Parents at the meeting encouraged us to join the Link, a bulletin board parents created to share information and support. It will become a lifeline in the coming year. A lot of the Link deals with our own personal growth, a lot of it is hysterical, a lot of it is, well, a lot, period. With several hundred parents on it, there are about thirty posts a day. I learn to cull the good ones quickly—there’s a core of about twenty people worth reading, whether or not it’s relevant to where Mia’s at now.
They’ve just posted their most recent compilation of their popular “One Liners,” excerpts from kids’ first letters home. They’re more than comic relief, they also serve to remind new parents not to take the first letters too seriously.
They fall into predictable categories. There’s the pitiful:
If you let me go home, I will be Miss Good Student, I will be Miss Housework, Miss Helpful…
How could you do this to your only child, your pride and joy, the fruit of your loom….
Even though you did this, I still love you internally…
There are certain animals that die without their moms and I’ve come to realize that I am one of those animals…
There’s the creative:
I am in a group with mostly gays and murderers…
There are cannibals working here, one ate his father…
They feed us so little, I’m forced to eat grass and toothpaste…
One girl thinks she’s really a reincarnated chimpanzee…
The place is full of crankheads and coke fiends, people with actual addictions, not like me…
Like Mia, they’re all obsessed with their “stuff”:
If I come home and one thing in my room is gone, there goes our relationship…
They beg, threaten, and manipulate in such predictable ways it makes you feel sorry for them. Until you remember what life was like when they were home.
My reflection in a pool of water catches me off guard. With no mirrors, the most you ever see of yourself is a passing glance in a window or glass door.
My skin’s gotten terrible and my hair’s complete frizz. I let Lara pluck my eyebrows yesterday with a rubber band we cut in half. Now, I look permanently surprised, thanks to two skinny commas above my eyes. Fuck it, who’s gonna care here?
I think back to my first day here, how all the girls seemed so strange and dull, how they all looked like matching nerds, and want to laugh. Looking at myself now in these awful clothes, 10 pounds heavier, a hairy upper lip and broomstick hair, I feel fully assimilated into the Morava machine.
Tyna reports by email:
I spoke with Mia on Monday “one on one” and today she opened up little bit in group. I am happy it is her good start. She is sick of her lies. She wants to change and she is going to write you about it soon I hope she will do it.
Have a nice day Sincerely—Tyna
Mia’s letter came a week later, and she did come clean, though she confined it to pharmaceuticals.
…I have only done pot, LSD, PCP, hash, coke, over-the-counter drugs (Coricidin and No-Doz), huffing inhalants, and drinking. Speed and shrooms, too, sorry. I guess barbituates, too.
Only? We’re amazed she has enough brain cells left to remember her home address to send the letter to. And she didn’t even mention the heroin.
“At least she’s admitted lying in the first place, that’s a first.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Paul says as he puts his feet up and picks up his glass of wine. “She probably has no problem confessing to all these drugs because she still thinks it’s okay to do them.” Her letters and his nightly glass of wine have become inseparable. He says one makes the other one easier to swallow.
“I disagree. She has too much pride. I really think she’s beginning to change a little. She writes two or three letters a week—there’s even a second one in this envelope. And she’s gone a few weeks now without going back to Level 1. I think it was a good thing she didn’t get the emails I sent. Maybe not hearing from me has gotten her to take her actions more seriously. See, Paul, she misses home, listen—
I read from Mia’s letter,
Just please write me. If you choose not to, tell me that. Just be honest. I know I’ve done a lot and will understand it if you guys don’t want to start over with me. I love you both more than anything and I want to start a good relationship with you, I want you both to write to me. But, I’ll be okay if you don’t want to. I really love you guys. Mia.
“Poor thing’s all over the place,” Paul says sympathetically.
I pull out the second letter, written days after this one, reading,
Please, I’m seriously begging you to write me a letter with issues. Please, I want to start a good relationship with you guys and so far Paul’s the only one who emailed me. Please just write me Mom, please. I want a two-way communication thing to start. I love you both. Love, Mia.
I know my child. This is not manipulation. This is a glimpse of my Mia, and she’s afraid she’s lost her mother. After dinner, I buy some mango-colored stationery, one of her favorite colors. I want a “two-way communication thing” to start, too.
“Trojan, T-R-O-J-A-N, a native or inhabitant of Troy.”
Roxanne passes Katrina the dictionary.
“Lifestyle, L-I-F-E-S-T-Y-L-E, the habits, tastes, economic level, etc., that constitute the mode of living of an individual or group.”
Clearly, the Czech Republic uses different brands of condoms, and the joke goes right over the head of our new staffer, Miss Olga. She has a sweet face and she’s painfully shy, though she knows enough to know we shouldn’t be laughing.
She walks over, smiling in confusion.
“Girls, I think there is no talking, yes?”
Suddenly, Tyna walks in.
“Girls, I have just come from speaking with Glenn. There is to be major change. From now on, you must talk in German only, no more English.”
Are they serious? We take German classes here, but so far I can only say my name and count to ten.
Life in German means head counts have gone from ten seconds to ten minutes. Now, we all rush to line up because numbers under ten are easier to remember and pronounce. Asking for simple things sends girls roaring into laughter—cleanser: das Reinigungschmittel, vacuum: das Staubsauger. The long rolls we get at every meal have become “das penis brot.”
Thankfully, Miss Zuza’s got a sense of humor about it. Miss Olga, however, has become a drill sergeant. She must have gotten chewed out for being too lenient with us. We watched Sunny’s favorite educational video today—David Attenborough on the sex life of a rare jungle flower—and Miss Olga gave her a breaking silence for squealing, “Aren’t vaginas just fabulous!” Then, when Sunny kept smiling, she consequented her again. For smiling!
When the shift changes, we all complain to Miss Zuza about Miss Olga.
“What do you think made her change, girls?” Miss Zuza asks. “How many of you would be lying if you told me you didn’t try to manipulate her?”
No one responds.
“You girls don’t think about other peoples’ feelings. Being manipulated is, what’s the word, degrading. If you had not taken advantage of her, she wouldn’t have wanted to overcompensate. And you might consider apologizing. It’s not always easy working with you girls!”
I guess she has a point. Miss Zuza is strict but she has our respect. Once you stop trying to manipulate her, she’s actually pretty cool.
A package arrives from Utah with a diary Mia left behind there. I’ve taken it to Kinko’s to make a copy to send to Glenn along with the first letter I’ve written to Mia since she left for Morava.
As I flip the diary open to lay on the copy machine, my eyes fall on something obviously written while she was in Indiana.
The people she was hanging out with there were skinheads.
I look up from her small, cramped writing and stare outside at the world. Heat waves rise off the roof of a black Mercedes with a Nevada license plate. Skinhead. A woman in a taupe chemise hurries across Wilshire Boulevard. Neo-Nazi. A slender Persian businessman grinds a cigarette out under a brown pigskin loafer. Holocaust. A single yellow leaf falls. My mother.
The contents of Kinko’s Dumpster have just increased by one sealed and addressed mango-hued letter.