Come Back With a Bonus Excerpt: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

by Claire Fontaine

  “You hunt?” I ask, somewhat surprised.

  Mike’s blunt, but he’s also soft-spoken, gentle. Not the type I picture proudly strapping an openmouthed carcass to his bumper.

  “Girl, I grew up dirt poor. I was putting food on the table by the time I was ten. I was fighting in the Gulf when I was the same age as some of the boys here so the service would pay for university.”

  That’s one thing I like about Mike: he’s not just honest about you, but about himself. He’s not afraid to talk about his own childhood, about a lousy weekend, losing a calf, hammering his thumb while pounding in a fence post. There’s nothing clinical about him, no condescending doctor–patient relationship.

  I remind Mike that tomorrow morning’s Harmony’s group and he said he’d come.

  “I didn’t forget, Mia—you think I want you bitching at me about it next week? Now, so I don’t have to tell your folks they’re paying me to talk about myself, how’s life on the lower levels the second time around?”

  24.

  As if dropping wasn’t bad enough, I’m waiting for results of an AIDS test and Hepatitis C. I doubt Derek used a condom that night, and the type of people he shared needles with have cost me four nights’ sleep.

  My family’s outside for PE, but nobody feels like exercising. I look up from my book. Montana really is big sky country, this place feels like it’s in the clouds sometimes. I think just being out in nature is half the success of these programs. Suddenly, I hear an angry Chaffin.

  “What is this? Why are you not exercising?” He looks over at me. “And you? When you were junior staff you had everyone doing pyramids like champs, what the heck’s this?”

  Right then, a junior staff boy passes by the court and Chaffin waves absently at him. Suddenly, his hand freezes mid wave.

  “Hey, come over here!”

  Damn! Of all boys to walk by at this moment, it happens to be Max.

  “Silvers, what does a normal fitness look like for the boys?”

  Max shrugs. “Maybe 10 pyramids, 100 push-ups, some laps.”

  “Harmony family, listen up. Max will be your junior staff until I feel you’re all out of your crap. Max, I’m giving you free reign to whip this family into shape, I mean black and white on rules, getting involved in group. Got it?”

  This is just fucking great. One of the cockiest guys on the entire facility has just been given carte blanche to make our lives hell.

  “Get down and gimme twenty!” Max yells. “Now! Last one on the ground takes two laps. Go! Go! Go!”

  Everyone flies to the ground but me, I never signed up for the fucking army.

  “Mia, two laps, go!”

  “Fuck you,” I scream back at him.

  I hate Max, I hate everything about guys in general. The way they walk, the way they smell, the way they shovel food down like starving pigs.

  “Two laps, Mia, or you have a Cat 2, blatant disrespect.”

  “What part about barking orders at us like a bunch of dogs should I respect? The power tripping part, or kissing Chaffin’s ass part?”

  “How about the your family is full of BS right now part and one of their oldest leaders isn’t helping by copping the attitude of a Level 1. Two laps, go.”

  “Fuck you! You can’t tell me what to do.”

  How original, I only said the quintessential self-righteous teenager phrase. Nice work, Mia, your big mouth just got you a day in worksheets. I haven’t been to worksheets since Morava, but I’m sure it’s the same dumb tapes and microscopic room.

  “First, let’s clear two things up,” Mike says. After another round with Max, Miss Kim radioed Mike. “The AIDS test is bringing up issues, so you’re in a man-hating groove from the get-go. Add to this a guy who’s in a position of control over you, and that equals one nervous and defensive Mia. And what does Mia do when she feels vulnerable or out of control?”

  I shrug, still annoyed.

  “How does acting out or shutting down sound? Question—who’s typically the prominent male authority figure in a kid’s life?

  “My dad,” I sigh, hating how everything comes back to him.

  “So, it’s not about Max being controlling, that’s his assignment per Chaffin. Your attitude and that irritated, shitty feeling you get whenever you’re around guys is about you, about your current inability to put the past behind you and not see every guy as your dad. Or Derek.”

