Her only friends were still Brother’s friends. Mother signed Brother up for a drug education class, so Girl went to all his family groups. Really, she was lonely. When Brother was required to attend an AA meeting, Girl followed along, because she knew some high school boys that went, and they were cute. Something happened at that meeting, though. Girl had always felt like she was drowning, but at that meeting, she felt like someone had grabbed her hand and was pulling her out. She asked Mother if she could go to treatment, but Mother said, “Oh, Girl, I need one of you to be a success. I can’t handle both of my children being drug addicts.” So she didn’t go. Three months later, after attending AA meetings several times a week, she asked again. This time, Mother said yes.
diagnosis
They were sitting in a large circle of chairs at family group, everyone quiet and attentive. Ten other troubled teenagers, ten other sets of parents.
“Stepmother has clinical depression,” Mother told the group. “She’s been on medication for six years. For Stepmother, depression comes out as anger.” Stepmother wasn’t there that night. The sound of Mother’s words set off a detonation inside Girl’s chest.
There was something wrong with Stepmother. There was something Girl could point her finger at and say, “See? It wasn’t my fault. See? I was right—she wasn’t normal.” It was like all the Kodak slides of her childhood were dropping into a new carousel. Click-click-click-click. What was wrong with Stepmother wasn’t because Girl was a bad daughter.
Then her anger rolled in—the smoke from the detonation. Why had they not told her sooner? Girl already carried the secret of their sexuality, it wasn’t like they were afraid to burden Girl with things she could not tell her classmates. This new secret might have actually helped. If she had known this growing up, she could have been someone different.
Girl wrote in a pink diary from September 1982 through January 1983. The book had been a gift for her ninth birthday. Girl wrote “Important” on the cover in red ink. She wrote down her pen pal’s address inside the front cover, the back cover, and on a separate page. Girl only wrote seven entries in the diary before she gave up. In those seven entries, only three of them were about more than just the weather.
November 13, 1982
“I am either wacko or strange. Can someone please turn me off? Everyone acts like I am strange. Most everyone hates me. List of friends: Rebekah (D), Gwen (D), Betsy (S), Alisa (D). D= definite. S = sort of.”
October 8, 1983
“Stepmother has been very depressed lately. Sometimes I worry about her.”
January 12, 1984
Girl wrote “WILL” at the top of the page, and divided up her possessions between her friends. “Mom has bank book. Stepmother has silver coin. Avanga [cat] will go to Gretchen. Charlotte [hamster] to whomever.”
She had been a depressed child, occasionally suicidal, raised by a depressed, rage-filled parent, but it hadn’t been her fault. The whole time, Mother had insisted that everything was fine, that Girl and Brother were just difficult, intolerant children, but she knew there was more to it. Mother knew and never gave Girl absolution.
i’m just wild about harry
During February recess her junior year, Girl flew to Alaska to spend a week with Father. On the way back, she almost joined the Hare Krishnas. The man selling copies of the Bhagavad Gita in the Chicago O’Hare airport wore a navy blue beret over his shaved head. Girl didn’t want to buy a book, but she was never good at turning away salespeople, so here she was, standing in the middle of the concourse talking to a stranger about religion. The man, who was not much older than Girl, took off his beret and long wavy hair from a patch at the back of his head fell down to his shoulder blades. Suddenly Girl was willing to leave the airport and attend his meeting. She always had a thing for long hair and shaved heads.
She had to check her flight first. She walked to her gate and saw that she had a two-hour delay, so she returned to the United terminal, but he was gone. Would she have really gone? She didn’t know. At her core, she was responsible, but Girl was certainly looking for something to believe in, and she wanted more than anything to belong to something that felt like family.
But the long-haired, shaved-head man had vanished, so she had to make other plans. The two-hour delay was now a full-on cancellation. Girl waited in line for the gate attendant and rerouted her flight through Buffalo, the next-nearest airport to her parents’ house. She was good at flying alone. The only problem was that she was unable to reach Mother.
That year, Stepmother had bought a cabin in the woods an hour outside of Rochester. For the first few months she went there alone, and not even Mother was allowed to visit. Soon, though, it became their hideaway,
