Come Back (22 page)

Cameron’s speech was prophetic. The new girls are already back to Level 1. Except Brooke, the girl whose intake I did in Morava.

Once the heroin finally left her system, it was hard to believe it was ever there. In less than three months she’s become a bright-eyed, feedback-giving machine. Between being molested as a child, addiction, street life, and having an abortion, she had plenty to deal with and wasted no time getting down and dirty with her issues.

As she shares today, there’s a giant, fair-haired man in jeans and cowboy boots sitting cross-legged next to her, his head cocked in concentration. He leans his elbows on his knees, as if he doesn’t know what to do with his huge top half. He’s probably in his thirties, but he’s got a friendly-looking boy’s face with an upturned nose. His name’s Mike Linderman, and I’ve seen him around the school during the week.

We’ve all heard Brooke speak about her molestation before, but never like this. She’s not just crying or angry, she’s talking about how it translates into her everyday life, how it affects her relationships, her ability to feel feminine, her ability to feel at all.

I think about those things all the time! I never know if not liking girly clothes is a personal preference or my way of avoiding sexual attention; or if always feeling nervous, like something really bad’s about to happen, is about my old dad or just the way I am. I want what she has, to understand myself like she does, to not feel so out of control.

We end group and Mike starts to head for the door. Without thinking, I leap up and tap his back. He turns around. Shit, what am I doing?

“I’m like Brooke,” I blurt out. “I mean, that happened to me, too, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

It pops out more coherently than I anticipated. He crinkles up his green eyes and smiles.

“I might be able to help you out with that.”

The teensy cabin across from the cafeteria turns out to be Mike’s office. The staff escorting me there is overweight and out of shape. It’d be a cinch to just take off. I’ve been thinking of running and it’s not even because I want to, just because I can. I think part of the reason I liked my old lifestyle was the challenge of it. Always having to find your next fix, being on the run, was exhilarating. I never thought like this at Morava and it bothers me that I think it here. Sometimes I worry that I can’t do well outside of Morava, that it was a magical place and the me that existed there can only exist there. Like a cake in the oven, if even one ingredient is missing, the entire recipe is ruined. Seeing Mike’s red roof snaps me out of my daydream. I thank staff and walk inside. Immediately, I feel claustrophobic. What are you doing, Mia? You hate shrinks.

He’s on the phone but smiles and motions to the chair in the corner. The walls are full of photos of students, their poems and drawings.

“Where do you think your son gets that pattern from, Tina?” Mike says into the phone. “You create the same dynamic with your husband.”

It’s hard to tell if the mom’s in therapy or the son. I try unsuccessfully to picture Colleen giving my mom marital advice. As he wraps up, I notice a framed desk photo of a blond woman hugging three small children, his family I’m guessing.

When he hangs up, he grins at me, leans way back in his swivel chair, and kicks his feet up on his desk.

“So, let’s talk, Mia.”

I look at his mud-covered cowboy boots, shitkickers. Everything about him is so untherapeutic, I’m not sure whether to talk about myself, ask for tips on riding, or just shoot the breeze. Not to mention it’s only now sinking in that I’m in a male therapist’s office. I’ve never seen a male shrink—a male anything for that matter.

“About what?”

“Oh, this is my session, I didn’t realize that. Well, let’s see, I birthed a calf yesterday, there’s a new Chevy blazer I’ve been eyeing. This what you had in mind, dear?”

I laugh, but still can’t think of an opening line besides “No.”

“You came to me, girl, you had to have something in mind, something, say, like sexual abuse, maybe?”

Shit. He doesn’t waste any time.

“That term make you uneasy?” he asks.

I nod.

“It’s a common reaction, Mia. Those words make people squirm who’ve never even been abused. It’s not a popular topic, it’s un-com-for-ta-ble. And that’s what I’m all about, diggin’ up the dirt. That’s what we’ll do in here if you choose, pull up the rug and see what you’ve been sweeping under it. And it’s not always fun, but you must have realized that something about the way you’ve been dealing with it isn’t working for you, or you wouldn’t have come up to me.”

Part of me wishes I hadn’t, because I am un-com-for-ta-ble.

