She Used to Be Mine
She Used to be Mine
My hand stopped mid-stroke as she told me. Time slowed and took on the surreal quality of dreams. This beautiful child, my favorite if I were honest, was defiled and damaged now. For twenty-three years I spent all of my effort and love to keep her from this; she threw it away. Disappointment and rage stuck in the back of my throat and I could feel hysteria trying to edge in.
“No, Jenny. Don’t even bother. They won’t believe you… My god! I told you this would happen! How could you be so damn stupid?” Even as the words tumbled past my lips I wished I could retrieve them. She looked up at me, her green eyes broken and raw, unfolded her coltish legs and ran from my arms and the house where I raised her. Twenty-three years of reaching for perfection shattered. I had failed.
When Jenny was a tiny infant I sometimes had irrational fears about her safety. When at the top of the stairs, with her sleeping in my arms, I would suddenly see us at the bottom, twisted, her body smashed and bleeding with sightless eyes of accusation. It got to the point that I would often have Ray carry her down; I feared my gracelessness.
She was always so beautiful to me; even more than Darla, my firstborn. From the moment I set eyes on her I understood what everyone had always said about having children— nothing could have been more perfect than her tiny chin or impossibly huge eyes. Darla was always Ray’s; Jenny was mine. Raising Jenny made me whole, a better person, and healed. Understanding her helped me understand myself and therefore others. She gave me what psychology never had achieved.
At twenty-five I saw a therapist for nine months or so. I’d sit in her office, once a week, trying to understand what happened to me and my baby sister, Clara. Sometimes I would talk about “when I have kids” and she always questioned the wisdom of the idea— did I really think I could parent, and what if my problems were genetic? I spent many hours, every time she mentioned her doubts, wondering how I should feel about her questioning. I devised and implemented a plan to circumvent the possibility of my failure at motherhood. I found a better half.
Jenny ran out into the early morning darkness and I sat staring on the sofa until it was time for Ray to get up and take his coffee. I mindlessly picked at the terrycloth fabric of my robe and wished I could direct a retake of that scene. The sunrise was vaguely beautiful as I scripted what I should have said and damned myself for being so foolish. As I slipped into the kitchen, I wondered if she would ever forgive me and if there was anything I could say to make it better. I drank my second cup and realized that nothing would ever make this okay; my betrayal of her was unforgivable and irreparable. I poured my third cup and heard Ray stirring in the bedroom. It was time to get on with my day.
Before Ray, I took a two-year break from dating. By my 25th birthday I’d fallen in love with all manner of awful men. My first boyfriend was thirteen to my eleven, fondled my flat chest with his clumsy fingers, and ignored me whenever we were not alone. It was he who I allowed to, in the dim mustiness of our never-quite-dry basement; take my “virginity” on a snow day. After him were maybe a hundred men who have, by now, faded into a nameless and faceless puddle. Some of them loved me because I was damaged and fragile; some of them used and beat me shamelessly; some of them shared my body with anyone who wanted to taste it.
As my body began to show evidence of my fruitfulness, with Darla, my mind constantly returned to the words of that therapist. I spent hours at the park observing the small interactions of good mothers and their happy children. From them I learned the importance of stroking a little girl’s hair as you comfort them with hugs and murmured encouragements. From books I learned everything else—I poured over each new parenting book until I knew, for sure, what it would take to raise whole children.
It wasn’t, you see, that I was careless about who used my body in the promiscuous years. I made a conscious choice, with every friend, lover, and stranger who spread my legs and pierced me, to share myself with them. Then, I thought that my only power was in choosing who would have me; I reveled in that power because my daddy never let me choose with him or his friends. I knew, even when I was sick and self-destructive, that it was the vanished nights, also in our never-quite-dry basement, that had broken me and stolen my soul away. It wasn’t until he died, and I was a woman, that I was brave enough to talk to anyone about everything that happened.
I knew Ray was perfect from the first time I met him. He spoke to me in kind tones and dreamed beautiful dreams that had no conception of the darkness I’ve lived. He was everything I am not, everything my father was not, and more than I even dreamed he could be. We fell in love quickly; me with his stability, kindness and compassion and he with my mercurial nature and sarcastic colorfulness. By the time we had sex I felt virginal. It had been three years of celibacy for me and he touched my body as if I were just as innocent as he.
A week after Jenny ran out I asked Darla to call her for me. “I’m really busy mom… You shouldn’t worry so much about Jenny.” I sometimes feel bad about the way things have worked out between Darla and me. We have never been close, she’s always been a daddy’s girl, and I think it has been bothering her more as she gets closer to thinking of having babies of her own. I decided that I need to invest more time in Darla once things are patched up between Jenny and me, but I forgot my resolve as soon as I walked away from the telephone.