  Turns out, it’s not just me. Come group, Mike shows up at the cabin with a red-eyed Brooke, who listlessly plunks down next to me in the circle. When she starts to share, her voice is monotone, exhausted, but it doesn’t take long for her to get back into the emotional state she was obviously in before she came.

  “Talk to Max, Brooke,” Mike says. “Look him in the eye.”

  “I hate when you tell me what to do,” she sobs. “I can’t listen to you without remembering the times he told me to do things.”

  Brooke displays her emotions so rawly it’s almost more powerful to watch her than to listen. She cries with her whole body. I want to breathe in her anger and pain, I want to use her emotions to ignite my own, steal her memories to replace the ones I can’t call up in my own mind.

  “To this day if I ever walk by that house, I’ll vomit on the spot.”

  As Brooke goes over the details of her abuse, I can’t sit here anymore, my skin’s twitching. I drop out of the circle and go to the bathroom as quietly as I can.

  As soon as I shut the stall door I slide to the floor, shaky. How awful for Brooke to remember all that! She was six when her abuse started and it lasted for three years, so she remembers a lot more than I do. How does she do it, how can she sit in her own skin, think with a brain that holds all those memories, all those touches, all…

  Sets of feet are pattering around me, to the stalls to my right and left. And then directly in front of the stall come two mud-covered cowboy boots.

  I can’t put into words how I’m feeling and I don’t even try. I just sit there and cry. Mike waits until he hears my breathing steady again to speak.

  “Was listening to Brooke getting to be too much?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, Brooke. I don’t want you to feel bad about sharing, this is all my shit, it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  A hand slides under my stall and squeezes mine, hard.

  “I know, Mia,” she whispers.

  I start sharing, first about my talk with Mike, but then it all starts tumbling out.

  “…it pisses me off! It’s like he never goes away! Knowing’s a double-edged sword, Brooke. I can see how shitty it is for you to have to live with those memories, but at least you know what you’re dealing with. It drives me nuts that I’m being affected by something I hardly remember! It makes me feel crazy.”

  “Do you remember anything?” she asks softly.

  “Yeah, weird things, details. A fuzzy pink toilet seat cover, tile patterns. I remember the bathroom was to the left of a long, dark hallway. I used to remember everything real clearly when I was younger, but now I mostly remember remembering; and the nightmares—the clowns poking me, the spiked jacket, a blond, curly wig.”

  I’ve calmed down now, so I open the stall door. My whole family’s crammed in the bathroom, smiling at me. We sit in a circle on the floor and finish up right there in the bathroom.

  “Let me ask you this, Mia,” Mike says, “would knowing make it any easier? Would remembering make it more real for you, help you let things go?”

  I’ve asked myself this a million times.

  “I’m not sure, but it might help. I just feel like a living secret sometimes, you know? He has other kids now. Sometimes, I think I want to talk to them, but what if they don’t know about me? If he never abused them, I’d kill their image of their dad. I couldn’t do that. But, I have so many questions. I want to get over him for good but it’s hard to get over something when I’m not even sure what exactly it is I’m supposed to be recovering from.”

  I think I just talked f
or twenty minutes straight. I look up and notice Max. He has tears in his eyes and is quiet for once. I go over and hug him. Neither of us says anything but I know we’ve made our peace.

  Dear Mom,

  I’m going to write my dad a closure letter that I can burn. But before I do, I want to know everything. All the gritty little details. What did he do to me, what exactly happened? Did he ever beat you? Did he sleep around? What drugs did he take? Do you have any photos of him, do I look like him? I want to know everything so I can let it go. I know how hard this will be for you, Mom…I’m here for you if things come up for you while you write this to me.

  Mia’s request for documents will be easier to put together than she realizes. Spread across my desk are all the old court papers ready to be copied.

  I’m suing Nick. He’s the reason she’s in the program, he should pay for it.

