Unit 8Section 4 Exercise 14Abuse & Neglect Impact on Self and Others

The following is an account of a relationship between a young adolescent and her adoptive parents. It speaks volumes about the layers laid down by abuse and how these embed new relationships into the fabric of the old.

“Snow Upon My Heart” by Susan Bavaria


The doorbell jolts us awake at 2:30 a.m. I jump up foggy with sleep and lift the shade a few inches. Lights beam on the street, but the dogwoods block a complete view. Stuffing my arms into the sleeves of a robe, I rush down the hallway and open the door.

“Is this your daughter?” a police officer asks, authority emanating from crisp navy serge, thick holster, retina-jarring chrome. Lee stands behind him with a bored blank look.

“Yes,” I say, confused: she’d said “goodnight” and closed her bedroom door hours ago.

“We found her walking down the street with a boy. Another officer is taking him home right now. They broke curfew.” Lee sidles in past the policeman and stands next to me.

“Just go to your room,” I mumble.

“They weren’t doing anything wrong,” the officer says. “No vandalism or anything like that.” He tries to reassure me; no malicious mischief overshadows their tryst. By his tone, my daughter is low on the bad teenager continuum.

“This must be a full moon or something,” he continues. “We found some other kids (obviously higher up on the continuum) driving a car over the grass and flower beds.” His spiel hit stride. “I told your daughter it’s dangerous to be out. People look for opportunities. If a carload of guys decides to do something, her boyfriend can’t protect her. I think she understands.” The policeman, accustomed to obedience, stands assured. I know better. At thirteen, my daughter wears the invisible arrogance of a teenager like her favorite jacket.

“I’m supposed to take curfew violators to the recreation center, but that would be a hassle for you,” he says, “so I just brought her back home.”

I thank the officer and close the door, walk back to the bedroom and exchange looks with my husband. A summer of weariness hangs between us silently, suspended on frayed nerves. A hidden, parallel existence, of which we are unaware and obviously not in control, is going on within our home. How much more did we miss?

Lee bounds into the bedroom and flings herself on the bed. No apology, no excuses.

“So, what’s my consequence?”

“Lee, just go to bed,” we say.

It is three days before my fiftieth birthday, a milestone I have neither energy nor desire to celebrate. Our lives center around controlling Lee, and our authority is fast slipping away, spiraling down into the dark like a twisted iron staircase in an inverted lighthouse. This is parenting from Middle Earth, over primeval terrain, both awful and unpredictable. A dragon lurks here.

Living with Lee is lonely and depressing. Her darkness draws us into a journey that we cannot share and are ashamed to tell. No one has a context for understanding our experience unless trained in the psychology of abuse.

Before we adopted Lee, we applauded the placement of a Wednesday’s Child in the arms of a new family, playing and laughing with balloons and toys, happily hyped up for the TV cameras. The story made you believe it was the last chapter, the ‘happily ever after’ part. Few know the truth about these kids; they are forgotten landmines buried in the soil.

The professionals sympathize. They know how bad it has become and why. After rounds of psychotherapy and testing, her therapist summons reinforcements for medication and further evaluation. Consideration should be given to placing Lee outside the home. At this time, she appears to be so entrenched in her determination to oppose and defy her parents that her behavior is likely to continue escalating. Her diagnosis? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Major Depression, possible Bipolar Disorder. She begins medication, going through Zoloft, Lithium, and now Welbutrin.

It feels as if George and I are in a hellish version of some wacky game show from the Fifties. Cheerful couples performing manic stunts that involve whipped cream or broken dishes.

Our first contestants are from Colorado, Bob, and we have a very special stunt for them today.
We ease on stage, nervous and smiling.
They are going to build a healthy child from this damaged set of parts.
“Really? Wow!!” says Bob.
Yes, and then they’re going to propel her through two developmental stages plus her teenage years!!

