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

by Claire Fontaine

  Children are still chattel to them—they’re just chattel with a disposable income. Not to mention perky breasts and bee-stung lips.

  Even my little corner of the world looks different to me now. I can see how unconscious I’ve been about what I’ve surrounded Mia with in her own home. She’s right, it is severe, there’s little color, and those breasts. They may be culturally relevant and provocative, but they’re also angry. Abuse of power, greed, male violence, and misogyny are important themes for artists, but perhaps not in Mia’s home right now.

  Even my refrigerator poetry magnets are a mirror for me. “I am a bitter goddess, Beneath my whispering petals, Lies a crushing tongue.” “I want languid red dreams, But my dreaming apparatus is rusty, And so, My dreams are pink.” They’re the depressed mother’s version of cheesy, angst-ridden teenage poetry.

  My home reflects a state of mind I’m not in anymore. I want the feeling of our home to be one of happiness. White walls become buttercup, pale olive, sunshine yellow. I hang Mia’s pastels, childhood photos of all of us. I want Mia to return to a home as transformed as we are.

  My relationship with God has evolved as well. I no longer rail or beg or sass back. I was standing on a bluff over the ocean the other day and suddenly laughed out loud as I realized what an illusion that was, what an impossibility. That would assume a relationship between a “me” and an “Other,” a separation. There is no otherness; to be separate from God is to be separate from myself, from life itself. What I’ve been looking for, I’m looking with.

  Well, I’m back in the saddle, I think, looking around at the seminar room. Two days on junior staff and I’m already staffing Discovery. Cameron and Chaffin offered me back my Level 5 status after my parents left—and this time I took it. I wasted enough time. Plus, I’ll get a home visit in time for my seventeenth birthday!

  It’s my first time on a staffing team and I had no idea how many hours you work preparing and getting coached. If I thought David was intimidating before, he’s twice as hard on the staff team. We’re about to do the first release process, and he’s going over our duties.

  “I want the kids to come in to dim lighting and ‘Cristofori’s Dream,’ that’s CD 12, song 3.” He nods to the people in charge of lights and music. “Small group leaders, I want you already seated in their circles. It’s critical you’re on top of your duties or the mood will break. Half of what gets these kids to open up in these processes is trust. The other half is the separation of this atmosphere from their normal lives, where they avoid dealing with things. Your job as a staffer is to help create that environment.”

  Sonia’s one of the kids in my group. When it’s her turn to share, she rises slowly and smiles coyly before speaking. She’s perfected the art of captivating an audience, knowing exactly when to pause and stare woefully at the ground, when to lower her voice to barely audible, bringing listeners to the edge of their seats.

  But I’ve heard her stories before, and while stripping, being raped, and dealing drugs were no doubt formative experiences, I suspect those she leaves out were more so.

  “What about your parents, Sonia?”

  “What about them? I don’t appreciate you interrupting me when I was sharing about my fucking issues,” she snaps.

  I remind myself not to react, to remember how easy it is to get defensive when someone’s trying to break through your walls.

  “I’m not saying what you’re sharing isn’t important, but I’ve heard it enough times to say it myself. I also don’t think these things are that hard for you to share.”

  “Yeah, rape’s a real easy topic.”

  How do I explain this without sounding like a bitch?

  “I’m not saying it isn’t. I just have a feeling that whatever came before it was worse.”

  She stares at me for a few seconds, a cat deciding whether to play with her prey, or just pounce.

  “Okay, if, as you say, I omit what’s painful, why wouldn’t I just refuse to talk?”

  She’s playing. The fact that she’s speaking almost flirtatiously tells me she’s acknowledging I hit a chord. Now that I’ve won a few points, she’s testing me to see how well I know her, which, unfortunately for her, is better than she’s about to like.

  “Attention,” I answer. “You equate it with power and control, you’ve said yourself that’s why you liked stripping. Good work on changing the subject, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” she smiles at me.

  “You’re so aggravating, Sonia!” I suddenly exclaim. “You’re so used to wrapping people around your little finger, you don’t even know when someone’s trying to help you. I’m not asking you this shit to amuse myself—I’m asking because the reason you’re so manipulative is to keep people at arm’s length so they won’t see how miserable you really are. You act stronger than you feel, and I know because I’ve been you.”

  Her amused expression changes to one of wariness. I need to watch my tone.

  “Look,” I say, more calmly. “We all have our secrets, it’s okay to keep some. But, like I said, I know nothing else about you. Tell us about your life, I mean, were you a good student, did you have a happy childhood, anything?”

  “Off and on, my childhood was happy, I guess.”

  “You don’t sound very convincing,” I say gingerly. I’m afraid to push her too much or she’ll clam up, but I also want to get past the bullshit.

  “We moved around a lot, but my parents were happily married. I got along with my siblings.”

  “Who were you closest to?”

  “Probably my sister, my mom, too, though.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “What about him?”

  She’s getting defensive again. I hit another chord. She senses my train of thought and changes her demeanor, flashing a quick smile.

