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

by Claire Fontaine

  Karel’s on a real roll. Because by the end of the day we’re told he’s going to try to charge us, too, the parents. For violating a law they dug up that makes it illegal to leave our kids in their country against their will, something the owners never informed parents of.

  It also turns out that it’s illegal for children under the age of eighteen to be isolated for any reason here. And OP is considered isolation, even though it’s supervised. Something else the owners either didn’t know or never told Glenn. The law isn’t hard to understand in theory; for a former communist satellite, “time out” often meant you never came home again.

  Now, they have their grounds.

  We collect the kids in the cafeteria to tell them. There’s a sharp, collective yell of disbelief, followed by a wall of crying and boys shouting angry threats. Little Charles sits in a pile crying, barely able to be his only support. The wailing in the room comes in waves I can actually feel in my body.

  Glenn and Steve don’t hide their grief from the kids who crowd around them. They’ve devoted their lives to creating this haven for them, and they’re losing it, and them, all at once.

  Mia hasn’t cried in my lap in years, and it’s only a brief privilege. She stops quickly, wipes her eyes on her sweatshirt, then joins the other girls trying to comfort each other.

  Some calm is restored when they stand up one at a time to express their feelings. One boy brings his guitar and sings for the kids; it is a tonic. The kids begin filing out quietly in buddy teams to begin gathering their belongings from around the facility. They don’t get far.

  Two police officers enter the school and arrest Steve right in front of their eyes.

  Morava’s closing. On some level, I sensed this coming, but hearing the words is devastating. The next few minutes unfold in slow motion. Sunny’s wailing, Katrina’s pacing back and forth, dazed, the normally composed Roxanne can’t stop crying.

  What’s going to happen to us? There’s not a day that’s passed that I haven’t thought about home, but now it’s a possibility, I’m terrified. I’ve become so used to the sheltered world of Morava, I haven’t been around “normal” teenagers in so long, I wonder how long it’ll be before I’m strung out in the back of a van. I’m not ready.

  And does this mean the staff are definitely going to jail, Glenn, Zuza, Olga? I feel sick, literally sick. In one week, the authorities have managed to destroy everything we’ve come to call normal and take from us the only people we trust enough to help us. Why?

  Glenn takes a few spare moments to talk to me about Mia.

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for what you’ve done with Mia. She’s a different girl, Glenn.”

  “No, she’s not, Claire, not yet. Mia’s come a long way, but she’s got a long way to go. She’s built up years of pain and confusion and anger about her father. What you’re seeing is a new awareness. But it takes a long time for knowledge to be internalized to where it changes behavior. She needs enough time in a controlled environment to get strong in the person she’s becoming, so it can survive outside in the world.”

  “I’m worried about what’s happening now, how it’s going to affect her progress.”

  “Knowing Mia, she’ll shut down for a while, I think a lot of the kids will. This has been such a shock.” She blinks back tears, unable to finish. I sit beside her and put my arms around her.

  Mia and the kids will go on to other facilities. Glenn has no idea where she and her husband will go. If the police here let them go anywhere.

  We’ve got three days to shut down an entire school and get forty kids ticketed, packed, and escorted out of the country to several different locations without having any runaways. What little sleep we’ve gotten in the last five days will have to last us. Roger stays inside, working nonstop, too, boxing up textbooks, doing whatever he can.

  Against police orders, Peter, Zuza, Olga, and Dusana return to spend the last few days with the kids, providing much needed stability for them. And no little love. Peter and Zuza’s tireless devotion to the kids, in spite of their bitterness at the baseless charges against them, is remarkable and heartbreaking. This wasn’t just a job for them or the others.

  Glenn ignores the order to stay in her room to be with the kids and to help assign them to new facilities. The girls interrupt their frantic packing to be with her as much as possible. Seeing her interact with the kids has made me realize how intimidated we are by our teens. They love her for what we don’t give them anymore, individually as parents or collectively as a society. She doesn’t care if they like her, and they love her. She’s not afraid to discipline them, and they respect her. Even in the midst of chaos, I watched her hold them accountable for every little action, and it created not resentment, but trust.

