He retreated back around the desk, putting a barrier between the two of them.
“No one is trying to change the way you feel,” he protested. “We just want to understand, and to help you, if there is something we can do. Maybe there is someone we should call …”
Justine couldn’t get any closer to him, but she still held his gaze aggressively.
“I already talk to my therapist,” she said. “The cops don’t want to talk to me. And neither do you.”
He tried to object.
“You don’t either,” Justine challenged. “You just want to pawn me off on someone else. You don’t want to talk about that,” she nodded to the essay on the desk. “You just want to make sure someone takes care of me.”
“I do want to make sure you’re taken care of,” he agreed sincerely. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care. Just that I want you to get the best help possible.”
“Then why don’t you just fax that to Dr. Morton?” Justine suggested.
“Okay, if you’re giving me your permission.”
“Sure,” Justine agreed. She picked up her books and headed to the door. She stopped before walking out. “And if Ms. Taupe doesn’t want my opinion, she shouldn’t ask for an opinion piece.”
With that, she left his office, slamming the door behind her.
Em drove Justine to Dr. Morton’s office in tight-lipped silence. Justine leaned her head against the frame of the car and gazed at Em with half-closed lids, considering her. It was obvious that Em was angry. If she was trying to hurt Justine or make her feel guilty by shutting her out, it wasn’t working. Justine preferred the silence. They were halfway to Dr. Morton’s office when Em decided to break the silence.
“I can’t believe that I have to take you to Dr. Morton again, mid-week, because of this fiasco,” she said tightly. A speck of spit landed on her cheek and she didn’t wipe it off as she concentrated on the road. It glistened on her cheek.
“It’s not my fault,” Justine said with a carefree shrug. “I just did the assignment that they told me to do.”
“If you just did your assignment, I wouldn’t be driving you for an emergency session. They insist that you can’t go back to school until you have a note from Dr. Morton clearing you to attend! I can’t even wait until your next regular session, it has to be done before you can go back to school again.”
“No skin off my nose,” Justine observed. “It’s not like I’m behind or something. I don’t mind skipping a few days.”
Em shook her head, staring at the red light as if she could make it change by sheer force of will.
“I can’t believe it,” she maintained.
Justine laughed.
“I can’t believe everyone is making such a fuss over a silly English assignment. Sheesh. What if I did a creative writing assignment about shooting everyone up? What do you think would happen then?”
“You’d be expelled, that’s what. You know better.”
“Or if I was in art and painted someone being shot, or bleeding,” Justine mused. “I read an article a while back about a first grader who drew a picture of a gun and got suspended. For drawing a picture of a gun! That’s stupid. They can’t control what I think.”
Em sneered.
“No one can control what you think, that’s for sure,” she observed.
Justine just smiled back.
“That’s right,” she said sweetly. “It’s been tried by experts, hasn’t it? No one is going to control what I think.”
Em fell silent again for the rest of the trip to Dr. Morton’s office. When they arrived, Em walked Justine into the doctor’s office, and didn’t even check in with the nurse at the intake counter. She just sat down with a flop in one of the saggy-bottomed chairs, and pulled a paperback out of her purse. She hid her face, saying nothing to anyone. The nurse receptionist looked at Em in stunned silence. She was used to Em’s usual greeting and pleasantries and wasn’t sure what to do about this. She looked at Em for a minute, and looked at Justine. Justine smiled, and the nurse half-smiled back, then dropped her eyes to her computer and continued with her work. Without looking at either of them again, she picked up the phone and buzzed Dr. Morton.
“Justine Bywater is here,” she said shortly, and hung up.
“He’ll be with you in a minute,” she said to the empty space of the waiting room.
Justine didn’t sit down. She just stood around, waiting. Eventually, Dr. Morton came to the connecting door. He looked at Em, hidden behind her book, waiting for her to greet him and fill him in on the situation with Justine. When Em didn’t look at him or say anything, he nodded to Justine.
“Come on in,” he invited.
Justine followed him into his office and sat down in the chair, lounging back and slumping down in it.
“Have a seat,” Dr. Morton murmured, without noticing that she had already done so. He walked around his desk and sat down. He picked up the faxed copy of Justine’s essay. “So …” he said, drawing it out, his eyes going over the page to refresh his memory. “The school was very interested in your personal opinion piece, were they?”
Justine nodded and kicked her feet.
“Yeah. But I don’t know what the problem is. They asked for my opinion, and I wrote it.” She paused. “She didn’t even grade the paper,” she pointed out.
“Your English skills are excellent,” Dr. Morton observed. “I’m sure this is A plus material. But … ‘the only reason to send children to school is to turn them into robotic clones? To bully them into either following society’s rules or …’”
“To drive them into despair or insanity,” Justine offered pertly.
He looked over the pages at her. He looked down at the paper again, through the half-lenses that he rarely wore. He adjusted them slightly.
“That’s the gist of it,” he agreed, and put the papers down. “So … you feel like you are being bullied?” he suggested.
“Well, yeah,” Justine agreed. “That’s what school is all about, isn’t it?”
