Lifesaving Lessons

by Linda Greenlaw

  So I did what any resourceful, slightly desperate mother would do under the circumstances. I got online again and found a sleazy site that promised official-looking documents. Two days and more money than I care to admit later, Mariah was Mariah and she was born on her birthday in her birthplace. Cool! I assumed that the name, place, and date of birth that Mariah had lived with was indeed accurate, and now we had the paperwork to back it up. I wondered if my Web activity and purchase of a birth certificate that might be phony would come back to haunt Mariah later in life. In the end I decided that it wasn’t worth mentioning. So what if she wasn’t born on the exact date she had celebrated every year. Lots of people manipulate birthdays to accommodate schedules. My own birthday is so close to Christmas that my family often acknowledges it on the twenty-fifth, when we are all together. (Not a highly religious holiday for the Greenlaws, and I never thought Jesus Christ was stealing my thunder as so many people have voiced concern about through the years when they learn of my birth date.) Anyway, my powers of justifying my possibly seedy actions were in overdrive. (Oddly enough, Mariah did come with a Social Security card. Goes to show you the diligence of Uncle Sam when potential taxes are at risk.)

  I couldn’t help but notice that a driver’s license was not at the top of Mariah’s priority list, which confused me slightly. I saw this as a necessary and natural step toward independence and maturity. I recalled getting my own license and how eager I was to do so. And even though I was perhaps a bit selfish in wanting Mariah to have hers to free up my personal schedule, I remembered my mother doing the same thing for the same reason. Every time I asked to use the family car (which was daily) when I was a teen driver, the answer was “Yes. Take the kids.” So virtually everywhere I went at the age of fifteen, I had the seven-year- old twins in tow. This was fine when it was a basketball game or ice-cream run, but I had to put my foot down when it was time for high school dances. I thought all teens were dying to get their licenses. This was not the case with Mariah. Maybe independence and maturity were things I wanted for her and that she was not ready for. She went along with the idea easily enough, though. And we began our two nights off island each week for ten weeks.

  Somewhat to my surprise, instead of adding to my own resentment, we both quickly began to look forward to our nights off including boat rides on the Mattie Belle. Mariah had always had a special fondness for the boat, and had even named one of her hamsters Mattie Belle when she first arrived on island. The ride over to driver’s ed gave us some great regular time for plain ol’ catching up because we didn’t see each other that much during the rest of the week with our work schedules and diametrically opposed sleep routines. I would drop Mariah off at the school and then do some grocery shopping, filling the car with items from her list and mine. After class we would go out to dinner at a restaurant right on the water from where we could see the Mattie Belle at the public dock. The ride home well after dark was comfortable and silent.

  One night at dinner after driver’s ed I asked Mariah how her job at the Inn at Isle au Haut was going. She said that she liked the job, although it was hard work. She loved being around the sole proprietor, Diana, and all of the gourmet food she prepared for her guests. Mariah had the luck to be fed dinner at the inn each night that she worked that shift, and was proud to tell me that she tried many things she had never before eaten, and really enjoyed them. Then she hesitated and frowned. “What?” I asked.

  “Well, no offense,” Mariah began. “But it is annoying when the guests question me about why I live with you.”

  Diana had warned me that her guests love to chitchat with the island people and that Mariah would be questioned about where she lived and what her parents do, et cetera. “That doesn’t offend me. It is nearly impossible to offend me. And that is not a challenge,” I laughed. “What do you tell them?” I asked curiously.

  “At first I would just get embarrassed and run for the kitchen. But last night this woman wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept firing questions at me. Once she learned that I live with the famous Linda Greenlaw, she wouldn’t let it go until she understood why that was so and what it was like to live with you.”

  “It’s your story to tell. Tell what you want to whom you want, and nothing more,” I said, repeating the advice that I had shared so many times with her. “So, what did you tell her?”

