Ask Me Why I Hurt (32 page)

“This Darlene Newsom just won’t stop,” she said. “Do you know her? She told me yesterday you did.”

“I’ve met her. She’s a total dynamo.” I had met Darlene at a task force on homelessness. She was a bright, grandmotherly-looking woman with a cap of silver hair and boundless energy. She walked with a slight limp, but I had heard she loved to go hiking in the mountains.

“She calls at least once a week and tells me to tell you one word: UMOM. What is that anyhow?”

I laughed at her persistence. “UMOM is her family shelter. It stands for United Methodist Outreach Ministries. I haven’t been there, but I understand they serve homeless families.”

“We go to domestic violence shelters. Why not them also?” Jan argued.

“It’s a matter of time and staff. We’re already working overtime.”

“She did say they had a lot of babies.”

“OK, OK. I’ll head out there today and check it out.”

UMOM turned out to be in a run-down area outside the city. I turned in past a high fence with a gate to find an old Motel 8, with peeling paint and concrete stairs up to each row of rooms. As I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a fleet of gleaming RVs parked at one end. A beaming Darlene stood outside to greet me and to give me the grand tour.

She started by showing me the shelter’s catering business. I was impressed. What had been an old kitchen had been converted into a shining, well-run professional kitchen. Darlene explained that the homeless parents who stayed at UMOM could work in the catering kitchen. They not only got job experience but also passed their food permit tests. The company’s catering was in high demand. It catered a lot of weddings and business meetings. It also fed the residents, and it was all done under the supervision of a professional chef.

Darlene moved on to the next room, the career and educational center. It was small, with rows of computers on tables and folding chairs. She explained how she had volunteer tutors come in. Most of the parents who came to the shelter had no high school diplomas, and some were illiterate. The tutors educated the parents, helping them study for their high school diplomas and, in some cases, helping them get scholarships for colleges.

“We have strict rules here,” Darlene said over her shoulder. She was walking so fast I had to trot to keep up. “Each parent gets a room for herself and her kids. No drugs, no criminal activity, no violence. I have way too many parents waiting to get in here to put up with nonsense. They all know that.

“Did you see all the RVs parked outside?” Darlene asked as she went past a day care room. “Those are mission volunteers. They
travel the country in their RVs. They contacted me and asked if they could stop here for the winter. They’ve been doing everything from painting tables to helping in the kitchen.”

She led me up a flight of stairs. “I do wish the rooms themselves were bigger,” Darlene said apologetically while knocking politely on a door. “But that’s what you get for taking over an old Motel 8.” A young black woman answered, balancing an adorable baby on her hip. “This is LaShondra,” Darlene said. “And this is her baby, Chantel.” LaShondra gave Darlene a big sideways hug.

“I got my food handler’s license!” she exclaimed.

“Do you mind if I show Dr. Christensen here your room?” Darlene asked. “He’s going to be helping us.” I shot her a wry glance.

The room LaShondra called her home was really a small square box. There was no kitchen, no bedroom. On one side, crammed against the wall, she had her bed and a crib. In the middle was perhaps two feet of free space, and then on the other wall was a bookshelf crammed with children’s books. A television was perched on the end of a table. Food supplies were stacked in neat boxes on the floor. I saw cereal, bread, peanut butter, and powdered milk. It was all food that could either be eaten without cooking or made on the little hot plate resting on the bookshelf. We peeked in a dime-size bathroom with a faded shower curtain. There was a clean saucepan sitting in a drain on top of the back of the toilet, along with a scrub brush. This tiny sink was where LaShondra did her dishes.

Despite her humble surroundings, LaShondra wouldn’t stop telling me how wonderful UMOM was and how much Darlene had helped her. “I was sleeping with my baby in a bus shelter before I came here,” she said, scooping up her little girl for a big hug.

“If you don’t mind my asking, how come you were homeless?”

“My whole family is in gangs. They were shooting each other. I don’t want that for my baby.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Eighteen. But now that I have my food handler’s card, I’m getting a job. I’ve been applying everywhere.”

After we left LaShondra’s room, I began to tell Darlene how
impressed I was with UMOM. It had surpassed any expectations I had for a family shelter. She stopped me. “You know what we don’t have, Randy? Medical care for babies like Chantel. Did you know that sweet little baby has yet to have all her shots? Just think of that.”

“You’re guilt-tripping me.”

“Of course I am.”

“Look,” I told her, “I’d love to stop here. But the van is already fully booked as it is, and we have a waiting list of places that would like us to visit. I just don’t have the funds to add UMOM as a stop.” In 2006 we had expanded our staff and the number of clinics—stops—we made with the van. The CEO of the children’s hospital, Bob Meyer, had asked me to think about having teams staff not just the van but a fixed clinic at the HomeBase center too. It had been a time of big, risky growth, and we were swamped with requests. It would be impossible for me to go back to the administration and ask for more money.

“What if you had your own little clinic here? With a nurse? She could have her own little space, and you could super vise it, since you’re the doctor.”

“That would be a dream.” I smiled, thinking Darlene probably had no idea of the start-up costs of creating a clinic, let alone hiring a nurse. “But again, I just don’t have any money to do something like that.”

She looked unfazed. “We’ll see about that.”

“Hi, Becca.” I had to remind myself this was Nicole, a teenager of perhaps nineteen. She was so convincing in her personalities I sometimes felt I should keep separate files. Today Becca was in a bubbly, fun mood. She let me check her ears and take her blood pressure. She was acting goofy.

