Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

by Rafael Yglesias

  “So? It’s just one kid,” Diane said.

  I showed her the written data. All the children eventually provided descriptions of a biting mouse that never happened and, when challenged, were loath to abandon them. Yes, they were young enough to be genuinely confused about the difference between fantasy and reality; nevertheless, they qualified for testimony in court. (The significance of their ages in terms of giving evidence is far from academic. In the courts, children six and under had been considered to be the most reliable witnesses of abuse, presumably because they were too ignorant of sex to make it up. I had sworn that was my expert opinion to more than a dozen juries, without allowing for a smidgen of doubt.)

  While she read on, I left to make coffee. When I returned, Diane had rewound the tape to watch key moments again and again, looking, I knew, for some mistake in the tone of the question asked at the first interviews: “Were you ever bitten by a mouse?” The question was asked as casually as possible. And the first response was equally casual—a simple no. The next week, sometimes a hesitation, sometimes an assent; yet by the third week, all nodded their cute little heads to say solemnly in a wounded tone, “Yes.”

  I wondered if somewhere Freud was laughing.

  Diane finally shut off the machine. She pushed the documents away with her foot—they were scattered across our coffee table—pulled off her glasses, leaned back, and shut her eyes. “In the end,” she said, her voice deeper than usual, “its just a story about a mouse.” She remained stretched out, hands behind her head, eyes closed as if she were going to sleep. Her composed freckled face looked as cute and innocent as a fantasizing child.

  I waited for her to elaborate. She seemed to be falling asleep. The subject was closed. I laughed scornfully. “That’s it? That’s what you got out of it?”

  Her eyes, only her eyes, opened. “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t.”

  She unlocked her hands, dropped her feet from the coffee table, sat up and argued, “There’s a big difference between a kid accusing a mythical mouse of biting him and accusing a real person, especially a relative, of playing with her vagina.”

  “I agree. But why don’t they give up the fantasy when they’re told everybody knows it’s untrue and that doesn’t matter?”

  “Come on!” Diane shook her head at me. She stood up and then seemed to realize she had nowhere to go.

  “Come on, what?”

  “That’s ego, that’s formation of identity. They know the lie has no consequence. What’s going to happen—the mouse will be punished unfairly? They’re defending their pride, not the lie.”

  Diane’s point was a good one. That’s exactly why they wanted our tapes: the mouse study’s implications were limited. I believed Phil Samuel had no ax to grind in the increasingly bitter debate within and without psychology over the accusations of children, from their reliability to whether the process of questioning and cross-examination is as harmful a trauma as the event under investigation.

  [Of course, adults long to convince themselves that the accusations of children are unreliable. In crimes between adults, victims can always be suspected—again, wrongly—of somehow being a party to their suffering. A mugging caused not by the mugger but by the victim unwisely wandering into a dangerous neighborhood; a rape caused by a woman’s provocative dress, rather than by the rapist, and so on. This is all part of the natural desire to deny random danger and viciousness in life. How much better to think of the world as an obstacle course that can be negotiated skillfully to a happy ending. At least children are presumed, albeit somewhat superficially, to be innocent. Other than Freud and child abusers, few articulate that children wish for sex with adults, and Freud wrote of fantasy, not actual collaboration. Inevitably, all parents hurt their children, most trivially, nothing like real abuse; and yet even that trivial guilt haunts us and we wish for an exorcism. Our route to maturity, without therapy, requires we believe our hurt didn’t happen or that we can safely ignore the pain as exaggerated. I don’t resent the unwillingness to believe; for some, it’s a useful defense. I’m angrier at those therapists who—either through sloppiness or ambition—do incompetent work and confirm the widespread impression that children routinely make up stories of physical and sexual abuse.]

