The Light in the Wound (4 page)

I craved to hear anyone’s voice but my own. Just then, the maid respectfully interrupted my story, which was just about to get more exciting.

“Ma’am Anna, Claudia is asking to see you. She’s waiting outside by the front door.

“Claudia, as in my mom?” I didn’t wait for an answer.

I bolted out of my chair and ran through the halls toward the front door. There she stood, looking absolutely beautiful. She was all dressed up in her designer clothes, a pair of Chanel palazzo pants and a silk blouse that was knotted up at the waist. She was surrounded by a set of matching Louis Vuitton luggage and flanked to the side by a tall, dark man with the kindest looking eyes I had ever seen.

“Isabel! Come and say hi to your new dad!” my mother said excitedly, like she was never gone from my life for all those months.

I ran over without any hesitation and gave him a hug. He lifted me up and hugged me back. I just knew right then and there that Dad #2 was going to be the best dad ever.

It wasn’t much longer than a few months when the fights between my mother and stepdad began to get worse. There would be screaming matches and crying fits. My stepdad would always end up walking out on her and staying away for days. I know they fought about money because she forged his signature on checks to pay for all her things. She was depressed when her shopping was curbed and he couldn’t control her spending. She accused him constantly about cheating on her with another woman.
I don’t think this is normal
, I would tell myself every time there was a commotion at our house. And yet this was the only family life I had ever known. It was either a cold and tense silence like she shared with my father, or knockdown drag-out fights like she had with my stepfather
.

One Wednesday afternoon, as I came home to get ready for a riding lesson, I rushed into my mother’s bedroom to greet her. The air conditioner made a humming sound and the room was ice cold and eerily still. My mother had migraines quite often, so the shades were pulled and the room was always pitch black.

“Mommy, I’m home. Are you sleeping again? I have to leave for my lesson in an hour.”

I jumped on the bed like I’d become accustomed to, intending to take a short nap beside her. I reached out for her, but she wasn’t on the bed. Just as I got up and headed out for the door, a feeling of dread washed over me. I felt a slight movement on the other side of the floor, so I climbed back on the bed and leaned over the edge to the opposite side. There, on the ground was my mother, slumped but alive, mumbling like she was drugged out of her mind.

“Mommy, get up, what did you do? Did you fall?”

She was crouched in a fetal position, her elbows jutting out as her arms were tucked in under her head. I tried to grab her hands and then I saw them. They were bloodied and wet, glistening red against the darkness of the room. She had cut her wrists. Both of them.

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.”

—Mother Teresa

Surprisingly, when you’re twelve and you witness something as devastating as finding your mother bleeding, semi-conscious and near death, there is a defense mechanism that kicks in to protect you from falling apart. The vision of her bloodied hands would stay with me forever. But aside from that, everything I felt or thought was more or less centered on the fact that I didn’t want my life to change again. Nothing ever stayed the same. No one was in my life long enough to get to know me. Most importantly, why did I always have to go through this alone?

Visits to a child psychiatrist began immediately after the incident. Ballet and piano lessons were quickly replaced by sitting in another waiting room; only this time, I was the patient. The first few two-hour sessions were spent doing puzzles and analyzing flash cards. Ink blots on cards. They all looked like different shapes of butterflies and I let the psychiatrist know that. When she asked what a red scribbled line looked like to me, I told her they reminded me of my mother’s wrists.

“Isabel, do you know why you’re here?” Dr. Pressler asked at the end of one of the sessions. She was a tall middle-aged woman who wore different colored headbands.

“Yes, I do,” I answered, looking down at the floor. “I’m here because of what happened to my mom.”

“Tell me what happened when you found your mom. How did it make you feel?” she asked.

“I found her on the floor, bleeding. That’s it. I was afraid she was dead, but then I heard her whispering, so I knew she was alive. She looked like one of those soldiers who are shot in John’s video games.” I continued to stare at the carpet underneath my feet. John was my stepbrother, my mother’s only connection to having a son.

“Who is John?” She leaned back into her chair and crossed her arms.

“He’s my stepbrother. He’s 16 and my mom loves him so much because he’s the only boy in our house.”

“Do you get along with John?”

“Yes, he hangs out with me a lot. He has a lot of cute friends who come over, and my sister Evie and I always hide behind the big tree by the pool to watch them.”

She laughed. “What do you watch them do?”

“Nothing, really. We watch them play pool on the veranda and just hang out. Sometimes I walk over to talk to them, but Evie is so shy about boys, she stays behind the tree.”

“What about your stepfather, Isabel? Do you like him?”

“Oh! I love him so much! He bought me a mini trail motorcycle and a horse. He always takes time to talk to me. We spend a lot of time together.”