  “My dad’s almost sixty, so I never related to him much, but we get along fine.”

  Something’s not adding up, nobody from such a “happy” background does what she did. And I get a weird feeling when she mentions her dad.

  “Did your dad abuse you?” I ask softly.

  I don’t know what makes me ask this, maybe it’s seeing something of myself in her, her refusal to create intimacy, her need for control. It would explain her running away, the stripping and heroin, she might have been trying to blot her father out.

  “Physically, no,” she answers. The look in her eyes is a mixture of dread and desire, of wanting to expose him while still fearing it.

  “Sexually?”

  With that one word something in her dies. Her eyes go vacant, her face blank. Her mouth opens a couple of times, but nothing comes out. After a minute, she nods ever so slightly before dropping her head. It comes out in whispers.

  “When I turned thirteen. It went on until I ran away when I was almost fifteen. You know the rest.”

  As she says this last part, she looks up from the floor at me. I’ve never seen anything so vulnerable in all my life.

  “I’ve never said that out loud before.”

  On impulse, I take her hand and squeeze it.

  “Me, too, by my dad.”

  There’s a lot more I want to tell her, things that she’s probably going to face in the future, patterns I noticed that stem from the abuse, but for now, I’m just glad she acknowledged it happened and that I have the chance to connect with her.

  I hear David telling the kids to stack their chairs on the side of the room and find a space on the floor.

  “I can’t say anything else, but what you’re about to do might help,” I whisper to her, as I move toward the staff table.

  It’s time for the towel process. Barf bags are stationed in each corner of the room and we’ve all memorized the location of the first aid kit. Slight rug burn from an overly enthusiastic hitter is generally the worst that happens. The kids will have their eyes closed, so it’s our job to make sure no one’s about to bushwhack someone else.

  David begins and I listen to the familiar di
alogue, the imagining your father’s face, calling up the unpleasant memories. When it comes time for them to begin hitting, I brace myself. He starts the count and with three, it’s like waking sleeping dragons. It’s darkened so all you can see is their silhouettes, like a machine, arms rising and falling, rising and falling. The sheer energy is breathtaking, it’s pure emotion, unfiltered.

  Whish! A towel whizzes by my face. “FUCK YOU!!” a girl to my right screams over and over, hitting the floor with such gusto I stand behind her to be sure she doesn’t hit the boy to her left. It goes on for at least fifteen minutes. When it’s time for them to rest before beginning to imagine their mom, David whispers to us to go out and soothe the kids however they feel comfortable, rocking them, putting a hand on their back.

  I go to Sonia first. She’s not crying anymore, just breathing heavily, her hair clinging to the sides of her face, wet from sweat and tears. I kneel beside her and lift her head into my lap, stroking her hair and cradling her lightly. She opens her eyes for a second and stares up at me, smiling softly before shutting them again.

  I kiss the top of her head before moving on to the next person, who happens to be Sean. I can make out Jason farther down and I see Zeke’s blond curls in the distance. My wall-punching, snow-slinging boys are curled up in the fetal position, rocking themselves and sniffling. And in comforting them and giving them someone to rock with as Sasha did to me, I feel something I haven’t felt before.

  The last time I felt an emotion so intensely was in this same process, the freeing of a little red demon my father left and I secretly nurtured. But this is entirely different. It’s not anger or pain I feel, but love. It surprises me to find I have love, not just insight, inside me in such abundance.

  And in letting myself love them, I see for the first time the gift I gave to my mom. And why she fought so hard to keep me.

  34.

  Cameron’s instinct was a good one. Mia’s finally becoming the leader everyone knew she could be, but what’s new is that she’s actually liking it. Not just the doing-ness of leadership, the being-ness of it. I can hear it in her voice, even on the phone.

  This is possibly the most crucial time in her healing process. Stopping the pain of a troubled child, and the behavior it elicits, is only half the journey. Because it’s one thing for them to finally know what they don’t deserve—to be molested, addicted, or in jail. It’s another entirely for them to know what they do deserve, for them to fully embrace success, to dream big and achieve, the true mark of self-worth.

  This is what I want Mia to get from this last phase. That she’s worthy of being looked up to, worthy of the self-respect, confidence, and distinction that comes of great accomplishment, hard earned. And what she’s achieved so far is an accomplishment few of even the most stalwart adults could.

  This is becoming a familiar scene for us—Mia running into my arms and bowling me over, while Paul stands nearby with tears in his eyes. We’re at LAX picking her up for a ten-day home visit. She’s been in the program a year and five months and hasn’t been home for twenty-one months.

  Just how isolated Mia’s been, and for how long, becomes apparent on the freeway going home. She’s clutching my arm and staring around like a scared bunny, flinching whenever a car goes by. “I forgot about traffic,” she whispers to me nervously.

  We stop at Whole Foods on the way home. Mia’s agog at three whole shelves of cereal; she takes half an hour deciding on Ben and Jerry’s, and practically swoons in the produce section.

  “Mangos and persimmons and kiwis! All we ever had were oranges, apples, and bananas!”

