Come Back (21 page)

“Mia!”

I turn as Glenn grabs me tightly. We look at each other and both start to cry. It hurts to see this strong woman cry, this woman who helped so many of us find that same strength within ourselves. It’s not right, Glenn’s not supposed to cry.

“Be strong, Mia,” she whispers fiercely. “For yourself, for the girls. Don’t let them slide back into old patterns, Katrina’s anorexia, Sunny’s self-mutilation. Don’t withdraw, don’t shut down! Don’t use this as an excuse to call everything you did here bullshit. The work you’ve done here is real. Take what you’ve learned and grow. Take it and fly.”

“But what about you, Miss Zuza—”

“We’ll be fine, sweetie. You have to go now, go…”

I stumble to the van, climb in and turn around to face her, pressing my hand against the rear window. I know this image will never leave me, seeing Glenn crying in the snow, watching her once powerful figure become smaller and smaller until it’s finally swallowed up by the silence that was Morava. The silence where I listened for myself, and for the first time, really heard.

Glenn’s reading of Mia is accurate. Whatever illusions I still had that Mia was almost fixed are dispelled by the time we get to Prague, the night before we fly out. Mia’s mood and behavior had been subtly shifting as the situation at Morava worsened. I noticed her picking up Gizmo often, as a way to comfort herself. As the days passed, she no longer appeared reflective but withdrawn. Her face grew silent.

I remember that face. And I haven’t forgotten that there can be another Mia behind Mia.

I see this other Mia emerge at dinner tonight, our last night together in Prague. We’re in a cavernous, groin-vaulted restaurant lit only by candles. She’s brimming with enthusiasm about what Morava taught her, and about being able to eat a rack of lamb.

“Every day we choose our life,” she bubbles as she starts eating, “which means you choose the consequences, too. Oh, my God, this sauce! The whole atmosphere there is designed to help us learn who we really are and love that person. That’s a choice, too.”

I’m so impressed by her maturity and insight. Then she suddenly stands up, saying she has to go to the bathroom. I get up to go with her and she looks at me, hurt.

“Mia, I can’t let you go by yourself, you’re still under rules.”

She rebels instantly, firing off, “Thanks for the confidence, like I’m going to run away or what, steal a cigarette from some guy at the bar?”

Well, yeah, I want to say. She’s gone right back to the same verbal aggression and sharp, machine-gun delivery I used to dread. Like a nice little kitty whose claws are merely retracted, not gone.

I don’t know why, but I decide to trust her. I hold my breath until she returns. But the Mia that returns is different; the sparkle is gone. She’s pulled strands of hair to fall over her face and is doing her affected slink-walk as she passes a guy at the bar. The tentative peace of mind I’ve come to feel as Mia became a loving, honest daughter again completely disintegrates. Replaced again with that mushy-sick-stomach fear.

Mia and many of the others will be transferred to a sister facility, Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. It’s on a secluded mountain far from a city. It has the reputation as being one of their most successful schools.

It has no tracking dog. It has no fence. It’s why I didn’t send her there to begin with.

NOVEMBER
15

It’s dead quiet in the van save a static-y country song twanging on the radio. It’s odd enough hearing music besides Beethoven, but “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” at 1 a.m. with an eight-hour time difference is too much.

I’m beat, the kind of tired that comes after tears. We just learned that Sasha won’t be coming to Spring Creek, as we’d been told. I never got to say good-bye. Only Sunny, Roxanne, Katrina, and Samantha remain, along with several newer girls, including Brooke.

The driver, Mr. Jim, said we couldn’t sleep in the van, so we sit like zombies, staring out at the night scenery. Even in the darkness, Montana’s beautiful, with pine tree silhouettes and an enormous yellow moon low in the sky. The freeway narrows to a two-lane road with “Watch for fallen rock” and “Bighorn sheep crossing” signs.

Someone coughs. Mr. Jim jumps and turns around.

“Y’all are still awake?! I thought you’da been passed out by now!”

“You said we couldn’t sleep,” Katrina responds politely.

He starts laughing so hard he about spits out his soda. “And you believed me? Aww, I feel awful now, I was only joking with ya. Go on and catch some shut-eye.”

It’s hard to imagine any of the Morava staff joking with us. I wonder how else this place will be different, but the last thing I remember being conscious of is that big yellow moon. Until Prague, I hadn’t seen the moon in six months.

