The Source of All Things (12 page)

But at night, I worried about my dad and, believing him in jail, fretted about how he was being treated. I imagined him cooped up with real criminals who committed real crimes: killers, serial rapists, thieves. It didn't matter how terrible he'd been to me, my heart cracked open at the thought of his suffering. I don't know if this says I was empathetic beyond belief or just a kid who would suffer anything to be in the relative comfort of her family. No matter. I couldn't wipe my dad's image from my brain.

I thought about the days we swam to our favorite rock at Redfish Lake. It sat in the middle of the water at what seemed like a few hundred feet from shore. Dad and I were the only swimmers in our family brave enough to make it all the way to the distant boulder. The trout and tiny silver minnows we swam among flickered in our peripheral vision, and the sun over both of our bodies made us seem beautiful and fast. I felt warm, even though the
water was freezing. When I got to the rock, Dad was already there, floating on his back.

“Only you could make me swim this far to a rock we can't even climb onto,” he teased, when I came within earshot.

“Come on, Dad! Get over it,” I answered back.

“No, I'm serious,” he said. “Just listen for a second.”

“Okay. I'm all ears. Watch me wiggle them.”

“I'm serious, Trace. You're special. People don't say things like that enough. I know sometimes I don't show it. But I love you. Got it?”

I knew I was loved—by him, my mom, and my grandparents. But my dad and I also had a secret, something we'd shared ever since I met him and immediately started hiking and fishing. While other people knew about feeding and clothing children, Dad taught me the beauty of taking risks in the mountains.

He never stopped me from swimming too far out into freezing mountain lakes, or skiing down steep, icy slopes at Soldier Mountain. Most of the time he came with me, for the sheer thrill of the experience. When we camped, it sometimes seemed that all Mom and Chris wanted to do was sit around and read or play cards in the trailer. But my dad gave me the tools of excitement—like the Honda 80 dirt bike I rode, and crashed, into an aspen grove when I was eight—and cut me loose. I jammed the throttle when I meant to squeeze the break and went flying over the handlebars, landing hard on my back. At first I thought I was dead, and then I howled in fear and pain. But for those few, frozen seconds that I was zinging through a grove of bright yellow aspens? All glory; all wild girl in the wilderness.

At the shelter, I sang myself selections from
Paint Your Wagon. “I was bo-orn, under a wandrin' star …”
But Dad's image continued
to haunt me, even through my quiet humming. When I couldn't stand the torture of my imagination any longer, I slipped out of bed and snuck down the hallway, to the top of a creaky, double-landing staircase.

The stairs were so old and whiny they broadcast my every step. But I crept down them even though I knew that phone use was off-limits. On that night, I would have taken solitary confinement in return for hearing one of my parents' voices. I found the phone and dialed their number. On the third ring, my dad picked up.

“Hello? Who is this?” he said, just as I was pulling the earpiece away from my head.

I waited until I was sure no one upstairs was following me, and then said, “Dad? It's me, Tracy. I'm scared. I hate it here. I want to come home.”

It was a miracle.

Dad had heard the pain in my voice and experienced a change of heart. On the phone, he sounded worried, apologetic. He told me how much he missed me and how bad he felt that I was living in a shelter, like a refugee or Little Orphan Annie. He said he and Mom wanted to come to my rescue, but they couldn't, because they didn't know where to find me.

I wanted to tell them where I was staying so they could spring me. But a tiny voice in the back of my head said,
You'll get everyone in big trouble.
After Dad and I talked, he put Mom on, who said
I love you I love you I love you
. Neither of my parents said
I believe you
or
I'm sorry
.

Still, talking to them only made me want to go home more. I obsessed about it for days after our phone call. I was going over our conversation for the hundredth time when my social worker, Claudia Vincent, pulled into the shelter driveway. A jolt of relief shot through me. Claudia had brought me to the shelter after I left Kathie Etter's house. She must have come back because Dad confessed everything. The court must have decided to reunite us.

But Claudia ignored me as she stepped inside the slanted, sun-peeling safe house. She smiled, but she said nothing. When I heard her tell my foster parents that she'd been court-ordered to remove me, I shot up the stairs and started packing my belongings. Bounding out the front door, I threw my small, black duffel into the backseat of Claudia's Impala; then we took off across Twin Falls. For a while we went in the general direction of my house, but as we neared the Snake River Canyon we veered left, stopping in a small cul de sac. In front of a one-story, off-white ranch house, Claudia killed the ignition.

I looked around at a neighborhood of identical houses.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Reach around and grab your bag,” she answered. “Social Services found you a more permanent placement. Let's go inside and meet your new foster parent. She's been waiting for you. Her name is Joy.”

I fought the tears that came, quick and sizzling. Claudia's words didn't compute. On the drive across town, I'd fantasized that she was taking me to
my
house, and that my parents—or at least my mom—would be waiting in the driveway to greet me. I was so sure of it, I didn't bother asking.