“Why don’t we start with the facts, what happened, who, how long.”

I go over the part I could recite in my sleep. Molested, biological father, two or three. It’s the other parts that I omit. The becoming terrified for no reason, the urges to scratch off my skin, to rid myself of any part of me that can be touched. I leave out feeling like no guy will ever want me and hating myself for wanting one in the first place.

“You’re voting up today, or I WILL drop you to Level 1. You’ve earned it, everyone supports you, and I’m done convincing you to trust in yourself.”

Miss Kim is our new family mother and yet another one of the brick walls my mom is so happy this program is full of. She’s as tough as Miss Zuza, but less formal. She’s half Native American, with delicate features and black eyes and already feels like she’s been with our family much longer than a few weeks.

“This is so unfair! I’m not ready to be junior staff and I’m irritable and they’re going to sense my bad attitude and no one’s going to vote me up.”

She gives me a look,
the
look, where she raises her eyebrows, tilts her head and, poof, you know you’re screwed.

“Then change your attitude,” she replies, walking away.

The remaining hour of class goes by way too quickly. Before I know it, the door flies open.

“Girls going to junior staff group, line up!”

Sunny, Roxanne, and I rise, all looking less than thrilled. Advancing on the lower levels is easy, you just need points. For upper levels, you need points
and
your peers’ approval.

Their group’s outside today, great. It’s about forty degrees and the wind’s blowing, so I have to vote up with my teeth chattering while trying to project my voice.

“Everyone voting up today, stand up,” Miss Marcy shouts to the group. She’s a tiny, energetic woman in charge of junior staff.

I rise. Most of the others are smiling, excited. I feel like a case of dysentery is setting in.

Roxanne’s vote-up takes all of two seconds. A natural leader, she only has three people stand in lack of support. She’s smiling ear to ear as everyone claps and cheers. Sunny, who threw a bigger hissy fit than I did, looks positively miserable. Like sharks to blood, the junior staff instantly pick up on her insecurities, and Sunny disappears into the ring of people standing up around her.

Her face falls, and my heart along with it. She’s so easily affected by things, it will be hard for her to get the confidence to vote back up. I saw this coming, though. She still hasn’t come out about being gay and even if they haven’t guessed it, they sense something’s not ringing true.

It’s my turn. I feel nauseous and I’m praying words come out of my mouth instead of vomit.

“Hi, I’m Mia. I’m voting up for Level 4 today. Everyone who doesn’t support me, please stand.”

I hold my breath.

Two, four, eight, eleven, fourteen people out of forty. I call on the closest kid.

“Mia, you give awesome feedback, people look up to you, but in my experience you still hold back when it comes to your emotions and that sets a poor example.”

“DITTO!” is echoed by the group.

Max Silvers goes next. He’s a stocky redhead, one of the most powerful males on the facility and he knows it. The fact that he doesn’t support me isn’t good; stafft end to respect his opinion.

“Mia, in my experience you could be one of the most powerful kids in this facility, but you’re stubborn. You know what you need to do to change, and the fact that you don’t is what bugs me. I experience you as relying on your potential to get you through the program. I feel a lot of the support you get isn’t what people see you doing, but what they think you can be doing and that’s just not enough for me right now.”

Great, he basically just told everyone supporting me they shouldn’t be. I half listen to the rest of my feedback, while picturing Max dangling from a
cliff, one hand clawing the edge while I look down at him and he pleads for his life.

While the other kids finish, the junior staff have been talking among themselves.

“Mia, congratulations, you just earned Level 4.”

The kids cheer and Roxanne rushes over to hug me. Sunny smiles weakly, and I feel awful for her. I spot Mike mouthing “good job.” I hadn’t noticed him standing outside the circle.

“But,” Miss Marcy continues, “we agree with Max’s feedback. You aren’t living up to your potential and until you do, consider yourself on thin ice. We really need to see you run with this, got it?”

Got it. I don’t care if she just stipulated I can’t breathe the entire time I’m up there—I’m Level 4!

“He’s not your typical shrink, that’s for sure. I half expect him to arrive on a horse,” Mia tells me on our monthly call. “He actually birthed a calf the other day, yuck.”

“I hope his therapy is just as atypical.”

