“When this is over you’re going to have a lot more than a headache to worry about.”
Nick hasn’t changed a bit. This time it’s my new lawyer he’s threatening, right in the courthouse. Probably because his letters telling her that her actions on my behalf will haunt her conscience and condemn her to eternal hell didn’t have enough of an effect.
Mia’s glad we’re suing him. She’s told Mike she feels it empowers both of us. And that if she’s being held accountable for everything she’s done, he should be, too.
“I know she’s glad, but I’m sure it’s bringing up a lot of issues for her,” I say.
“Oh, it is,” Mike answers. “But those issues will come up anyway. They will for anyone who’s been sexually abused, only most folks never deal with it. Mia is doing a lot of hard work most adults either never get the chance to do or are afraid to do. You should be very proud of her.”
Only in this sense has Nick paid any price for what he did, and it is a steep one. He’ll never get to be proud of Mia, a punishment of his own choosing.
“How ’bout it?” Mike asks before I can sit down.
“How ’bout what?”
I’m already not liking the way this session’s headed.
“How ’bout we walk over to Unity after this session?”
“What?” Cameron said something about this last time but I thought he was joking! “You’re not really going to stick me in a boys’ family—you can’t!”
“Cameron’s already discussed it with me.”
This bites! Unity’s one of the most notorious boys’ families on the facility. Whenever you hear someone radioing for backup, it’s almost always Unity family. He stands up.
“Right now?”
“Right now, kiddo.”
I reluctantly follow him to the Hungry Horse. We walk in and a roomful of boys all turn around to stare at me. I wheel around to walk back out but Mike grabs me by the shoulders and half leads, half drags me over to a tall, tan man in his thirties with a scruffy beard. Mike explains the situation to him, two weeks of joining the family from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., then two days a week from then on. I stuff my hands in my pockets and stare at the ground.
“Boys, listen up,” Mr. Greg announces. “This is Mia, she’ll be joining our family.”
Their names come in a whirl, Brad, Sean, Jeff, Aaron. They give the same introductions as girls do, name, age, where from, why here. The drugs and dropping out are similar but there’s a lot more gangs and violence.
When I get back, I’m hit with questions: what do their cabins look like, do they have the same rules, what’s fitness like with them? It’s not until I’m about halfway through that it hits me. Brooke, Samantha, and Katrina are all missing.
“Where is everyone?”
“They got Level 4 today.”
“All of them?”
I instinctively seek out Sunny, whose expression and presence tells me she didn’t get voted up. Again.
“Katrina and Samantha I saw coming,” I tell her, “but Brooke’s only been here seven months!”
“Yup, and we shining examples are still Level 3 after a whole year, isn’t that just faaabulous!”
Boys smell. They shower, they shave, they do laundry once a week, but their cabin still stinks of sweat and socks. They’re louder during fitness and quieter during group.
There’s so much snow on the court today, fitness turns into a snowball fight. They tackle one another, rubbing snow in each other’s faces. It looks like fun but they’re so aggressive, I’d probably get massacred.
I walk over to talk to Mr. Greg and ask about his weekend.
“Oh, it was great, I went to the Testicle Festival.”
“The what?”
“Testicle Festival,” he says, as if every town had one.
“Right. And I suppose come fall, there’s the Pussy Parade.”
He laughs. “Bull balls, Mia, not people’s!” He’s practically smacking his lips. “Got down ten of those bad boys this year.”
Only in Montana. I’m grimacing and trying to imagine testicle festivities when Thwack! A snowball slams into the back of my head. I turn to see blond frizz taking off. I ball up a handful of snow and chuck it back at Zeke. It hits him squarely in the back. He turns around and we both start laughing. Before I know it, I’m snowball fighting with Zeke and ducking attacks from the others. Paul was always proud that I could throw a baseball like a boy, and the skill is coming in handy because they aren’t cutting me any slack for being a girl!
Every week I feel less like an outsider. I’ve made a few friends and feel comfortable with the whole group in general.
I’m in the middle of helping Aaron with a math problem when we hear a loud pounding. It’s Sean. A minute ago he was quietly reading a letter but he’s livid now, slamming his fists into the table as he yells, “That bitch!”