In my head I told myself that going home would be just like the time I'd had my tonsils out, or broken my foot after landing
on a sprinkler head while doing an aerial cartwheel: the freezer would be full of popsicles; MTV hours unregulated.

Instead, I stared out the car window, looking at my third “temporary dwelling” in two weeks. The longer I stared, the more I wanted to punch someone—Claudia, to be specific—in the face. When I finally composed myself to speak, I said, “But I want to go
home
. To
my
house. I'm sick of living in places where you have to ask to use the bathroom. Those foster people might pretend they like girls like me, but really they think we're all fuck-ups. I wasn't going to tell you this, Claudia. But I talked to my dad. He sounded sorry. I know he is. I know he wants me back.”

Claudia sighed. “I know this isn't easy, Tracy. We all know it isn't. But I have to be honest with you. Your dad is still insisting that he's innocent. And your mom still believes him. That's why we're keeping you out
here
, away from your house, where we can watch you and make sure you're safe. As long as your dad stays in the home, by law, we can't let you go back.”

“But what about my mom?” I asked. “Can't
she
protect me?”

“I'm sorry, Tracy,” said Claudia. “But she's not ready. She hasn't asked your father to move out.”

I moved in with Joy, the next stop on the homeless-teenager house tour. Joy served as a temporary foster mother to girls in trouble or at risk—I seemed to be both.

All I remember now about Joy is her name and a smoky image of her physical appearance. She was tall and quiet, and her hair rose up in a metallic black corona that reminded me of Brillo.

In many ways, Joy was the perfect foster parent. She kept to herself and rarely asked questions. The court made sure my mom gave me money, which they filtered through Claudia and Joy. If I needed deodorant, or a new jar of Noxzema, Joy would take me to the local Albertsons and wait in the car while I raced through the aisles hoping no one would see me.

By some stroke of luck, Joy had also forgotten to put a screen on her guest room window, where I slept. At night, when I was feeling lonely, I'd climb through the open window and sit in the gravel watching thunderstorms build over the desert. Sometimes I'd sneak a phone call to Reed, who would drive over in his teal blue pickup and take me to the rim of the Snake River Canyon.

We'd sit on the hood, and he'd ask me how I was doing. I don't know when I told him about the abuse, or how much detail I went into. But I remember the surprising strength of his bony arm around my shoulders and the feel of his cheek, also a surprise, so soft and warm against my cheek. We sat in silence, except for the sound of the river, faint and far below us.

On nights when Reed didn't appear, I stood in the dirt outside my bedroom, wondering if I would ever go home. Even though I raged at my parents, I missed my yellow Labs, Dusty and Brandy. I wanted my clothes and my room, my freedom and independence. I know how crazy that sounds. But there are times when familiarity trumps even safety. The strangeness of living as a transient unnerved me. All I wanted was to crawl back into my own, familiar cage.

But the court system didn't agree with my definition of “normal,” even though it (the court; not my definition) would ultimately
fail me in all matters regarding my abuse. I stayed with Joy while school started, and I went back, hoping no one had heard about my summer. I knew my classmates suspected something, but few, if any, ever stepped up and asked me what had happened. Years later, someone would describe my situation like this. “If you're a kid and you get hit by a car in a crosswalk, people visit you with balloons and well wishes. But if you're a kid who gets hit in the crosswalk of life by sexual molestation, nobody will even talk about it. They expect you to brush it under the carpet.”

If my classmates wondered why a strange lady was dropping me off at school, or why I'd stopped wanting to sleep over, they never asked me about it. Scared of soiling my image—or losing my spot on the freshman cheerleading squad—I don't remember telling anyone I'd been molested: not friends, school counselors, or teachers.

Three weeks after I moved to Joy's house, Claudia came over, telling me to pack up my things. This time, she said, she was taking me home.

“But why?” I'd asked. “Why all of a sudden?”

“Because your parents finally decided to do the right thing,” she answered. “They're going to work within the system.”

Claudia was right, at least in theory. In late August, Dad went to the Health and Welfare Department, asking what he needed to do to “get our family back together.” After so many weeks of not knowing my whereabouts, he and Mom said they were worried sick.

Within weeks, the Health and Welfare Department struck a deal with my dad. In exchange for his signed admission of guilt, eight weeks of court-appointed group therapy, and ten months of abstinence from me, they would forego prosecution and return me to my mom. If, by the following June, Dad could prove that he'd been “cured” of his obsessive need to molest me, he could join Mom and me at home.

In September, Dad moved out. He went to live with his brother across town. He didn't take much with him: just some work clothes, his shaving kit, and a few copies of
Field and Stream.
His job, he told my mom, wasn't to enjoy himself, but to do anything and everything to get himself home.