“Well, if you call putting muddy cowboy boots on his desk during therapy atypical, it is. I like him though, he doesn’t BS.” She pauses, then adds, “You’re still going to Focus next week, aren’t you? I really want you to go, mom.”

I can hear the hope in her voice. Because, unlike Discovery, which is primarily about awareness, Focus demands real change based on an even more unsparing look at yourself. Which means a lot of parents avoid it, including Paul.

This is going to disappoint her. “I was getting to that. Jordana got a director for
All Good Children
, and we’re going to London for rewrite meetings with him.”

Jordana is a close friend and the producer of a screenplay I adapted from Marianne Wiggins’s transcendent novel,
John Dollar
.

“Really? I’m so happy for you!” A pause. “But you’ll still do the seminar, right?”

“As soon as I get back, monkey, I promise.”

EXT. RANGOON HARBOR
1919
MORNING ESTABLISHING

Steamships, freighters, and native fishing boats crowd the harbor. Docks SWARM with Burmese fishermen in sarongs, Chinese coolies, Europeans in white linen. Rice mills belch filthy smoke. ELEPHANTS stack teak logs with their trunks.

A dozen turbaned SIKHS swim to a barge, put the tow ropes in their mouths, turn and swim back, pulling the barge in by their teeth. Beyond them, a huge golden spire towers over Rangoon, the Shwedagon Pagoda.

ANGLE ON A STEAMSHIP
—
THE VICEROY OF INDIA

A milky-skinned young woman with sea-colored eyes, CHARLOTTE LEWES, stands at the bow, entranced by all she sees. Her fingers rest on a small metal military kit balanced on the rails. The kit is stamped
Lt. Harry Lewes
. Without lowering her eyes, her fingers appear to move slightly. The kit slips down and sinks into the cloudy water below. It might have been an accident.

She turns and walks around a group of wilted ENGLISHWOMEN in pale silk dresses already clinging with sweat. She continues toward the gangplank as it’s lowered.

Charlotte walks unaided down the narrow plank. Into the sweating humanity, the shimmering heat, the unearthly sounds and colors. Into Burma.

“That’s the moment, Claire. She wouldn’t turn back even if she knew, would she?”

“She might walk faster,” I reply with a smile.

Marshall is gregarious, witty, a perfect director for the screenplay. Jordana and I are sitting with him in our small rented flat in Sloane Square. I’m excited to be taking meetings in London, a city as delightful as Brno was depressing. A city where I’m not as depressed. For the first time in ages, I’m not an anxious, terrified mother—Mia’s on level four and she’s
asked
to see a therapist. What more could I ask for? I’m like any other professional woman doing what she’s passionate about—I’m writing again!

Like the script I’d been writing last year, this is also a period drama about a woman who goes to a foreign land and is forever changed. However, Charlotte, a British WWI war widow, doesn’t lose a child, she gains one, and a lover, sailor John Dollar. The book is about a group of British colonials who are swept away in a tsunami off the coast of Burma in 1919. Only Charlotte’s students survive, a handful of schoolgirls who unwittingly create a microcosm of their parents’ imperialist world, at once touching and brutal, a bit like
Lord of the Flies
. John and Charlotte’s unexpected survival and appearance both destroys and saves them. The moral center of the story is a ten-year-old girl named, coincidentally, Monkey.

Our goal is to expand John’s role to attract an A-list actor and intensify the love story, which means I must create histories for them that don’t currently exist.

It strikes me that, again, my work and life are mirroring the same recurring themes: children, loss, a new life built in a new world after the destruction of the old.

“Roxanne, come on! I need to shower!”

Not having timed showers on the upper levels isn’t always a blessing. She’s been in there at least an hour. Still, living in the junior staff cabin is paradise. It’s like a real house—there’s no silence, we’re allowed to decorate, girls chase each other around with rollers in their hair.

I wrote my parents asking for a razor for the Amazon that’s become my legs;
the rest of my list consisted entirely of food, starting with Trader Joe’s chocolate raspberry sticks. Roxanne’s consisted almost entirely of cosmetics.

She finally walks out of the bathroom with two rainbows of eye shadow and foundation caked on so thick you could carve a relief on her cheek.