  Mariah hesitated, and then shrugged. “I told her that I was in need of some major nagging and that you needed a pain in your ass, and that both of our needs are being met.” Mariah looked cautious, as if she might have crossed a line.

  I raised my glass of wine to clink against her milk and said, “Touché! Now for confession time: When people ask where the hell you came from, I tell them the stork left you on my doorstep when you were fifteen.”

  “Linny!” We both started to laugh a much needed laugh.

  “Well, I guess we both have our own ways of avoiding the whole gory story,” I said.

  “It is pretty gory, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yeah. But you know what the best part is? The best part is that we can talk about it in the past tense.” Mariah agreed for the most part, but confided, after looking over her shoulder and lowering her voice, that she was still afraid that Ken would be found not guilty and would get out of jail. I promised Mariah that he would never bother her again. “He will never step foot on our island.” She said that she wasn’t scared for herself. She was worried that he would find another victim.

  I learned a lot about Mariah at that table that night. And I was proud and unhesitant with my introductions of her simply as “Mariah.” No other explanation was needed as far as I could see.

  Daily routines were one thing, but there was a big moment looming: the resolution of the case against Ken. We were on a wild emotional roller coaster together, united by our hopes and fears of the possible outcome. The court had assigned Mariah a victim’s advocate (a real title and one that I would not use otherwise, because Mariah never let on that she was a victim), and she kept us in the loop about upcoming hearings (putting us on edge), continuances and postponements (frustrating!), and failure after failure for the court-appointed defending attorney as he painstakingly exhausted each avenue available to his client. After each one we’d exhale and sink back in our seats.

  Change was good, and we underwent many changes during that summer. I had the basement finished with a bedroom and bathroom for Mariah, allowing her to move out of what we still called the guest bedroom. I noticed that Mariah began referring to the house as “ours,” and I no longer had to wonder whether her “home” was Maine or Tennessee. I no longer felt that Mariah interrupted my life; instead, I knew that she enriched my life. Now when I would say no to some of Mariah’s requests, she responded with easy acceptance. There was no begging or pleading when the answer was no. Indeed, she seemed happy to be forbidden to do certain things. In the past when I had friends in for social time, Mariah would revert to coloring books and crayons. Now she joined the conversation and no longer complained of being with “old people” all the time. Mariah was becoming quite a socially adept young woman whom my friends enjoyed. Life fell into a comfortable normalcy. And I no longer questioned whether I should go fishing or not. I knew it was all right for me to continue along my chosen path, which Mariah would take in stride. Our very separate lives synced smoothly. She did her thing. I did my thing. And when we were together, we did our thing.

  I left on a fishing trip before Mariah started school again that fall, leaving her in good hands. Bif took over as guardian and mother figure, doing the school prep shopping, transporting, and advising. Mariah moved in with Bif and her husband, Ben, in their year-round home in Harpswell, Maine. When Mariah complained of homesickness, Bif was kind enough to collect her from school and take her home for a weekend in Harpswell, where she got lots of coddling from Aunt Bif and great food prepared by Uncle Ben. When I called and informed Mariah that I had been arrested and put in a Canadian jail for fishing violations, Bif let me kno
w that Mariah was fine with this information. Bif attended all court proceedings and hearings on my behalf as they pertained to Ken and his pending trial. I fished the Grand Banks season without a worry about how Mariah was doing in my absence. At the end of my fishing season, when I picked her up for her Thanksgiving break, I hadn’t seen Mariah in three months. She looked great. She was happy. Her grades had improved slightly. She appeared to have come into her own and was thriving in a way that I hadn’t witnessed before. And we shared the excitement and anticipation of going home to a place we both loved knowing that neither of us had been there since we’d left together, me to the Grand Banks and Mariah to Evergreen.