“Can’t wait to see that!” Enthusiastic Bob nods to the audience.
Yep, this will be some stunt!
Might even boost their ratings.
Are you ready folks?
We clear the initial hurdles from grade school to summer camp, lulled by a feeling of normalcy – the “big bear hugs” she loves that squeeze her breath away, her hand-sewn pillows that read I love you Mom and Dad in magic marker.
We miss the early warning signs – quick temper, disrupted friendships – not realizing these liabilities will grow along with Lee. When hormones and adolescence collide, it’s like sodium cyanide dropped into a bucket of acid.
The buzzer sounds.
Time’s up! Oh, and I am sorry. You’ve been such good sports. Bob, tell ‘em about the nice gift they’ll get for playing the game.

I live with guilt. Adopting Lee was my idea. George took an early retirement when Lee was nine. Quiet and reserved, he made sandwiches with just the right amount of mayonnaise and coached her fifth grade girls’ basketball team to a league championship, winning the respect and admiration of all the parents. He drove the car line with the Moms, transported kids to the planetarium, and let kindergarten girls turn him from frog to prince during playground duty.

George offers his heart to Lee countless times from the deep waters that flow for the ones he loves. He is the at-home parent, scrambling to account for every one of her unscheduled moments, a burden that only relents when school starts and frees him from round-the-clock guard duty. My work is respite, a place to go away from the stress of home, beyond the realm of damaged daughter, where the rules of engagement are civilized and courteous.

When George reaches overload, I ship him to my sister’s house in the mountains for a weekend. He calls me refreshed, the thought of coming home depressing. I know this feeling – pulling into the driveway full of dread, just knowing that Lee is in the house.

She plays out her pathology like a performance artist, stalking the stage, eyes flashing, body bristling, hacking at the emotions with a machete. She spins her abuse and loss into a finely tuned rage. George and I sit in front row seats, unwitting characters forced to perform humiliating and degrading roles. Like performance art, this is extreme and shocking, a highly unconventional family tableau as disturbing as crucifixes in urine or chocolate-smeared bodies. We cannot leave the building; there is no intermission.
It troubles me to think that Lee is one of the lucky few, adopted by a family with resources, a battery of highly qualified and motivated professionals working with her. I think of the many adults who have “graduated” from the foster care system now sharing the city with me. What might they do with their stockpile of suppressed rage?

Sometimes I grab my journal and stand outside the door when she is shouting at George, so I can catch her words. Her barrage is relentless and inexhaustible, her verbal skills sharp. Can I unravel the meaning of these caustic words and discover what possesses her? Discover how to reach her? I hope she someday channels this ability into something positive, finds a worthy cause to defend, joins the debate team, or becomes a prosecutor.

“Dickhead, imbecile,” she calls him. George stands center stage, jeered at and scorned like some tawdry carnival stooge. Caught in her web, the rejection and insults paralyze him like a slow-acting neurotoxin. I watch him pull his damaged soul into an interior as secret as a Chinese puzzle box.
I look for evidence of Lee’s tender heart buried under the scales of her dragon skin. I miss the child who wove hearts from paper strips, painted rocks with smiley faces and sculpted a clay mother bird with two babies in a nest for my Mother’s Day present.

I cherish these items from a child’s longing heart, especially her first homemade Christmas gift. She was so excited the day she brought it home for Christmas vacation that she laid it unwrapped under the tree. It was a high gloss green cardboard gift box. On the top, hand-written in black ink in a first grader’s printing were the words Alligator Jewelry Box (she likely asker her father how to spell it).

“Don’t you want to look at your present, Mom?” she said.

“No, not yet, I like to be surprised,” I said.

Two rows of zigzag teeth cut from lined notebook filler paper were Scotch-taped along each side of the lid with one paper nose and two paper eyes taped on top. Two pointy, inverted V’s cut out of the lid popped up like German Shepherd ears – a working-breed alligator. He served his job well for almost eight years, a repository for dangly bone and feather earrings from my hippie days, African trade beads on cords of straw, and Mexican silver earrings with broken backs saved for ‘future use after repair’.

It is bittersweet to throw away this treasure from a happier time that has become so dilapidated and stained. I memorialize him in my journal, noting each aspect of his tattered self. A lid almost flat since three of four corners have given way, only one eye left, loose teeth, his green skin cracked and torn. He carries the battle scars of domestic life – a permanent oil mark from a dust cloth tossed carelessly on his snout, a coffee cup stain between his ears. I fling my beloved box into the trashcan with the solemnity of a burial at sea, knowing that I will never have that box or that daughter again.