“I know you’re trying to make up for lost time, Roxanne, but you don’t have to do it all at once! They’re gonna think you’re trying to rub your level in their face.”

She bends over, flips her hair back, and smiles.

“That’s their problem.”

Not entirely. Cameron comes into junior staff group, takes one look at Roxanne, and bursts out laughing.

“Who thinks this calls for the pond?” he shouts with a grin.

“The pond! Yeah, throw her in the pond!”

The pond isn’t a pond, it’s a cesspool. Algae covers the top of it, and it’s more mud than water. Roxanne crosses her arms defiantly over her chest and gives Cameron a death look.

He moves toward her and she tries to dodge, but he’s too quick. He throws her kicking and screaming over his shoulder, and we all follow him outside laughing and shouting as he races over to the pond.

“Let me down, Cameron! I’m gonna sue your fat ass!” she screams.

We laugh hysterically as Roxanne flounders, splashing and swearing up a storm. She makes her way to the edge and emerges like the swamp creature, hair dripping and black eye makeup streaking her face. Needless to say, the next day mascara and lip gloss seemed adequate.

My first shift as junior staff is in the library. I dust and catalog books, making mental notes of must-reads, and as the clock hits the hour, I walk over to let the girls lining up outside the door cross in.

It’s Harmony family, and they all raise their hands, excited to see me. I’m excited to see them, too, and it’s a few seconds before it sinks in that they can’t speak until I call on them.

I look around at all the faces, at Katrina’s crooked smile, at Brooke’s aggressively questioning eyes, at Sunny’s half-moons. Then I notice three brand-new faces in the family, and it hits me how assimilated the Morava girls have become.

Our first few months here, all we heard was how we needed to integrate, but it was impossible then. But now, with our old ugly uniforms long gone; two of us on the upper levels; Samantha, Katrina, and Sunny soon to follow; and three
unfamiliar girls who’ve probably never heard of Brno, it saddens me to see how deeply Morava’s getting buried.

I’ve always been fascinated with war. Few things could make me happier than sitting under the cupola of the Imperial War Museum, waiting for a bespectacled librarian to haul up dusty boxes of documents from the bowels of the building.

I spend two days reading the copious and touching correspondence of a British soldier on the frontlines in World War I France and his young wife in London. I’m so engrossed in their lives that by the time I untie the faded ribbon on the last bundle, the red K.I.A. stamped on the envelopes catches me completely off guard. Killed In Action. A dozen of them arrived in her mailbox after he died.

Having gained a deeper understanding of the world Charlotte left behind, I hit the British Library to conjure up John’s past. Edwardian England, the Raj, smuggling, colonial opium dens. I’m ecstatic as only a nerd in the stacks can be. Even if for no other reason than I’m not in L.A. thinking about Mia, points and levels, and what to make for dinner.

“So how’s it feel?” Mike asks at our next session.

“Awesome! I really didn’t think I was gonna get it, Mike.”

“Oh, I know how that feels. I meant how’s it feel getting called on your shit?”

I stop smiling and stare at him.

“Are you talking about Max?” I demand.

“Girl, you about shot fire from your eyes at him!”

“Cuz he’s an arrogant asshole! It’s fine for him not to support me, but he didn’t have to imply that other people are idiots by voting me up!”

“See, that’s funny,” he says, “because I agreed with just about everything he said.”

I glare at him. What the hell was I thinking voluntarily entering therapy?

“And I think you do, too.”

“What!” I explode. “That’s bullshit, Mike. You know I deserve this!”

“Do you, Mia? You’re a great leader in some ways, but how honest have you been with your family? You know everything about them, but do they even know you were raped?”

He might as well have shot a cannon at me. Last week, he asked me to write him a letter about issues I wanted to cover. I, stupidly, included Derek.

“You asked me for those papers so we could work through things, not so you could use them against me!”

“Mia,” he says, unruffled, “this can’t work if you’re not honest or if you hide out emotionally. I asked for those so we could build a relationship, and you knew that. I’ve observed you for a while and you’re so used to using yourself as leverage against other people, rewarding and punishing others by how much you share with them, you probably can’t remember what an even-footed relationship feels like.”

