Every night, Girl wrote diary entries on little scraps of paper, then tucked them inside her student planner. She wrote practical things, like lists of people she could stay with—ranked by feasibility—and entries filled with self-doubt, like on the night she left:
“It’s hard to believe I’m a runaway. I think that sounds so serious, but I guess that’s what I am, technically. I wonder if I’m just making something out of nothing. Am I overreacting? I always thought runaways were either awful or came from awful families. I wonder if I’m all wrong. I am scared that they’re right. Tomorrow things will be clearer. I need my toothbrush.” And, on another day, “I don’t wanna ever go back. Maybe I’m sick, but I’m enjoying this. Well, maybe not enjoying, per se, but I’m comfortable within myself. I am still sort of scared that this is wrong and that I’m overreacting. I know that there are a lot of worse cases. I don’t know anymore. Now I just almost hate Stepmother–especially for afterward saying that I could wake her up if I needed to.
1. I am not crazy.
2. If I had stayed there Saturday I would have gone crazy.
I sort of feel lost and scared. I feel as though there is no going back. I miss my mother holding me but I can’t be a part of her sickness.”
Mostly, though, when she was all alone in the night, she wrote about how terribly she missed her mother. Some nights she cried. She tucked her diary scraps of paper into her calendar and didn’t show them to anyone. It was the only time in her life that she kept a daily diary, and she wasn’t sure why she did it.
She remembered once when she was so sad that she thought she would break apart, back in junior year. She just cried all the time and Stepmother thought it was hormones and she said with a voice full of fear, “Judy, I think Girl’s depressed!” And Girl only cried harder because she did not want to be defective, she didn’t want to be like Stepmother. And she remembered how Stepmother and Mother took her out of school for a few days and they all went down to the little cabin in the woods with a round, wooden bathtub that was too big for the hot water heater and Mother heated water on the stove so Girl could have a bath in that big, glorious bathtub. And she remembered the way Mother looked with her closed-lip smile, her eyes crinkling behind her glasses that looked just like Girl’s, and how she used to sit on her mother’s lap and push and pull on her mother’s lips—it was a game Mother used to play with her own mother. The goal was to make the lips line up right, except Mother would always exaggerate her movements so it was impossible, and Girl would get scared that Mother’s face would never go back to normal ever again. Mostly she remembered the feel of her mother around her, holding her when she cried, like sinking into a warm bowl of pudding, soft and safe and where the hole in Girl’s chest was finally filled up.
When Girl first left home, she had called the Center for Youth Services, an outreach program for runaway teens. They had free family counseling, but after the first session, her mother showed up alone.
“Stepmother cannot—and I mean cannot—keep reopening old wounds. She was up crying all night. She is bipolar, and it is too hard on her,” Mother told the counselor and Girl.
“She hit me in the face, Mother,” Girl said.
“I choose to believe that you are lying,” Mother replied. “And if I have to choose one of you, I choose her. You will be going off to college and starting your own life next year. If I chose you I’d be alone.”
“If you left her I would stay with you forever,” Girl said, wanting that more than anything. Choose to believe, Girl repeated in her head, wondering if Mother meant that as intentionally as it sounded. She didn’t say I think or even I believe Stepmother. Was she really actively choosing to believe?
“You think that, but you are growing up. Stepmother will never leave me. I have to think of my own life.”
That was the end of counseling. What was interesting, though, was that Stepmother never accused Girl of lying. She never said the slapping hadn’t happened, only that she was justified in her actions. Mother was the one who decided to relegate the story to something all in Girl’s head. And Mother never asked Girl to come back home.
Next Girl had to check an equally hard item off her to-do list: get child support from Father. This wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Father wouldn’t object to the money, Girl knew that. He sent Mother two hundred dollars a month, and he had to send it to wherever Girl lived. When she had lived with Suzy, he sent Suzy’s mom a check without even being asked. The problem was that she had not spoken to him in a year, and she’d have to sell herself out to get that check. Worse yet, because she was staying with friends, she’d have to call him collect.
“Hi, Dad,” she started, her heart racing, her hands clammy on the white phone.
“Girl,” he answered.
“I wanted to say that I’m sorry I lied about you sexually abusing me.” Girl figured her heart might explode if she didn’t get right to the point.
“That makes me happy to hear. It was the worst possible thing you ever could have said about me,” he replied. Girl fought back rage—now wasn’t the time to discuss the meaning of the term covert sexual abuse or talk about