At the end of a long week we savor the Friday ritual, our first stop on the road to weekend decompression. Soft, over-washed sweats, the “big as your head” calzone and salad from I Love New York Pizzeria, Chardonnay for me, vodka for George, jazz, conversation, and Lee stretched out on the floor in front of the TV.

Fridays reverberate with ominous warning. Vitriol has dissipated during the week at school but enough remains to inflict injury. Anything sets her off – a small disappointment, a change in plans, a simple reminder, “Please put the phone back when you are finished with it.” The eventual detonation.
This time, she flips over the coffee table. Paper, notes, and junk mail flutter to the floor, the table’s four legs pointing to the ceiling like a turtle stuck. We sit, frozen: George with his newspaper open to the Sports section, I clutching a dishtowel, watching from the kitchen. Another storm to weather, this one over phone use. Fifteen minutes later finds us in our bedroom, Lee holding three phones in her arms, backed into a corner by George; I twisting cords out of her hand.

“If you don’t calm down,” George says with restraint, in a voice louder than usual, “we’re going to call Children’s Hospital.”

Lee, close to tears, a tinge of self-control seeping through, grabs a phone, runs to her bathroom and slams the door. Another pitiful melodrama in a play with too many acts. George and I sit silent, catatonic. She is disturbed. So are we. Our marriage relationship thrown in the crucible – fired again.

The weekend unfurls. Saturday, she returns triumphant and surly, her mood warmed by shopping, a new silver satin bra from Victoria’s Secret. She loves lingerie; it satisfies something beyond covering private parts. A part of me admires this trait; I treat myself with Hanes three-in-a-pack cotton briefs.

“Your water bottle is on the counter,” I say, setting myself up.

“Screw you,” says dragon.

“We talk courteously in this house,” I state with flimsy authority.

She naps. It is a gift to have a quiet house. Barely distinguishable house noises. Thrums, whooshes, and the occasional soft click of dog paws on hardwood, looking for fresh scent of alpha humans. I hope for a miracle. I always hope, inevitably seduced by her sweetness when she wants something – misreading her actions as sincere, eager to have a daughter again. She comes in and hugs me one time because a friend tells her to “be nice to your parents.”

“It doesn’t feel right,” she says afterwards and walks away.

The dragon awakes. I tense. She walks the dog, seeking testosterone. Can you have sex in twenty minutes? We do not trust her seething emotions. Dragon returns, walks to room, and closes door. Caretaker prepares dinner.

“You smell,” she announces the following weekend, then proceeds to ask me for a ride to the mall. I know this isn’t about body odor, but I check off the logical culprits. Breath? Underarms? Hair? Crotch? I do push Saturday activity beyond the appropriate hygienic limit – walk the dog three miles, garden, run to the store for onions and nectarines – but I start clean.

“Do I?” feigning innocence, inured to her rudeness. I truly don’t care, nor do I smell; but she needs to slather more verbal mortar on the wall she keeps between us. I have few moments of pleasure at this point and am firm about maintaining control over my bath: smelly chauffeur or no ride at all.

I sit enveloped in teen scents while all windows remain shut lest a strand of hair march outside the precise tempo set by the rest. I return home and draw a bath with the hottest water possible; it makes me exhale “sssssss” in a very big sigh. It feels so good to inch my way in, red skin below water, pale nude above. From the tub below, I flick a towel from the wall hook with a well-calculated snatch so it falls to the floor. I pick it up, dry my hands, and leave it on the floor for easy access. Then I grab my book and read it while I sink into the water.

On Valentine’s Day, I hit my daughter. I’m surprised at what’s inside of me; it sparks an unknown language from a deeper place. What else dwells there? The scene begins when I shove a Styrofoam take-home box with two chicken fingers in her face and scream, “Stay away from me; I’m tired of your shit.” I, the communications professional, who challenge my daughter’s vocabulary with words like déclassé and arcane, cannot, in this moment of exhausted frustration, find a more incisive word than shit. I revel in the baseness of it, the surge of power stemming from expletive, the physical shoving. I have not felt power in so long. I am a prisoner freed from the cell rushing into a barbwire compound to stomp around in the muck.
She gets angry because the edge of the box grazes her face. She grabs a knife out of the rack. I am unfazed; it is a line she never crosses. I stand still, calm. She reaches up and slaps me softly for the first time in eight years, and I reach up and slap her not so softly. She goes to her room.