He sits, waiting for my response. I cross my arms and slouch down into my chair. He can try to pry information out of me until his precious cows come home—I’m never talking to him again.

A minute passes in silence. He sits patiently, his growing annoyance barely perceptible. Another minute. Swinging his feet down from his desk, Mike walks to his door and opens it.

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get the hell out.”

“Fine!” I say, storming past him and slamming the door.

Fucking shrinks.

“She got
what
?”

I’ve called Paul from London.

“You heard me, thrown out,” Paul says.

“Great,” I sigh, “here we go again. She probably had it coming.”

“I’m sure she did. Kim also said that Mia just
happened
to mention in passing that she sniffed paint dust to get high in Morava.”

“Paint from the wall?”

“Yep, when she was in worksheets. Can you believe she’d be that stupid?”

“
Would
be? You mean
will
be. That paint’s full of lead.”

I try to put this out of my mind as Jordana and I get ready to meet the director for dinner. Over dessert, he proudly shares the accomplishments of his older kids, who are in college or apprenticing in creative fields. Your kid’s interning with a curator, how impressive! Mine? Oh, she’s busy finding new and exciting uses for pulverized paint.

I look up at the clock on the library wall.

“Girls, start putting your things away, please,” I say. “You have one minute to be in line.”

The room becomes noisy as papers rustle and books are slid onto shelves. The girls I’m in charge of walk past me, eyeing me warily.

Being disciplined by someone your own age is hard enough. Being disciplined by someone your own age who has privileges you can only dream of, and who is a lot closer to home than you are, plain sucks, and lower levels spare no expense demonstrating this to us.

One girl shuffles into line late. Sonia’s one of those people you never forget. She’s so aggravating and endearing she seems more like a caricature than a human being. A petite, doll-faced Amerasian bombshell, nobody was surprised to learn she used to be a stripper. You can tell by the way she moves, slow, deliberate, almost snakelike, that she revels in the attention her body commands. Even after being raped by a customer.

She’s had one of the more sordid pasts in here and is perfectly comfortable talking about it. In our first conversation, she told me about having to use her feet and toes to shoot up once other veins collapsed. She and her boyfriend dealt heroin and had several near-death encounters with dealers for not paying up on time, the money no doubt already in their veins. She’s so forthcoming you’d think she’d be a program poster child, until you notice she talks about it a little too eagerly.

“Sonia, do you wanna self-correct?”

“I know you’re just dying to dish out the consequences, but isn’t it typical to explain what it’s for before handing it out?”

Like you don’t know, you dumb bitch, almost slips out of my mouth. Profanities seem to be doing that a lot lately.

“It’s also typical to remember the rules after you’ve been here over a year.”

She glares at me with a disdain as blatant as mine must have been toward my mother. As an authority figure, I find myself wavering between callousness and caring. Half the time they throw attitude, I remember being in their shoes and try to be patient with them.

Then there are days like today when I’m homesick and don’t feel like putting up with some little shit’s attitude over a rule she deliberately broke. Days I feel like laughing at this pathetic girl who’s too stupid to realize she’s just keeping herself here longer while I can go off-shift, shave my legs, and eat chocolate-covered raspberry sticks.

My new scenes are a jumble in my head, and it’s so damp in the flat that my scene cards won’t stick to the wall. I’m in a lousy mood anyway, so I bundle up to take a walk. It begins to rain and I think of my foolish daughter as I dodge puddles. Hello, up there—not to trouble You or anything, but I couldn’t have gotten a regular teenager with regular teenage problems?

I’ve been walking so fast and furious, I suddenly realize I’m completely lost, I’m soaked through and freezing, and my neck is so tense from anger, my scalp’s pulled two sizes tighter than my skull.

I duck out of a downpour into St. Paul’s Cathedral, and while I’m dripping in the vestibule, it hits me. I’m not angry at Mia. I’m angry at Nick. Thirteen years later, he’s still making my life hell. And I’m not just angry for what he did to Mia. He didn’t just steal her innocence, her psychological well-being, he damaged me, too. He stole my youth. Years I’ll never have back. My twenties, my thirties. With Mia’s problems, now my forties.