Waking up at Spring Creek Lodge proves no less disorienting. I’m in a giant, barren rectangular room with twenty bunk beds lining the walls. Two
chests rest in the gaps between bunks, and I vaguely remember having to lock our shoes up in them when I came in last night with Samantha and Roxanne. They promised to keep all the Morava girls together, but until they build our cabin, we divide up into different cabins each night.

Strange girls rub sleep from their eyes and give us curious glances. I assume we’re on silence because no one talks, though they smile briefly at us. A tall blond woman in a parka opens the door, letting in a freezing draft.

“Morava girls, I’ll be back in ten minutes, please be ready and lined up.”

We rise and head to the bathroom—it’s blinding! Polished chrome reflects bright white walls, spotless sinks, and shining linoleum. Gone are Morava’s buckets of water so you can flush down what the toilet couldn’t and, to my great delight, in their place sit glistening, new American toilets.

Samantha jabs me and points—there are mirrors here! In a flash, she’s looking for blackheads and Roxanne’s admiring her hair as if she’d never seen it before. I head right for a stall because we can’t pop zits in the program, it’s considered self-injury, and until I can shave, I have no desire to see a fat, hairy version of myself.

The woman returns and we follow her up a narrow dirt path to yet another log cabin. Except for the silence and walking in line, this place doesn’t feel like a program. We’re high on a snowy mountain slope thick with evergreens, in the middle of nowhere. A cluster of about ten red-roofed log cabins so perfect they seem fake peep from between the trees and deer eye us calmly as we walk right beside them.

I suddenly realize that we’ll have to walk outside every time we change activities. Which means that unless there’s an electrified fence hidden in the trees, there’s nothing between me and freedom but a very long hike down.

We stop in front of a long, low cabin called the Hungry Horse, where the other Morava girls are waiting. Katrina and Sunny reach out and squeeze my hand as we line up behind them to go inside.

On the way in, I notice a teeny, tiny cabin across the path. Several students wait on the porch, hopping from one foot to another to keep warm, and I wonder what they’re waiting for.

The cafeteria’s full of girls already seated with our first familiar sight—watery, gray oatmeal. Heads turn but few smile. Several girls walk around in full makeup, junior staff no doubt. But, nobody, upper or lower level, wears a uniform! Even more surprising is that the people in the kitchen are students!
There are no fences
and
students are allowed access to fire and knives? I can see why my mother sent me overseas.

We eat, cross out, and stand freezing as staff pats us down to be sure no one pocketed food or utensils. As I lift my arms and spread my legs, I hear engines gunning in the distance. Zooming toward us are identical, burly, blond twins riding identical four-wheelers. They smile and wave as they zip by.

“That’s Cameron and Chaffin. They’ll be by your cabin this afternoon.”

“This afternoon” turns to evening as dusk settles around the cabin we’ve spent the last five hours in. Cameron, the Glenn of Spring Creek, came by after group. Because the police took all our records, he asked us to assign ourselves levels—and he wasn’t joking.

Katrina, Roxanne, and I rated ourselves fairly, asking for Level 3, and he agreed. But now he’s agreeing when the newest girls ask for the same thing! He sees our expressions and laughs.

“Where did you all just choose to go? Anger? Jealousy? Smug, because you think I’m clueless?”

D—all of the above, especially the last one.

“And I’m sure your reaction stems from genuine concern for your peers, right?” He laughs again. “Gimme a break! You’re jealous because they had the guts to ask for what they didn’t deserve and you didn’t have the courage to demand what you do.”

He looks at Sunny and Samantha, who realize they screwed themselves by asking for too little.

“I know it seems like I just changed the whole program, but this is just an exercise, a chance to learn something about yourself. Your own behavior will drop or raise every one of you to exactly where you’re really at in no time, I guarantee it. You can’t disguise the truth, girls.”

Spring Creek is beginning to feel like Morava Light.

It takes me three days to sleep off last week. I feel so bereft about the loss of Morava, more than what should be reasonable, and it’s a while before I realize why. It was the first time I felt a real connection to my mother’s family. My ancestors lived nearby for centuries, which makes it the closest thing to a home I’ve ever had. It felt almost fitting that my daughter would heal in the place where my mother was born.

I’m somewhat worried that Mia will run from Spring Creek, but I am more concerned that the conditions that elicited her amazing growth were specific to Morava—Glenn, the foreign location, the Czech staff, the girls there, many of whom didn’t go to Spring Creek. There was a sweet, innocent quality to the place that was utterly unique.

