Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [37]
Betty continued. “In seventh grade, Francie started her periods and was cranky all the time. I thought it was hormonal. Before, she’d always told us everything, but in seventh grade she hid in her room. I talked to my sister and we agreed that teenagers go through stages like this. In fact, her girls were giving her fits at the time. So we let it slide.
“Her grades dropped and that worried us.” She sighed. “We called the counselor and he said lots of kids have trouble their first year. We made her study two hours a night and her grades picked up a little. She wasn’t seeing her old friends, but we let that slide too.”
“We let too much stuff slide,” Lloyd said.
Betty continued. “This year has been horrible. Lloyd is the main disciplinarian. He’s not that strict really, only the ordinary rules—let us know where she’s going, no alcohol and passing grades—but you’d think he was beating her. She hardly speaks to him and it’s breaking his heart. She’ll talk to me a little more, but not much. She won’t go to church with us.”
Lloyd twisted in his seat. “She’s running with a rough crowd and drinking some. We’ve smelled it on her. She’s lying and sneaking around.”
Betty added, “Last week we let her go to a ball game with friends and she didn’t come home. We were worried sick. Lloyd drove around until sunrise. The next day when she came home, she wouldn’t tell us where she’d been.”
I said, “I’d like to meet Franchesca.”
Lloyd said, “She doesn’t want to come, but we’ll make her.”
“Just one time,” I said. “I let teenagers decide whether to return.” The next week Franchesca sat stiffly in my office. She was dressed in green jeans and a SIX FLAGS OVER TEXAS T-shirt. Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes were filled with tears. At first she was quiet, almost sullen. She looked over my head at the various diplomas on the walls and answered my questions by nodding.
I searched for an issue on which we could connect—school, friends, books or her parents. She barely acknowledged my questions. I asked her about adoption and noticed that her breathing changed. At that point I sat still and waited.
Franchesca raised her eyes and looked me over. She inhaled deeply and said, “I’m living with nice people, but they are not my family.”
She paused to see how I was taking this.
“Every morning when I wake up I wonder what my real mother and father are doing. Are they getting ready for work? Are they looking in the mirror and seeing faces that look like mine? What are their jobs? Do they talk about me and wonder if I am happy?”
Big tears dropped onto her shirt and I handed her the Kleenex box. She wiped her cheeks and chin and continued. “I can’t stop feeling that I’m in the wrong family. I know it would kill Mom and Dad to hear me say this, but I can’t make it go away.”
I asked Franchesca what she knew about her real mother.
“She gave me up when I was three months old. Maybe she was poor or unmarried. I’m sure she never hurt me. I feel in my heart that she loved me.”
Outside flakes of snow floated by. We watched the snow.
“How does it feel to be Native American?”
Franchesca sighed. “For a long time I pretended that it didn’t matter, but all of a sudden it’s the most important thing in the world.
“I’ve been teased since I was little about being a Native American and my tribe doesn’t even know I exist.” Franchesca talked of the years of teasing, the names—Redskin and Squaw—and the remarks about Indian drunks, welfare cheats, and Indian giving. She ended by saying, “The worst is that line—the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
I asked what Franchesca knew about Native Americans.
“I saw The Last of the Mohicans and Dances With Wolves. Before that, the movies about Native Americans made me sick. Have you ever seen The Lone Ranger? Do you remember his pal Tonto? Do you know that Tonto in Spanish means ‘fool