  I also stepped into the new role as family grown-up and began making unilateral decisions about what was right and wrong for Mariah. Real parents don’t always consult their kids, especially about thorny emotional issues. When Christmas rolled around and Mariah was torn about whether to go to Tennessee or not, I decided that she would stay home—with me. We sent gifts for her brothers, mother, and aunt and went to Florida for two weeks. (My older sister, Rhonda, had Mariah the first week in Florida—absolutely spoiling her rotten—while I worked to meet a deadline.) On spring break I took Mariah on her first visit to New York City, where we went to see The Lion King on Broadway. We ate at fine restaurants, met up with dear friends, and wandered Macy’s looking for dresses for formal dinners at school. Her only complaint was that the trip was too short.

  Yes, life was good. Mariah entered her senior year at Evergreen Academy no longer on probation. I was not nervous that she would do anything to jeopardize her diploma. She worked with a guidance counselor to apply to colleges, and seemed surprised to be doing so. She confided that she didn’t know of anyone in her biological family who had attended college and that not many had finished high school, a signal to me of the many things I had taken for granted. Bif took Mariah to visit colleges in the Boston area. Simon drove her to check out some schools in Vermont. Mariah told me that her group of friends graduating with her from Evergreen were all going to Colorado, some to study and some to live and hang out. I suspected that she might prefer the hanging out to attending college and told her to forget it. Among this group of Colorado-bound kids was Mariah’s boyfriend, with whom she had been connected at the hip since her sophomore year. “Not happening!” I had first met Liam when Mariah and I were visiting Evergreen just prior to her reacceptance. He had followed us around campus like a lost puppy, and had been part of the picture ever since. A total dichotomy in my view, Liam was a high-achieving slacker. A wrestling champ and straight A student who didn’t need to hit the books, Liam was a bit of a Daddy’s little rich kid. I had indications from things that Mariah told me that Liam’s parents did not approve of the relationship either. As relieved as I was to understand that Mariah was at least in a monogamous relationship, my observations were that Liam didn’t treat Mariah with much respect. Hadn’t he been partly responsible for her probation by being caught in her room? So postponing college to hang out with him was not optimum.

  Mariah inquired about the possibility of doing a gap year program. “If it is a program that colleges will accept as worthy of a year of your time before entering college, fine. If not, forget about it.” When Mariah delved into acceptable programs, she quickly leaned back in the direction of traditional college matriculation with a freshman class.

  Mariah’s first choice was Ethan Allen College in Vermont. Her guidance counselor told me that it was a stretch but that she didn’t want to discourage Mariah from applying because she wasn’t showing a lot of enthusiasm for other schools. I spoke with Mariah about what I saw as fear in her. I said that it was natural that she would be scared at this major juncture in her life—everyone is! I told her about my experience at Colby College and even got a little sentimental when relaying the fact that I begged my parents to take me back home before the car was unloaded. I urged Mariah to apply and pushed her to check into scholarship possibilities. The counselor at Evergreen helped Mariah through the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) process, filing as an independent as I had not adopted her. All of this was like pulling teeth. Mariah became very moody, and it seemed to me that she had taken a few steps backward emotionally. She was as confused as could be, pulling away from me and putting up the old barriers. She even started some really childlike behavior: The coloring books came out.

  She was keen enough to go to college, but it seemed she wasn’t so hot on the real commitment it was going to take. Here was one place where my sympathy dried up fast. When Mariah complained that she didn’t want to borrow money for school, I said, “Tough. Everyone does. Suck it up.” I explained that I had fished my way through college, working on the deck of a sword boat. And I still had to borrow money. I’m sure all of that sounded like the barefoot-uphill-to-school lecture. I was aware of the possibility that Mariah might have assumed I would foot her entire four-year college tab. I agreed to contribute what I could as long as she did her part by working and borrowing and scholarship searching. When speaking to the financial aid folks at various schools, I always needed to explain that Mariah was not my birth child. I hadn’t had eighteen years to plan and save for her education. I sort of felt that I was on the defensive when justifying why my kid was an independent with regard to any aid packages.

