Come Back (6 page)

The university became Mia’s big playground. The generosity of everyone there was wonderful. Cafeteria workers fed Mia for free for two years, financial aid worked miracles. Mia made friends at school. She rode through our new world on the back of my bike in her shiny red helmet and decided her name was really Queenie Princess Arosia. For weeks, if I didn’t call her that, she didn’t answer.

If one part of me was discovering what was rotten in the world, the mother part of me felt like it was always spring and each new day was green with laughter. I had the joy of looking up from writing a formal analysis of Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” to see Mia clonking about in my high heels and fur coat as she whispered to an imaginary person, “Does it get cold in your spaceship?” Here, she said kindly, taking off the fur, this should help, and my coat is off to Mars. I watched her from around a corner as she solemnly pledged allegiance to the refrigerator, with liberty and dust is for all.

I looked for the flag at her nursery school and, sure enough, it was beside the refrigerator. How vast and inscrutable the world must seem to a child, even their small corner of it. They need for it all to work, so they simply remake it as they go, as it suits them. Why wouldn’t people pledge to honor the big white box where they keep the food?

They remake themselves as well. I overheard her talking to her stuffed animals, “her children” as she called them—“Amember when the mean daddy cut up all the walls? And I patected mudder from all those fings he frew? Well, you don’t have to worry nooooo more, ’acause he can’t come see us!”

I was astonished—where had she kept the memory of that night? I thought she’d forgotten it forever. She’d simply buried it twelve months deep. Until the moment she was able to recall a night of terror as a night of heroism. Till she could transform paralysis to courage. I felt as if I were witnessing the actual creation of a human trait—confidence. She was creating herself anew in a way that all the therapy in the world couldn’t.

I didn’t share any of the dark clouds with Mia, the fear or sorrow. She never saw that face, the alert, frightened one with eyes in the back of her head. She saw the singing face.

I had a clear and ringing voice and sang to her all day long. Singing expressed our joy in each other, it knitted up our frayed edges. At night, just the two of us in the dark, singing created sanctuary, my lullabies were as hymns. It was the closest I ever came to praying.

She still had nightmares of Nick, still acted out what happened. She’d say she wants to kill her dad without even looking up from her fingerpaints. We were sitting in a theater watching a Maya Deren film when I noticed Mia on her back with her dress pulled up, her legs in the air, and no underwear on. I pulled her quickly onto my lap, glancing around the dark for her panties. They were on the floor by the door, where we’d stood waiting in line.

She continued to see a wonderful psychologist named Ella, and her sexualized behavior faded slowly. She grew stronger and happier as I headed for graduation.

I’d formed a friendship with a gentlemanly professor who became a kind of father figure, at a time when fathers weren’t high on my list. He was mortified that I had no intention of ever getting married again. But, Claire, he said, you can’t possibly want to live alone. My marriage has been the best part of my life for forty years. You just need time, he assured me.

I met Paul at a downtown film gala. He was handsome, fair, and dark-haired, with huge dove-colored eyes that turned down at the corners. A talented designer without the artistic personality that usually goes with it, Paul was the kind of Southern gentleman that’s practically extinct. He stood when a woman entered a room and still called his parents ma’am and sir. We dated for six months, until I was certain it was a lasting relationship, before I introduced him to Mia.

At their first meeting she was so possessive of me, she slid off my lap, whacked him in the face with a stuffed animal, and crawled back into my lap, scowling. Still, she agreed to let us take her to the zoo next time. She had a screaming tantrum the entire car ride there. Well, I thought, there goes Paul.

After we parked, she got out, sniffled herself quiet and put her little hand up for me to take. Then she put the other one up for Paul to take and we never looked back.

Paul’s appearance in our lives meant that she got doted on by two. She was the center of our lives and she loved it, loved that she had a kind man who would protect us both from what she now called her “old dad.” She had a new father. But she never called him Daddy, he would always be Paul or, after enough years passed, occasionally “Dad.”

Sometimes it was his arms that held her and walked her back to sleep after nightmares of Nick pulling a long needle out of his jacket and sticking it into her while he laughed in his curly blond wig.

