Twilight Children (34 page)

“I’m not Dr. Brown,” I said.

“Dr. Brown’d tell you not to do that.”

“Not to do what?” I asked.

“Make me talk about my dad taking me. Dr. Brown said to my mom, ‘Don’t ever make her talk about it. She’ll get psychological damage.’” Cassandra looked at me in a pointed way.

I raised an eyebrow.

“She
did
say that. I heard her. I was in the other room, but I was sat really, really close to the door. And she said that.”

Silence.

Cassandra was watching me in that intent, unflinching manner she had. Indeed, she’d sat bolt upright again to fix me more firmly in her gaze.

“Know what?” I replied. “If I heard someone say that about an experience I’d had, it would make me feel scared.”

Cassandra’s expression was one of confident superiority. She even had a little smile on her lips. “
I’m
not scared. Dr. Brown was just trying to take care of me. She was a better doctor than you.”

“To me,” I replied, “Dr. Brown saying that makes it sound like talking about your abduction would be a very dangerous thing to do. Doesn’t it? If it were me in your shoes, I’d think ‘Wow, that experience must be really powerful. Even just
talking
about it can hurt. And
I
actually had to live through it, so I must be really damaged already.’ If I were in your shoes, I’d probably even think, ‘I better
never
say anything to anyone about what happened. Then I’d get more damaged. Even worse, if I talk about it, maybe I will damage the people I tell it to as well. Maybe I will hurt my mom and people I love if I tell them about this. I better lock it up good and tight inside me, so no one gets hurt.’”

Cassandra was no longer smiling, but she didn’t take her eyes from my face. The energetic silliness had vanished. She sat very still.

“You’re a very clever girl, Cassandra. You pay careful attention to many things. And that’s good. But I’m going to tell you an important secret now. Something you really need to know. And it’s this: not everything you hear is right. And in this instance, that
thing
wasn’t right.”

“But Dr. Brown said it. She said it to my mom. I heard it.”

“Yes, I believe you. But it still doesn’t make what you heard true. There’s several possible reasons why you heard Dr. Brown say that. One possibility is simply that Dr. Brown was wrong. Just because people are grown up or well educated or important doesn’t mean they are always right. Perhaps she didn’t understand the matter herself quite correctly, so she
thought
she was saying something that was true, but it wasn’t. Another possibility is that Dr. Brown said something
like
that but you didn’t quite hear it right, because sometimes it’s hard for kids to understand what adults say. Another possibility is that Dr. Brown was answering some very specific question your mother asked and for that specific thing, it was best not to talk about it more, or for that specific period in time it was best not to talk about it more, but Dr. Brown didn’t mean forever. Or another possibility is simply that Dr. Brown and I do things differently, that we will arrive at the same point eventually but we have different ideas of how to get there. And because you are working with me now, we will go my way, because I know it best. And my way says that that is untrue. Talking about what happened will not hurt you. And it is an important part of getting well.”

Cassandra grimaced.

“It’s also important for me to say here that I’m never going to
make
you talk about these things,” I said. “I’ve told you this before, but it is worth reminding you of it. If at any time any of this is too scary or too hard, all you have to say to me is ‘Stop’ and we’ll stop. We’ll do something else for a while, until you feel more ready. I promise that. But simply talking about your abduction, talking about how it happened, what happened, who was involved, all those things—they
are
important to talk about. Know why?”

“Unh-unh,” she said and shook her head.

“Because then they aren’t secret anymore. Then you will not have to keep a Troubled Place inside you to hide all these things in.

“Our minds are kind of funny things. When something really big happens to us, it tends to stay really big in our minds and won’t become a proper memory unless we talk about it. Our minds, on their own, don’t seem to be able to get big events sorted out enough to squish them down into a size to fit with our other memories. We need to talk about it. Talking helps our minds to organize what happened—helps us understand how it occurred and how we felt and what we did. Sort of like you have a big laundry basket full of clean washing, sitting in the middle of your bedroom floor. It takes up lots of room. You see it every time you come in your room and maybe you’ll trip over it, if you aren’t watching out. But if you organize it—fold all the towels, roll up the socks—then you can put everything away neatly. Talking does that for our thoughts. It lets us put away things that have happened to us, so that they aren’t in the way every time we are thinking.

“This isn’t just true of bad things. It’s true for anything big, even really good things. If you won a million dollars, for example, the first thing you’d want to do is tell everyone, wouldn’t you? You’d want to talk about it and relive it and remember every little detail until you got used to the idea of yourself as someone who won a great prize. It’s the same way if something bad happens. If, for example, you have a bad fall from your bike. You want to tell people about it, don’t you? You want to tell them what it felt like, where you were hurt, exactly how the accident happened. That’s how we cope with big things. We talk about them until our mind gets organized about what happened. Then they’re not such a big deal anymore. Finally they start to feel more like ordinary memories and we can stop thinking about them all the time. We don’t forget them. We never forget that we won that prize or we fell off our bike, but they’ve become just ordinary memories. They stop taking up all our thinking, just like the clothes in the laundry basket stop taking up all the space on our bedroom floor once the clothes are put away in the drawers. Then we can get on with what’s happening now in our lives and not worry any more about it.

“But just the opposite happens if we have to keep something big a secret. First of all, we have to create a special place in our heads to keep it, and this is what the Troubled Place is. The Troubled Place is chock-full of stuff you can’t tell. Usually this is bad stuff. Scary stuff. And you have to do a special kind of trick with your mind to get the door shut on a Troubled Place so that all this bad, scary stuff doesn’t slip out into all your other thoughts. You have to lock it up really tight, so even you can’t get in there very easily. If you don’t, then you don’t have any room in your mind for other thinking.

