Stronger than You Know

  Stronger Than You Know

  Jolene Perry

  Albert Whitman & Company

  Chicago, Illinois

  To Emma Rose & Jack Michael

  May you always know how much you are loved

  Child Services Summary Report

  Name: Joy Neilsons

  Age: 15

  Case worker: Louisa Gray

  Findings: (a brief compilation from both physician and psychiatrist)

  •Severe signs of abuse and neglect.

  •Victim was not often allowed outside of 750 sq. ft. mobile home.

  •She did not attend school but had received schooling through the home school system.

  •Neighbors believed her to be an occasional guest of the residence but not a permanent fixture. Victim explained that occasionally months would go by when she was not allowed outside.

  •Approximately 10–15 lbs. underweight. Dehydrated. Malnourished.

  Current Status:

  •Inpatient care.

  •Solitary room as victim panics around men and is silent and shaking in groups—both have led to panic attacks in the few days since admittance.

  •Waiting for aunt to retrieve victim. Home study and background check of aunt, uncle, and cousins completed.

  •Mother (defendant) and boyfriend (defendant) are currently in California state custody.

  Largest concerns:

  •Depression—possibly suicidal

  •Anxiety

  •Integration into functioning society will be overwhelming. Until this point she has coped mostly by hiding and causing as little disruption as possible. Becoming part of a family or student group will be challenging at best.

  ONE

  Three months in and no less broken than before

  I read somewhere that happiness is fleeting, but joy sticks with you, holds on to you, and fills you up. The fact that my name is Joy is sort of a lesson in irony.

  I sit here because I’m still broken. I’ll probably always sit in offices like this, because I’ll probably always be broken.

  Dr. Mayar—no, wait, Lydia—is waiting for my response.

  “Joy?”

  “What?” I wait for her to repeat the question, hoping to buy myself more time. We meet for forty-five minutes twice a week. It’s a game to see how many minutes I can waste. The more time we say nothing, the less time we have to talk about things I don’t want to talk about.

  Her body doesn’t move, her face doesn’t change, but I can feel the disapproval sliding toward me in waves. “I know you heard me. One thing, Joy. One. You can do this.”

  You can do this, she says. It’s so ridiculous. It’s not like I’m lifting weights or anything. Like she’s my coach, yelling from the sidelines, “One more set, one more! Push yourself! I know you can do it!”

  What muscle am I exercising here? My brain? My heart? A combination of the two? Because it feels like a lot more of me is broken than just that. I mean, where do I even start? The thoughts swim around inside me so fast that I can’t catch them or formulate them into something I can grasp, understand, or deal with.

  “Joy, I know you’re watching the clock, because you’re always watching the clock when we’re close to time. But, you’re not leaving until you can tell me one thing you like about yourself.” Her dark, narrow face is fixed on me.

  This is probably the cheesiest thing ever. She asks me to come up with something often. “You have another appointment,” I say. She can’t wait forever.

  She leaves herself ten minutes between appointments to make notes and prepare for the next. I know this. It means her time with me is limited. And that gives me confidence about my ability to drag this out to the point where I won’t have to answer.

  “Not today.” She recrosses her legs and leans back in her chair. Sometimes I sit in here and just stare at her dark African skin. It’s beautiful, like she glows from within. Were things harder for her because of her skin? I’m not sure. In fifteen years my pale skin hasn’t helped me any.

  I pull my arms more tightly around my legs. I look too much like my mom for me to pick something about myself that I like. Same straight brown hair. Same tiny little button nose that I hate. I’m too skinny, but so is Mom. Or she was the last time I saw her.

  My head rests to the side to look at myself in Lydia’s tiny mirror. I even have Mom’s brown eyes.

  “Okay, Joy, I’m not talking physical traits here. You know this. Give me something else. Anything.” The annoyance she’s trying to hide in her voice makes me hold in a grin.

  “I’m smart. I don’t need my teachers to tell me how to do things.”

  She chuckles. “I’m impressed. That was a good one.” She runs a hand through her short, spiky black hair as she leans back in her chair. I love making her smile; her teeth are perfectly straight and white.

  I thought it was a good one too. But then I realize, in a way, that it’s a dig at my teachers.

  I blink in the chair and feel suddenly that I’m back at my first day of school. I’d never seen so many people in one place. Mom’s trailer would get packed once in a while, but nothing like the jumping and hollering and the sea of navy, white, and khaki that awaited me in the halls.

  I looked at all the faces, the smiling faces, the groups, the kids who sat reading, the kids who sat playing on their phones, and I had no idea how or where I fit into any of it. I still don’t.

  “How are we doing with talking?” Lydia asks, bringing me back to the present.

  “I’m talking now.” I let my eyes rest on hers. I’ve been to a lot of shrinks since Mom was taken to jail. A lot. Shrinks that specialize in child abuse, that specialize in neglect. I’ve been to people who work only in physical abuse cases and people who counsel teens with depression and anxiety issues. I fall under every category. Lucky me.

