The Source of All Things

by Tracy Ross

  The questioning continued. At the police station, social workers cross-examined Mom and Dad in two separate rooms. Dad maintained his innocence, while Mom cried into stiff, government-issue toilet paper, saying, “What kind of people do you think we are? My husband would never do anything to hurt my daughter.”

  And yet, on three separate occasions, she had caught him, in the middle of the night, walking quickly and awkwardly out of my room. And what about the incident at Redfish Lake?

  While Dad lied—boldly and blatantly—and Mom commiserated by omission and self-imposed blindness, I was led to a room at the Health and Welfare Department where a woman in denim overalls asked me to trade euphemisms for straight talk, generalities for specifics. I tried, but clammed up when she asked where Dad put his hands when he wanted to show me he loved me in the middle of the night. Unrelenting, she gave me an anatomically correct doll and told me to point out the places instead.

  This time, I explained better. So well that the social workers decided it wasn’t safe to “place me back in the home.” They made me a ward of the State of Idaho under the Child Protection Act. The court put a restraining order on my dad that prevented him from coming within five hundred feet of me. Still on the fence about his innocence, Mom refused to kick him out, which meant I would be going to a shelter for abused girls. Run by Mormons, it would smell like rotting floorboards, scented tampons, and bulk cheese.

  In the days before the district attorney finalized the paperwork that would take me out of my parents’ custody, I stayed with Kathie and Laura. If my mom knew I was there, she didn’t bother calling.

  I was terrified, but I refused to let myself feel it. I knew that what I’d set in motion couldn’t be reversed. I was also a kid, and kids don’t dwell in their emotions. I put on my strongest, happiest face and tried to act like everything was normal.

  During the hottest hours, Kathie and I stayed in the house watching Nickelodeon and eating huge bowls of Honeycomb cereal. But in the evening, when the temperature dropped into the low eighties, we drifted out onto the lawn.

  That’s where Chris saw me parading around like a Solid Gold dancer in my Tweety Bird nightie one week after my escape. Kathie had put her boom box in her windowsill and we were making up routines to Duran Duran’s “Rio.” Kathie had just executed a perfect roundoff-to-moonwalk dismount when my brother swung around the corner in his cherry-red Sirocco.

  He didn’t stop, but I could see him squinting as he checked out the two girls dancing on the lawn. At first he and the kid in the passenger seat were laughing, probably because girls made them nervous. But then I saw it dawn on my brother just who was dancing. The way he stopped, in the middle of the road, without checking to see if anyone was behind him, made me think he was going to jump out of the car and run up to hug me. But as I watched, I saw him form the words “What the … ?” and jam the gas pedal.

  “What was that all about?” Kathie asked, after Chris sped off, burning rubber. Her eyes were wide as saucers. “Wait. Holy shit, Tracy! That was your brother!”

  “Yeah? I know. So what?”

  “I don’t know. You’d just think he’d stop if he saw you and didn’t know where you’d been for half of eternity.”

  I stared at my friend, unable to answer. Under the cushion of grass, I felt the heat rising off the desert and climbing into my feet. “Rio” had ended and a tune I don’t remember rocked Kathie’s boom box. For a few seconds when he’d stalled the car in front of me, I thought I’d found an ally in my brother. But the look on his face was indisputable. It told me I had betrayed my family.

  At the shelter where I stayed while the State of Idaho found me a foster home, I ate the cheese, and used the tampons, and walked across the creaky wooden floors. I slept in a row of bunk beds next to a dozen other girls. The girls reminded me of the ones who’d picked fights with me in the bowling alley across the street from the cemetery where my real dad was buried: Mexicans, head-bangers, lesbians. I didn’t talk to anyone but spent a lot of time inspecting the floorboards.

  I stayed just five or six days. In the afternoons, we gathered in a dusty living room with big, square windows that looked out over the thirsty wheat fields. Crows scoured the roadsides, flying over them and then landing to pick at piles of carrion. Our shelter parents told us about the power of faith and the importance of surrendering ourselves to God. But every night, when the lights were out and I could hear the other girls snoring, I stared up at the mattress of the bunk bed above me and thought about my dad.