Paul taught her to paint, to pitch like a boy, to skateboard. To fly. Literally. She was so fine-boned and light that he would throw her up in the air high above his head and catch her as she sailed down, squealing with delight.

I took photos of Mia looking like she was falling from heaven. Photos of her making big muscles and ferocious faces, of her galloping, laughing, waving a sparkling magic wand. Of Mia the Powerful.

Mia ruled.

Paul, Mia, and I moved to Los Angeles when she was five so I could pursue a career as a screenwriter. I worked regularly, and in genres women rarely wrote in then—action and futuristic thrillers. But my primary ambition was to be a great mom. I knew these were magic years and reveled in them. So did Mia. She thought it was Herself that magically controlled the TV. She turned it on and off and changed the channels because she had The Power. Mia would swing her arms around, zap the TV with a “Poof!” and it obeyed.

We thought she’d outgrow it, as children outgrow the tooth fairy. She didn’t, and by age six, we were afraid she’d be humiliated at some friend’s house. So the TV began to disobey her little by little. It was both heartbreaking and comical to see her keep swinging and poofing to no avail. I told her the TV grew up and had its own power now.

“Oh, no, it didn’t, Mother, TVs don’t grow up!”

There are so many ways we commit crimes against our children, even out of love. She didn’t want to grow up and leave her magic behind. I didn’t want her to, either.

She eventually realized she didn’t have The Power, but she wasn’t ready to give up magic yet. So, God got the job. But how could we be sure He was qualified?

I had no idea what to tell her. I’d never talked to her about God and she’d never seen me pray.
I’d
never seen me pray. My experience of the divine was entirely culinary. Potato pancakes at Hannukah, matzoh at Passover, starvation at Yom Kippur.

Absent any help from me, Mia decided to prove not just God’s existence, but his usefulness. “If there is a God, why doesn’t he do something
already? I mean like
now
, not fifty years ago when he parted the Red Sea.” She came up with a True Test, one that would vastly improve her life.

She had a terrible fear of toilets “overflooding and drownding” her. We always had to flush it after she was a safe distance from the bathroom.

“Mother, Paul,” she announced grandly, “I’m going to the bathroom and I’m going to ask God not to overflood it and drownd me when I flush. Weeee’ll see if there’s really a God.”

We waited in the hall while the exam was administered. She went. She flushed. We could just picture her waiting for the rising tide with her hands over her eyes. She finally emerged, beaming and proud.

It’s not every child that’s able to prove that there’s a God. And she expected Him to be darned grateful she did.

It was in her play that I saw remnants of the abuse in her emotional life. A recurring theme in Mia’s psyche was of evil lurking behind good. The clown of her nightmares always pulled off his blond wig to become Nick. When she played with her horses, the kind, strong stallion would suddenly become evil and try to devour the younger horses. The mother horse was always shuttling her foals from one “secret cave” to another to protect them.

I heard Mia muttering after midnight once and went in to find her combing her stuffed animals. An evil man made an oil slick on purpose, she whispered, and left them to die, so she was cleaning their fur to save them. Her horses and stuffies had as many calamities as they had tea parties.

Her nightmares had stayed behind in Chicago, but her memories apparently hadn’t. Her second-grade teacher, Sara, a gentle, perceptive woman in her forties, called us in to show us Mia’s weekly journal.

“Sometimes I feel bad when I think of certain events,” Mia wrote, “such as when my old dad did bad things to me. But all I have to do is not think about it and then I feel better.”

She assured us she’d keep Mia’s journal confidential should she want to continue writing about “certain events.” Sara and Mia forged a deep bond that soon included Paul and I. She had a calm, spiritual presence that was often an anchor for our family.

I asked Mia if she still remembered what Nick did to her. She looked at me as if I was daft.

“Of course, I do, Mama,” she said. “I just don’t remember which birthday it happened on.” Then she wagged her finger at me and scolded, “You know, Mother, you shouldn’ta got married with that man.”

How could I reply? Tell her that if I hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here? What a terrible truth for her to one day realize. The price she paid for her existence.

“He did
what
?” said Judge Moran, outraged.

I had flown back to Chicago to settle a child support dispute, and my lawyer told him that Nick had remarried and had more children. I had just found out myself and was half hoping the judge wouldn’t, because I knew he’d have Child Protection investigate him again. Then, Nick would blame me and would want revenge.

