The hospital’s staff cafeteria always had Jell-O with whipped cream on top, which Girl liked, and some sort of meat, which Girl didn’t. Everyone here knew Dad, though, and people would come up to their table and chat with him, so he didn’t notice how little Girl ate. Afterward they went to the closet-like dictation room where Dad dialed a phone and talked into it. Girl wasn’t sure if he was talking to a person or a recording machine, because he never let her listen in. All Girl knew was that she had to wait forever. Forty-five minutes to a child is an eternity, so Girl put her ear to the door to work on her spy skills.
“The man lay on top of her, period, she said he smelled like sour milk, period. It hurt a lot she said, comma, but she didn’t cry, period.” Girl wasn’t supposed to be listening in on her father when he dictated notes, but there was nothing else to do, and Brother was off somewhere doing something Girl was sure was more fun than what she was doing. They were all squished together when they were on the boat, and he needed time alone without his smelly sister. Girl knew which patient her father was talking about in the dictation room. Girl met her earlier in the day when she came in, and she seemed sweet, with reddish hair and freckles. “Note to file, colon, this is the second occurrence of stranger molestation this patient has experienced, period.” Girl walked away. Girl knew the redheaded child wouldn’t want her to hear this—it didn’t seem fair to be listening to something that private, even though Girl didn’t remember her name and would likely never see her again.
Girl found Brother fiddling with an EKG machine. “Dad’s almost done,” Girl said. They ran up the wheelchair ramp and jumped off the top a few times, then went back to the dictation room. Their father turned to the children with sparkling eyes, like he hadn’t a care in the world, and they started walking back to the harbor. They’d sleep on the boat that night and take off first thing tomorrow morning. Girl couldn’t stop thinking about what she overheard and how awful it would be to have a grown man force her body to open beneath him. It must have hurt. Girl didn’t know how her father could distance himself from his work and smile and laugh when Girl couldn’t escape the overheard words circling inside her head. Attachment disorder, she would later learn, was a valuable condition for a doctor to have.
1. Lyrics to Tom Lehrer’s “Be Prepared” from the album Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953).
thanksgiving road trip
Every Thanksgiving they drove eleven hours to Stepmother’s parents’ house in West Virginia—four people and one dog stuffed into a small station wagon. No matter where they went, the driving experience was always the same. The children and the dog always shared the back seat, the dog’s tail slapping the face of one child as she tried to lick the other’s face. Eventually they’d push the dog down to the footwell, and one of the siblings would place their hand flat on the seat in the middle. “Put your hand on my hand,” they chanted over and over as they layered their hands one on top of the other. “Put your hand on my hand.” The person on the bottom would slide their hand out and slap the top of the other person’s hand, but not too hard, because the hand that got slapped was owned by the person whose hand was now in the bottom and whose turn it now was to retaliate. Their parents begged the children not to play this game, because it always ended in a midair slap fight, and the children always played it anyway. Girl got carsick when she read in the car, and the drive was long and boring.
Stepmother always drove, and Mother’s job was to read the map. Whenever Stepmother came to a new town or highway intersection, Mother would hold the map six inches from her face, her arms spread wide so the windshield was blocked on the passenger’s side.
“Judy! Judy!” Stepmother would yell. “Where am I supposed to turn? Left, did you say left?” Always loud, always angry. “Seventy-six? Judy, am I supposed to turn onto seventy-six?” She didn’t ever ask politely, or quietly. She treated Mother, the person Girl loved most in the entire world, like she was an idiot, a servant, a child. She yelled and spluttered as Mother tried to read the map and mollify her at the same time.
“I don’t know … I’m looking … I can’t find it … wait … just pull over a minute …”
The silent daughter, the good child that never made any trouble, looked out the window with narrowed eyes. Girl squeezed her arms so tightly that her elbows hurt from trying to keep everything in. Don’t you talk to my mother like that, she imagined saying. She didn’t know why Mother let Stepmother treat her this way. Her fists ached with the desire to punch something. Who was she fooling? Hitting Stepmother would be as useless as trying to scream in dreams.
Stepmother had been adopted by Claude and Libby when she was two. Before that,
