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

by Claire Fontaine

  Growing up is about growing away, about finding an identity distinct from your family. But few teens have a strong enough sense of self to stand alone. It’s why friends are so important; together you form a collective identity from which you gather strength and a sense of belonging. And your clothes, music, and friends announce that identity.

  Weeks after the seminar, I’m still mulling the “Where did I go blind” question while shopping at Ross Dress for Less. Without a second income now, we’re doing Everything for Less. Mulling, however is free.

  Probably the first time I remember going blind, I mull as I check the size of a sports bra to send Mia, was when I ignored Nick’s drug use, before we even got married, then in countless ways after we did.

  Just as troubling was going into such denial about Mia’s old psychologist Ella’s warning that I “forgot” it altogether. And I’ve only recently recalled that my mother warned me when Mia was still in grade school that something like this would happen. What he did hurt her deeply, something like that doesn’t just go away, she told me.

  What was the payoff? It obviously kept me in my cozy zone of being in control, being a good mother, with a good daughter. Most of all, I realize, is that it allowed me to maintain the lie that she was healed, that Nick hadn’t permanently damaged her, that I’d truly saved her. Because if I did, if there was no lasting residue of him, it meant that the denial that kept me in the marriage long enough for him to hurt her didn’t help create the situation she’s in now.

  The person who I worked hardest to keep safe seems to have been me.

  I’ve finally decided to share in group about my old dad. Glenn came to support me, but I’m still nervous. Seminar was one thing, everyone was bawling in a darkened room. But here, in a bright, silent room, it’s much less comfortable.

  “I don’t really remember much of it. I used to, but all I remember now is vague details and the nightmares. It’s weird how something I barely remember runs me so much.”

  “What came up for you in seminar?” Glenn wants to cut to the chase.

  I’m silent for a minute. I’m not sure where to start, how to word it.

  “I didn’t realize how hurt I was by him. I was aware of the anger, and of feeling different, but I never acknowledged being hurt, too.”

  “Why is that? What would acknowledging the pain mean?”

  I knew coming in Glenn wouldn’t let me slide by, but that’s not making this any easier.

  “I don’t like being out of control, being weak. I hate that it hurts me, that twelve years later someone I don’t even know makes me feel like shit. It bothers me that he never went to counseling. He could have had visitation with me, a relationship with me if he went to sex offender therapy, but he didn’t. He just went on and had another family.”

  I stop for a second. I feel dumb saying that. Who would want to be wanted by a pedophile?

  “And I feel really fucked up for wanting him to want me, I mean he’s sick, so what does that make me for missing him?”

  Glenn leans forward in her chair toward me, but she addresses all of us. “We all want to be wanted by our parents, no matter how shitty they were as parents. It’s human nature. There’s anger toward them, sure, but beneath that is always hurt, why did he do this to me? It doesn’t make you weird or perverted for wanting your father’s love. Do you hear me, Mia? There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  She holds my gaze and says it again.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  I feel my chin start trembling and Glenn’s face starts wavering as my eyes water. She keeps whispering, “There’s nothing wrong with you,” as I bury my head in her chest and start to cry.

  When I look up, my family’s surrounding me saying how proud they are of me and how much they love me. I feel a mixture of love and gratitude toward them and Glenn and relief at hearing her words, though it may take me awhile to fully believe them.

  During a lunch meeting with a friend, I notice for the first time since Mia left five months ago that I have just gone a whole meal without thinking of her.

  My days have finally begun to take on their own rhythm, one not dictated by Mia’s needs and wants. For the first time, I’m not obsessing about her progress or her future.

  I would have been thrilled if Morava had merely returned her to who she used to be. But she’s transforming in a way I never imagined possible. She’s made huge leaps in understanding herself, in learning to communicate honestly and effectively. Most important, she’s grown to love herself, the quality a teenager most needs to stay safe.