We don’t have a family rep yet (their version of a case manager), so I express my concerns about Mia’s behavior to whoever will listen, a supervisor, the school counselor, a secretary.

I finally reach Chaffin, Spring Creek’s codirector, who assures me that he’s aware that a lot of the Morava kids have gone back to old patterns. Unlike me, however, he sees this as a positive.

“Events like this are a tremendous opportunity for growth. It’s a chance for these kids to learn to handle a major setback in a safe place. It’s also a chance for you parents to see where you go with yourselves.”

Fear and control, my favorite destination, it seems. As usual, there are as many lessons for me in this as for Mia.

“You went across country by yourself? And did speedballs?” A girl from our cabin named Jessie stares at me.

“So, we’ve all done stuff like that,” Samantha defends. “Why are you here?”

“I just smoked a lot of pot and skipped class.”

“That’s it? You must hate your parents! Are all the kids here like you?”

“Most did more drugs, but kids from overseas are usually worse.”

“Jessie,” interrupts a junior staff, “showers started five minutes ago, self-correct your late consequence?”

Jessie grumbles a self-correct, then flips her off when she turns away. I smile to myself. I was the same way to Sasha at first. I really miss her. I hear she’s already practically running the facility she was sent to, some new school in the South. I wish junior staff here were more like her. There are about forty of them and they’re like the Spring Creek mafia.

The general attitude toward them is a mixture of respect, admiration, fear, and hatred. Some of them are so confident and powerful it’s hard to imagine why they’re here. The rest of them you wish weren’t.

Jessie emerges from the bathroom and joins some girls in the corner. I may have bitched about Morava feeling like kindergarten, but I prefer that to high school, which is what this feels like. The Spring Creek girls are in various
cliques in the cabin and their stares are unnerving and unwelcoming. In Morava, every new girl was subject to a loving interrogation her first night, but Jessie was the first one to come and talk to us in almost a week.

They’ve finally finished our cabin and we’re so excited to all be back together it’s all we can do to keep silence as we move in. We’ve named ourselves the Harmony family, and their goal is for us to assimilate into Spring Creek.

Because the staff here discourages it, we talk about Morava as little as possible. I think about it, however, constantly, and can tell the other girls do, too. Roxanne is quieter, in school she gets distracted easily and I know whenever she’s doodling, her mind’s in Brno. Samantha’s nails are gnawed to the quick and Katrina’s been given a bathroom buddy to prevent her from purging. It’s never brought up, but we’re all worried about Glenn and Miss Zuza going to jail.

I’m sweet sixteen today, or bittersweet rather. My family woke me up singing happy birthday and gave me a paper tiara along with ingeniously made gifts. We can’t use scissors, so Katrina tore paper into small squares, hole punched them, and threaded a ribbon to make me a small diary. Sunny sketched me a butterfly in honor of my Stretch.

But it’s still mildly depressing. There’s nothing like handing over gifts to staff(keeping my cards would be considered note-passing) to remind you that you’re locked up.

They let me keep the best gift, though. Growing up, my favorite question to ask adults was, “What was your Most Embarrassing Moment?” I would die laughing hearing about adults making total fools of themselves. My parents had friends and family members write down their stories. The whole cabin’s been hysterical over them.

I miss my parents so much, especially after just seeing my mom. Walking with her in Prague on the Charles Bridge that night was pure magic. It was a storybook perfect setting, a sky full of stars, a layer of snow coating the statues on the bridge. Everything was so still, it felt timeless, and we stood there, hand in hand, listening to a musician play “Ode to Joy” on water glasses.

Even so, there was always an edge. When I got up to go to the bathroom at dinner, there was that split-second panic in her eyes. It’s painfully obvious how little she trusts me, how scared she is I’m faking it.

Still, it’s touching how she rests her hopes on the small chance that I’ve
changed, that bit of faith that her baby girl is still in me. That part of me loves how she and Paul still take the time to make me feel special. As far back as I can remember, my mom could always think of a reason to come home with my favorite pastry or take me on a surprise visit to the Getty. She’d leave notes inside lunch bags that Paul drew calligraphic M’s on. I cringe when I think about how many beautiful lunch bags ended up in the Dumpster of my elementary school.

It’s funny how care becomes a source of embarrassment. When puberty strikes, you start acting like you were hatched from some egg and dropped off in a random house. You’re on a sudden mission to prove you’re parentless. Mom, don’t kiss me in front of everyone! Paul, stop decorating my lunch bags!

And now, we get excited over even just a letter from them.

MUDDER’S MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT