Dr. Anderson leaned forward, elbows resting gently on his knees. His vivid green eyes stared at me through square spectacles. Laugh lines crept around the edges of his eyes and he smiled at me. His black hair was littered with gray streaks. Dr. Anderson was neat; he had no facial hair, and his carefully ironed blue polo shirt was tucked into his pressed khaki pants. “Why don’t you tell me what happened today?”
I thought back to the moment that landed me here in Dr. Anderson’s office in the first place. The dream had taken me over again while I sat in the back of History class. It was the same one that had been haunting my every sleeping hour. The edge of the cliff was so close, but so was the fear that chased me. In the nightmare, I felt strong arms wrap around me, and throw me on the cold hard ground. Then the beating came. I screamed for them to stop, but they just laughed. I knew what was coming next as I scrunched up into a tiny ball, but the nightmare changed. My name was being called, my arms were being shaken. I woke to the terrified eyes of my teacher and the worried stares of my classmates.
I shook my head and tucked a strand of brown curly hair behind my ear as I answered his question, “Nothing, sir.”
The way he looked at me, like I was some experiment, disturbed me. Dr. Anderson was the Westminster High School psychologist, and I avoided him at all costs. It always seemed to me that doctors, especially psychologists, could see right through the armor I had built around myself. Maybe I was paranoid, though heaven knows I had a good reason.
His head cocked to the side and a small smile played around his lips. “I know something happened in class today, Charlotte. Ms. Martin requested that you see me. Now, I know that you’ve been in here quite a few times in the past few months and I think that it would be in your best interest to let your thoughts and feelings out. I believe that you will feel rather liberated once you have done so. Charlotte, what happened in History today?”
I shifted in my seat. I remembered blinking my eyes rapidly as I had drifted back into the real world. I recalled Ms. Martin’s concerned look, her face contorted in an unpleasant grimace. Her blonde eyebrows knit tightly together; her lips were in a thin line. She signed the pink slip of paper that sealed my fate of coming to Dr. Anderson’s office. I remembered the burning stares from my classmates. My eyes moved away from Dr. Anderson’s as I thought about how to answer his question.
I glanced around his office. Lime green walls and white tile floors. I felt like I was going to puke. Potted plants sat by the door and on the ledges below the dirty windows. Adorning the hideous walls hung numerous awards and a doctoral degree for psychology from Johns Hopkins University. His wooden shelves were filled with books: Psychology; The Breakdown of the Human Mind; Children and Their Strange Behavior; How to Handle Teenage Problems, What they Say and What they Actually Mean; and so many more. His desk was littered with papers and more books. I took a deep breath before answering.
“Dr. Anderson, I fell asleep in class and then I had a nightmare. I must’ve been making some noises or something, I don’t know.” I sniffed slightly, and the light scent of pumpkin filled my nose. I glanced around until I saw the tiny Scentsy candle burner hanging in the outlet by his desk.
“Screaming, perhaps?” He raised his eyebrows, asking. I didn’t say anything. Then he looked at the pink slip. “It says here that you were screaming loudly. You were saying things like ‘Stop’ and ‘Please don’t’. Would you care to explain that?”
I stiffened in my chair, my back straightening against the wooden bars behind me. My hands shook. My knee bounced, moving up and down in an endless pattern. I shrugged, playing up my whole act of I’m-just-a-fifteen-year-old-teenager-who’s-bored-out-of-her-mind-sitting-here bravado. “Like I said, I had a nightmare.”
“Or a class-mare?” He chuckled at his own joke and I stared blankly at him. “Hmm, my mind is telling me that you are holding something back. I need you to confide in me, trust me. Please? This will help you, I promise.”
“All promises are empty,” I said.
He straightened up and his brow furrowed. I continued, “And trust is something to be earned, not to be handed out freely.”
He made notes on a yellow piece of lined paper. “Do you have many experiences with broken promises?”
I sat in the uncomfortable, wooden chair and thought about his question. Yes, I thought. I have had a lot of experience in that department. All those times my parents promised that they wouldn’t hurt me anymore, and their crying and begging for me to just forget what happened. I believed every lie that came out of their mouths, and I suffered the consequences of trusting in promises that would inevitably be broken. And as I got older, the apologies ceased and our violent encounters became more frequent. I exhaled a shaky breath and shifted in my seat once more.
I finally nodded to Dr. Anderson and answered, “Of course, hasn’t everybody?”
I tried to play it nonchalantly, but I knew what I had said had piqued his interest. I cursed myself for my quick speaking. He wouldn’t let me say something like that without figuring out what horrible thing must have happened in my life to make me like this: cold and angry and feeling like people’s word is about as reliable as me with a toothpick in a gun fight. I was like stone on the outside, but a fire that no one saw raged inside me. Beneath the surface was the real me: hurt and broken.
A science experiment, something to be picked apart - that’s all I was to Dr. Anderson. At least, that’s what I told myself. I told myself that he didn’t care, that all he was looking for was some crazy kid as evidence that he was doing his job. I told myself he was using me, just like my parents. But, some small part of me knew that Dr. Anderson really wanted to help. I just never wanted to accept it because I didn’t know how to. No one ever tried to help me, so why should some random man at school want to? These thoughts nagged at me. This was the only way I could think, that no one cared. If I ever thought someone cared, then I would get attached and feel dependent. I had never depended on anyone before, because there was no one to depend on. I thought that I was strong enough on my own, because it had been that way for so many years.
I knew that I shouldn’t tell. Mother and Father told me enough times to keep my mouth shut. Threats, though really promises, resonated inside me; the harsh infliction of my parents’ voices echoing in the room. I’ll kill you if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, Father’s voice said in my ear. No one would believe you anyway, Mother said. I had the urge to cover my hands over my ears to drown them out.
Mother and Father would be furious if I told. They had warned me so many times, but I needed to tell somebody. I was ashamed, because no other parent I knew hurt their children. There had to be something wrong with me. I was weak. I couldn’t even protect myself against my parents. What would people think about me? I didn’t want them looking down on me with pity, like a kicked puppy. I had tried for fifteen years to act like I was fine and normal. I didn’t want people to worry and hover around me or look at me like I was as frail as glass. Even though I sometimes felt like I was, I didn’t want others to view me that way. I didn’t want to seem weak in front of everybody. That would be embarrassing.
I kept glancing at Dr. Anderson, though he remained silent. He looked off in the distance.
I was tired of being at the receiving end of my parents’ anger. A fifteen year old should not have to experience what I did every night when I came home from school. Young teenagers shouldn’t be beaten by their own parents. They shouldn’t be told they are ugly or stupid or useless or a waste of time and money. They shouldn’t be pushed around, bruised, or endangered. Parents were supposed to protect their children from harm and enemies, not cause harm or become the enemy.
Maybe this happens when your parents have you as teenagers? Sixteen was a young age to start a family. They always reminded me of everything that they had to give up: college, family, friends, and social lives. I remembered sitting at the old kitchen table and eating a frozen dinner. Mother stood next to me, arms crossed and a frown on her face. Her dark hair was in its usual messy bun, her brown eyes glaring in my direction. “You know, if I had gone to college we could have the money to make a proper meal?” I nodded, saying nothing. I felt the hand crack against the back of my head like a whip. “But, no! You had to come along and screw up all of our lives. You’re a worthless piece of trash.”
I knew I ruined their lives, and they never missed a beat in telling me so. “I hate you,” Father said almost every night and pushed me up against the wall, causing the pictures to shudder. I cried and asked him to stop, but he only yelled, “Shut up! Just shut up!”
As stupid as it may sound, I always tried to impress them. I worked hard in school, but suffered from dyslexia and couldn’t keep my grades high enough. I had a C average. My parents wouldn’t pay for a tutor even if they had the money to do so. A cashier at Giant and a waitress at Full Moon Bar & Grille don’t exactly ring in a ton of money. I tried and tried and tried. But they didn’t care, and half the time they were too drunk to notice. Nothing ever pleased them. I was always a disappointment, and an ultimate example of why they never wanted another child. I was already enough, or rather, too much.
When I glanced at Dr. Anderson again, he was already staring at me. He was quiet. We watched each other, not saying anything. Dr. Anderson cleared his throat, “Yes, I suppose everyone does experience broken promises every once and a while. Humans, after all, are far from perfect. But I believe that most forgive and forget. It seems to me that you are holding on to grudges of broken promises,” Dr. Anderson said.
Those green eyes stared right through me, and I felt myself coming undone. I felt my mouth opening to speak. His gentle eyes told me it was okay, that I could talk.
I cleared my throat and said, “I think that the quote goes, ‘Forgiving is trying to act like the past never happened.’ I don’t hold grudges, but I don’t forget either.”
He nodded. “I can understand that.” He jotted another note down on that legal notepad and I wondered what he was writing about me. “Now, you said that trust needs to be earned. You don’t think people deserve trust; that is until they do something to injure it?”
The air in the room seemed to evaporate. There was nothing about the cloudless blue sky of spring that suggested deep and dark secrets would be revealed in this tiny, claustrophobic room. Not the sun, not the blue birds perched on a nearby tree branch, not the overwhelming scent of pumpkin that wafted through my nose. Nothing at all.
I didn’t have to tell him. I could’ve kept my secret. But I yearned to tell someone, anyone, what was happening in my life. I was done harboring my emotions and keeping my façade of a normal teenage girl in check. It was exhausting. Maybe if I revealed my problems the burden would be lifted from my bruised shoulders. I wanted to tell someone of the nightmares that haunted my every second and made me scream in the middle of class. If I could do this, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone, so hurt, so unbalanced. I could release the tension those fifteen years of abuse had caused. But how could I possibly articulate the feelings I had into words?
Dr. Anderson continued to stare at me and I avoided his eyes. I glared out of the single-paned window, my eyebrows knitted together. A single blue bird leapt off the tree branch, wings outstretched to let the wind catch beneath them. I watched the bird and wished I was one. It was free and forever moving on its own time. I envied that bird. How nice would it be for everything to be so easy?
The decisions I had to make were far from easy. There was a part of me that knew revealing the truth could be my one-way ticket out of my God-forsaken life. I could lose my shoddy excuse of a family, and find one that actually cared about me: a foster family or maybe an adopted family. But then, my family would be broken apart. I needed to think that some small part of my parents loved me; that was the only way I could survive. Because I loved them. It was sickening and the idea of it made my stomach and heart sick, but I did. As much as I wanted to hate them, I couldn’t find the will in me to do so. I thought if I loved them enough, they would eventually show me their love. I survived because I told myself things would always get better, that my parents really did love me deep down in their dark souls, and that I was worth something to them. Wouldn’t they have done away with me if they hated me so much? Or was I just there to serve as a punching bag and a dependent on their tax forms? I would never know, and I would never ask them either. Ignorance can be bliss.
I remembered the years I spent cowering in my closet of a room instead of playing outside with the other children. I remembered the times I prayed to some god that never answered. I remembered the moments when I thought I was going to be killed. I felt all the emotions of fifteen years crash into me all in a single moment.
I needed to tell Dr. Anderson. I was going to tell him. I had to. Right? Yes, yes, yes, I chanted inside my head. This would be the decision that would change my life forever. I had no idea what awaited me on the other side of the door, but I was willing to take a chance. I felt like my life depended on me telling Dr. Anderson just how screwed up my life was.
“Everyone has people who are close to them,” I said. “And I guess it’s in everyone’s nature to trust those people.” I exhaled heavily. “But sometimes, those people that you give so much trust hurt you, use you, and destroy you. They break you like a promise. And you’re left wondering who can be trusted when those closest to you cannot be. So, no. I don’t think that anyone deserves trust, unless they can somehow earn it. It is not something to be given. If you trust in the wrong people, you’re the only one who is bound to get burned.”
I sat back in my chair and he leaned back as well. “Who hurt you enough to make you think this way?” His voice was low and soft. He laid his notepad and pen on the coffee table between us. He looked at me, waiting.
I froze, my palms sweating. Small droplets of water formed between my clenched, slender fingers. What would happen if I told? What would Mother and Father do? Was there a chance that telling the truth could kill me? Another voice tugged at the back of mind. It told me that Dr. Anderson could help, even if I didn’t even like him. He could help me leave my parents. He had the power to change my life. The truth would change my life, but would it get better? Would foster care be the right answer? Or adoption? There was no real way of knowing what the future would hold or what waited for me. Because there were still other people in the world who could hurt me.
“Tell me.” Dr. Anderson’s voice was gentle, beckoning me to open up and let my thoughts come flowing out.
I wasn’t exactly sure what went through my mind at that moment. Maybe it was the way he spoke, the way his voice sounded soothing to me for the first time. Maybe it was the weight of fifteen years that yearned to explode out of me. Maybe it was the realization that my life wouldn’t get better. Maybe I realized that only Dr. Anderson could help me at this point.
I stood up slowly. “I don’t need to tell you.” I inhaled the comforting scent of pumpkin again, hoping to find the strength.
“Charlotte-” he began.