  When she was accepted at Ethan Allen, there was no backing out. She had miraculously gotten into her school of choice against great odds. But after the initial thrill of achievement of acceptance, she became quite negative. She began talking about Colorado with a longing, and being cheated out of something that others had, and sort of whining about having to go to college. I explained that she certainly did not have to go. But if she chose not to go, she had better plan on getting a job. There was no suitable year-round employment on Isle au Haut. I absolutely forbade her to stay on Isle au Haut and do nothing like so many others before her. The tension that had eased in our relationship was piano-string tight once again. Our phone calls were few, brief, and unpleasant. During these calls, I could tell that something was weighing heavily; I assumed the fear of college. Once again I began questioning my decision to bring this girl into my otherwise happy life.

  I voiced my sadness to Bif, who had an interesting and, I now think, quite accurate insight. “She turns eighteen in two weeks and graduates from high school the following week. Mariah is acutely aware that your legal guardianship terminates automatically on her eighteenth birthday. She must think you’ll be done with her like every other parental figure she’s had. Right?” I didn’t comprehend the depth and breadth of what Bif suggested until much later. For all our comfort and closeness of late, secretly a part of me wished I could be done that easily. The better part of me, though, knew that this was a long-term relationship and that as the grown-up, I had to find a way to ease Mariah’s fears. “You’ll just have to let the brat know that she’s stuck with us!” Bif teased. I wondered how I would do that while we barely spoke and when we did, Mariah was so bitchy I felt like slapping her. Who is stuck with whom? What did stick was the nickname. Mariah officially and affectionately became “the brat.”

  When the caller ID on my home phone read “U.S. Government,” I was not alarmed because I had become accustomed to Mariah’s court advocate calling with updates that were later received via the post office. When I learned that Ken had pleaded guilty to both charges of which he had been accused—possession and transportation of child pornography—I was hugely relieved. Ken was now awaiting sentencing. This news was well beyond welcome. It was joyous because we now understood that Mariah would not have to testify in court. She had the option of speaking or reading a statement at the sentencing, the very thought of which threw her a huge emotional fastball. Our own relationship, only recently realigned, now teetered on a knife’s edge.

  Mariah wanted to appear and face Ken if doing so would amount to a stricter sentence, she said. But neither the federal prosecutor nor her advocate could tell her whether her showing up woul
d have any effect or influence on the outcome. I couldn’t help but think that seeing Ken would inevitably set off mixed and strong emotions in Mariah. Ken had been Mariah’s only caregiver for several years. He had been responsible for moving her to the island, which, admittedly, might ultimately have saved her life. I felt that Mariah would not benefit from seeing Ken, and I wanted to protect her from another unintended consequence: In some emotionally laden twist of logic, she might be haunted by the idea that she had contributed to his demise (leaving aside the fact that half the island population would happily have done just that, literally). Mariah must surely have a tender spot in her heart for her abuser. Although she had never shown or verbalized anything that hinted at the Stockholm syndrome, I knew that it was a survival strategy. And Mariah was certainly a survivor.

  After several days of discussion and flip-flopping on the topic, I made the decision that Mariah would not attend the sentencing. “You are not going. You need to stay at school and not worry about it. I’ll go and speak on your behalf and will call you immediately afterward.” And that was that.

  The days leading up to the sentencing, graduation, and Mariah’s plunge into legal adulthood were dreadful: Three huge life cycle events converged in one short period. The calls back and forth had virtually come to an end. Mariah wasn’t even calling to get permission to leave campus, something she had been doing like clockwork. The daily reminders and countdown of days to her birthday stopped. She didn’t even e-mail me asking for a bit of spending money. She did submit a written statement to the judge who would preside at the sentencing procedure. I wouldn’t have known that, but her advocate sent me a copy to read so that I could better ready my statement. Mariah’s written testimony was eloquent, succinct, and mature. I called to say that she had done a great job with it, and ended up leaving a message that was never returned.