nothing. We have ten minutes before shutdown. I pull it out and read it again.

  I hope that somewhere still inside of you is Mia—it is to that indescribably wonderful person that I send all of my love. I can’t wait to see her again.

  Even after being so badly hurt, she ended the letter by saying she loves me. She should have signed it fuck you. That, I could understand.

  Growing up, one of my favorite films was The Adventures of Natty Gan, about a girl who travels across country by herself with her wolf dog. I used to stay up in bed at night pretending to be her. I was Natty racing to hop a train, I was Natty looking around to make sure that soup can was safe to steal, I was Natty grabbed from behind when out of nowhere my wolf dog flies at my attacker. I was captivated by her freedom and independence, by the adventure.

  I didn’t think about the fact that she was traveling in search of her father. I guess we always want what we don’t have. She traveled cross-country solo to find a parent, I did the same thing to leave one.

  A friend of mine, a beautiful Polish producer, has arranged a meeting with director Tony Kaye. Lena’s been trying for a while to set up a script I’d written, and he likes it.

  I don’t particularly care to go, I don’t particularly care to do much of anything now, especially writing, which is too internal an endeavor. I’m finding apathy oddly relaxing. On the way to the studio, she fills me in on the film he’s cutting:

  American History X.

  Of all the directors I take a meeting with, it has to be the guy who’s just directed Hollywood’s first major film about Neo-Nazis, about a skinhead?

  Her tiny Mercedes suddenly feels suffocating; my armpits have started itching. She’s going on about what an important film it is, how gorgeous the footage is. Yes, I mumble, pretending to stare out my window while I work on getting my features back in order.

  We meet Kaye at a lunch table outside a cutting room on the studio lot. I feel floaty and dull-witted as the sun beats on my face and the top of his shaved head. He’s quick-witted and gracious. Unfortunately, he also wants to talk about the controversy surrounding his film. The few English words I remember from Latin mass, Lord Deliver Me, are practically spelling themselves out across his bald pate.

  “Claire, darling, you weren’t yourself,” Lena says on the way home. “You’re always so high energy and creative in meetings. Is it Mia?”

  Yes, probably, I say absently, apologizing.

  “It must be hard to have her so far away. You must be dying to see her.”

  It’s not far enough, and the only thing I’m dying to do is crawl in a hole.

  Tonight, I dream of Mia. She’s sitting in the pink velvet chair I had when she was little. She’s shrunken and the whites of her eyes are solid red, like old depictions of the devil. I’m talking to her and she’s high and belligerent; she mocks me. This makes me so mad, I lean down and grab her arms. I squeeze them so hard my fingers start to hurt and I know I’m hurting her. She tries to get away but I squeeze those little arms until I hear her bones cracking in my hands.

  The sound of her bones breaking is so horrible it wakes me up with my hand
s clenched so tight that when I go to the kitchen I see nail marks in my palms. This feeling of her bones crunching haunts me for days. My own child’s bones.

  I’m ashamed of this anger. She’s written me a dozen letters begging me to forgive her, but I can’t; my heart feels as rigid and cold as steel, and as unforgiving.

  Please, please, God, soften my heart. Who else will be her mother?

  Hollywood is divided into two kinds of people: those who practice yoga and those who practice Zanax. I hate taking drugs, and yoga’s right up there with chanting and feathered Dreamcatchers. But, after two weeks of incapacitating panic attacks, I’m learning to chattarunga with the best of them. Monday/Wednesday/Fridays, I inhale a column of red energy up from mother earth’s core. Tuesday/Thursdays I suck calming blue breaths into my cranial cavity and down my spine. In between, I surround myself with purifying white light.

  And I am still seized with a racing heart and pinched lungs. I recall an article about something called neurofeedback for anxiety and track down the information.

  Two days later, I’m in a darkened room with three electrodes attached to my head, staring at a slowly turning star on a video screen. Every time my brain does the good thing, whatever that is, the star glows and I’m rewarded with a little beep! After so many beeps, a burst of twinkly sparks shoots out and showers the spinning star with happiness. A harplike interlude accompanies the twinkles.

  Maybe I’ve become the cheapest date in town, but I begin to await those twinkles and sparks like a junkie. I practically start sucking my thumb the minute they hook me up and give me a lap blanket. Each half-hour of brain training is like a month in the country. I walk out of there feeling like Buddha.

  It’s almost enough to make me forget the rest of my life.