“There is a ‘no bullying’ policy, isn’t there?” Dr. Morton questioned.
“There is a ‘no bullying’ policy on paper,” Justine agreed. “That’s what they claim. But do you think that means that there’s really no bullying?”
“Probably not,” Dr. Morton agreed. “But if there is bullying going on, it needs to be reported.”
“They don’t do anything about it,” Justine brushed this aside. “But most of the bullying isn’t by the students, and it isn’t … overt. The school uses peer pressure to try to force you to be like everybody else. To try to force you to do the things that everybody else wants you to do, to be the kind of person that they want you to be. The perfect member of society. Like a bee in a hive, or a borg or something. Just serve society, do what’s right for the collective. They don’t want individuals.”
Dr. Morton was nodding as he listened. His eyes went from her, back to the paper, and to his file. But so far he had not written down any notes.
“It’s the teachers and the administration who do the bullying,” Justine pointed out. “It’s not about kids who don’t like your face or who want to put you down because you’re not a cheerleader or don’t fit in or wear the right clothes. That stuff … it’s nothing,” she made a motion to push it aside. “That’s not the kind of bullying that I’m talking about. It still goes on … there’s no way for any school to prevent it. But that’s not what harms kids. What harms kids is being pushed into molds by the school, and by their parents, by society, and peer pressure. Be a productive member. Don’t make noise. Don’t make waves. Forget your dreams, and just follow the person in front of you. Queue up for the rest of your life. One behind another, like soldiers. Die for society. Kill yourself for society.”
“Kill yourself?” Dr. Morton repeated, raising his brows.
“I don’t mean commit suicide,” Justine said, irritated. “I mean … kill your real sel
f. Your spirit. Who you really are. Kill that person, and be what the school and society want you to be.”
“You can see why an idea like that might be hard for the school to take,” Dr. Morton said. “It does sound very violent, or suicidal. You are talking in metaphors.”
Justine rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. She leaned back in her chair.
“They don’t get it. You don’t get it,” she said. “It’s worse than dying. It’s worse than suicide. They kill souls.”
“Do you feel like they have killed your soul?”
“They are certainly trying,” Justine said. Dr. Morton waited to see if there was more. “It’s like a conspiracy,” Justine said. “It’s all a plot—the school, and Em, and you … it’s all a plan to take away who I really am. To eviscerate my soul.”
“Eviscerate your soul,” Dr. Morton repeated. He paused to write something down. Maybe he appreciated her turn of phrase. “Wow. Let’s go back to your mother on this one. I’ll tell the school that it’s okay for you to return and attend your classes, you’re not a danger to yourself or others. But I’d like to talk about your mother, and how you might feel that she has ‘eviscerated your soul’. Because this was a conversation about school, but I don’t think this is about school. I think that like everything else, it comes back to you and your mother. Why don’t you give me an example of how your mother has eviscerated your soul?”
Justine pondered on this for a few minutes, frowning. What could she tell him to explain it?
“You remember Katie?” she questioned.
“We just talked about Katie, yes. What about Katie?”
“I told you that Em didn’t like her. Em wouldn’t let me talk about her, wouldn’t let me … be Katie.”
Dr. Morton nodded.
“You said that she felt threatened,” he said, glancing over the notes in front of him.
“Yeah. Threatened because of Katie. Lots of kids have imaginary friends, or imagine being someone else, right? That’s a normal thing.”
“Certainly. I would be more concerned by the child who didn’t have any imaginary world. Not at your age, maybe, but as a child, say between four and six, I would expect it.”
“But Em never liked it. Never allowed it. I had a doll once.” Justine closed her eyes to try to remember the details. “It was just a little rag doll. I never really played with toys, but I got attached to that doll. Played with it. Pretended it was my baby. I did play therapy here too, right?” she opened her eyes and looked at Dr. Morton for corroboration.
He nodded.
“Yes, absolutely. We did play therapy.”
“Well, so it’s okay for kids to play, right? And you even wanted me to play with dolls, and to pretend to be a mommy when I played here, right?”
“Right. Role playing is important. Imaginative play. Working through roles and memories. Learning how to attach.”
“Well, Em was okay with me playing with the doll. She encouraged it. Pretended that I fed it, and changed it, and all of that. She would even rock the doll.” Justine paused. “It was just a stupid little rag doll. Little floppy thing. Didn’t look like a real baby. Didn’t act like a real baby. All dirty and stained from playing with it at the table and outside.”
“Go on. Then what happened?”
“I named it.”
“It? Was it a boy or a girl?” Dr. Morton prompted.
“It was an it. Just a doll. Not a real person. Just a stupid, dirty old doll.”
Dr. Morton processed the words.
“Just a stupid, dirty old doll,” he repeated. “Is that what you said, or Em?”
“I don’t know who said that,” Justine said impatiently. “I’m just describing it for you.”
“Okay. So what did you name the doll?”
Justine looked at him. Looked at the place on his forehead in between his eyes.
“Katie,” she said.
“Oh. So it was a girl baby. And what happened when you named the doll Katie? What changed?”