  I can’t explain the guilt that came over me then, or the depth of self-doubt that threatened to crush me. My abuse had been hidden, always cloaked in darkness. My dad played tricks to make me think I’d played a part in the molestation. During our midday tickle sessions, he had finessed the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable touching so that I couldn’t be entirely sure that, at least in those circumstances, what he had done was wrong. Nor could I be certain that I hadn’t somehow enticed him. Looking back, I chided myself for spending so much time in my nightgowns. Why did I insist on doing Jane Fonda in the living room? The other instances—the nights when my dad came to my room and fondled me after I was sleeping—were his fault and his fault only. But a lie he’d once told me, after I’d woken up and asked him what he was doing, had always stayed with me. “How dare you accuse me of anything,” he’d said. “If you don’t want people to touch you, don’t sleep on your back.”

  While the rest of the lost and molested girls slept, I tortured myself with stories. I told myself my abuse couldn’t have been as bad as I remembered. My mind began mixing good memories of my dad with bad ones, until the good ones usurped the bad. I know a part of me just wanted it all to be over. The uncertainty about what would happen next seemed even worse than my dad’s abuse. Life at the shelter was the opposite of fun. All the girls shared one bathroom, and we weren’t allowed to do anything without asking. Phone use was strictly off limits, meaning I couldn’t call my friends, grandparents, or parents. Because our foster parents were Mormon, on the Sunday I was there, I had to attend church at the local temple. My mom packed me no dresses when the social workers demanded my things. With nothing acceptable of my own to wear to church, I had to borrow an outdated Gunne Sax dress that was two sizes too big. Dozens of kids from my junior high were Mormon, and when I walked down the aisle of the church with my “shelter family,” I could see them staring at me quizzically. A kid named Ted Smack watched me the entire service. I knew that when school started a few weeks later, he’d go back with a story. It went like this: Tracy Ross was in a whole heap of trouble.

  But at night, I worried about my dad and, believing him in jail, fretted about how he was being treated. I imagined him cooped up with real criminals who committed real crimes: killers, serial rapists, thieves. It didn’t matter how terrible he’d been to me, my heart cracked open at the thought of his suffering. I don’t know if this says I was empathetic beyond belief or just a kid who would suffer anything to be in the relative comfort of her family. No matter. I couldn’t wipe my dad’s image from my brain.

  I thought about the days we swam to our favorite rock at Redfish Lake. It sat in the middle of the water at what seemed like a few hundred feet from shore. Dad and I were the only swimmers in our family brave enough to make it all the way to the distant boulder. The trout and tiny silver minnows we swam among flickered in our peripheral vision, and the sun over both of our bodies made us seem beautiful and fast. I felt warm, even though the water was freezing. When I got to the rock, Dad was already there, floating on his back.

  “Only you could make me swim this far to a rock we can’t even climb onto,” he teased, when I came within earshot.

  “Come on, Dad! Get over it,” I answered back.

  “No, I’m serious,” he said. “Just listen for a second.”

  “Okay. I’m all ears. Watch me wiggle them.”

  “I’m serious, Trace. You’re special. People don’t say things like that enough.
I know sometimes I don’t show it. But I love you. Got it?”

  I knew I was loved—by him, my mom, and my grandparents. But my dad and I also had a secret, something we’d shared ever since I met him and immediately started hiking and fishing. While other people knew about feeding and clothing children, Dad taught me the beauty of taking risks in the mountains.

  He never stopped me from swimming too far out into freezing mountain lakes, or skiing down steep, icy slopes at Soldier Mountain. Most of the time he came with me, for the sheer thrill of the experience. When we camped, it sometimes seemed that all Mom and Chris wanted to do was sit around and read or play cards in the trailer. But my dad gave me the tools of excitement—like the Honda 80 dirt bike I rode, and crashed, into an aspen grove when I was eight—and cut me loose. I jammed the throttle when I meant to squeeze the break and went flying over the handlebars, landing hard on my back. At first I thought I was dead, and then I howled in fear and pain. But for those few, frozen seconds that I was zinging through a grove of bright yellow aspens? All glory; all wild girl in the wilderness.