Which is exactly what happened. For years, Nick hadn’t paid for any psychological care related to the abuse, as he was court ordered to do, nor his share of doctor bills, but now, to get back at me, he wanted visitation rights.

My happy life collapsed and I didn’t know how to shore it back up. He had the means to outspend me in court. Going to court in California was risky anyway. Fathers got visitation no matter what they did or what the child wanted. I could just see Mia screaming and trying to crawl under a coffee table in the name of family unity. I’d sooner disappear than leave her alone with him ever again. And I knew how.

I’d heard of an “Underground” that secreted away women and children when courts wouldn’t protect them. The only other option I saw was doing what Dr. Elizabeth Morgan did in her well-publicized case. She had her parents spirit her child to New Zealand, and she went to jail for it.

I was prepared to do either if I had to. I felt so emotionally overwhelmed that I called a social service agency for counseling. A therapist named Fran called back and I poured out the whole saga in between sobs. As we were making an appointment, I asked her full name. Fran Blair, she said, then spelled it out for me: B-l-e-y-e-r. That’s an unusual spelling, I said, are you related to a Peter Bleyer, from Philadelphia?

Why, yes, as a matter of fact, he’s my husband, she said, why do you ask?

I’d come all the way across the country to escape from Nick and the
one
psychologist in the entire state of California I
happen
to call is the
wife of a P family friend. Who had been at my wedding. I don’t know who was shocked more, she or I.

Paul came home to find me staring at the phone, practically catatonic.

If I had any doubt Nick would learn where we lived, I didn’t anymore. It took me exactly one day to find the Underground. I met a well-dressed young woman at a café and explained my situation. She listened quietly, then led me to her car without a word.

She drove to an apartment in a seedy part of town, locked the door behind us, and then told me this was the first stop in going underground. I looked around and thought, here I am again, at the nexus of Nick, desperation and dirty orange shag carpet. The worn sheets on the bed matched the one strung across the window. We stepped over toys and sat on the sagging plaid Herculon sofa to talk about the mechanics of “disappearing.”

We could take nothing of our old life, not even a stuffed animal. There’d be new histories, new hair colors, a new profession. Every day would be a lie. Paul would be watched.

I wish I could tell you that you’ll get used to it, she said, but you won’t. And if you ever do, that’s when you’ll get caught, because you’ll get careless, it’ll be good-bye Mia, hello prison. Once she was eighteen, Mia could resurface, but I never could, I’d face charges. I would go to my grave looking over my shoulder. Underground was an apt name, I was feeling cadaverous already.

We would wait here until she got everything set up for us. There was a doorless closet against one wall full of Goodwill cast-offs. She pointed to them and said I could pick out new wardrobes for Mia and me once we got settled in.

I scanned for the least drecky choices. Triple-pleated, puce trousers; a flowered sweatshirt; and a slick, thin blue belt that looked like a Tupperware cake dish handle.

Or I could hold the pants up with that Navajo beaded belt and use the Tupperware belt to hang myself. God help me, it was vanity that made my decision.

Forget it, I told Paul, Mia will have to lie every day knowing that if she screws up, Mommy goes to jail. And it’ll flat out kill me to become Jane Smith, tight-lipped blond bookkeeper for Frank’s Fuel-n-Feed.

I found another lawyer in Chicago who established that nothing would happen without the Sex Offender therapy Moran ordered. Nick finally withdrew his motion.

But the damage to Mia was done. Because I made the single worst choice I’d ever made in raising her. From the start, I felt it was best to hide all this from her until I had no choice. My hope was that it wouldn’t come to that. But, for some reason, a sister-in-law kept harping on me to tell Mia, saying, “You must always be honest with your kids.” I was of the opinion that your kids didn’t need to know some things. But I was so exhausted and fearful, and she so insistent, I gave in.

I took Mia outdoors, by her favorite fountain, and somehow managed to force the words from my mouth, “Your old dad wants to see you again.” She grabbed me and started to cry. She shrunk into a ball in my lap and I knew immediately that I’d done something I’d regret for the rest of my life. It didn’t matter that I told her that I was going to fight hard to stop him; her safe world was shattered. I was furious at my sister-in-law and myself. I could see in Mia’s face that her little life was snapped in two. Her first Before and After.

