As if dropping wasn’t bad enough, I’m waiting for results of an AIDS test and Hepatitis C. I doubt Derek used a condom that night, and the type of people he shared needles with have cost me four nights’ sleep.
My family’s outside for PE, but nobody feels like exercising. I look up from my book. Montana really is big sky country, this place feels like it’s in the clouds sometimes. I think just being out in nature is half the success of these programs. Suddenly, I hear an angry Chaffin.
“What is this? Why are you not exercising?” He looks over at me. “And you? When you were junior staff you had everyone doing pyramids like champs, what the heck’s this?”
Right then, a junior staff boy passes by the court and Chaffin waves absently at him. Suddenly, his hand freezes mid wave.
“Hey, come over here!”
Damn! Of all boys to walk by at this moment, it happens to be Max.
“Silvers, what does a normal fitness look like for the boys?”
Max shrugs. “Maybe 10 pyramids, 100 push-ups, some laps.”
“Harmony family, listen up. Max will be your junior staff until I feel you’re all out of your crap. Max, I’m giving you free reign to whip this family into shape, I mean black and white on rules, getting involved in group. Got it?”
This is just fucking great. One of the cockiest guys on the entire facility has just been given carte blanche to make our lives hell.
“Get down and gimme twenty!” Max yells. “Now! Last one on the ground takes two laps. Go! Go! Go!”
Everyone flies to the ground but me, I never signed up for the fucking army.
“Mia, two laps, go!”
“Fuck you,” I scream back at him.
I hate Max, I hate everything about guys in general. The way they walk, the way they smell, the way they shovel food down like starving pigs.
“Two laps, Mia, or you have a Cat 2, blatant disrespect.”
“What part about barking orders at us like a bunch of dogs should I respect? The power tripping part, or kissing Chaffin’s ass part?”
“How about the your family is full of BS right now part and one of their oldest leaders isn’t helping by copping the attitude of a Level 1. Two laps, go.”
“Fuck you! You can’t tell me what to do.”
How original, I only said the quintessential self-righteous teenager phrase. Nice work, Mia, your big mouth just got you a day in worksheets. I haven’t been to worksheets since Morava, but I’m sure it’s the same dumb tapes and microscopic room.
“First, let’s clear two things up,” Mike says. After another round with Max, Miss Kim radioed Mike. “The AIDS test is bringing up issues, so you’re in a man-hating groove from the get-go. Add to this a guy who’s in a position of control over you, and that equals one nervous and defensive Mia. And what does Mia do when she feels vulnerable or out of control?”
I shrug, still annoyed.
“How does acting out or shutting down sound? Question—who’s typically the prominent male authority figure in a kid’s life?
“My dad,” I sigh, hating how everything comes back to him.
“So, it’s not about Max being controlling, that’s his assignment per Chaffin. Your attitude and that irritated, shitty feeling you get whenever you’re around guys is about you, about your current inability to put the past behind you and not see every guy as your dad. Or Derek.”
Turns out, it’s not just me. Come group, Mike shows up at the cabin with a red-eyed Brooke, who listlessly plunks down next to me in the circle. When she starts to share, her voice is monotone, exhausted, but it doesn’t take long for her to get back into the emotional state she was obviously in before she came.
“Talk to Max, Brooke,” Mike says. “Look him in the eye.”
“I hate when you tell me what to do,” she sobs. “I can’t listen to you without remembering the times he told me to do things.”
Brooke displays her emotions so rawly it’s almost more powerful to watch her than to listen. She cries with her whole body. I want to breathe in her anger and pain, I want to use her emotions to ignite my own, steal her memories to replace the ones I can’t call up in my own mind.
“To this day if I ever walk by that house, I’ll vomit on the spot.”
As Brooke goes over the details of her abuse, I can’t sit here anymore, my skin’s twitching. I drop out of the circle and go to the bathroom as quietly as I can.
As soon as I shut the stall door I slide to the floor, shaky. How awful for Brooke to remember all that! She was six when her abuse started and it lasted for three years, so she remembers a lot more than I do. How does she do it, how can she sit in her own skin, think with a brain that holds all those memories, all those touches, all…
Sets of feet are pattering around me, to the stalls to my right and left. And then directly in front of the stall come two mud-covered cowboy boots.
I can’t put into words how I’m feeling and I don’t even try. I just sit there and cry. Mike waits until he hears my breathing steady again to speak.
“Was listening to Brooke getting to be too much?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Brooke. I don’t want you to feel bad about sharing, this is all my shit, it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
A hand slides under my stall and squeezes mine, hard.
“I know, Mia,” she whispers.
I start sharing, first about my talk with Mike, but then it all starts tumbling out.
“…it pisses me off! It’s like he never goes away! Knowing’s a double-edged sword, Brooke. I can see how shitty it is for you to have to live with those memories, but at least you know what you’re dealing with. It drives me nuts that I’m being affected by something I hardly remember! It makes me feel crazy.”
“Do you remember anything?” she asks softly.
“Yeah, weird things, details. A fuzzy pink toilet seat cover, tile patterns. I remember the bathroom was to the left of a long, dark hallway. I used to remember everything real clearly when I was younger, but now I mostly remember remembering; and the nightmares—the clowns poking me, the spiked jacket, a blond, curly wig.”
I’ve calmed down now, so I open the stall door. My whole family’s crammed in the bathroom, smiling at me. We sit in a circle on the floor and finish up right there in the bathroom.
“Let me ask you this, Mia,” Mike says, “would knowing make it any easier? Would remembering make it more real for you, help you let things go?”
I’ve asked myself this a million times.
“I’m not sure, but it might help. I just feel like a living secret sometimes, you know? He has other kids now. Sometimes, I think I want to talk to them, but what if they don’t know about me? If he never abused them, I’d kill their image of their dad. I couldn’t do that. But, I have so many questions. I want to get over him for good but it’s hard to get over something when I’m not even sure what exactly it is I’m supposed to be recovering from.”
I think I just talked for twenty minutes straight. I look up and notice Max. He has tears in his eyes and is quiet for once. I go over and hug him. Neither of us says anything but I know we’ve made our peace.
Dear Mom,
I’m going to write my dad a closure letter that I can burn. But before I do, I want to know everything. All the gritty little details. What did he do to me, what exactly happened? Did he ever beat you? Did he sleep around? What drugs did he take? Do you have any photos of him, do I look like him? I want to know everything so I can let it go. I know how hard this will be for you, Mom…I’m here for you if things come up for you while you write this to me.
Mia’s request for documents will be easier to put together than she realizes. Spread across my desk are all the old court papers ready to be copied.
I’m suing Nick. He’s the reason she’s in the program, he should pay for it.