“How about your grandparents, Isabel? Do you get along with them?”

“I’ve lived with them since I was seven. My grandmother is always angry at my mom, calling her names and telling me that I’m going to grow up to be just like her. Then she gets angry at me.”

“Why do you think she gets angry at you? Do you know what she means when she says that you’ll grow up to be just like your mom?”

“I think it’s because I look like my mom. When boys look at me or talk to me, she says it’s because I act like my mom, whatever that means.”

Dr. Pressler shook her head slightly.

“Isabel, tell me about school. Have you been getting into fights lately?”

“Yes,” I said guiltily. I started to pull out a thread from the hem of my dress.

“Do you start the fights? What are they about?”

“It bothers me that everyone at school knows about what my mom did. Some of the kids on the bus tease Alicia and call my mom names. I don’t like it, and I don’t let them get away with it.” The inflection in my voice had notably changed. The thread kept on unraveling. This dress was going to be two inches longer by the time I got done with this session.

“Does anyone in your family talk to you about it when they hear from the school?”

“Just my stepdad. He never gets mad at me, though. He says that I have a love for life that he admires. He always tells me that someday some guy is going to be very lucky to marry me.”

“And how are you feeling now?” Her voice was soft and gentle, almost calming. No one ever asked anything about me. I wanted to tell her, to keep her attention.

“I’m okay. I miss my mom. I’m going to be visiting her again after this.”

“Do you like visiting her?”

“I don’t mind it. Even when I’m without my sisters, I like being close to her, knowing where she is, what she’s doing. She has no one but me to take care of her.”

“Do you feel like you’re always the one that’s there for her?”

“I
am
the only one. That’s just how it is, I even stay home from school to keep her company whenever she’s sad,” I declared with so much conviction.

“What do you like to do, Isabel? Tell me what you do during your free time.”

“I love to read. I also want to be in the Equestrian Olympics one day, so I try to ride my horse as often as I can. I love talking to my sisters and playing games with them,” I answered excitedly. Someone was trying to get to know me.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked in a soothing voice as she leaned close enough so I could see the beautiful freckles on her nose.

“A good wife and mother,” I announced self-assuredly as I snapped the thread in half with my fingers.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

—Robert Frost

As I took the final step off the landing stairs and onto the ground, the hot and humid breeze grazed my cheeks. I was home. I followed the line of people through the runway and into the main building toward the immigration booths. I was one in a sea of people. No one knew me; no one knew I was here. I smiled to myself as I thought of the normal process my family went through at the airport. Ordinarily, I would have been whisked out of the airplane into a private walkway leading to a private immigration line. There would be no waiting, just a branding of our passports and we would be on our way. It felt wonderful to be inconspicuous and unrecognized.

As I walked through the normal checkpoints, no questions were asked. My passport was stamped, and I trudged along on the way to the luggage carousel. I was now feeling very nervous, all alone — I’ve never done anything like this before. I was excited, but scared at the same time. What if she didn’t want me? Where would I go? It didn’t matter. I was free.

I was drenched in sweat by the time I pulled out my third suitcase and placed it on my cart. I pushed through people and carts and stood at a taxi line that was one hundred people long. It took me an hour to finally get on my way, now wary of the taxi driver who could sense that I would never know where he was taking me. I gave him the address, which was in the most exclusive neighborhood in the city, and there I sat, on edge the entire time.

As I looked outside the window at the familiar streets, my thoughts took me back to how this homecoming came about. I was sent to boarding school to escape the scandal brought about by my mother’s suicide attempt. What started out as a trip to the States for the summer holiday, ended up as three years of loneliness, rebellion and isolation.

One morning while on vacation in Canada, my grandfather invited me to go for a drive with him. I was silently observant as we drove through an elegant neighborhood and reached a beautiful wooded area high up on a hill. We entered through a tall black gate, drove on a short brick-paved driveway and stopped right in front of a huge and imposing stone structure. Above the arch-shaped doorway, a brushed nickel sign simply read, Convent of the Sacred Heart. The building looked just like the front of a castle, complete with barred windows and a round tower. A middle-aged nun dressed in a navy blue habit met us at the door.

“Good morning, Mr. Holtzer. I’m Sister Marybeth. Welcome to our school. It is so nice to meet you,” greeted the nun as she shook hands with my grandfather. Sister Marybeth had a very heavy French accent. Hmmm. “This must be Isabel,” she continued, “what a lovely girl you are.”

What is it about being oblivious to everything around you when you’re this age? I don’t remember exactly what they talked about, but the nun seemed quite excited to show us around the premises.