Getting Somewhere

by Beth Neff

  “Because . . . it’s all you know.”

  “She has all the power, doesn’t she? And, as far as you know, all the information.”

  Jenna shrugs, doesn’t answer.

  “So, at some point, you’re going to act out, aren’t you? Because it hurts like hell to believe her, and nobody can live with that kind of pain.”

  Jenna hasn’t taken her eyes off of Ellie, but she still isn’t saying anything.

  “So, is it wrong to be angry? Are you wrong if you’re angry?”

  It takes Jenna a long time to respond. “I don’t know.”

  “Really? I think you do.”

  Okay, Cassie definitely doesn’t like this. Ellie is challenging Jenna, and Jenna is being pushed into a trap, given no choice but to retreat or fight. Cassie wants Ellie to just smile, clear the air of all the tension. Isn’t that her job? Cassie doesn’t understand why Ellie seems to be, instead, rocking the boat, poking and prodding until she forces a hole that will send them all plunging into the surf.

  Yet Jenna is not retreating. She is not looking away or jumping up from her seat or even appearing upset. In fact, Cassie can almost make out the slight bobbing of Jenna’s head.

  Ellie’s voice is a little quieter now but no less insistent.

  “I think you know that your feelings, your anger and your sadness and your pain, tell you exactly what you need to know. They have been doing their job—protecting you, telling you the truth. To get your power back, you have to stop believing her and start believing you.”

  Jenna still doesn’t say anything. The room is completely silent. Nobody moves.

  Cassie thinks the session might be over when Jenna says, “To do that, we’d have to believe you first.”

  Ellie smiles. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. In the meantime though, you have to believe Sarah.”

  Sarah’s head jerks up and she looks at Ellie with confusion. Ellie focuses her smile on Sarah.

  “Didn’t you just say what everybody needs is a mother? Or maybe we should say, someone in your life who cares for you in a mothering way? Well, that’s it. You have to be a kind of loving mother to yourself.”

  Cassie’s mind is reeling. A loving mother. She knows other important things have been said, but she can only focus clearly on the last part—being a loving mother.

  She is hoping someone will ask how you do that when Lauren says, “So, you’re trying to be our mother?”

  “No, Lauren, that’s not what I said. I—”

  “Because, see, I already have a mother. Maybe not the best one in the world but I certainly don’t need you to be one for me. You don’t even have kids, probably never will, so I can’t imagine what you would know about it.”

  Lauren is glaring at Ellie who is trying to hold Lauren’s gaze. Cassie can see from where she is sitting that Ellie is swallowing hard.

  “Okay, Lauren. Tell us what you’ve learned from your mother about how to be a successful, empowered woman.”

  The room goes completely silent again. There isn’t a single person here, Cassie thinks, who can’t hear that Ellie’s words are attacking, challenging. Except maybe Lauren. She is sitting up a little straighter, seems glad for the opportunity to describe her mother, hasn’t noticed that the rest of them are shifting uncomfortably in their seats, looking away.

  “My mother loves me,” Lauren declares. “She has devoted her whole life to me and my dad. She works hard to keep herself looking great, and everybody comments on how put-together she always is. I suppose my file says something about her drinking, but she’s never let that stop her from being there for me and Dad. She’s not the reason I started shoplifting. You can’t blame her for it just to fit your little theories. I had everything I needed. I’m not angry about anything other than being stuck here, having to be around people who think I’m better off with them than with my own family, with a real family.”

  “What’s a real family, Lauren?” Sarah is not even trying to hide her contempt.

  “It’s a mom and a dad and kids. It’s certainly not a bunch of women living together, and it’s not what you think either, Sarah, a bunch of run-away drug addicts living on the street.”

  “So, there’s only one kind of family?” Sarah challenges, her voice rising. “And you can only have a family if there’s a man in it? Do you have to have a certain number of children, too? Like two point two or whatever is ‘normal’? You’re an only child, right? Does that mean someone could decide that yours isn’t a real family?”

  “I’m not . . .” And Lauren hesitates, glances over at Ellie and then back to Sarah.

  Ellie leans forward. “You’re not what, Lauren?”

  Lauren doesn’t answer.

  “You’re not an only child, are you? You have a brother, right?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it said in your file that you had an older brother. I must be remembering it wrong.”

  “You are. And if it said that, someone got it wrong. I don’t have a brother.”

  Cassie is watching Lauren, fascinated. Her face has gone completely white and her teeth are gritted. She is almost violently yanking the ponytail holder off the back of her head and pulling her hair back tightly in order to attach it more severely. When she is done, she turns to rest her gaze back on Ellie.

  “Let’s just go on. This is totally ridiculous. I don’t need to tell any of you anything about my family.” She spits the last word out so that it hangs in the air like a bomb ready to drop.