Mia was never the same. Sometimes, she’d stare off into space and a fleeting melancholy would pass across her features. She began to pick at her fingernails and jiggle her knee, or she’d get these shudders up her spine, like someone cracked the whip from her tailbone to her neck. Her nightmares returned, either with Nick chasing her in that wig or snatching her off the playground or scaring her with snakes (Freud got that one right).

One night as we walked to her favorite restaurant for dinner, she galloped in front of an alley without looking, just as a car was pulling out. The car’s brakes squealed and Mia froze inches from the bumper. It was the second time in a few days she’d done it. We scooped her up and scolded her about looking both ways. By the time we ordered dinner, she seemed fine. Then her mouth and shoulders suddenly sagged. I asked what was wrong.

“I just have this feeling that I don’t like being a person,” she said quietly.

I took her to see a child psychologist, Colleen, a very caring woman who spent over a year helping Mia through this time. Though Mia grew to feel safer, she remained a changed girl. She became a nervous child. There was a shadow across her heart.

She was afraid something would happen to me; her fear of being alone in bathrooms got worse. Until she was twelve, she wouldn’t shower unless I was in the bathroom or Paul was outside in the hall. “A bad guy could come in, and I can’t see through this shower door, you know!”

The fallout from Nick finally hit me as well. Not long after, I woke up crying every morning, with a sick, mushy feeling in my stomach that was inexplicable, followed by losing ten pounds in as many days. The CD from the film
The Piano
became the soundtrack to the depression movie I starred in,
Crying in Three Positions
. Standing, sitting, lying down, it was all I did. When Mia got home from school, I’d somehow pretend to be her smiling mother, make dinner, read stories, ask about school.

I learned why most people committed suicide. It’s impossible to describe what it is to have your heart
literally
hurt so much that only the stopping of it will end the pain. Stopping it becomes the bright and shining light at the end of the tunnel. Just the thought of it, with its secret, thrilling promise of release, is enough to lift you up to where you can perform basic functions, like brushing your teeth or eating or drawing that pricey chef’s knife across the jugular. Somewhere in the mountains where it wouldn’t leave a mess for someone else to clean up.

I finally got on an antidepressant and in six months I no longer needed them, but I knew a hole had opened up in the terrain. And that if I wasn’t careful, I could fall in.

It was little things, it always is. Things only a mother notices. A subtle withholding, waiting too long to wash her hair, a book choice, red cheeks.

When Mia was thirteen, I noticed her cheeks were often red. It was winter, it couldn’t be the sun. My cheeks aren’t red, she’d say. Paul agreed, as he nearly always did.

But they were. I had no idea where the thought came from, but out popped, “I think you’re scalding your face.” As soon as I said it, my brain agreed with my intuition.

Did I catch hell. What a mean thing to say, leave me alone, leave her alone, they said. I didn’t say anything else about it, but I had sprouted a new antenna. One that would cause increasing discord in our home as it picked up the subtlest things in her behavior.

Her heroes had always been Jane Goodall and Audrey Hepburn. Sud
denly, it was Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten. She read his autobiography several times. “For a school assignment,” she said. She began to let her personal grooming slide. She’d stay in the bathroom forever, but whatever she was doing didn’t involve soap and water.

It’s odd, I told Paul, something’s off. It’s typical teen behavior, Paul said, leave her alone. No, it’s not, I told him, teenage girls are fanatic about their appearance.

“You can’t keep at her like this, Claire,” he said irritably, “for heaven’s sake, she’s a great kid, she’s not doing anything wrong.”

It’s true, she wasn’t
doing
anything wrong, but something
was
wrong. I felt the same way I did when I met Nick’s family, something was wrong with the picture. I couldn’t see it but I could feel it.

Then, one day, out of the blue, Mia said to me, with cold curiosity, almost with contempt: “How could you have married
him
?”

I arranged for her to see Colleen again, to deal with whatever was coming up for her about Nick. Mia was old enough then that the sessions were confidential.