  I see Lydia because she’s close to my aunt and uncle’s house. She grew up in foster homes after her mom was sent to jail, so she gets at least a small part of me.

  “Please don’t make me run around in circles again to get what we both know I’m after. You’ve been with your aunt and uncle for three months, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And have you and your aunt talked much about what brought you to them?”

  “No more than we did when I sat here last week. She has my file. I don’t get to choose what she does or doesn’t know about me.” I hate that I don’t get to choose what she knows. Sometimes I wonder if she read it all right away, or if it she thought, okay, ten minutes on the horrible life of Joy tonight, and I’ll do ten more minutes tomorrow. My, it’ll take me a long time to get done with this large file.

  “But your mom is her sister. And I think she’d like to hear things from you.”

  I disagree with Lydia on this count. Aunt Nicole drove to California to pick me up when child services called her. She barely spoke to me for fifteen hours on the drive back to her house. Maybe she was in shock, but she couldn’t have been more in shock than me.

  “Why don’t we …” Lydia’s eyes go back to her clock, and I have to wonder if she was lying earlier when she said her following appointment canceled. “This is what I want you to do this week—ready?”

  I just stare. This is the part of our visit that I dread. The homework part. Only she doesn’t let me call it that.

  “Talk to your uncle, share something with him.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but she holds her hand up between us.

  “It can be something as simple as telling him about someone at school, okay? Anything.”

/>   “It’s not like I’m the silent kid.” But my hands shake at the thought of talking to Uncle Rob.

  “You’re almost the silent kid.”

  “Fine.” I’m saying this just to appease her. I grab a strand of plain brown hair to give my hands something to do aside from shake and pull it in front of me to look for split ends like my cousin, Tara, is always doing. It gives me some time when I don’t have to see the expectant face of Lydia. I know I’ll just let her down. It’s rare I’m able to do what she asks of me during the week.

  I try to tell myself I’m doing better than my first few weeks with my aunt and uncle. I never knew what to say but I tried so hard. I was filled with yeahs and uh-huhs. It was so exhausting to try to figure out when I was supposed to talk and when I wasn’t that I gave up—at least for a while. Mom was happy when I stayed silent and hid in my room.

  “And I want you to talk to someone at school. Give one of your friends some kind of detail about you. And no, neither of your cousins count, and your teachers don’t either.” She smirks. Her weird smile is how she tries to lighten the mood.

  My chest sinks. It’s overwhelming, which is stupid. It’s just that I don’t really have friends friends. I mean, when I sit in the cafeteria, I sit with Tara’s friends, but they’re not really my friends. Trent, her twin, is always inviting his sports team over, and their loud voices and the way they push each other around … I don’t like guys in groups.

  “Joy? Why does this make you nervous?”

  I push out a frustrated burst of air. “I don’t know what to say to people. I don’t know how to answer their questions or …” But I just trail off because I’m not sure how to continue. Even with Lydia I don’t feel like I can say—when Mom had a group of people over, I got too much attention from the guys there. I don’t like men. Why aren’t there more all-girl private schools near Seattle?

  “Why don’t you play around with some things to tell people about why you’re in your aunt and uncle’s house? Nothing that’s a lie, but maybe something that would satisfy curiosity. We’ve talked about this before, but I don’t think you came up with anything more than you moved from California.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Maybe.

  Now I get to leave. I think we had eight minutes of silence today. Eight minutes when I didn’t have to speak and I didn’t have to listen to her say things that make me want to run out of her office.

  “How are you feeling with your meds?”

  I shrug.

  Since I was pulled from my house, they’ve all been sure I’m going to off myself. The docs stuck me on the depression meds almost as soon as I checked in. Maybe they just weren’t sure what else to do.

  “Let me know if you think something needs to change.”

  I turn to face her before grabbing the door handle. “You’re the doctor.”

  “And I’m relying on you to tell me how you feel.” We have this interchange every time we see each other.

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  “Joy.” Her voice has that tone of seriousness that makes me pause. “I know you feel like you’re not moving forward, so I’d like you to do one easy thing for me. Write me an email or write in your journal about what it was like when your Aunt Nicole first picked you up. Keep it simple. Talk about any part of that experience you want to, but you’ll see how far you’ve come in a very short time.”

  I step out of Lydia’s office overwhelmed with what she wants me to do this week. The letter or journal thing is fine, but the other two tasks seem impossible, which makes me feel stupid. She’s basically asked me to say one thing to my uncle and one thing to someone I know at school.

  I’m Joy, the girl who’s so broken that the thought of speaking two sentences is making it hard to breathe.

  TWO

  My assignment from Lydia

  I sketch in the margins of the paper instead of working on my writing assignment, but something about drawing again makes me think of my trailer home. I scratch it all out, flip to a clean sheet of paper, and start to write.

  There was no way to fill fifteen hours in the car with my Aunt Nicole, who I’d never met. I didn’t attempt to fill the silence because I had no idea how or even if I should.