“When you first do it, first create a Troubled Place and manage to get it locked up, it’s easy to think you’ve made it go away. But, in fact, this is the weird thing about Troubled Places. Just the opposite is true. A Troubled Place works just like a freezer does. Everything you put in there, it keeps really fresh, like it’s just happened. So if you accidentally crack open the door on the Troubled Place and look at anything that’s in there, that thing will hurt horribly all over again.”

Cassandra had lain back on the pillows as I was talking. She was no longer looking at me, and she didn’t speak.

“If you heard Dr. Brown say no one must talk to you about what happened, that must have been scary for you. I think if I’d heard someone say that, I would have felt what happened to me must be so awful that even the grown-ups around me were scared of it,” I said. “I’d be really frightened then because I’d think I needed to really keep my Troubled Place locked up tight. I mean, what would happen if I didn’t? What if it got out? What if I
did
say something, even accidentally, and it did lots of damage?”

Tears had formed in the corners of Cassandra’s eyes. She was on her back on the pillows and the tears escaped, one running down either side of her temples.

I looked over at her.

Very briefly she glanced at me, then looked away. She nodded.

“If someone said that, I think it would just be putting words to what I already felt—that I must be a bad person because this happened to me, that things like this don’t happen to good people and I’m dirty and dangerous to know because of it.”

Again she nodded.

Silence then.

I didn’t speak again. The music playing on the tape was Mahler’s Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony, in my opinion a nondescript piece of music, the kind meant to be background music in a bookstore or in humdrum parts of films that is so subtle you never realize it’s there. Now I listened to it carefully.

Cassandra looked at me when I didn’t speak, her expression searching.

“I was waiting a moment there,” I said, “because I wanted you to have the chance to think about what I just said, before I want to add something else to it. This is very important, so I wanted to wait until all your thoughts were focused on this. And here’s what I want to say to you, Cassandra.” I looked over at her. “That isn’t true, what I just said about your being a bad person or a dirty person or a dangerous person to know because of what happened to you. I know it
feels
true, but feelings often aren’t very accurate things. It’s easy to fool our feelings, so it’s important to learn not to pay too much attention to what they tell you, because lots of times, they’re wrong.

“What happened to you is simply something that happened. It didn’t happen because you are a bad person. It didn’t make you a bad person because it happened. It just happened. And now it’s time for it to be over. It’s time to open up the door on the Troubled Place and clean all that junk out. Not to throw it away, because those are part of your memories, part of what makes you ‘you.’ But it’s time to make them ordinary. To talk about them until you understand how you felt, what you did, what other people did. To talk about them until there aren’t any secrets left in your Troubled Place to stay fresh and scary, to talk until you’re bored with them. That will turn them into just ordinary memories, like all the rest of the memories of your life.”

T
he thing is,” Cassandra said, “I don’t really remember what happened.”

She was lying back on the pillows. I had the overhead lights off, so we were in soft daylight darkness. We had done deep-breathing exercises to relax. I started the music cassette over again.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Mostly we’ll just talk about little parts of it. Sometimes, I will say, ‘Tell me one memory,’ and it can be anything you want. Other days, I will say, ‘What do you remember about this specific thing?’ Some days you might remember something yourself that you want to tell. And that will be just a part of our time together. There will be other things we’ll do as well.”

“Like that feelings thing with the poker chips,” Cassandra said.

“Yes, like that.”

“Good,” she said, “because I like doing that. And maybe other things, too, huh? Like maybe we’ll play some games? Dr. Brown did that with me. She played checkers with me lots of times.”

“Except that it’s important to remember I’m not Dr. Brown,” I said.

“Yes, I know.”

“And that we are here to work.”

“Yes, I know.”

Silence then. I listened into it, hearing beyond the soft music the everyday noises of the hospital.

Oddly, what I was reminded of, as we lay there on the pillows on the floor of the therapy room, was camping. I’d often taken the children in my special ed classes camping and there’d always been those moments, lying on our backs under the stars. There was the same ambiance now in the pale gloom.

“But for today, I’m going to ask you to tell me the story of your abduction,” I said. “This is the only time I’m going to ask you outright to tell me the whole story. Other times we’ll just talk about parts of it. And it’s okay if you don’t remember all of it. But I want to know how you remember it happening.”

Cassandra didn’t respond. We had the pillows out quite flat, so that we were lying almost prone on the floor. She was at an angle to me, and not that close physically. Our heads were, but that was all.

I heard her draw in a deep breath. She held it, then let it out slowly. Still she didn’t speak. I listened to the music. I didn’t actually recognize what was playing. Schubert, I think, but I couldn’t be sure.

Cassandra brought her hand up and held it with the lower part of her thumb against her lips. After a few moments, she slipped her thumb in her mouth. I’d not previously seen her suck her thumb, but she did then, the sound very soft against the music. Still she didn’t speak.

“What do you remember?” I said in little more than a whisper.

“I was at the school. We were doing finger painting. I remember that. I did this picture with blue finger paint and went around and around and around, and this kid next to me had red on his paper. I wanted another color. I wanted red. So when the teacher came around with the red pot, I said, ‘Could I have some?’ and she put this splodge on my paper and it made it go purple. I was just little. I didn’t know red and blue make purple and I thought that was so cool. And I lifted it up to show the teacher and a bunch of paint dropped off. I remember that. I remember it falling onto my painting shirt and on the table and I got upset. I’d wanted to show the painting to my mom …”