“Knock-knock,” she said.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“I forgot.” She giggled. It was strange hearing a knock-knock joke come out of the mouth of a teenage girl with tangled hair.

“I’d still like to give you an exam,” I told her. I expected her to say no. This time little Becca smiled.

“Sure,” she said.

I was caught by surprise. “I’d like to do what we call a pelvic exam as well,” I said.

“Okey-dokey,” she said, giving me that gap-toothed grin.

I called in Jan. I had never approached a pelvic exam with more trepidation. I wished I could explain to the real Nicole, whoever she was, what was happening. But instead I was talking to a little child. Jan got out a gown and asked her to change. We waited a bit and knocked. Jan went in first, talking quietly. I gently explained what I was doing as I came back in the room and pulled on the gloves. I rolled the stool closer to her. I reached for the speculum. And then I stopped.

Where Nicole’s genitals had been there was something else. I felt my eyes blink. Outside my doctor’s demeanor was calm. My doctor’s voice and eyes stayed even. But inside my heart was breaking open and weeping its own tears. I didn’t want to think about how or why this had happened. I didn’t want to think about the nature of these scars. What I wanted to say was, “Oh, you poor baby.” But doctors can’t talk like that.

I cleared my throat. “Becca—”

“You’re probably wondering about my owies,” she said in a crystal-clear little voice.

“Yes,” I said.

“My stepdaddy did that. When he was punishing me.”

Jan and I stared at each other. I didn’t know how to continue. But I did. I took the Pap smears. I dropped the swabs into vials. I finished the exam and pulled off the gloves. I gave the vials to Jan. I told Becca she could get dressed. The little girl in the grown woman’s body bubbled.

“Am I healthy?” she asked, sitting up.

“Healthy as a horse,” I said.

“See? I knew I was brave enough to do it.”

Afterward I went in the bathroom and washed my hands. I splashed water on my face, feeling the hotness of my eyes. I felt so sad my heart ached inside my chest, and the tears threatened to burst out. I wanted to cry for Nicole and all the hurt children, but I knew that if I did start crying, I would never stop. How could life treat this child this way? I asked myself. How could people
do
such things? The horror of it hit me. I looked in the mirror. The face that looked back at me looked bleak. When I came out, Jan was leaning against the wall. For the first time I saw her weeping. Her shoulders were shaking. She wiped her eyes when she saw me and walked back up front.

At home that night I pulled Charlotte into my lap. It was hard to believe she was almost four. She kicked her legs and nestled her face against my chest. She smelled like fresh-baked bread; she always had, since she was born. She babbled. Charlotte had the cutest little voice, with just a touch of a lisp. Just like Becca, I thought involuntarily. All the memories of the day flooded back: seeing Becca’s scars, seeing what could be done to a girl, seeing with my own eyes the travesties and pains of the world. I held my own little girl in my lap. For a moment a dizzy sick wave came at me.

“Are you OK, Randy?” It was Amy; bless her, Amy who seemed to know intuitively when any of us needed her.

“I’m fine,” I said without thinking.

Charlotte was still babbling. She was just a baby, I thought, and then corrected myself. She was a three-year-old little girl. What if what had happened to Becca happened to her? What if it happened to Janie or Reed? It wasn’t just the girls. So many of the boys I saw reported they had been molested. It could be a neighbor, a coach. Amy and I could die in a car accident. One of us could fall ill. Our children could be molested without our knowledge. I wanted to push the thought aside, but it kept intruding. You do everything in your power to prevent the unthinkable, I told myself. I remembered when the twins were in the hospital after they were born and how I had considered the impossible, that they might die. Now all the other what-ifs came rushing at me. My babies could get hurt in unspeakable ways. I knew nothing could be
ruled out for good. And now this thought included molestation. I held my baby girl in my lap, our beautiful moment tainted.

Amy caught me that night. “Randy, you’ve been quiet for hours. Something is bothering you. You
promised
me that you would start talking to me.”

“I thought I was doing better,” I said.

She smiled. “You have been. You just still need a little reminding.”

I sat next to her on the couch, holding her hand. “It is the badness that is so bad I don’t even want to think about it.”

I told her about Nicole. It was cathartic to talk. Her face was calm, that was a relief. “It was never so real to me before,” I said. “I mean, it was real before. But it was real for the kids I treat, not real for my own children. Now all of a sudden I feel like it could happen to them. How do we prevent that from happening to our kids? What if we can’t prevent it?”

“We do our best,” she replied calmly. “What happened to Nicole was because no one knew or intervened. We have each other, and we have extended family. We can teach our children how to come to us for help.”

“I don’t know how to help her,” I said. “That’s the really hard part. She’s been coming to the van longer than I want to admit. It’s been two years.
Two years
, I haven’t been able to help her.”

“Maybe you can’t,” she said.

“When she is Becca, I feel like I am letting an eight-year-old wander the streets.” I felt close to breaking down. I remembered the rage and frustration I had felt in Katrina at how the government had failed all those people. Now I felt the same rage at how our country was failing this mentally ill, sexually abused child.

“I feel like there is something wrong with this world.” For a moment my emotions overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t explain the depth of what I was feeling.

“You’re trying to help,” she said.

“I wish I had talked to you before. I was afraid you’d think less of me, for getting in over my head.”

She rubbed my head with her knuckles and gave me that sweet, teasing smile. “Honey, you’re always in over your head. That’s what I love about you.”