  Cassie realizes she has been staring at Lauren and quickly averts her eyes. Something is definitely wrong, and it’s obvious that Lauren is working very hard to cover it up. Does she have a brother or doesn’t she? Why would someone say they don’t when they do? Other than a mother, Cassie can hardly imagine a thing that she could want more for herself than a brother or sister. And then Cassie is seeing Lauren in the hallway, clutching those cards to her chest that she insisted Ellie had given her permission to borrow. Was that lying? Is this? And, if so, what, exactly, is Lauren trying to hide?

  IT IS NIGHTTIME so Cassie walks. It is as if the days, with their activity and human chaos are so full of all the things Cassie doesn’t know that she must find a time and a place for what she does. At night, she goes over and over those things in her mind, a desperate effort to preserve their worth and dignity, but it feels like pawning family heirlooms only to discover their mediocrity. Cassie knows every president and every vice president of the United States but, until a week ago, she had never seen or eaten popcorn. She has a map in her head of the county she lives in, where it is located in the state, the country, and the world, knows the date of incorporation of every town in it, where the rivers and dams and highways can be found, but before she came here, she didn’t know that the law requires children to attend school. She knows how to make a pie, fix a toaster, and provide nursing care to an elderly woman, but she has never played a game with other children or even met someone her own age until now. She’s never seen a movie, used a computer, or played a video game.

  The list goes on and on, fills Cassie with a feeling that the word “regret” is far too small to describe, a suspicion that her fundamental difference from everyone else is insurmountable. She has tried to reach back far enough to recover the joy she once squeezed from the darkness. But now, it’s like a monster has hurtled out from under the bed, knocking Cassie down with the firm and bitter conclusion that she has lived in the promise of that childhood guise for far too long. It’s an illusion, pretending to herself that she might still be essentially normal, that Gram was still taking care of her instead of the other way around, that Gordon loved her as a carefree girl instead of a woman, that any memory she can dredge up could possibly set her free.

  She knows all of this, in part, because of what she has been hearing
in the sessions, and especially today, what Ellie said about being a mother ringing and ringing in her ears. But mostly she knows because it is not working anymore. It is as tedious as the passages she read over and over again to Gram about Corfu from the travel book she hasn’t touched in weeks. Instead, the nights are gradually and insistently asking for the real story.

  The very young Cassie, the one she has tried to maintain, is gone, surrendering Cassie to a more recent, more disturbing rendering of herself. She now sees a different Cassie, at nine, at eleven, at fourteen, remembers different nights, confusing nights, darkness that brought only fear and shame. She remembers it all clearly as if a shroud has been yanked away, all the way back to the first time, even before Gram got sick. She hears his voice as if he is standing beside her. We’ll just take a ride, Gordon had said. You need to get out.

  She can feel the dirt and gravel collected on the floor pressing into her knee as she climbed up to the seat, the truck too tall for her to step directly into. She can smell the green corn and the fresh-cut hay rushing past her open window as she rode, the force of the wind pushing her arm back. And then he insisted she sit on his lap, that he would teach her to drive, placed her hands on the steering wheel with his own on top while she guided the truck past sleepy farms with barking dogs, over swamps with dense willow thickets blanketing both sides of the road, through mile after mile of woodlands with the headlights bouncing off the trunks of ancient oak trees.

  Then, the lake. In the heat of the summer, it was an excuse to get cool. He would never bring a swimsuit for her but instead carefully removed each item of her clothing and folded it neatly beside him where he sat on a picnic bench in the deserted clearing that must have once served as a boat access. She started out just paddling around in the shallow water at the shoreline, but gradually, over time, she learned to jump and then dive off the decrepit dock into the dark water below. Cassie doesn’t know when he started to put his hands on her as she rose out of the water onto the stony beach, can’t place exactly when the trip itself became shorter, Cassie always in the driver’s seat with Gordon gazing out the opposite window as if she were the one determining their destination, when the purpose for their night travels became clear, the only driving directly to the lake, the only swimming a brief dip for Cassie to wash the mess and smell away. She told herself she hated leaving Gram like that, even though Gram never woke up at night, but that was the only objection she could muster, never refused or indicated in any way that she didn’t want to go, even hurried to get the dishes done and Gram in bed while Gordon tapped his fingers against the page of the newspaper that he always brought and always took away with him.

  Then, one night, the sweep of headlights startled Cassie as she climbed out of the water, hurried to dress. A policeman stepped out of his car and sauntered casually over to Gordon sitting on the picnic bench, took the hand that had been resting on the holster of his gun and extended it to Gordon’s, the two men shaking hands like old friends.

  “My niece,” Gordon had said. “She likes to swim.” The policeman had told Gordon that few knew about this place anymore, but the ones who did were rarely up to any good, suggested a more public swimming place might be wiser, and Gordon had nodded, acting grateful for the advice. And that was the end. They never went back,and Gordon started staying later at the house, waiting until Gram was snoring in her room, taking Cassie into her own and leaving just as soon as he was done. Cassie had missed the one chance she might have had and, for almost two years, never set foot in the truck or swam in the lake or went anywhere at all until that last walk before she was arrested.