  After lunch, I pick up a few ingredients for a small dinner party I’m giving on the weekend. I’m digging in my purse for my keys on the way to my car when I look up and see a pretty teenage girl and her slender, dark-haired mother come around the corner. The mother has her arm around her daughter and they’re laughing.

  The noise of the street drops off and tears spring into my eyes unexpectedly. I quickly duck my head and I look back into my purse as they pass me.

  I don’t just miss her, I miss us.

  We’ve crossed out to go to lunch but the boys aren’t finished eating yet, so we face the wall and wait in silence. As I wait, it occurs to me that I’m no longer bothered by the quiet. I actually enjoy it at times. It makes me realize how excessively we talk. We talk to fill the silence because it’s easier than being with ourselves.

  We’re stripped to the bare essentials here, physically and emotionally. We eat, use the bathroom, sleep, exercise, and attend school, but all on silence. Talking becomes important only when it’s a need, not a want, when someone needs to get something off their chest or say something important. I feel more in tune with my real needs versus wants now, both mental and physical.

  I feel much healthier now, too. The drugs are out of my system, I’ve gained some weight, I don’t get light-headed like I used to. It sounds dumb, but feeling good feels good.

  Morava now has fifty kids, and most of the parents have gotten to know each other by email. There’s a resilience and sense of humor common to the Morava parents. I guess you’d have to be a combination of tough and not a little crazy to send your kid to a brand-new program in a former Soviet faux chalet near the Slovak border to face the wall when the opposite sex passes and remain silent for most of the day.

  I’m looking forward to meeting some of them and some of the girls that are now part of Mia’s journey. The opportunity will come sooner than I expect.

  19.

  I’m in the second day of Focus, the seminar following Discovery, and the past two days have been harrowing, rewarding, and plain old exhausting. It’s a smaller group, a handful of boys, including Jared and Robbie, as well as Sunny, Katrina, Roxanne. We’ve gone through another towel process, we’ve re-rediscovered our magical children, we’ve shared, we’ve sobbed. We’ve taken everything we did in Discovery to the next level, delving even deeper into what’s holding us back. For me, it’s how ugly and worthless the abuse made me feel.

  Instead of David, we have Lou, a very little lady with a very big voice, who right now is asking us to vote ourselves and everyone else as a Giver or Taker. We tally our votes and line up in the order of the Giver votes, most to least. At least I won’t get reamed in this process; compared to everyone else, I have a decent number of Giver votes.

  “Mia!”

  I jump at hearing my name. Glenn whispers something in Lou’s ear. Why was I singled out? I’m not even at the Taker end of the line.

  “Everyone who gave Mia a taker vote sit down. Of those of you standing, why did you vote the way you did?”

  Roxanne volunteers, “I think Mia’s a Giver because she’s really unselfish, she’s always willing to listen to people and talks one on one with a lot of us.”

  Sunny offers that I give really good feedback and am a good listener, and the rest of the girls basically reiterate what they said.

  “Well, isn’t that interesting?” Lou muses, pacing back and forth. Then she
stops about a foot in front of me and stares me straight in the eye.

  “The feedback I’m hearing has nothing to do with you, Mia. So far I’ve heard nothing about what you give to others, just what you take from them. You listen? How is that giving, that’s taking in other people’s words, other people’s experiences. How often do you share in group, Mia?”

  “I’ve made an effort since Discovery to open up in group.”

  I see Glenn stand up in the back—this can’t be good.

  “That effort consisted of sharing four times, Mia. You were real, you didn’t small talk, but considering we have group every day, I wouldn’t call that much of an effort.”

  “Neither would I, neither would I,” Lou mutters. “It’s sad, Mia, because you take away from others the experience of sharing yourself with them. And that’s not what Focus is about. It’s about risk, it’s about standing powerfully as the gift that you are and the difference that you make. Your results don’t seem to indicate you want to be here.”

  I swallow hard, resisting the urge to shout, “That’s not fair!” I have been trying lately, I’ve been curbing my attitude and making relationships. I raise my hand.