  Mia told me that when she came back from the police station, she went straight to Glenn to tell her she smoked, and that she never would have done that with me.

  “Because Glenn simply held me accountable, consequented me, asked what my new declaration was, and had faith that I meant it.”

  This faith, I think, is the gift Glenn leaves these kids with. Her trust in them has created a space where they can begin to trust themselves.

  Professional escorts work two adults per one teen. The four parents left will be one sleep-deprived adult per three kids, many high run risks. One is Mia, though I don’t tell her this. Glenn and I agree the risk is mild, but I’m still a nervous wreck.

  The biggest run risk is David. I ask him if, as one of the eldest and most mature, he’ll help me look after my group. He shrugs a nonchalant agreement, but I can see he’s pleased. Everyone, including Glenn and Steve, are sure he’ll run anyway.

  Not only will David not run, he will not let me carry a single bag nor open a single door through three airports. Even his posture will change—he’ll stand erect and dignified, an example not only to the kids but to every man we’ll pass.

  His composure will be all the more remarkable given the way he and the others will be gawked at in every airport—eleven wide-eyed, huddled American teens wearing identical jean sweatpants and bright red shirts. The boys in white socks, sandals, and crew-cuts, the girls in shocking pink fur slippers and straggly hair.

  At the Prague airport, they’ll be recognized as the poor, tortured kids on the news and us as their lousy, irresponsible parents. The last image we will leave them with will probably confirm the accusations. Because one of the parents will pull a pair of scissors from I don’t know where and proceed to cut the girls’ hair. Right in the middle of the airport. The girls will giggle and blush as hair piles up at their feet. I’ll tactfully suggest doing it in the bathroom as I scoop up handfuls and carry it to the trash.

  “There isn’t time, the planes are about to leave and the girls look terrible,” she insists. “Besides, after what this country did to these kids, let them clean it up!”

  I stand with my mother in front of Morava, just as we did six months ago when she dropped me off. I remember seeing this building with such a sense of dread and fury it’s hard to reconcile that with the feeling inside me now.

  Morava now stands only as a shell. It’s empty of boys and girls walking in lines, of death-defying soccer tournaments, of dancing butterflies and ballerinas, of pseudo-German-speaking American teens trying to figure out their past and future selves.

  Morava’s essence is now carried inside sixty teenagers who call themselves a family, who are all painfully aware that a chapter of our life is ending. It’s a chapter that is an indescribable mix of a Utopian environment and pure hell. We’ve all despised Morava, we’ve all loved it, we’ve all been thankful for it, but above all we’ve all loved each other. We’ve seen sides of people that they rarely show and grown together in ways that outsiders will likely never understand.

  “Mia!”

  I turn as Glenn grabs me tightly. We look at each other and both start to cry. It hurts to see this strong woman cry, this woman who helped so many of us find that same strength wi
thin ourselves. It’s not right, Glenn’s not supposed to cry.

  “Be strong, Mia,” she whispers fiercely. “For yourself, for the girls. Don’t let them slide back into old patterns, Katrina’s anorexia, Sunny’s self-mutilation. Don’t withdraw, don’t shut down! Don’t use this as an excuse to call everything you did here bullshit. The work you’ve done here is real. Take what you’ve learned and grow. Take it and fly.”

  “But what about you, Miss Zuza—”

  “We’ll be fine, sweetie. You have to go now, go…”

  I stumble to the van, climb in and turn around to face her, pressing my hand against the rear window. I know this image will never leave me, seeing Glenn crying in the snow, watching her once powerful figure become smaller and smaller until it’s finally swallowed up by the silence that was Morava. The silence where I listened for myself, and for the first time, really heard.