  I also didn’t know how to process the landscape. The cities, the small towns, the gas stations, the ocean. It felt too enormous to possibly be real. Like the National Geographic Channel come to life around me.

  Over the week before Aunt Nicole arrived, I’d been taken from the trailer where I’d spent nearly every minute of my life, locked in a small room, and asked to relive almost every experience I’d had while with my mom.

  Aunt Nicole asked me about a million times if I was okay. If I wanted to stop for the bathroom. If I wanted food. She was always trying to feed me, but she kept getting these enormous bags from McDonald’s, and I couldn’t risk spilling crumbs in her car.

  I still feel this way. So far, this assignment isn’t helping any.

  I throw that last line in for good measure.

  I ate very little. At home Mom usually had frozen pizzas for me, or sometimes I’d open a can of soup or chili.

  I’m starting to realize how crazy it was that I ate at night after Mom was asleep. Or I’d get up after she went to work and eat standing over the sink so I wouldn’t have to clean crumbs off the table.

  Hours went by and we were still driving. How big was the world? How many places could there be? How far apart was everything? It was crazy to think about how enormous the world was as we kept driving.

  Now that I have a grasp of what a short distance we actually traveled, that too makes me feel stupid.

  I knew Aunt Nicole’s house was just a house, but it was so big and too pretty—I couldn’t imagine myself belonging in a place like that.

  I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs, closing my eyes tight for a moment. The house and the kindness and … everything … were too much. Aunt Nicole talked to me like I was a three-year-old, which I probably deserved, asking me to please leave the car, and told me about how great everything would be with my uncle and cousins and a new city to explore.

  I nearly left the car when she promised privacy inside. Said I had a bathroom attached to my room even.

  There were so many nights at home when I had to pee desperately, but Mom had people over and I didn’t want to be noticed. Walking across the hall was a sure way to get attention.

  I actually asked Aunt Nicole if I could sleep in the car. That’s how desperate I was to not move. I don’t write about begging to sleep in the car to Lydia because it makes me feel ridiculous—especially now that I’ve been there for three months, and the house is no longer scary. But I guess that’s the point of the assignment. To show me how far I’ve come. I’m reluctant to admit my progress, even to myself.

  Aunt Nicole sat just outside my car door when she remembered that she’d forgotten to give me my Xanax before we arrived. (I hate those by the way. They make me sleepy and rubbery.)

  We made a deal though, before leaving California. If Aunt Nicole handed me a pill, I had to take it, and I was given a number to call if I felt like it was happening too much or if I was uncomfortable with anything going on in the house. It’s sort of stupid, really. I was burned and hit and, AND …

  I can’t say the word. Not even in a journal. It feels too horrible.

  … in my last house, and I never called anyone. It seems kind of ignorant on the part of the child services people to tell me to call if something doesn’t feel right. I had no idea what to expect. Or what was normal. I’d only just learned that my normal wasn’t normal at all.

  I knew even then that my fear of that house might be ridiculous, but I didn’t know how to shake it. All I had was unknown—unknown cousins, unknown uncle, and an aunt I’d just met.

  The moment we reached the porch, the front
door opened to expose a man several inches taller than Mom’s last boyfriend, Richard, and I froze.

  I make sure I write the Uncle Rob stuff because maybe Lydia won’t force me to talk to him after reading this.

  When I saw my Uncle Rob all I could think was please no. I know what he’ll want, and I’m not big enough to stop him. Aunt Nicole can’t have more power than my mom to stop a man that large.

  Aunt Nicole threw herself into his arms and they murmured so quietly I felt like I shouldn’t listen. A part of me registered that I thought my aunt was nice and that she liked him, so maybe he wasn’t bad. But he was a man I didn’t know in a house I didn’t know, and maybe certain things were going to be expected of me. A lot had been expected of me in the past. I had no reason to believe that Uncle Rob was any different.

  Uncle Rob said hello or something equally simple, but the lowness of his voice felt like a warning. Run. Hide. Only I couldn’t just run away. I had no idea where I was.

  It was awful. New house. New man. New situation that I was sure would turn out like my old one. I don’t even have to exaggerate to show what a mess I was. This assignment isn’t making me feel better. It’s making me feel worse because I still don’t want to share space with my uncle.

  Aunt Nicole was nice enough to see how awful I felt and she sent Uncle Rob inside. (This is all making me feel crazier by the way.) Aunt Nicole brought me through a massive foyer in a house so big that my trailer could have fit in the kitchen. She led me up stairs three times wider than the hallway at home and into a room with its own bathroom.

  My room.

  That first night will always be etched in my memory. I dropped my backpack and went through the doorway and into my own bathroom. Tears spilled down my face at the glimpse of a life I knew I didn’t belong in.

  THREE

  Keeping track

  Every time I do something that puts me out of my comfort zone, I write it down. This way when I see Lydia, I can hand her my notebook and she can see how well I’m doing. Also, if I don’t do my writing assignment, I at least have something to show her. The problem is that my lists always look the same. Almost every week. The same, simple things still put me on edge.