  “It’s true, I have a harder time sharing in groups, but I’ve been working through my issues through letters to my parents or talking one on one with people. I don’t think it’s fair to base my progress only on group.”

  Lou asks my family for feedback about this and they’re all very supportive. Maybe this will help sway her.

  “Mia, notice how you create situations where others have to jump in to save you. Your family seems more eager for you to graduate from this training than you do. I experience you as being very selective about who you’re with because it gives you the illusion of control. That’s operating from a place of fear, which isn’t control, it’s cowardice. Young lady, you’re on thin ice. I want to see you get real and open up or you’re out, is that clear?”

  I nod and sit down shakily. As she moves on to others, I think about what she said and start getting mad. Why is everything here based on sharing, like if you don’t publicize your life you’re not dealing? I hate how this place has this cookie-cutter idea of what change looks like. If you’re too quiet, you’re not showing up enough, if you talk too much, you’re playing show up games. You just can’t win.

  Still, I’m so relieved to have not chosen out, I keep this last thought to myself.

  Our final process is called our Stretch, and I’d rather face a charging bull. I have to put on glittery makeup and twirl around like a butterfly to Mariah Carey. Being Surfer Barbie would be less humiliating. It’s meant to get us out of our comfort zones by taking on the persona of the part of us we avoid most. I don’t see how making a total jackass out of myself will help me “grow.”

  Jared seems equally thrilled by the idea of donning a tutu and exploring his feminine side as a ballerina, and Katrina’s hyperventilating at having to clod around as a sumo wrestler. Watching pounds of fake flesh jiggle has got to be a nightmare for someone who panics at eating more than a piece of lettuce.

  We’ve spent the last two hours creating costumes from scratch, practicing moves, and making ourselves up. The center of the floor is cleared as a stage.

  Samantha starts it off as Bananarama’s “Venus.” My jaw drops when I see our dark and moody Samantha dancing and twirling around in a costume of colored paper, streamers, and face paint as she lip-syncs. She looks radiant and I cheer loudly when she dances past me, trying to get her to hear my voice over Sunny’s whooping and clapping.

  When her song finishes, we watch three guys shimmy and shout as the Pointer Sisters. They were so pissed when they found out their Stretch, the only reason the words homo or fag didn’t come out of their mouths was because they knew they’d get dropped. But something must have happened in the last few hours, because right now they’d put drag queens to shame!

  Then the tone changes. An ethereal melody begins to play and the lights dim. Fabric rustles in the darkness. As low lights rise, Jared and two other boys begin to move slowly around the room to the “Nutcracker Suite.” It’s unbelievable to watch, it’s not Jared in front of me in a pink tutu, but some otherworldly creature moving slowly, surely, with grace and strength. They’re all beautiful. Not in a feminine way, in a powerful, peaceful way.

  Any thought of their looking ridiculous has completely dissipated. Laughing at them would be like laughing at unicorns or angels. When they glide out, there’s not a dry eye in the room.

  Just as Katrina begins to sumo wrestle her way around the floor to our applause and laughter, Sasha taps me from behind and whispers for me to get ready. I’m so nervous I think that releasing all the butterflies inside would be a more entertaining Stretch than watching me pretend to be one.

  Covered in a brown potato sack, I sit under two chairs pushed together (my cocoon) and wait for the music. When I hear the first few notes of the song, I take a deep breath and start wiggling my way from under the chairs and out of the sack. Sasha did my hair and makeup earlier with sparkling green eye shadow, blush, and lip gloss. Under the potato sack I wear tights, a long billowing shirt, and I tied the ends of a shimmering scarf to each of my hands. When I let the sack fall I feel naked, almost how I did that morning I woke up on Derek’s sofa.