“My Mom bitch-slapped me,” she tells friends, wearing my violence like an honor roll ribbon.

“You probably deserved it,” they say.

I haven’t abused her, or have I? Just one slap. She feels comfortable living at this level of intensity, reaching into the warped chaos of her early family pathology and bringing it home to roost like a pet rattlesnake. If we try to ignore her, she disrupts us, storming into our room at 10:00 p.m. and jumping on the bed while we try to read.

The next day, she plays the piano like a demon, obsessed by several bars of Melody in F that will not go just right. The piano that sits untouched for weeks is now pummeled by determined hands. For one and one-half hours she does not yield to the measures that challenge. I sit perfectly still, lest I appear inattentive, which incurs a rebuke, or, God forbid, read while I listen. Lee gets up finally and sits down in a chair. She looks at me with quiet resignation; it almost gives me hope.

“I have a tear and a flame inside of me,” she says. “Sometimes I want to cry, and sometimes I want to explode. I don’t know what is wrong with me.”

The principal summons us to school because Lee has insulted the religion teacher, laughing at a video that the eighth grade class watches in preparation for receiving the sacrament of Confirmation, which inspires one to face the rack in order to defend the faith. Lee says she doesn’t want to be confirmed with the rest of the eighth grade class.

“God hates me,” Lee tells us. “Besides, I don’t believe in God anyway.”

“If you were in a foxhole during the war,” says the principal, “you might feel different.”

The principal asks her to leave the room. He tells us of another child with such anger. She committed suicide. He worries. We share our story, but not all of it. Not the part about when she locked her father out of the house and he walked across the street, rang the doorbell and cried with our neighbor, a juvenile court judge. Or when she pulled a knife out of the holder and flaunted it casually as she stroked the family dog. Her behavior was so bizarre it scared me, even though I knew she wouldn’t hurt our beloved pet. Or when I prayed the Our Father over and over in her room one night because tired, frustrated, and held hostage in a chair by her incessant harangue, I needed a mantra to take me away. The prayer finally broke through; she placed her face one-inch from mine and said, “Now you know how I feel,” then climbed onto my lap to be held like a small child.

We tell neither the principal nor the nun she offended that we live in a war zone with no DMZ. All is battlefield.

“Mom, will you come sleep with me?”

She wakes me at 11:45 p.m. because a noise at the window spooks her. I sleep in her bed, overwhelmed with sadness that I will not be able to comfort her when it goes away. She doesn’t know yet that she’s going into residential treatment. We agree with the professionals; it’s the only option. Therapy and antidepressants are a gossamer chain restraining a lion. George and I fear for her safety and possibly ours.

I watch a lone daffodil come up on March 15th. It joins the errant grass, phlox, and other neglected perennials that find my garden a grand place in which to frolic unrestricted. Snow and sleet fall all day, bending my yellow sentry to an acute angle like a Nordic skier flying through the air with nose to ski tips. I don’t even go outside to bump off the snow. It is sassy enough to taunt the elements; rebound or perish.
Snow melts. Freed from the weight, the daffodil springs back up erect for eleven more days. I’m sure if I go to examine the petals, they will be frazzled at the edges.

The daffodil does not have a tidy life. As the season mellows, it will appear defeated, with unsightly foliage, its leaves yellowed and flattened. I am not deceived. I know there is life within those withered stalks, traveling back down to the bulb, where it will build up enough strength to flower again next year.

Study Questions

1. This story demonstrates a mother’s extreme frustration with a difficult and unstable child and forces the reader to ask, what defines abuse? Does the author of this story abuse her daughter? Verbally? Physically? Who is the victim in the story—mother or daughter, or both? Who is to blame?

2. What does this story say about the way in which a history of abuse implants itself in the affected individual? What is the temporal course?

3. What factors do you think may have contributed to Lee’s defiant behavior and her many diagnoses (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Major Depression, possible Bipolar Disorder)?

4. Why is Lee’s sentence, “Now you know how I feel” so important to this story?