Poor_Baby

One of my Susans showed me
a photograph of herself as a
little girl, standing outside a
screen door and bawling
beneath her little red cowgirl
hat. My heart embraced the
sad child with pigeon toes
and big brothers who belittled
her for sport, more so than
I’d allowed the bookish coed
whose paintings dwelt on
captivity and emaciation. With
that yellowing slice of a painful
childhood serving as a point of reference, I could more clearly see the depth
of footprints her hypercritical parents had stamped upon her soul. Day by day, through the years, each motherly reproach and every paternal condemnation had driven her to further withdraw and hide beneath the covers of volume after volume of numbing distraction.
Poor baby girls, I'm a sucker for their tears.
    Susan told me about a friend of hers, Claire, who had similarly grown up with sadness sealed inside. Anorexia, schizophrenia and alcoholism defined her as an adult, uncomfortable wrappings for the little girl who never felt secure. When Claire was five years old, her family had inadvertently left her at the side of a desolate road while out on vacation. Once the error had been discovered, the station wagon was turned around and they hastily doubled back. They found Claire sitting at the edge of the highway, pounding her head bloody with a sharp rock. Swept up with familial concern, the tot was frantically asked why she was hurting herself.
    "I thought you had left me…so I was killing myself."
    Skin and bones, broken mirrors, obscure spots on the brain.
    Susan went into therapy after I had moved away to seek my own greener pastures with less horseshit in them. Her psychiatrist placed her on a program of Prozac and sanctioned blame, which helped only in inducing her to slice her arms with an Exacto knife. She told me that it released some of the pressure inside. Poor baby girls.

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Poemission

Poor Baby Girls

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