  The program has cost us a small fortune, but she’s come home a really cheap date.

  It takes being away from home for a long time to be able to actually smell your house. I stand in the doorway, inhaling that delightful mix of clean laundry and simmering pasta sauce until my mom, eager for me to see the house, steers me away.

  I wander through each room, soaking up every last detail, familiar and new. The house looks a lot brighter. Gone are the breasts in the hallway and in their place are pastels I did when I was younger. My room is almost empty, but the color! It’s the most vibrant shade of pear green.

  “We can decorate it together when you come back. I’ve been saving—”

  I stop her mid-sentence with a crushing hug. My parents, my home! I’ve been gone so long, everything I’m seeing doesn’t feel like reality yet. I’m afraid I’ll go to bed tonight and wake up staring at the bars of the bunk bed above mine.

  If Mia continues to do well, she’ll be home in a few months, just in time for the spring semester at Santa Monica College, which we’ve all agreed will be a good transition to university. We scheduled this home visit to coincide with registration for spring classes, which starts today. She must have changed ten times, finally settling on jeans and a roomy yellow fleece top.

  It feels strange seeing her write “Spring Creek Academy, Montana” on the enrollment forms. Stranger still is how clingy she’s being. She holds me close in the crush of the registration lines and refuses to hold our place while I go to the ladies’ room.

  I expected the opposite, especially around people her age. She stares at the students like they’re another race. There are thousands of them, speaking a cacophony of languages. Has she grown so used to the mountain quiet, walking heel to toe in silence and knowing every face? Or is she simply disoriented and scared because she has no real experience of herself in this world? The last time she was in the big-city world of teenagers she was almost always high. With each day home, a truer picture emerges of what the possible long-term effects of being gone in a program so long might be.

  I watch her among the kids in the packed cafeteria, looking like just another student, and I almost have to pinch myself—Mia’s going to college, Mia’s home, Mia is alive!

  “There won’t be anywhere near this many students when you go to classes,” I whisper to her. “It’s only this crowded because everyone’s here to register.”

  “I hope so,” she whispers back.

  “You’ll adapt in no time. Really, Mia, could it possibly be harder than the Gravel Pit?”

  I can’t believe I’ll be going to school here. Alone.

  The fleece my friends envied in Montana now seems atrociously earthy. The girls are all in really low hip-huggers or miniskirts. Kids I would have once considered cool now look like deliberately crafted projections of personality rather than their real selves.

  My mom sits in the grass and pores over the course catalog.

  “Mom, can’t we do this in the car?” I whisper, dying to leave.

  “If you don’t register today, you’ll be locked out of the classes you want.”

  “I can register by phone, I checked. Can we go now?”

  I look around the campus and wonder how hard coming home is going to be. As much as I’ve hated the program, I’ve loved it, too. People are vulnerable and honest, I’ve formed deeper friendships there than I ever had before, and there’s no temptation in terms of drugs or sex.

  In the real world, if I have an issue come up or I’m just having a bad day, I won’t have fifteen girls or Mike or Chaffin to talk to me at the drop of a hat. I won’t have anyone there to call emergency bathroom therapy sessions.

  It almost seems wrong to have you change and mature in an artificial reality. They strip you of any facade, teach you to be totally open with your thoughts and feelings, and then send you into a world where it’s impossible to live without a label, where people smile when they’re sad.

  I used to know how to operate in this world. I had a skin thick enough to withstand the harshness of it, but I feel like I’ll be re-entering it virtually naked.

  “You can’t take just three academics. And you can’t hold my arm while I drive.”

  “So, just drive with your left hand. And I’m taking four classes.”

  “Sculpture is not a class. You’ve missed two years of the academics you would have gotten at Hop
kins. You’re at a disadvantage for admissions when you transfer to begin with.”

  “Mo-ther, I’m not even home yet and already you’ve got my next year of school planned. You’re taking charge as if I’m incompetent. And why am I at a disadvantage? I plan on getting all A’s. It’s not like I want to transfer to a shitty school.”

  “Mia, please don’t swear, it sounds trashy.”

  We drive most of the way home from the school in silence. It feels miserable. She stops me before we get out of the car.

  “What are you so scared of, Mommy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not about the classes. Control’s always about fear, you know that.”

  She’s right, Claire, stop, what you’re doing isn’t working. My inner Debbie is practically shouting “Get outta’ your damn head and be emotionally present for your daughter!”

  “I’m afraid you’ll get bored.”

  “What would happen if I got bored?”

  “You might decide you don’t like college.”

  “And if that happens?”

  “You might cut classes or quit.”

  “I’ll cut to the chase, Mom. If I cut classes, I might flunk and end up working as a janitor for life. Or start partying with the other class-cutters and, voilà, I’m addicted to heroin all because I didn’t take enough academics.”

  “Well, I didn’t consciously take it that far, exactly.”

  “That’s worse, Mom. If you go unconscious with letting your fears run you, you’ll be exactly where you used to be two years ago and we are going to seriously butt heads.”