  I called Phil the next day to learn more about the hypothesis of his new study. He said he wanted to test if children who had no experience of sexual abuse would fabricate such stories as easily as a biting mouse. He said we were regarded as the most thorough and impartial interrogators (we videotaped all sessions, used dolls rather than words to pinpoint exactly how the kids were touched) and he wanted to imitate our technique. I asked him to describe the new research. Eight children were to undergo a routine examination by a pediatrician that would be secretly taped. The doctor would do a few innocuous and pointless things—listen to their bellies with a paper cup to his ear, tickle them lightly under one arm with a feather—not skin to skin, clothes always on—and count the toes with a tongue depressor. At no point would their genitalia be exposed or touched. We might consider these actions to be a silly bedside manner and perhaps sexually symbolic, but no reasonable person could consider them to be molestation and they are far less physical and stimulating than ordinary parental embraces or sibling roughhousing. A week later, copying our procedure and technique, using dolls and questions that are stripped of direct sexual references, the children would be asked about the examination as if an accusation had been brought against the pediatrician. Samuel wanted to see our tapes of real victims of abuse to train his graduate students for that phase of his study.

  Diane objected vehemently in general and she was certainly opposed to my sending tapes of the Peterson case, the one most suitable for Phil. Henry Peterson had accused his wife’s father of sexually molesting his granddaughters, ages six and four, while they were in his care. At the time of the alleged abuse, Henry and his wife were in the midst of a bitter divorce; he had had to relocate out of state and she often traveled on business, so the Peterson girls were basically being raised by the maternal grandparents. Henry Peterson’s lawyer, leery of many recent failed child abuse charges, had asked us to question the girls. Diane handled them exclusively. She uncovered a systematic, progressive molestation by the grandfather. He fingered their vaginal lips during baths, rubbed up against them in their beds at night, and eventually, as the girls put it, “Grandpa peed on my tummy.” The girls said when they complained to Grandma, she spanked them with wooden spoons so hard that they bled. Since no penetration was alleged and the beatings were claimed to have taken place months before (the girls moved out when their mother changed jobs and no longer had to travel) there was no physical evidence to confirm or contradict the testimony Diane had elicited. The psychological condition of the Peterson girls was alarming, however. They had severe night terrors, had completely regressed in their toilet training, were fearful of their grandparents and would shriek if any man, including their father, tried to touch them. For us, that is emotional corrobo-ration. I had no doubt that the stories were essentially true, if not absolutely accurate in every detail.

  I wanted to include Diane’s interrogation of the Peterson girls precisely because, unlike patients such as Albert, there was no corroborating physical evidence and their ages were in Samuels target. Most of our patients were older than his cutoff of six. (The age limit isn’t arbitrary, it’s developmental. The study sought to examine the ease with which a child might blur fantasy into reality. After six years of age, a child bears a greater resemblance to an adult liar. Phil Samuel was testing the reliability of young children to testify at all, not their willingness to lie. He believed that the inventive boy in the mouse study didn’t understand the distinction [for adults] between the “game” of being asked questions by a clinician and official testimony. In many cases, a child his age would not be required to appear in open court. A deposition under circumstances similar to the clinical interview is sufficient, and a private retraction, such as
the admission to his father that the story was pretend, is regarded as denial typical of abuse victims.)

  Diane objected that the case against the grandparents was not a criminal procedure—Henry Peterson had merely asked the court to forbid them visitation rights and, with the agreement of the District Attorney’s office, wished to spare the entire family any attempt at punishment. Her complaint didn’t seem relevant to me. Samuel had agreed that he would merely view them to imitate our questions and use of dolls. I didn’t see any harm.

  We argued this to a draw in the morning, went off to our separate appointments for the day, agreeing we would settle it at home in the evening. My schedule that day was an unusually happy one for me. Albert had been accepted into Dorrit House, a boarding school in North Carolina founded by the posthumous donation of a wealthy tobacco baron for boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. In view of Albert’s excellent behavior and academic progress in the nine months since Torres had allowed his sentence to be served at our clinic, as well as the six months before the sentence (a total of fifteen months of therapy and exemplary conduct), Judge Torres agreed to extend the strictures of his parole so that Albert could to go boarding school.