  I try to remember the steps I planned out but I draw a blank and start to freeze up. Fuck it, I already feel dumb. Slowly, I start twirling around, circling the scarves around me and feeling completely idiotic. Then, I start to let loose and move to the music’s beat, and suddenly, I’m having fun as my body takes the lead. I’m dancing like I used to when my parents left the house and I’d closed all the blinds. I spin, I stag leap, I twirl.

  I feel weightless and angelic. When I reach Sunny, I see tears in her eyes. Being a girl always made me feel weak; I equated femininity with violation. But this feeling of female beauty and grace is awesome, empowering. The song ends, the lights dim, and I’m told to close my eyes. I hear feet rustling up to me and I’m told to let myself fall back. When I do, I fall into hands that lift me high into the air and hold me there.

  “…She’s a sparrow, but she’s an eagle when she flies…” I listen to Dolly Parton with my eyes closed, allowing myself to feel the support of everyone’s hands. As it winds down, I feel myself lowered and open my eyes to meet those of everyone else smiling down at me.

  Everything I wanted, love, belonging, feeling beautiful, feeling wanted, it’s all here, enveloped in the arms of eighteen people I met barely four months ago.

  I’m guided to the “Oasis,” a chair in the corner with a plate of fruit next to it and a wash basin on the floor. I look down and see Roxanne smiling gently at me as she puts my feet into the warm, bubbly water. Her Stretch is to serve others, which is perfect for someone who is used to being waited on hand and foot. I tilt my head back, reach for some grapes, and enjoy a foot massage.

  I feel as if a new me is awakening. Or perhaps reawakening. Initially, I found my Stretch fitting in that it helped me embrace femininity as a strength, rather than a source of pain. A butterfly is able to fly precisely because it’s so delicate.

  On a deeper level, though, it signified a transformation I’ve been undergoing. Just as a caterpillar cocoons itself away for protection, I began to shield myself from the world a long time ago. But, I had become so comfortable in it that, rather than protect me, I let it define me, stifle me. I became the shield, not the butterfly. Literally and metaphorically, my Stretch was about the shedding of a self that no longer serves me. One I’m now glad to see go.

  20.

  “We’re being raided.” It’s Glenn, early on a Friday morning.

  I’m sure I’ve heard wrong. “You’re what?”

  “Someone said we’re abusing the kids, Claire. The police are taking them and strip-searching them. I’m going to need help.”

  My hand shot up with everyone else’s as soon as Glenn asked for kids to be interviewed about Morava and now ten of us are on
our way to the police station. Where did they get the idea that they starve and torture us? It’s so preposterous, we had a good laugh until the look on Glenn’s face told us she wasn’t joking.

  When our van pulls up to the station, a lady from the American embassy has us wait outside. She says they’re still interviewing the previous group of kids.

  “Still?” Jared exclaims.

  “What are they doing in there for so long?” Roxanne asks.

  We murmur in agreement, but the woman just shrugs before going back inside. Hours pass. We’re freezing, hungry, and getting really worried, but there’s also an anxious excitement in the air—the sudden change in schedule, unsupervised conversations with boys, just being outside in the world, much less riding to a police station in a foreign country.

  A man loitering watches us with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The smell is making us drool. Robbie gives in and bums one; the man gives us a handful out of pity. Everything about the day is so crazy, and we’re all so nervous, what the hell.

  The embassy woman comes back out and says they won’t be interviewing us after all, so back we go. When we rejoin our families back at Morava, several girls who were in the station before us are crying. They were strip-searched and photographed, with men in the room and the door open. And they accuse Glenn of abuse? What the fuck is wrong with these people!

  Ten hours after Glenn’s call, I’m leaving the Prague airport in a rental car with two other mothers and a stepdad. We’re anxious and uncertain, but confident we’ll fix whatever’s wrong. We’re Americans, we’re hardwired to think everything’s possible.

  We piece together what we know on the four-hour drive to Morava: a Czech employee angry over being fired for poor performance told police that kids who went to OP—Observational Placement, program-speak for time out—were physically abused.