“Desitin is a topical solution for diaper rash, and pinworm is a parasite. You would have needed mebendazole,” Dr. Rosen said, sounding super doctor-y and looking very Harvard, with his furrowed brow. I longed to dart to someone else’s issues, but the group snared me with its questions. Like why I didn’t tell my parents Desitin didn’t work.
“I thought it was my fault the medicine wasn’t working.” I wasn’t supposed to scratch—they told me not to, but I did. All night long. Plus, who wants to talk about butt worms? Shame, a word I didn’t know at five, had clamped my mouth shut.
“You were already committed to doing things alone by age five,” Dr. Rosen said like it was a big revelation, but it didn’t feel like one. When I had pinworm, I was embarrassed—in Rosen-speak ashamed—about being a dirty girl with worms in my butt, worms that weren’t crawling through my brother’s or my sister’s asses. Worms were proof that my body was defective and disgusting. Dr. Rosen pressed me to describe how it felt to be a little girl alone in a fight with an anal parasite.
I shuddered and squeezed my eyes shut. From a distance of two decades, I could smell the Desitin and feel the infernal itching between my legs. I’d never discussed pinworm with anyone, much less a rapt audience of six.
Without opening my eyes, I told them, unprompted, “I felt shame.”
“Shame’s a cover. What’s underneath?” Dr. Rosen said.
I put my head in my hands and scanned my body for an answer. I lifted the corners of shame to see what lurked beneath. I saw my five-year-old face twisted in horror in my childhood bedroom as I scratched past midnight. Horror that I didn’t know how to ask for help. That eventually I had to visit the pediatrician, a tall, middle-aged man with fat thumbs and a deep voice, and tell him all about my butt. That during reading circle at school I had to wedge the heel of my tennis shoe into my butt crack to ease the itching without anyone noticing. That I was dirty and lived in a body filled with food I couldn’t stop eating and worms that made my butt itch. Most of all, horror that my body was a filthy problem, a problem that no one else had.
“Horror,” I answered.
Dr. Rosen nodded his head in approval. “You’re getting closer.”
“To what?”
“Yourself and your feelings.” He swept his arms around the room. “And of course us.”
“How will this trip down memory lane help me?”
“Look at Patrice and ask her if she can identify.” Patrice looked startled and shook her head like don’t look at me. After a beat, she launched into a story about a medically administered enema that went wrong. Then Rory mentioned her distaste for anal sex, and Marty contributed a story about the intractable constipation he’d suffered as a kid. By the end of group, everyone had shared a butt story.
A few days after this session, I called my parents. My dad and I discussed my car’s sticky brakes, the Aggies’ prospects for the Cotton Bowl, and the unseasonably cool weather in Chicago. Then I pulled a Rosen: out of the blue, I asked him about my pinworm history. What did he remember? (not much) How many times did I get them? (several) Did my siblings ever have them? (no) In the background, I heard my mother’s voice: “Why is Christie asking about pinworm?” I gripped the phone harder. The confession that I’d joined a therapy group gathered in my mouth, but dissolved when I imagined her horror upon realizing that I’d discussed my butt worm history with a group of people. Plus, if I told her about Dr. Rosen and group, I’d have to admit that I’d failed at both willing myself to be happy and not telling other people my business.
“Why are you asking?” my dad said.
“Just curious.”
One Tuesday morning, no one said a word during the entire ninety-minute session. All of us literally sat in silence, listening to the El train lumber below, car brakes screeching, and someone shutting a door down the hall. We didn’t catch each other’s eyes or giggle. During the first half, I plucked lint off my sweater, jangled my leg, and picked my cuticles. I looked at the clock every thirty seconds. The silence made me feel exposed, antsy, and unproductive. I could be reading my Constitutional Law assignment. Gradually, I stilled and watched Lake Michigan out the window. The quiet space we were holding felt as vast as the ocean or outer space. The light streaming in the room seemed holy; the intimacy among us sacred. At nine, Dr. Rosen folded his hands and said his usual “We’ll stop there for today.”
As I walked down the hall with my group members, I carried the quiet calm in my body, though once we reached the street, I shook Carlos’s arm: “What the fuck just happened in there?”
Whatever it was, through the rest of the day, I carried a quiet calm and sense of awe that I could sit with six other people in total silence for ninety minutes.
Dr. Rosen gave a lot of prescriptions, though rarely for drugs. He wasn’t a pill guy. Carlos got a prescription to bring his guitar to group and play a song for us to help allay his fears about expanding his practice. Patrice got a prescription to rub strawberries on her husband’s stomach, lick them off, and then report the results to group. And because Dr. Rosen thought that the prescription Rory’s internist gave her for anxiety was suppressing her sexual feelings, he gave her his own: “Put one pill
