Reviving Ophelia (36 page)

Today she sat quietly in my office, a small girl with dark hair and eyes. Only her fluttering hands betrayed her nervousness.

Terra said, “I don’t need to be here. Mom and my counselor are making a big deal out of nothing.”

“A black eye is nothing?”

Terra said, “Court would never have hit me if he hadn’t been drinking. He apologized and bought me a rose. It’s over. It won’t happen again.”

I asked about Court. Terra described him as seventeen, a high school dropout who worked at a body shop weekdays and customized vans on weekends. She said he’d had a tough life. His dad was an alcoholic and his mother ran around with other men. Court took care of his younger brothers when he was little. Even now he slipped them money.

They had been dating for a year and Terra wanted to marry him, but she admitted there were problems in the relationship. Court was jealous and controlling. He expected her to be either at school or at home waiting for him. He got mad if she even talked to other guys, and he didn’t like her to do things with her girlfriends.

I asked about school and Terra flung her arms up in despair. “I hate school. I’m killing time there until it’s legal to quit.”

Terra told me that her mom had quit school at sixteen to marry and she’d done just fine. Well, not with her marriage, which had ended in divorce when Terra was two, but with her money. She cleaned houses for a living and earned more money than lots of women with high school degrees.

I asked about depression and Terra denied any problems. She said, “I’d be okay if people would leave me alone.”

I asked about her family history. She talked about her parents’ divorce and her father’s remarriage and move to another state. She never saw him and heard from him only on her birthday and Christmas. For a long time he’d sent no child support, but now he did. Terra said, “Mom and I have plenty of money.”

In spite of her arguments with her mom over school and Court, Terra described her mother in positive terms. She said, “Mom’s a hard worker and she’d do anything for me.”

I asked about other family and she said, “I used to stay with my grandparents, but I don’t anymore. When I was little my step-grandfather did nasty things to me. I told Mom when I was seven and she stopped it. He’s in jail now.”

Terra looked even smaller and younger than when she came in. She yawned dramatically and said, “I’ve had enough for one day. I don’t like to talk about this.”

I asked if I could talk to her mother and she agreed. She said, “Let her tell you the details. I forget.”

Mona came in the next week. She was a small, wiry woman who looked a lot like Terra. But in contrast to Terra, she was energetic and talkative. Mona said, “I’m worried about Terra. Not so much her schoolwork—I did fine without school—but I don’t like Court. He’s bad news.”

I asked about Terra’s earlier abuse. She sighed. “Now, Irwin wasn’t my dad. He married Mom after Dad died, but Terra always knew him as Gramps. He was a big cuddly guy who wore overalls and kept candy in his pockets for kids. I thought he was great and he seemed to love Terra.”

She paused. “I worked a lot of hours in those days. I was getting my cleaning business started. Irwin and Mom watched Terra for me. When Terra was about five, she stopped wanting to go over there, but I didn’t think much of it. Maybe she missed her neighborhood friends. Then when she was seven she refused to go. She grabbed my legs and howled when I tried to leave her. That’s when we had a talk and Terra told me what was going on.”

“What was going on?”

“Terra said Irwin was making her watch movies with him and he was having sex with her. Later she told the police about other things—oral sex, being tied up. It was awful.”

“So you did get the law involved?” “Yes, and Mom filed for divorce right away.
Thank God
we both believed Terra from the beginning.”

Her voice caught in her throat, but she continued. “Terra was a mess. She hadn’t sucked her thumb since she was two and she started that up again. She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. I could hardly get her to school. She cried when I left her in the morning. The lawyers decided she couldn’t testify, and they used her counselor’s testimony instead. But that was enough to lock up Irwin. May he rot in hell.”

I asked about the counseling, and Mona said it was good for Terra. Really, Terra hadn’t had any trouble until adolescence. Then she seemed to fall apart again. As Mona put it, “She’s attracted to every skunk in the county.”

I said that Terra’s reactions were common for victims of incest. Adolescent issues often trigger earlier traumas. I warned that it might take a while to get things squared away. I also said that a sexual assault by a family member is an injury to the soul of the family. Everyone is wounded. Mona would need help forgiving herself for not protecting Terra and dealing with her own anger. I suspected all the other family members would as well. We would need to sit down together and discuss how this incident affected everyone. Also we would discuss how family members could help Terra heal.

Mona said, “Take all the time you want. Terra’s welfare is all that’s important.”

When Terra returned I brought up the abuse. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Do we have to talk about that? It’s over. I’m fine now.”

I said, “Do you see any connection between the abuse with Irwin and your relationship with Court?”

“Like what?”

“He hurts you, wants you for himself and tries to control your behavior.” Terra’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

Terra reminded me of many young women who were abused as children. Often they must rework the abuse when they are teenagers. They’re all mixed up about love, sex, punishment and affection. They need to erase memories of bad relationships and build ideas about good ones. Otherwise they are at risk of finding boyfriends like the person who abused them.

Many issues arise with dating. For example, girls who have been assaulted often learn to block out the experience of being sexual. When they want to be emotionally present, they may find that impossible. Sexual touch may trigger a dissociative reaction. With therapy, this is something that can be changed.

Terra asked if I’d known other girls with her problems.

“Not exactly like you, but I’ve known lots of girls who were incest victims and had trouble in adolescence.”

She asked, “How many of them did you cure?”

I sighed. “I hope I have helped quite a few. I don’t blame you for doubting, though. It’s hard to trust people after what you’ve been through.”

Terra said, “You’ve got that right.”