When we found out that Darla was a girl I cried awful tears of fear and disappointment. Ray took them for joyful droplets and danced with me in the doctor’s office. I was terrified that my damaged self would ruin her; that my fragmented personality would leach into hers. I was frightened I would shape her in my own image.
But my fears never materialized with Darla or with Jenny. I watched them grow, my beautiful flowers, with confidence and grace. Somehow, I found reserves of purity and humanity and became one of the good mothers from the park.
I woke up before dawn to have my coffee and bake biscuits or scones for their nourishment. I packed their lunches, everyday, before school and never forgot to cut off the crusts or include foods from every group. I walked them the seven blocks from our house to the schoolyard and even let them pretend to not know me once they were old enough to be embarrassed by my red hair and unfashionable shoes. I baked cookies on the weekend, stayed up all night to stroke their hair when they were sick, sewed their most elaborate Halloween costumes, taught them to drive and to never let boys disrespect them. I thought, now that they were women, that they were safe from my brokenness.
When Jenny showed up, knocking on our bedroom door at four in the morning, I got up without question. Even when they’re grown you can expect them to need mommy’s kisses for their boo-boos sometimes. She cried in my arms, just like she had when her dog died or a boyfriend moved on without her, and I reveled in the silky feel of her chestnut hair under my fingertips.
It might have been hours or minutes that we sat on the couch, me rocking her in my arms as she cried, and I remembered all of the other times we’d shared this ritual. She still smelled fresh and sweet, like rain and cotton candy, and felt warm and childish in my embrace. I thought she would once again tell me of some awful words a friend bestowed, a disappointment, or maybe of her embarrassment for her outrageous costume.
When, instead, she told me of how they’d drunk wine for hours, from the same bottle, and then kissed without abandon on her sofa. When she revealed that he moved from sharing to taking, that he held her down, spread her legs and violated her… It was as if time rewound and it was me, at seven, telling my mom that daddy took me down to the dirty mattress in the basement. She wouldn’t believe that he and his friends would undress me, make me take them in my mouth and tear into me while they drank beer and took pictures. She said my daddy would never do anything like that. She said I must have asked for it and I was a whore.
For twenty-three years I had done everything I could think of to never make my babies feel the way I felt the day I confessed my pain and shame to my mother. Even as the words spilled out, like vomit, I knew I had failed her. I knew that no matter what would happen I could never make it better and never take those awful words back.
When she wouldn’t speak to me for weeks, I feared that she would never forgive me for my awfulness. When she stopped answering her phone, or going to class, I hoped that I’d built her too strong to break from one tragedy, no matter how terrible.
I begged Darla to drive to her apartment with me. I could feel my older child’s resentment at Jenny overshadowing her once more and tried to ignore my irritation at her childish jealousy. Darla didn’t know what had happened; she complained that I was so worried about Jenny while her marriage was breaking up, her husband was cheating on her, and was probably never going to be able to give me grandkids.
The sound of her nagging voice, the whir of the whiney Chevy engine, and the buzz of my fear began to overwhelm me and I screamed at her so I could avoid hysteria. “Just shut up, Darla! Shut up! You have no fucking idea what is going on, Okay? Your sister was raped! She was raped and I fucked up and I said it was her fault! Fuck! I can’t deal with your shit right now!”
“Oh mom… Oh my God…” was all she could say as she turned away from me and stared out of the window. I put it out of my mind; I could think about Darla tomorrow.
My heart was racing as I parked the car across from her building. Each step on the way to her ground floor apartment was both a hurdle keeping me from her and a reprieve from my fear. She didn’t answer. I unlocked her door and knew all was lost as soon as I pushed it open.
My mother left us when I was twelve years old. I spent the next year trying to not be seen and then the six after that trying to entice my father away from Clara. Eventually I realized that there was nothing I could do to help her, I was dying in my failure to protect her, and I left. She came to live with me when she turned sixteen; I was twenty-one at that time. Clara lived with me for nine months before she gave up. I came home from a weekend road-trip to Chicago and opened our door to that same smell.
As I walked down the hallway I could hear Darla on her cell phone to 911 and the water running in the bathroom. The carpet outside of the bath was dark and wet and I thought it must smell like the never-quite-dry basement of my childhood, even though I couldn’t smell it through the sticky and foul smell of dead things.
My beautiful Jenny was face-up in the bathtub; she wasn’t beautiful anymore. It looked like the water had soaked right into her pores and puffed her up like rising bread dough. Her slender body was purple and mottled and it occurred to me that she had never looked like Clara before that moment.
I grabbed onto her but she was too heavy and slippery to pull out of the tub. Darla came in and led me into the darkness of the living room to wait. She held me in that lonely living room, whispered small words of love, and stroked my hair as I cried.