“I can show you.” I took off my jacket and yanked my itchy sleeves up to my bony elbows. Black and blue contusions snaked their way up along my arms. The age of the bruises varied. Some had yellowed and some were green, showing their week old age. Some were new, even from the night before. I leaned down and pulled my baggy jeans up to my scrawny knees. There were more bruises and even a deep gash along my calf. I felt tears coming, but I held them back. I stroked the cut, “This is where my mother threw her bottle of Jack Daniels at me. It broke and shattered, and I got cut.” My hands traveled to my turtleneck, and I moved the fabric away. I heard Dr. Anderson’s quick gasp of air. “This is when my dad tried to strangle me, but he wasn’t drunk like my mother was.” I knew he could see the long red finger marks that were left behind from the night before.
Dr. Anderson’s eyes widened, his mouth fell open into a gaping hole. His eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the marks left behind. For the first time it felt like he looked at me as if I was a real person. His bushy eyebrows were scrunched tightly together. Dr. Anderson’s hands were clenched into fists and rested on his knees. His eyes darted back and forth, looking at me looking around, and looking down at the ground. I saw the tiniest of tears slowly work its way from the corner of his eye to the tip of his chin. His mouth opened and closed, as if he wanted to say something but decided against it. How can one express how sorry they are? How can they say words that will mean nothing? Words really do mean nothing when one has no idea what they’re talking about. They cannot say that they understand the pain, because they don’t. They cannot say they understand how I feel. Though, I saw his green eyes pondering what could possibly be the appropriate thing to say in this kind of situation.
I felt the tears threaten to spill over the edges of my eyelids. I closed my eyes as the memories of last night slammed into me, shaking my whole being. Mother screamed because I tripped over a plastic chair leg. “God, I hate you!” I saw her raise the bottle of liquor over her head, saw it fly towards me. I shut my eyes and raised my hands over my face. Her aim was off, the alcohol clouding her perception. The broken shards cut deep in my calf as the bottle shattered. My blood and Jack Daniels covered the dirty cream carpet.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Father had screamed, lunging towards me. He landed on top of me, his arms extended for me. I struggled against his heavy weight, my back pressing against the jagged edges of the broken bottle. I gasped for air as his hands wrapped tightly around my throat. I thrashed against him, my hands clawing at his. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around my sides as the memory faded into the air.
This was what fifteen years of abuse had done to me: my eyes held a great sadness, and on my body were marks of the past in patterns, each telling their own tales. From slapping me as a defenseless baby in attempts to shut me up, to kicking me as a skinny teenage girl after they pushed me on the floor; these stories marked me from head to toe. These marks caused my nightmares. I ran away from what I saw in my dreams, but still managed to get caught over and over again. The world I lived in every day found its way into the corners of my mind. The nightmares instilled ideas in my head of never getting away, chains that tethered me in one place, and oppressed me. I was left thinking that my life was over. And I always woke up sweating and panting as I clutched the thin wool blanket that covered me. I knew that one day the beating would go a little too far. Then I would be gone.
One thought reverberated throughout my mind every time a blow came to my body: who would really care if I died? I had no friends. I had always been a loner. I could never risk getting close to anyone, and even if I did, they would be too appalled at my situation. I was too different, too awkward, too broken and used to be any good to anyone. I didn’t have friends because I never tried. I couldn’t take the chance of being rejected.
I quickly put all of my clothes in order and sat back down. “Trust is given to parents by children. But my parents hurt me. I don’t think that they deserve trust. The bond between parents and children promises to protect and defend. To love,” my voice faltered. “But my parents destroyed those promises and any trust I ever had for them.”
He was silent for minutes before he cleared his throat. “I – I’m so sorry. This was not what I expected. I just really don’t know what to say.” Dr. Anderson frowned, at a loss for words.
“You can say you’ll help me.”
He pushed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. “I will have to report this, you know.”
I nodded, a small twinge of dread settling in my stomach, as I imagined the reactions of my parents. Another thought came to me, “But, will I be put in foster care?”
“I can’t really know for sure, though that will be one of the options.” He paused. “Though, in the meantime, do you have anyone you can stay with?”
My head lowered towards the floor as I answered, “No. I don’t have anyone.”
I heard his chair scrape against the floor as he stood tall, towering over me. “Charlotte, I’m going to get you out of there if that’s the last thing I do.” He bent down so we were face to face. The deep lines on his face were set in a frown. His green eyes held anger. “This shouldn’t happen, and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure you never get hurt by your parents again.”
I could hear the emotion behind his words. I sensed the promise, though I knew he knew better than to speak those words. It was an unspoken agreement. Dr. Anderson didn’t want to promise me something that might not happen. I knew from experience that hope, no matter how much you have of it, can sometimes be the thing that destroys you the most.