  Albert packed the night before and said goodbye to the staff and his roommates at a small party. I drove him to the halfway house in Brooklyn where his mother was a resident. This was to be their first meeting since both their arrests two years ago. After their goodbye, I was to take Albert into Manhattan to meet a van that would transport him and six others to Dorrit House.

  The women’s shelter in Brooklyn was a converted rooming house. We were led to a garden in the back. Albert stepped onto a brick patio with two wood picnic tables and green metal folding chairs. Albert and I had to duck to clear the sliding door. His mother, Clara, was at the far end, on a grassy elevation, waiting under a tall maple with her arms crossed. It was late August, a hot, humid day. The leafy tree looked damp, exhausted and sooty. Clara watched her son approach as if he were a stranger. She was in a red blouse sufficiently unbuttoned to show her impressive cleavage and the beginnings of a black bra. Her flat belly and long legs were emphasized by tight white shorts; I noticed later they had impressed lines on her upper thighs.

  I was shocked by her youthfulness. She was fifteen when Albert was born; that meant she still wasn’t thirty years old. I knew that as fact. Seeing with my own eyes her smooth creamy brown skin, her girlish figure, and the dignity of her high cheekbones and long nose, did not match an expectation of meeting a mother, much less the most monstrously abusive mother in my experience, and as bad as any in the literature for that matter.

  I was also taken aback that they had allowed Clara to dress this way to meet Albert. Involuntarily, I looked to our escort for an answer. She was a young and beautiful African-American woman, but she was wearing a dowdy blue dress that dropped to her sandaled feet. I had no idea what authority she had, and I realized my questioning look to her was absurd. Obviously, someone felt it was up to Clara how to present herself to Albert and up to him how to react. All in all, I had to agree. If she persisted in sexualizing her relationship with him, then he should know it.

  Albert went no farther than the brick sitting area. “Hi,” he said shyly and lowered his head when his mother didn’t answer, uncross her arms, or move in any way. She seemed to stare through us; not angrily, in a trance.

  “I’ll be right inside,” our escort said. “You want to join me?” she asked me in a low tone.

  I shook my head. Albert had asked me to stay with him the whole time. He was afraid of Clara; and was afraid of himself. He had vivid fantasies of cutting her open, her stomach in particular; sometimes he longed to strangle her while she begged to be forgiven. Often, while in the midst of a pleasant and innocuous activity, he could feel the grip of her hand as she kept his head between her legs, pushing his lips to her sex; sometimes, the recollection was so vivid Albert jerked his shoulders to free himself from her insistent fingers. The memories were clearer and more immediate with each passing day. Recently, his ability to masturbate had returned and, although that was relief in one way, sexual feeling also brought with it images of torment and vengeance. I had worked with him to keep it specific to Clara, not to fight the memories or fantasies about her, not to generalize them in an effort to forgive her. “She did it,” I said more than once. “Not anybody, not any woman. This woman. Remember it was her face, her body, not anyone else’s.” Of course, when I gave him that advice, I had no way of understanding just how vital and beautiful was the person who tortured him.

  “Lets sit down,” I said after some time passed and Clara remained in a sentinel’s pose. I pulled one of the green chairs away from the bench and sat. Albert copied me, moving his seat as close to mine as possible.

  I wondered how I would feel if, after my therapy with Susan, I had the chance to see and talk with my mother. Clara unfolded her arms. She moved at us with a slow, long-limbed walk, eyes on the flower beds she passed. Her attitude was so casual it seemed insulting. I reminded myself that Albert was facing a very different woman than my mother, that his scars were not only deeper, his injuries more severe, but they were also visible forever, wounds anyone who tried to cherish him would see and touch in the very act of love. The closer she got, the angrier I felt. My body tensed as if I were threatened—or perhaps, more accurately, as if I were restraining myself from attacking her.

  “Hey Al,” she said with a little wave of her fingers, not raising her hand. She sat on the step up from the bricks to the grass, legs together, knees reaching her chin. She smiled at him regretfully. “You look good.”