Mr. Greg rushes over and grabs his arms. Sean wrestles free and slams his fist into the wall. Mr. Greg grabs him again. “Michael, radio staff central and tell them we need backup here NOW!”
“Fuck you!” Sean screams while trying to punch Mr. Greg. Suddenly, he buries his face in his chest.
“She lied to me, Mr. Greg,” he sobs. He makes one more fist, then drops it.
“She lied, she was never pregnant.”
Sean’s girlfriend was two months pregnant when he came into the program. She was due this month. Or so we thought. Turns out she was worried Sean would leave her and faked the pregnancy. Poor thing, he was so excited to be a dad.
Women don’t have a monopoly on being abused, I think, as I watch Mr. Greg cradle Sean. I’ve listened to guys share about being beaten by drunken dads, cheated on by girlfriends, one was even molested by an aunt, another by an uncle. I’d been so busy seeing the world through my own experiences, I didn’t think to view it through anyone else’s.
“I’m not wearing a dress.”
Mike’s putting me on a challenge by making me wear girl clothes for a week.
“A skirt, then.”
“N-O.”
“Mia, what don’t you like about being a girl?”
“Nothing,” I lie.
“Hmm, musta been another client who made that long list of all the things wrong with it. Let me think…I believe you said you don’t like walking down the street and being catcalled at, you feel that guys enjoy sex more—that whole fucking versus getting fucked—you don’t like being physically smaller than guys. And, my personal favorite, you can’t pee in the woods standing up.”
“Just because I don’t like being a girl doesn’t mean I want to be a guy.”
“That’s why I think it’s a good idea to get you more comfortable with being a girl, so you can embrace it rather than let it be a source of frustration and pain for you. The rest of this week, you’re going to dress like a girl, and I mean makeup, hair, the works.”
“Even when I’m in the boys’ family?”
“Especially when you’re in the boys’ family.”
It takes three days of walking around in a skirt for me to break down. A new boy came into the family and he’s been eyeing me all day. Then I got so frustrated during PE because I can’t do anything in these stupid clothes, I yelled “fuck” and Mr. Greg made everyone circle up. Of course, as soon as we do, who happens to walk by but Mike.
“I was wondering when this would happen.”
“You wanted this to happen? Everyone’s staring at me like I’m a freak or a piece of ass and I can’t do anything in these stupid clothes!”
“Guys, if you weren’t in the program and you saw Mia walking down the street, how many of you would say, damn, that’s a good-looking woman?”
All their hands go up. I’m on the verge of tears.
“Okay, then what would you have done?” Mike asks me. “Actually, don’t answer that. Mia, I want you to guess who would have responded in which way.”
I look around at the guys. “Micah and Jason definitely would have catcalled, Sean would have waited for me to approach him, Aaron would have come up and been very respectful, Zeke would have said some jackass pickup line.”
“Now go around the circle and tell me what each of these guys’ biggest issues are.”
“Micah was adopted and has big abandonment issues, so does Jason, though he’s more afraid of rejection. Zeke’s ridiculous pickup line makes sense, he always uses humor to mask being nervous or scared.”
By the time I finish the circle, Mike’s point is obvious. People’s reactions are always about themselves, their own insecurities and fears.
“Mia, if I thought you genuinely hated dressing like a girl, I wouldn’t have done this. But I see how you look at other girls. I know you want to do certain things but don’t because you’re scared of the attention it might bring. This was to help you get more comfortable with that attention, to teach you how to handle it appropriately.”
Micah raises his hand.
“Guys aren’t all just after sex, Mia. I know we talk about it a lot and you’ve had some bad experiences, but half the reason I would have wanted to hit on you is because you’re cool. I’m not saying sex isn’t a factor, but give us some credit.”
“Yeah,” Zeke says, “and how you dress makes a difference too. Sure, if we see some girl with tight-ass pants and a thong showing we’re gonna want to hit it. But if you see a woman who dresses nice, honest to God, sex isn’t the first thing we think of, it’s more like damn, that woman’s beautiful, she’s never gonna go for a dude like me. So we make some retarded pickup line when all we really want to do is just ask you out.”
“Mia, what did we do today?” Mike asks.
“We tortured me.”
“Well, maybe,” he laughs. “We made you face your fears. Now tell me you don’t feel a little bit better?”
I smile reluctantly. The bastard has a point.