“Mia is a very troubled girl.”
Dr. Kravitz is one of the doctors in charge at the hospital. He saw us right away when he’d heard what happened. He’s also seen Mia.
“Of course, this all stems from the sexual abuse. It’s a very durable trauma, very significant in terms of Mia’s self-perception, especially when it occurs at such a young age. The self-loathing and disgust she’s expressed is typical. No matter what a parent does or doesn’t do, by fifteen the problem manifests itself. Kids don’t connect it, they don’t see the effects played out in their behavior. Like the cutting, for example. She has no idea why she did it, only that it made her feel better.”
Why would she? Trained professionals twice her age didn’t.
“Cutting serves many functions,” he continues. “It’s the embodiment of distrust of the body. It relieves tension. It’s a way of achieving mastery; it says I will control the harm inflicted on me. It had nothing to do with communication problems with you.”
This should feel like a victory, but it doesn’t.
“Coupled with her enmeshment with you,” he says, “she got a double whammy.”
“Her what?”
Okay, let’s rewind, go back to the chapter in the How to Mother an Abused Child manual I never got to read when all this started. Here’s the drill:
“The bad news.”
“That was the good news?” I ask.
“Understanding all of this isn’t going to help, very little will,” the doctor says. “She’ll go back to the streets, the drugs. It’s the only thing that offers her relief from her own misery, the only way she sees to protect you.”
Mother horse can’t save her pony anymore. She’s charging off into the unending night that you buy in little plastic bags. She’s leaving because she loves me too much to hurt me? Then, I wish she hated me, that she wanted to destroy me instead of herself. That she would do to me whatever it takes to scratch the itch of the sullied child.
Staying at Sara’s lasts two weeks. When my sister Vivian asks if Mia wants to stay with her for a while, Mia jumps at the offer. Maybe it’ll be a good thing, I think. Vivian lives in Larkin, Indiana, a tiny town in the countryside, certainly a more wholesome environment than LA. Mia will have her little cousins, the public school there will be less pressure than Hopkins. It’ll also give Paul and me time to recover.
Mia’s back in her bedroom tonight, but only to pack her things for Indiana. I don’t recognize anything she’s packing, she must have gotten these things in the last two weeks. Grungy druggie clothes, combat boots, shapeless knitted beanies. Different clothes for a different girl living a different life. One without me.
She doesn’t seem to mind my presence, though I can tell she’s glad we’re not talking. But she’s leaving tomorrow morning and I have a nauseating suspicion I won’t speak to her again for a long time.
“Mia, I know you were unhappy inside for a long time, but right before you ran away, things seemed better, you seemed genuinely happy before you left.”
She looks up from her packing. “I was really happy, Mom. I knew I was leaving.”
It’s funny. I used to be terrified of hurting my mom, it was my worst fear. Then it came true. That night she saw me cutting changed everything. It was one of those moments that define your life in a new way. Her look of pure horror and disgust, it was like she ripped me open and laid bare a gremlin. That was when I knew I had to go, that her house was too bright. I had already been hanging out and partying with street kids on the Promenade enough to know I made sense in their world, that I fit. Once I made the decision to go, I had found a thread to hang on to, to follow to salvation. Of course, I seemed happy, the last days of something are always the sweetest.
She goes back to packing, turning her face from me. My throat constricts. The stupid thing is, I get what she’s saying, I know how she feels. It was how I felt when I thought about suicide, that promise of release. Only I was seeking escape from the darkness, I wanted the light at the end of the tunnel. She seeks escape in the opposite direction. Either way promises oblivion.
Our most intimate conversations have always been while I was sitting on her bed like I am now, usually at bedtime. I remember how terrified she always was of monsters in the dark, of bad guys under the bed or in the closet. I remember all the ways I tried to banish her fears—telling the monster he had the wrong address and sending him off with directions and a cookie, turning on the lights to show her the empty closet, magic wanding them poof! into dead mosquitoes, see there he is smushed on the screen. Nothing helped. One time she began to cry and told me not to bother, pointing to her head and saying sadly, “You can’t make them go away, Mudder, because they’re in my head.”
Now, she’ll do anything to get rid of the monsters in her head, even if it kills her. God knows it’s killing me.