  At the shelter, I sang myself selections from Paint Your Wagon. “I was bo-orn, under a wandrin’ star …” But Dad’s image continued to haunt me, even through my quiet humming. When I couldn’t stand the torture of my imagination any longer, I slipped out of bed and snuck down the hallway, to the top of a creaky, double-landing staircase.

  The stairs were so old and whiny they broadcast my every step. But I crept down them even though I knew that phone use was off-limits. On that night, I would have taken solitary confinement in return for hearing one of my parents’ voices. I found the phone and dialed their number. On the third ring, my dad picked up.

  “Hello? Who is this?” he said, just as I was pulling the earpiece away from my head.

  I waited until I was sure no one upstairs was following me, and then said, “Dad? It’s me, Tracy. I’m scared. I hate it here. I want to come home.”

  It was a miracle.

  Dad had heard the pain in my voice and experienced a change of heart. On the phone, he sounded worried, apologetic. He told me how much he missed me and how bad he felt that I was living in a shelter, like a refugee or Little Orphan Annie. He said he and Mom wanted to come to my rescue, but they couldn’t, because they didn’t know where to find me.

  I wanted to tell them where I was staying so they could spring me. But a tiny voice in the back of my head said, You’ll get everyone in big trouble. After Dad and I talked, he put Mom on, who said I love you I love you I love you. Neither of my parents said I believe you or I’m sorry.

  Still, talking to them only made me want to go home more. I obsessed about it for days after our phone call. I was going over our conversation for the hundredth time when my social worker, Claudia Vincent, pulled into the shelter driveway. A jolt of relief shot through me. Claudia had brought me to the shelter after I left Kathie Etter’s house. She must have come back because Dad confessed everything. The court must have decided to reunite us.

  But Claudia ignored me as she stepped inside the slanted, sun-peeling safe house. She smiled, but she said nothing. When I heard her tell my foster parents that she’d been court-ordered to remove me, I shot up the stairs and started packing my belongings. Bounding out the front door, I threw my small, black duffel into the backseat of Claudia’s Impala; then we took off across Twin Falls. For a while we went in the general direction of my house, but as we neared the Snake River Canyon we veered left, stopping in a small cul de sac. In front of a one-story, off-white ranch house, Claudia killed the ignition.

  I looked around at a neighborhood of identical houses.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Reach around and grab your bag,” she answered. “Social Services found you a more permanent placement. Let’s go inside and meet your new foster parent. She’s been waiting for you. Her name is Joy.”

  I fought the tears that came, quick and sizzling. Claudia’s words didn’t compute. On the drive across town, I’d fantasized that she was taking me to my house, and that my parents—or at least my mom—would be waiting in the driveway to greet me. I was so sure of it, I didn’t bother asking.

  In my head I told myself that going home would be just like the time I’d had my tonsils out, or broken my foot after landing on a sprinkler head while doing an aerial cartwheel: the freezer would be full of popsicles; MTV hours unregulated.

  Instead, I stared out the car window, looking at my third “temporary dwelling” in two weeks. The longer I stared, the more I wanted to punch someone—Claudia, to be specific—in the face. When I finally composed myself to speak, I said, “But I want to go home. To my house. I’m sick of living in places where you have to ask to use the bathroom. Those foster people might pretend they like girls like me, but really they think we’re all fuck-ups. I wasn’t going to tell you this, Claudia. But I talked to my dad. He sounded sorry. I know he is. I know he wants me back.”

  Claudia sighed. “I know this isn’t easy, Tracy. We all know it isn’t. But I have to be honest with you. Your dad is still insisting that he’s innocent. And your mom still believes him. That’s why we’re keeping you out here, away from your house, where we can watch you and make sure you’re safe. As long as your dad stays in the home, by law, we can’t let you go back.”

  “But what about my mom?” I asked. “Can’t she protect me?”

  “I’m sorry, Tracy,” said Claudia. “But she’s not ready. She hasn’t asked your father to move out.”