  Cassie is convinced she will never be able to forgive herself. She could have stopped it. She should have known how wrong it was. She acted like a child, did everything she could to stay one when all the evidence made it clear that her childhood was over. And then, when she got another chance to recognize herself as something other than an unsuspecting child, when she could have actually learned the mothering part, she threw it away. Even now, when she could be learning what she needs to know to make her way as a woman in the world, she can’t talk, can hardly participate, flinches whenever someone gives her any attention, avoids rooms where the others are gathered, finds herself running out each night into the darkness as if the person Gordon made her is the only one she knows how to be.

  Cassie is undone by this sudden fury. She has never in her life raised her voice to anyone and now she would give anything to shout, to scream, to rant and rave until her throat is raw. She picks up rocks from the pile Grace has made at the corner of the north field and lofts them again and again, always back at the pile, too afraid to launch them out into the night and ruin the order that Grace has worked so hard to establish, even though that is exactly what she would like to do, create a chaos that matches the one in her head.

  Angry, angry, angry. At herself. At this place for being the very mirror that shows her what she is. At the dark that won’t swallow her up as it once did, that, instead, spits her out night after night onto the ground, shivering with the truth. What to do with it? She fights, she resists, and very slowly, pounding at the edges of her consciousness like a persistent knocking, is the answer. She has to talk. She has to tell it so it doesn’t remain livid and scorching inside. She knows this because of Jenna.

  Cassie doesn’t understand it, but there she is. When she returns from her walks, sometimes Jenna is sitting on the porch, and, if Cassie didn’t know better, she would guess that Jenna is waiting for her. Cassie has tried not to depend on it, not to look forward to it because she is sure she will just be disappointed. But, tonight, she is moving a little faster toward the porch, doesn’t realize she has been holding her breath until she hears the slight squeak of the porch swing as it glides back and forth under Jenna’s weight.

  “I DIDN’T COME out last night because I heard thunder.”

  Jenna peers at Cassie in the dim light but doesn’t say anything, nods. They are quiet for a while, the sound of the swing filling the air enough to make the lack of conversation seem comfortable.

  Finally, Jenna says, “Grace said she thought it might have hailed some during that one storm a couple weeks ago. Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t go out.” Cassie thinks Jenna’s voice sounds different, almost choked up, when she says Grace’s name. She waits to see if Jenna is going to say more, and when she doesn’t, Cassie decides to say exactly what she is thinking.

  “Gordon used to always tell us the weather report. He usually made it sound like there was a disaster about ready to happen at any moment.”

  “You mean like tornado warnings and stuff?”

  “Yes. Tornado warnings and severe thunderstorms and blizzards and floods and everything. I used to think he was trying to scare us, but now I think maybe he was just scared himself.”

  “Hmm. That’s weird. It sounds like he was kind of a jerk.”

  Cassie looks away from Jenna, self-conscious for a moment, but then feels herself starting to smile. “Yes, I suppose that’s right. A . . . jerk.”

  Jenna sees her smiling, says, “Have you heard that word before?”

  Cassie shakes her head, embarrassed. “No.”

  Jenna snorts. “There are a lot worse words than that for people you think are jerks.”

  “Like what?”

  Jenna laughs out loud, shakes her head. “I don’t want to be the one to corrupt you.”

  Cassie looks away, unsure what that means.

  Jenna quickly changes the subject. “Did you ever think of running away?”

  “From home, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I couldn’t ever leave Gram. And especially after she got really sick. There wasn’t anybody to take care of her.”

  “Why couldn’t Gordon take care of her?”

  Cassie doesn’t answer right away. It had never crossed her mind to expect Gordon to
take care of Gram, but she suddenly has an inkling that the idea is not as far-fetched as it first seems.

  “I don’t really know. Maybe because he was . . . a jerk.”

  They are quiet for a moment, then Cassie asks, “Did you ever run away?”

  Jenna snorts out another laugh. “Lots of times. I was running away more than I was staying put.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because I always figured it had to be better somewhere else. I hated most of the places I lived, and they hated me just as much. There wasn’t anything to stay for.”

  “Did you get in trouble for it?”

  Jenna nods. “A lot.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Well, that was always kind of the problem. There wasn’t anywhere to go. So I always just ended up coming back, or they’d find me pretty quickly and that would give them a reason to look for another foster home where I might do better. But it never really worked out. I guess I just wasn’t old enough to figure out how to make it on my own yet.”

  Cassie feels a flush of something like recognition and a shiver runs down her spine.

  “No. I don’t think kids are supposed to be making it on their own.”

  Jenna nods again, studies her hands.

  “Are you now?” Cassie asks her.

  “Am I now what?”

  “Old enough. Do you think you could make it on your own?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I could. I’d know where to go now, too.”

  “Where?”

  Cassie is not sure if Jenna is embarrassed or if the question is too personal. Jenna looks away, has kind of a funny half smile on her face.

  “Oh, I’d probably head out west. I don’t know exactly where but I think I could make a go of it. What about you?”