Come Back (23 page)

And what if this isn’t just a phase, what if she’s always a screw-up, because his filthy hands have made her hate herself into that identity? What if the rest of my life I’ll feel bad whenever I think of my daughter?

I’m in the right place to pray, but this anger feels much more powerful than faith. Certainly more logical. I must have been crazy—one answer to a prayer to find Mia and suddenly I believe? If that’s the case, then losing Mia means losing faith. Which means that belief is nothing more than a willful delusion born of either desperation or gratitude.

“Ready to try this again, bucko?”

I jump. It’s Mike whispering in my ear in the middle of class. Where the hell did he come from?

“Shouldn’t you be asking yourself that?” I hiss back. “You’re the one that kicked me out. Bucko.”

He looks at me calmly, waiting for a real answer. I roll my eyes, grab my jacket, and wordlessly follow him outside.

“Boy, have I missed your attitude, girl!” he says once we’re outside. “After a week of peace, I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to come getcha.”

I trudge behind him in silence, scowling every time he cheerily waves to passing students. He stops on his porch before going in.

“Mia, look at me.”

I look up.

“I’m glad you got Level 4, dear, I really am.”

I breeze past him and sit down. He follows me in and sits in his chair, facing me with his elbows on his knees.

“I’m also still glad Max gave you that feedback. We both know you’re operating at a fraction of your potential. How are people supposed to help you grow if you withhold from them? Oh…wait, that’s right, they can’t!”

He leans in toward me and I press back against my chair.

“Mia, when I look at you, I see a beautiful, bright young woman who’s too scared and stubborn to admit she’s stuck.”

He pauses, lowers his voice, “You think you’ve dealt with your rape, with your old dad…then why do you freeze whenever a male comes within a foot of you?”

The faces of past students on his wall seem to be pressing in toward me, too. I put my feet on the chair with my knees under my chin and stare out the window with my jaw clenched tight.

“I want to see you happy, Mia. I want to see you put on a dress without worrying about the attention it’s going to bring. You’re still so run by what happened thirteen years ago that you don’t even feel comfortable in your own skin,” he says softly.

Then he doesn’t say anything. He watches me watching the trees. I’m so frustrated—doesn’t he think I want those things, too? That I wouldn’t give anything to enjoy hugs without feeling claustrophobic and squeamish? To wear makeup without feeling like looking pretty is asking for trouble? I want that more than anything, but I just can’t, so what does he want from me? I hate this, I hate Mike, I hate my old dad. I hate that every other memory has a me in it that he touched. I hate that some days I wish I wasn’t me.

They come of their own accord, big rolling drops down my cheeks. I wipe them away silently, but they keep coming.

“Do you want me to help you, Mia?”

I nod. I’ve never cried in front of a man before. I hardly cry, period. I’m terrified of intimacy, of vulnerability.

“Then let me in. I can’t help you if it’s always on your terms. You’re going to have to get a little vulnerable, feel a little out of control sometimes. That’s why I kicked you out of my office. You weren’t being emotionally honest.”

I still can’t bring myself to look at Mike. I look up to reach for a tissue on the
filing cabinet and catch his eye as he watches me from his desk. He smiles at me. His eyes are moist.

“Mia,” he says gently, “I know how hard that was for you. I’m real proud of ya’, girl.”

I nod as I wipe my eyes. It caught me off guard, seeing his eyes like that.

Cat 2, major horseplay. One overly rough tussle and it’s back to Level 3. I don’t fucking believe this. I was on sickbed with another girl and by afternoon we were feeling better and started horsing around. I tossed her a rock, but she missed it and it nailed her near her eye.

“But, she wasn’t hurt and I’m really sorry, Chaffin,” I protest on the way back to Harmony cabin with my arms full of my stuff.

“If a lower level did that, wouldn’t you consequent them? Here, give me some things,” he says, helping me. “Half an inch lower and you could have blinded her.”

“I know. But, I worked so hard to get to Level 4 and it was an accident!”

“That’s life. You break a rule, you pay the consequence. You were in a position of authority, a role model for others, and it’s time you started acting like the young lady you are and not some hooligan.”

I suppose he has a point, though if I hear about how I need to start acting ladylike one more time, I’ll scream.

“That’s a good size buck,” Mike says, pointing to a big horned deer nibbling grass on the trail ahead of us. There’s a boy on a parent call in his office, so we’re doing my session while walking a fire road above the facility. The buck chews and watches us.

“You hunt?” I ask, somewhat surprised.

Mike’s blunt, but he’s also soft-spoken, gentle. Not the type I picture proudly strapping an openmouthed carcass to his bumper.

“Girl, I grew up dirt poor. I was putting food on the table by the time I was ten. I was fighting in the Gulf when I was the same age as some of the boys here so the service would pay for university.”

That’s one thing I like about Mike: he’s not just honest about you, but about himself. He’s not afraid to talk about his own childhood, about a lousy weekend, losing a calf, hammering his thumb while pounding in a fence post. There’s nothing clinical about him, no condescending doctor–patient relationship.

I remind Mike that tomorrow morning’s Harmony’s group and he said he’d come.

“I didn’t forget, Mia—you think I want you bitching at me about it next week? Now, so I don’t have to tell your folks they’re paying me to talk about myself, how’s life on the lower levels the second time around?”

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.

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.