Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [147]
June had the gift for appreciating what was good in her life. Once she told me, “I always get what I want.” Then she winked and said, “But I know what to want.” Her life, which might strike some people as difficult or dull, is rich and rewarding. She has friends, money, a boyfriend and the respect of her peers. She has that pride in her life that so many self-made people have. She has no bitterness or anger because she is basically happy. She’s a desert flower opening to the rain.
CAROLINE (17)
Caroline asked to interview me for her high school psychology class. I agreed, provided we could trade interviews. Caroline had recently moved to town from Alabama, and I was interested in talking to girls from other states. We met at my house and Caroline interviewed me first. I was struck by her poise and sensitivity. Dressed in a dark blue skirt-and-sweater outfit, she looked older than her seventeen years. She could have been a college student in a journalism class.
After my interview, we jokingly traded chairs and switched roles. I asked her about her family. Her father was a military man with a drinking problem and a womanizing problem. He’d considered Caroline ugly and lazy. He whipped her for the smallest mistakes. Once when he was calling her names in front of his buddies, one of them told him to stop. Usually, though, his friends were too drunk or too insensitive to care when he belittled his daughter. Caroline said of her father, “He would have been a good horse trainer. He had lots of ways to break a person’s spirit.”
She continued, “Fortunately, he wasn’t around all that much. When he was around, I’d grab a book and head for my room. Mom couldn’t get away from him and he destroyed her.”
I asked about the abuse. “It happened at night after he’d been out drinking. He’d stumble in, slamming doors and cursing. Mom yelled at him and he called her names. Then he hit her and she cried. Later she came to my bed for the night. I stopped it when I was twelve. I called the cops on him.”
I must have betrayed my emotions because Caroline said, “It wasn’t as bad as you think. I loved school. We moved a lot and I went to all kinds of schools—parochial, military and integrated public schools. But wherever I went, I was the best student.
“I was always the teacher’s pet. The kids liked me too. I sang, danced, played sports, was good at art. I could joke my way into any crowd. Even though my home life was hell, I had high self-esteem from all the praise I got at school.”
She said, “No one at school knew what my home life was like. I pretended my parents had rules for me, that I had birthday parties and dental appointments. When we had school plays, I explained that my parents were out of town on business. I was doing so well it was easy to fool the teachers.”
She settled back into the couch. “My sixth-grade year was one of the best years of my life. That year Dad brought a girlfriend home and Mom tried to kill herself. I had to pull the gun away from her. But amazingly, I was a happy kid. I was in a good school in Boston and I loved my teacher. She arranged for special art lessons and she let me sing lead in the school musical. I maybe should have felt worse about my family, but I didn’t. I was living my own life.”
Caroline paused, and when she continued, the happiness had vanished from her voice. “The next year my parents divorced and Mom and I moved to Alabama to live with her parents. Everything good in my life stopped happening.
“The schools were horrible. Everyone with money went to private schools, and