  Glenn’s reading of Mia is accurate. Whatever illusions I still had that Mia was almost fixed are dispelled by the time we get to Prague, the night before we fly out. Mia’s mood and behavior had been subtly shifting as the situation at Morava worsened. I noticed her picking up Gizmo often, as a way to comfort herself. As the days passed, she no longer appeared reflective but withdrawn. Her face grew silent.

  I remember that face. And I haven’t forgotten that there can be another Mia behind Mia.

  I see this other Mia emerge at dinner tonight, our last night together in Prague. We’re in a cavernous, groin-vaulted restaurant lit only by candles. She’s brimming with enthusiasm about what Morava taught her, and about being able to eat a rack of lamb.

  “Every day we choose our life,” she bubbles as she starts eating, “which means you choose the consequences, too. Oh, my God, this sauce! The whole atmosphere there is designed to help us learn who we really are and love that person. That’s a choice, too.”

  I’m so impressed by her maturity and insight. Then she suddenly stands up, saying she has to go to the bathroom. I get up to go with her and she looks at me, hurt.

  “Mia, I can’t let you go by yourself, you’re still under rules.”

  She rebels instantly, firing off, “Thanks for the confidence, like I’m going to run away or what, steal a cigarette from some guy at the bar?”

  Well, yeah, I want to say. She’s gone right back to the same verbal aggression and sharp, machine-gun delivery I used to dread. Like a nice little kitty whose claws are merely retracted, not gone.

  I don’t know why, but I decide to trust her. I hold my breath until she returns. But the Mia that returns is different; the sparkle is gone. She’s pulled strands of hair to fall over her face and is doing her affected slink-walk as she passes a guy at the bar. The tentative peace of mind I’ve come to feel as Mia became a loving, honest daughter again completely disintegrates. Replaced again with that mushy-sick-stomach fear.

  Mia and many of the others will be transferred to a sister facility, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. It’s on a secluded mountain far from a city. It has the reputation as being one of their most successful schools.

  It has no tracking dog. It has no fence. It’s why I didn’t send her there to begin with.

  part four

  21.

  NOVEMBER 15

  It’s dead quiet in the van save a static-y country song twanging on the radio. It’s odd enough hearing music besides Beethoven, but “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” at 1 a.m. with an eight-hour time difference is too much.

  I’m beat, the kind of tired that comes after tears. We just learned that Sasha won’t be coming to Spring Creek, as we’d been told. I never got to say good-bye. Only Sunny, Roxanne, Katrina, and Samantha remain, along with several newer girls, including Brooke.

  The driver, Mr. Jim, said we couldn’t sleep in the van, so we sit like zombies, staring out at the night scenery. Even in the darkness, Montana’s beautiful, with pine tree silhouettes and an enormous yellow moon low in the sky. The freeway narrows to a two-lane road with “Watch for fallen rock” and “Bighorn sheep crossing” signs.

  Someone coughs. Mr. Jim jumps and turns around.

  “Y’all are still awake?! I thought you’da been passed out by now!”

  “You said we couldn’t sleep,” Katrina responds politely.

  He starts laughing so hard he about spits out his soda. “And you believed me? Aww, I feel awful now, I was only joking with ya. Go on and catch some shut-eye.”

  It’s hard to imagine any of the Morava staff joking with us. I wonder how else this place will be different, but the last thing I remember being conscious of is that big yellow moon. Until Prague, I hadn’t seen the moon in six months.

  Waking up at Spring Creek Lodge proves no less disorienting. I’m in a giant, barren rectangular room with twenty bunk beds lining the walls. Two chests rest in the gaps between bunks, and I vaguely remember having to lock our shoes up in them when I came in last night with Samantha and Roxanne. They promised to keep all the Morava girls together, but until they build our cabin, we divide up into different cabins each night.

  Strange girls rub sleep from their eyes and give us curious glances. I assume we’re on silence because no one talks, though they smile briefly at us. A tall blond woman in a parka opens the door, letting in a freezing draft.

  “Morava girls, I’ll be back in ten minutes, please be ready and lined up.”