  I moved in with Joy, the next stop on the homeless-teenager house tour. Joy served as a temporary foster mother to girls in trouble or at risk—I seemed to be both.

  All I remember now about Joy is her name and a smoky image of her physical appearance. She was tall and quiet, and her hair rose up in a metallic black corona that reminded me of Brillo.

  In many ways, Joy was the perfect foster parent. She kept to herself and rarely asked questions. The court made sure my mom gave me money, which they filtered through Claudia and Joy. If I needed deodorant, or a new jar of Noxzema, Joy would take me to the local Albertsons and wait in the car while I raced through the aisles hoping no one would see me.

  By some stroke of luck, Joy had also forgotten to put a screen on her guest room window, where I slept. At night, when I was feeling lonely, I’d climb through the open window and sit in the gravel watching thunderstorms build over the desert. Sometimes I’d sneak a phone call to Reed, who would drive over in his teal blue pickup and take me to the rim of the Snake River Canyon.

  We’d sit on the hood, and he’d ask me how I was doing. I don’t know when I told him about the abuse, or how much detail I went into. But I remember the surprising strength of his bony arm around my shoulders and the feel of his cheek, also a surprise, so soft and warm against my cheek. We sat in silence, except for the sound of the river, faint and far below us.

  On nights when Reed didn’t appear, I stood in the dirt outside my bedroom, wondering if I would ever go home. Even though I raged at my parents, I missed my yellow Labs, Dusty and Brandy. I wanted my clothes and my room, my freedom and independence. I know how crazy that sounds. But there are times when familiarity trumps even safety. The strangeness of living as a transient unnerved me. All I wanted was to crawl back into my own, familiar cage.

  But the court system didn’t agree with my definition of “normal,” even though it (the court; not my definition) would ultimately fail me in all matters regarding my abuse. I stayed with Joy while school started, and I went back, hoping no one had heard about my summer. I knew my classmates suspected something, but few, if any, ever stepped up and asked me what had happened. Years later, someone would describe my situation like this. “If you’re a kid and you get hit by a car in a crosswalk, people visit you with balloons and well wishes. But if you’re a kid who gets hit in the crosswalk of life by sexual molestation, nobody will even talk about it. They expect you to brush it under the carpet.”

  If my classmates wondered w
hy a strange lady was dropping me off at school, or why I’d stopped wanting to sleep over, they never asked me about it. Scared of soiling my image—or losing my spot on the freshman cheerleading squad—I don’t remember telling anyone I’d been molested: not friends, school counselors, or teachers.

  Three weeks after I moved to Joy’s house, Claudia came over, telling me to pack up my things. This time, she said, she was taking me home.

  “But why?” I’d asked. “Why all of a sudden?”

  “Because your parents finally decided to do the right thing,” she answered. “They’re going to work within the system.”

  Claudia was right, at least in theory. In late August, Dad went to the Health and Welfare Department, asking what he needed to do to “get our family back together.” After so many weeks of not knowing my whereabouts, he and Mom said they were worried sick.

  Within weeks, the Health and Welfare Department struck a deal with my dad. In exchange for his signed admission of guilt, eight weeks of court-appointed group therapy, and ten months of abstinence from me, they would forego prosecution and return me to my mom. If, by the following June, Dad could prove that he’d been “cured” of his obsessive need to molest me, he could join Mom and me at home.

  In September, Dad moved out. He went to live with his brother across town. He didn’t take much with him: just some work clothes, his shaving kit, and a few copies of Field and Stream. His job, he told my mom, wasn’t to enjoy himself, but to do anything and everything to get himself home.

  It felt to me like a bit of redemption. I finally thought my family believed what I’d been saying. Years afterward I’d learn that Dad’s admission had been anything but honest; he told my mom he was only telling the Health and Welfare Department he was guilty because she was so frantic to bring me home. Mom was inadvertantly in on the lie too. She believed my dad when he said he was only paying lip service. She didn’t actually commiserate, because she didn’t have to. He never told her the full extent of my abuse, and she never bothered to ask him.