“Em said I couldn’t play with it any more. Took it away. But I took it back later. She took it and hid it. And I found it again. So she took it …” Justine’s voice shook with emotion. She swallowed a lump in her throat and struggled to carry on. “She took it, and right in front of me, she cut it into pieces, into the garbage. Chopped the whole doll, with her big sewing shears, into little tiny pieces, into the garbage. That’s what she tried to do to Katie. That’s why I couldn’t talk about Katie.”
Dr. Morton stroked his chin.
“That must have been very upsetting,” he observed.
“No duh!” Justine snapped back.
“How did you feel about it?”
“I wanted to hurt her.”
“How did you feel about what she did? Not what did you want to do, but how did you feel inside?”
Justine chewed on the inside of her cheek. What was the difference? And how was she to know how she felt? It was a long time ago. Feelings had never come easy to her, and it was so long ago to label those feelings that she had when Em tried to kill Katie.
“Sad,” she said baldly. “Horrified. Devastated. Eviscerated.”
“You felt like that doll was a part of yourself? A part that she took away from you?”
“I still have it,” Justine whispered.
Dr. Morton looked puzzled.
“How do you still have it, if she cut it up and threw it in the garbage? Do you mean that you still have her in your heart? That she’s part of you?”
“No,” Justine shook her head. Of course all of that was true, but that wasn’t what she had meant. “One eye … when Em wasn’t watching, I went out to the lane, to the garbage can, and I dug through the garbage, and I got one of Katie’s button eyes. Black button eyes. And I kept it. And Em never knew.”
When she went back to school again, Ms. Taupe eyed Justine on arrival, as if wondering if she might explode or something. Justine just gave her a knowing smile, and sat down. Ms. Taupe looked around at the chattering students, and clapped her hands.
“All right, everybody, before you get settled, you remember that we were working on group projects …” There were some groans, and some excited titters. “Please put your desks together in your groups, and sit down. Then we’ll go over the assignment progress, and catch up anyone who missed.”
Justine stood up by her desk, and watched as everyone moved around her, getting into their groups. Ms. Taupe raised her voice over the grinding of desks and babble of voices.
“Justine, Megan, why don’t you pair up? You were both away yesterday. You can be a group.”
Justine looked across the chaos and saw Megan. Megan nodded, and Justine picked up her books and went over to her. They grabbed two desks and put them together. Justine flopped down into the desk. Ms. Taupe started to review what the group project was all about. Justine only half-listened to them. She watched Megan, and glanced around the room at the groups eager to get going. Group projects were just a chance to socialize during class time. One person would do all of the work on their own time, or if the team was made up of people who didn’t care, then they would pull together some stupid presentation in the last ten minutes available and everyone would giggle about how lame it was. Justine turned her eyes back to Megan, listening raptly to the assignment. Megan was a good student, she’d be the one who wanted to complete the assignment. Ms. Taupe finished talking and turned the class over to their projects. Megan smiled at Justine.
“Okay, who wants to start?” she questioned.
Justine shrugged.
“What are we supposed to do?” Justine returned.
Megan looked surprised. Justine waited.
“We’re supposed to interview each other about our earliest childhood memories, and find similarities in our experience,” Megan summarized.
Justine raised her eyebrows.
“Earliest childhood memories?” she repeated. Megan nodded, waiting. Justine squinted her eyes, thinkin
g. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she told Megan.
Megan’s eyes widened slightly.
“What … ?” she questioned, already drawn in.
“I could get in big trouble. I mean … big trouble,” she said dramatically.
“From who?” Megan whispered.
Justine shook her head.
“Maybe you’d better go first,” she suggested.
Megan was hesitant. Then she nodded, perhaps deciding that if she shared first, Justine would trust her more to report her own story.
“Well, let’s see … my first memory … I can remember my mom cuddling me in a blanket … a fuzzy pink one, I still have it … she was rocking me in the rocking chair, back and forth … I had my cheek on her shoulder. I don’t know if I had been sick, or if she was just cuddling me to go to sleep or because I just woke up. It’s not a long memory, but the feelings are really clear. The texture and color of the blanket … feeling so warm and safe …”
Justine’s stomach roiled. She felt unaccountable anger rising in her chest, a tight, hot marble of steel. Her breathing quickened.
“I don’t feel good,” she told Megan, and bolted from the room. She made it to the washroom and hung over the toilet retching, but bringing nothing up. Her face broke out in sweat, and a cold trickle of sweat ran down the center of her back. She tried to get her breathing under control, to stop the jumping sobs that accompanied the sick feeling. She heard the restroom door open, and footsteps approaching.
“Are you okay?” Megan questioned worriedly, peeking around the stall door.
Justine wiped her sweat-slick face.
“Are you sick?” Megan asked anxiously. She tentatively touched Justine’s back, and Justine jerked sharply away from her gentle fingers.
“It’s just …” Justine leaned against the wall, steadying herself and taking deep breaths. “My mom … do you know what my first memory of her is?” Justine questioned.
Megan shook her head wordlessly, eyes wide and entranced. Justine cleared her throat, swallowing the acidic bile stuck in her chest.
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