  We rise and head to the bathroom—it’s blinding! Polished chrome reflects bright white walls, spotless sinks, and shining linoleum. Gone are Morava’s buckets of water so you can flush down what the toilet couldn’t and, to my great delight, in their place sit glistening, new American toilets.

  Samantha jabs me and points—there are mirrors here! In a flash, she’s looking for blackheads and Roxanne’s admiring her hair as if she’d never seen it before. I head right for a stall because we can’t pop zits in the program, it’s considered self-injury, and until I can shave, I have no desire to see a fat, hairy version of myself.

  The woman returns and we follow her up a narrow dirt path to yet another log cabin. Except for the silence and walking in line, this place doesn’t feel like a program. We’re high on a snowy mountain slope thick with evergreens, in the middle of nowhere. A cluster of about ten red-roofed log cabins so perfect they seem fake peep from between the trees and deer eye us calmly as we walk right beside them.

  I suddenly realize that we’ll have to walk outside every time we change activities. Which means that unless there’s an electrified fence hidden in the trees, there’s nothing between me and freedom but a very long hike down.

  We stop in front of a long, low cabin called the Hungry Horse, where the other Morava girls are waiting. Katrina and Sunny reach out and squeeze my hand as we line up behind them to go inside.

  On the way in, I notice a teeny, tiny cabin across the path. Several students wait on the porch, hopping from one foot to another to keep warm, and I wonder what they’re waiting for.

  The cafeteria’s full of girls already seated with our first familiar sight—watery, gray oatmeal. Heads turn but few smile. Several girls walk around in full makeup, junior staff no doubt. But, nobody, upper or lower level, wears a uniform! Even more surprising is that the people in the kitchen are students! There are no fences and students are allowed access to fire and knives? I can see why my mother sent me overseas.

  We eat, cross out, and stand freezing as staff pats us down to be sure no one pocketed food or utensils. As I lift my arms and spread my legs, I hear engines gunning in the distance. Zooming toward us are identical, burly, blond twins riding identical four-wheelers. They smile and wave as they zip by.

  “That’s Cameron and Chaffin. They’ll be by your cabin this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon” turns to evening as dusk settles around the cabin we’ve spent the last five hours in. Cameron, the Glenn of Spring Creek, came by after group. Because the police took all our records, he asked us to assign ourselves levels—and he wasn’t joking.

  Katrina, Roxanne, and
I rated ourselves fairly, asking for Level 3, and he agreed. But now he’s agreeing when the newest girls ask for the same thing! He sees our expressions and laughs.

  “Where did you all just choose to go? Anger? Jealousy? Smug, because you think I’m clueless?”

  D—all of the above, especially the last one.

  “And I’m sure your reaction stems from genuine concern for your peers, right?” He laughs again. “Gimme a break! You’re jealous because they had the guts to ask for what they didn’t deserve and you didn’t have the courage to demand what you do.”

  He looks at Sunny and Samantha, who realize they screwed themselves by asking for too little.

  “I know it seems like I just changed the whole program, but this is just an exercise, a chance to learn something about yourself. Your own behavior will drop or raise every one of you to exactly where you’re really at in no time, I guarantee it. You can’t disguise the truth, girls.”

  Spring Creek is beginning to feel like Morava Light.

  It takes me three days to sleep off last week. I feel so bereft about the loss of Morava, more than what should be reasonable, and it’s a while before I realize why. It was the first time I felt a real connection to my mother’s family. My ancestors lived nearby for centuries, which makes it the closest thing to a home I’ve ever had. It felt almost fitting that my daughter would heal in the place where my mother was born.

  I’m somewhat worried that Mia will run from Spring Creek, but I am more concerned that the conditions that elicited her amazing growth were specific to Morava—Glenn, the foreign location, the Czech staff, the girls there, many of whom didn’t go to Spring Creek. There was a sweet, innocent quality to the place that was utterly unique.

  We don’t have a family rep yet (their version of a case manager), so I express my concerns about Mia’s behavior to whoever will listen, a supervisor, the school counselor, a secretary.