I felt horribly rejected. Was I too disturbed, too crazy for Yvonne? What did she think of me? Was this going to make it so I couldn’t continue with the Y Club?
Yvonne referred me to a male psychiatrist who volunteered his time since I couldn’t afford to pay him. He was a tall, thin, pale man, very polite but very formal.
At my first session, he asked me why I thought I was there. I didn’t have any trouble opening up with him. I told him about what Steve did to me. I told him about what Harvey did. I told him about my mother, how critical she was and how her drinking was getting worse and how much I hated her for it.
I went to the psychiatrist for several sessions. I liked talking to him but I wished he would say something back to me. I wished he’d tell me he was sorry all those things had happened to me. I wished he’d tell me what I could do about all the bad feelings I was having—all the shame and anger and sadness. But he never said anything. I wondered sometimes if he was really listening.
One day, when I walked into his office and sat across from his desk, he said, “This is going to be your last visit with me. You are a very smart girl and you seem to understand your problems very well. In fact, you seem quite well adjusted for someone who has experienced all that you have. I think you have a bright future ahead. You don’t need to be ruled by your past.”
I was stunned. I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad. I’d liked coming to talk to him. It helped me to feel less alone. It felt good to have someone who would listen to my problems, even if he didn’t offer any suggestions for how to solve them. Now I felt rejected—for a second time. First by Yvonne and now by this therapist. On the other hand, I also felt like he’d given me a compliment, and I was relieved to hear that he thought I didn’t need any further help. I was okay. I was “well adjusted.” I didn’t have to let my past ruin my future.
chapter 33
The fact that I’d become more popular at school and started going to the Y seemed to bother my mother. She suddenly started telling me what time to come home and asking me where I was going and with whom. I was completely surprised by this since she hadn’t taken any interest in these things for many years. But even though it was difficult for me to adjust to, I went along with this new turn of events, thinking that perhaps I still needed to prove myself to her. After all, I had put her through hell when I was on Janice Drive.
It got so that I was lucky to get out of the house before she laid into me about something:
“You just went out last night—you don’t need to go out again tonight.”
“What do you girls do when you go out, anyway?”
“I need my sleep. Be quiet and don’t make a ruckus when you come in.”
“You’d better not be sleeping with boys. All I need is for you to get pregnant!”
I tried to be patient with her but it was difficult. And I tried to understand her but it was all so new—her concern for me, her suddenly setting boundaries when she had seldom done so as I was growing up. And if she was already drunk when she said these things, which was often, I had a hard time seeing her as someone I should respect or listen to. In fact, the more she lost control of her faculties, the more contemptuous I grew toward her.
Who the hell does she think she is, telling me what to do? I’d think to myself. I never said this out loud, but I’m sure I expressed it in the way I looked at and spoke to her.
The fact that I was feeling better than I ever had about myself, that I had more friends and was receiving more positive feedback from others, seemed to rub my mother the wrong way. Thinking about it now, I wonder what my blossoming and my adolescence was bringing up in her. From the little I’d been able to ascertain, my mother had a really good time during her teen years. She was pretty and got a lot of attention from boys. She had a best friend and she seemed to have a lot of fun.
Once, she shared with me about her own adolescence and early twenties, “I was a selfish girl who only thought of myself.” Maybe she was projecting her feelings about herself onto me. After all, adolescents are notoriously self-centered and arrogant, and I was probably no exception.
And yet, I actually had more compassion for my mother at the time than I’d had in years. I appreciated how hard she worked for us, and I tried to make her life easier by cooking and keeping the house clean. I walked nearly a mile each Sunday to the nearest Laundromat to wash and dry our clothes, and I even ironed her work clothes when I ironed mine. And I was considerate of her when I came home from being out with the girls, making sure I didn’t disturb her sleep. So her harshness and sarcasm were puzzling to me, and I couldn’t always keep my contempt from rising to the surface.
Maybe she resented the fact that I was young and had my whole life ahead of me. My leaving the house to go out with my friends seemed to upset her more than my going out on dates. Whenever a boy came to pick me up, she put her “Queen of the World” face on to greet my date. She’d talk to him politely, putting on the charm, smoking her cigarettes in her regal way. Often