  I watched him react, mostly to take my eyes off the unfathomable mystery of her appearance, a pretty young woman who seemed to know nothing about life, who appeared untouched. Albert is darker than his mother; he shares her dignified features, however. His wide eyes showed a lot of white as he took her in. He didn’t say anything.

  She nodded as if he had spoken, and as if she agreed with his comment. “You going to school?”

  Albert nodded. Barely.

  “Where’s it at?”

  “North Carolina,” Albert mumbled.

  “Your Grandmas from North Carolina,” she said, looking up at a passing jet. She watched it trail off. “I think,” she added, returning her eyes to Albert.

  “I hate you,” he said, gulping on the last word as if he were choking with tears. His eyes were clear, however, head stiff on his long neck.

  Clara seemed not to have heard. She looked him up and down, checking his outfit. The survey was leisurely. Abruptly, her eyes came to me. She said, fast, like an ambush, “You gotta be here?”

  I didn’t answer, startled by the suddenness.

  “They say you gotta be here, that it? I can’t be alone with my boy?” Clara nodded at the house behind us. “She’s there. You gotta be here?”

  I turned to see. Our escort stood just inside the glass door, watching.

  “She won’t let me do nothing to him,” Clara was saying as I shifted back to face her. “I make a move—I kiss him, I try to shake his fucking hand, she’ll talk me to death. Shit, I’d rather die than have her talk at me. I ain’t gonna touch him.”

  Albert said gruffly, “You heard me? I hate you.”

  Clara dropped her head, arms drooping, a puppet whose master had let go. She hung there, lifeless. From the street, summer sounds washed over the garden wall. A water pistol fight, the ping of a basketball dribbled fast on pavement, a radio playing rap music. A man shouted, “Hey Tony! Hey Tony! You fuck face. We have to go.” The music shut off. A girl screamed with glee. The basketball rattled on something metallic. Clara came to life. She sat up, stretched, elongating her skinny arms and neck. Under her arms, there were faint white circles, maybe from a deodorant. She slid off the steps onto her knees.

  “You’re my baby,” she whispered passionately, arms forward now, fingers calling to Albert. “You always gonna be my sweet baby.”

  Involuntarily, I push
ed my chair back. I thought I heard the glass doors open, but our escort didn’t appear. Albert, on the other hand, hadn’t moved. His dignified face was set, cheeks puffed, eyes in a rageful stare.

  Clara gushed on, low and intense, like a lover. “I know I hurt you, baby, but that was crack, that was the life, that was all the shit happening to me. I love you, baby. That wasn’t me hurt you. I’m your Mama, baby.” She moved herself: eyes brimmed with tears. I noticed her wide full lips, painted vermilion—they were luscious and innocent.

  “Who you think you talking to?” Albert said. The words were tough; the sound he made wasn’t.

  “I’m talking to my son. You always gonna be my son—”

  “You talking trash for the Man?” Albert nodded at me. They both glanced my way, but only briefly. They locked eyes again. “You won’t fool him,” Al continued. “You’ll fool me sooner than you fool him. And that’s hopeless, ’cause you ain’t never gonna get a lie past me.”

  Clara’s wide mouth was open, hands extended, fingers calling for him to come to her, tears streaming, “I’m not saying I did nothing. I’m not lying about it. I know what I did. Everybody knows what I did. There’s nothing for me to get out of lying.” Clara seemed to notice she was on her knees and that appeared to surprise her. She reached back to the step, and pulled herself on it. She gave us her profile as she confessed, “I know I’m bad. I know there’s no excuse—”

  “You’re making excuses, that’s all you’re doing,” Albert said, again talking tough, but his voice cracked on the last word.

  “I’m just saying I love you, that’s all.”

  “You’re saying it wasn’t you.”

  “Not the real me,” Clara insisted. “I didn’t touch you before I smoked.” She looked past him to me and said, “Explain it to him. I’m not saying I didn’t do it. I’m not saying it ain’t my fault. I’m saying I love him and I wish to God it never happened.” She had moved herself again, fresh tears running over the dried tracks.