Rape is a personal problem that cries out for a political solution. The solution to our cultural problems of sexual violence lies not only in the treatment of individual victims and offenders, but also in changing our culture. Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism. Sex is currently associated with violence, power, domination and status. The incidence of rape is increasing because our culture’s destructive messages about sexuality are increasing.

Rape hurts us all, not just the victims. Rape keeps all women in a state of fear about all men. We must constantly be vigilant. One day last winter I was cross-country skiing along a jogging trail. A tall man dressed in a ski mask and a black jogging suit ran toward me. It was dusk in a busy residential neighborhood, but his size and shape frightened me. As he approached, he said my name and I realized it was my own husband.

Men are fearful for their women friends and family and aware that women are afraid of them. A male student complained that he hated rape. He said, “When I walk across campus after dark, I can see women tense up. I want to reassure them I’m not a rapist.” Another said, “I haven’t dated a girl yet who trusts men. Every girl I’ve cared for has been hurt by some guy. They are afraid to get close. It’s so much work to prove I’m not a jerk.”

But mostly rape damages young women. They become posttraumatic stress victims. They experience all the symptoms—depression, anger, fear, recurrent dreams and flashbacks. The initial reaction is usually shock, denial and dissociation. Later comes anger and self-blame for not being more careful or fighting back. Young women who are raped are more fearful. Their invisible shield of invulnerability has been shattered. Forty-one percent of rape victims expect to be raped again; 30 percent contemplate suicide; 31 percent go into therapy; 22 percent take self-defense courses and 82 percent say that they are permanently changed.

Our daughters need time and protected places in which to grow and develop socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically. They need quiet time, talking time, reading time and laughing time. They need safe places where they can go to learn about themselves and others. They need places where they can take risks and make mistakes without fearing for their lives. They need to be valued for their personhood, not their bodies.

Today girls are surrounded by sexual violence. We have emergency treatment for sexual casualties—therapists, hospitals, rape crisis centers and support groups. But we also need a preventive program. We need to work together to build a sexual culture that is sensible, decent and joyful.

THEN AND NOW

Cassie reminded me of myself as a girl. She even looked like me, with long brown hair, blue eyes and a gawky, flat-chested body. Like me, she loved to walk in the woods and cried when she read poetry. She wanted to visit the Holocaust Museum and join the Peace Corps. She preferred books to clothes and didn’t care a fig for money. Like me, she was the oldest daughter of a doctor. She loved both her parents even though they were now divorcing and had little energy to care for her. At school she was shy and studious. Kids with problems could talk to her.

But Cassie also wasn’t like me. I was fifteen in 1963, she was fifteen in 1993. When I was fifteen, I’d never been kissed. She was in therapy because she’d been sexually assaulted. Her hands folded in her lap, she whispered the story.

She’d been invited to a party by a girl in her algebra class whose parents were out of town. The girl was supposed to stay with a friend, but she had worked out a way to be home. The kids could use her parents’ hot tub and stereo system.

Cassie didn’t get invited to many parties, so she accepted the invitation. She planned to leave if things got out of control. She told her mother the truth about her plans, except she didn’t mention that the parents were gone. Because her mother had been to her lawyer’s that day, she was preoccupied by the divorce proceedings and didn’t ask for more details.

The party was okay at first—lots of loud music and sick jokes but Cassie was glad to be at a party. A guy from her lunch period asked her to dance. A cheerleader she barely knew asked her to go to the movies that weekend. But by eleven she wanted to go home. The house was packed with crashers and everyone was drinking. Some kids were throwing up, others were having sex or getting rowdy. One boy had knocked a lamp off a desk and another had kicked a hole through a wall.

Cassie slipped away to the upstairs bedroom for her coat. She didn’t notice that a guy followed her into the room. He knew her name and asked for a kiss. She shook her head no and searched for her coat in the pile on the bed. He crept up behind her and put his hands under her shirt. She told him to quit and tried to push him away. Then things happened very fast. He grabbed her and called her a bitch. She struggled to break free, but he pinned her down and covered her mouth. She tried to fight but was not strong or aggressive enough. He was muscular and too drunk to feel pain when she flailed at him. Nobody downstairs heard anything over the music. In ten minutes it was over.

Cassie called her mother and asked her to come get her. She shivered outside until her mother arrived. Cassie told her what had happened and they cried together. They called her father and the police, then drove to a nearby hospital. Cassie was examined and she met with a crisis counselor.

Two weeks later Cassie was in my office, in part because of the rape and in part because of the flak she’d taken at school. The guy who sexually assaulted her had been suspended from the track team pending his trial. His friends were furious at her for getting him in trouble. Other kids thought she led him on, that she had asked for it by being at that party.

Cassie awakened me to an essential truth: In 1993, girls’ experiences are different from those of myself and my friends in the 1960s. When I tried to understand them based on my own experience, I failed. There was some common ground, enough to delude me that it was all common ground, but there was much new, uncharted territory. To work with girls in the 1990s I had to understand a new world. I had to let go of my ideas and look at the girls before me with fresh eyes. I had to learn from them before I could help.

During my adolescence, I lived in a town of 400 people where my mother practiced medicine and my father sold seed corn and raised hogs. I spent my days riding my bike, swimming, reading, playing piano and drinking limeades at the drugstore with my friends. I raised all kinds of animals—baby coyotes that we bought from bounty hunters, turtles we picked up on the highway, birds washed from trees in heavy spring rains, mice pulled from their nests by dogs, and snakes and rabbits we caught in the fields on the edge of town.