  25.

  “When this is over you’re going to have a lot more than a headache to worry about.”

  Nick hasn’t changed a bit. This time it’s my new lawyer he’s threatening, right in the courthouse. Probably because his letters telling her that her actions on my behalf will haunt her conscience and condemn her to eternal hell didn’t have enough of an effect.

  Mia’s glad we’re suing him. She’s told Mike she feels it empowers both of us. And that if she’s being held accountable for everything she’s done, he should be, too.

  “I know she’s glad, but I’m sure it’s bringing up a lot of issues for her,” I say.

  “Oh, it is,” Mike answers. “But those issues will come up anyway. They will for anyone who’s been sexually abused, only most folks never deal with it. Mia is doing a lot of hard work most adults either never get the chance to do or are afraid to do. You should be very proud of her.”

  Only in this sense has Nick paid any price for what he did, and it is a steep one. He’ll never get to be proud of Mia, a punishment of his own choosing.

  “How ’bout it?” Mike asks before I can sit down.

  “How ’bout what?”

  I’m already not liking the way this session’s headed.

  “How ’bout we walk over to Unity after this session?”

  “What?” Cameron said something about this last time but I thought he was joking! “You’re not really going to stick me in a boys’ family—you can’t!”

  “Cameron’s already discussed it with me.”

  This bites! Unity’s one of the most notorious boys’ families on the facility. Whenever you hear someone radioing for backup, it’s almost always Unity family. He stands up.

  “Right now?”

  “Right now, kiddo.”

  I reluctantly follow him to the Hungry Horse. We walk in and a roomful of boys all turn around to stare at me. I wheel around to walk back out but Mike grabs me by the shoulders and half leads, half drags me over to a tall, tan man in his thirties with a scruffy beard. Mike explains the situation to him, two weeks of joining the family from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., then two days a week from then on. I stuff my hands in my pockets and stare at the ground.

  “Boys, listen up,” Mr. Greg announces. “This is Mia, she’ll be joining our family.”

  Their names come in a whirl, Brad, Sean, Jeff, Aaron. They give the same introductions as girls do, name, age, where from, why here. The drugs and dropping out are similar but there’s a lot more gangs and violence.

  When I get back, I’m hit with questions: what do their cabins look like, do they have the same rules, what’s fitness like with them? It’s not until I’m about halfway through that it hits me. Brooke, Samantha, and Katrina are all missing.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “They got Level 4 today.”

  “All of them?”

  I instinctively seek out Sunny, whose expression and presence tells me she didn’t get voted up. Again.

  “Katrina and Samantha I saw coming,” I tell her, “but Brooke’s only been here seven months!”

  “Yup, and we shining examples are still Level 3 after a whole year, isn’t that just faaabulous!”

  Boys smell. They shower, they shave, they do laundry once a week, but their cabin still stinks of sweat and socks. They’re louder during fitness and quieter during group.

  There’s so much snow on the court today, fitness turns into a snowball fight. They tackle one another, rubbing snow in each other’s faces. It looks like fun but they’re so aggressive, I’d probably get massacred.

  I walk over to talk to Mr. Greg and ask about his weekend.

  “Oh, it was great, I went to the Testicle Festival.”

  “The what?”

  “Testicle Festival,” he says, as if every town had one.

  “Right. And I suppose come fall, there’s the Pussy Parade.”

  He laughs. “Bull balls, Mia, not people’s!” He’s practically smacking his lips. “Got down ten of those bad boys this year.”

  Only in Montana. I’m grimacing and trying to imagine testicle festivities when Thwack! A snowball slams into the back of my head. I turn to see blond frizz taking off. I ball up a handful of snow and chuck it back at Zeke. It hits him squarely in the back. He turns around and we both start laughing. Before I know it, I’m snowball fighting with Zeke and ducking attacks from the others. Paul was always proud that I could throw a baseball like a boy, and the skill is coming in handy because they aren’t cutting me any slack for being a girl!

  Every week I feel less like an outsider. I’ve made a few friends and feel comfortable with the whole group in general.

  I’m in the middle of helping Aaron with a math problem when we hear a loud pounding. It’s Sean. A minute ago he was quietly reading a letter but he’s livid now, slamming his fists into the table as he yells, “That bitch!”

  Mr. Greg rushes over and grabs his arms. Sean wrestles free and slams his fist into the wall. Mr. Greg grabs him again. “Michael, radio staff central and tell them we need backup here NOW!”

  “Fuck you!” Sean screams while trying to punch Mr. Greg. Suddenly, he buries his face in his chest.

  “She lied to me, Mr. Greg,” he sobs. He makes one more fist, then drops it.

  “She lied, she was never pregnant.”

  Sean’s girlfriend was two months pregnant when he came into the program. She was due this month. Or so we thought. Turns out she was worried Sean would leave her and faked the pregnancy. Poor thing, he was so excited to be a dad.

  Women don’t have a monopoly on being abused, I think, as I watch Mr. Greg cradle Sean. I’ve listened to guys share about being beaten by drunken dads, cheated on by girlfriends, one was even molested by an aunt, another by an uncle. I’d been so busy seeing the world through my own experiences, I didn’t think to view it through anyone else’s.

  “I’m not wearing a dress.”

  Mike’s putting me on a challenge by making me wear girl clothes for a week.

  “A skirt, then.”

  “N-O.”

  “Mia, what don’t you like about being a girl?”

  “Nothing,” I lie.

  “Hmm, musta been another client who made that long list of all the things wrong with it. Let me think…I believe you said you don’t like walking down the street and being catcalled at, you feel that guys enjoy sex more—that whole fucking versus getting fucked—you don’t like being physically smaller than guys. And, my personal favorite, you can’t pee in the woods standing up.”

  “Just because I don’t like being a girl doesn’t mean I want to be a guy.”

  “That’s why I think it’s a good idea to get you more comfortable with being a girl, so you can embrace it rather than let it be a source of frustration and pain for you. The rest of this week, you’re going to dress like a girl, and I mean makeup, hair, the works.”

  “Even when I’m in the boys’ family?”

  “Especially when you’re in the boys’ family.”

  It takes three days of walking around in a skirt for me to break down. A new boy came into the family and he’s be
en eyeing me all day. Then I got so frustrated during PE because I can’t do anything in these stupid clothes, I yelled “fuck” and Mr. Greg made everyone circle up. Of course, as soon as we do, who happens to walk by but Mike.

  “I was wondering when this would happen.”

  “You wanted this to happen? Everyone’s staring at me like I’m a freak or a piece of ass and I can’t do anything in these stupid clothes!”

  “Guys, if you weren’t in the program and you saw Mia walking down the street, how many of you would say, damn, that’s a good-looking woman?”

  All their hands go up. I’m on the verge of tears.

  “Okay, then what would you have done?” Mike asks me. “Actually, don’t answer that. Mia, I want you to guess who would have responded in which way.”

  I look around at the guys. “Micah and Jason definitely would have catcalled, Sean would have waited for me to approach him, Aaron would have come up and been very respectful, Zeke would have said some jackass pickup line.”

  “Now go around the circle and tell me what each of these guys’ biggest issues are.”

  “Micah was adopted and has big abandonment issues, so does Jason, though he’s more afraid of rejection. Zeke’s ridiculous pickup line makes sense, he always uses humor to mask being nervous or scared.”

  By the time I finish the circle, Mike’s point is obvious. People’s reactions are always about themselves, their own insecurities and fears.

  “Mia, if I thought you genuinely hated dressing like a girl, I wouldn’t have done this. But I see how you look at other girls. I know you want to do certain things but don’t because you’re scared of the attention it might bring. This was to help you get more comfortable with that attention, to teach you how to handle it appropriately.”