Now how many days in a year
She woke up with hope
But she only found tears
~Nine Days (Absolutely – The Story of a Girl)

I have her hair and her eyes; I’ve come to accept this.

I honestly have no idea how I got this picture. I know that it’s been at the bottom of this backpack since I was twelve years old. My mind has put together a memory that I do not trust, of the same cop who puked his guts out that night my mother officially went postal, bringing it to me. It could have happened. He could have gone back in and found the clothes and the teddy bear and the picture of my mother. But, chances are that it was the social worker getting clearance to go back into the house and get a few things for the daughter of the crazy family. For as ashamed as I am of my past, this backpack has stayed with me. No matter how many times I’ve lugged this backpack across the country, that picture has stayed in the small, waterproof pocket. It’s been stared at, crumpled, spit on, screamed at, and still it remains. Even now, with my mother freshly released from prison and a new TRO against her, I keep this picture. Maybe it is because I want some image of her without the bruises. Back then, men didn’t have to be smart about their hitting. This is a picture of her without the scar above her eye. I want to think this is the picture she took before she gave her dreams of greatness over to a man with a temper and a taste for little girls.

Her stillness was a perfect beauty. It’s an odd thought to have about a mother I can only remember as the monster who protected my father, but in this picture, the picture that looks so like me at nineteen, I see a beauty that her mental illness and my father’s abuse stole away. At nineteen, she was freshly away from the horrors my own grandfather inflicted on her and my father must have seemed so perfect for her. Even I have memories of his strong arms lifting me up to see the stars more clearly. Those same arms that kept me safe and secure as I reached for the stars later held me in ways that still make my stomach churn.

I was nine then. I’m thirty-five now. I still cannot accept that my father used to make me take my clothes off and lash me with his belt until I screamed for mercy. I still cannot accept that he used his own daughter for his perverse sexual pleasures. I still cannot accept that my mother couldn’t stop it from happening. It’s childish but I wanted her to protect me. As an adult who has studied abuse and self-destructive behavior, I know, intellectually, why she couldn’t. Emotionally, I am still nine years old and scared to death that the guests at the bed and breakfast are going to hear me crying in the middle of the night.

She wants me to forgive her. Brian’s dead and she wants me to forgive her. She wants me to open my door to her and welcome her back into my life because she’s out of prison and my brother is dead. I’m supposed to forgive her. I don’t know, maybe I should. She did kill my father – that is worth something. I could have easily been the one to do it. I was twelve and abused and angry. I spent my nights contemplating how to sneak into their room and cut him into ribbons. She just beat me to the punch. A part of me thinks that I should forgive her because she was protecting me, but I know that she did it because she was manic at the time. Brian and I had nothing to do with it.

My life is starting over again. I have a ring on my finger and a new family who has embraced me. Greg’s parents never thought twice about welcoming me as their daughter and Nana Olaf may scare me, but she loves me as much as I already love her. So, maybe it’s time to get rid of the backpack and the old teddy bear and the picture of a woman who never existed for me.

But, the backpack is going in a box that will end up in the bottom of a closet along with the comforter I can’t stand to get rid of. Maybe it’s because I want our kids to someday know more than their father’s parents. I don’t want my mother within one hundred yards of any children Greg and I will eventually have, but this picture is all I have to show them that their mother was not just spawned from nothingness. One picture, a teddy bear, and two letters from my brother. That is all I have of a life that made me an adult while most girls were still playing with barbies.

She’s standing at the window. She’s been there for half an hour, just watching the rain. There’s a droplet she’s following with her finger and it continues to amaze me how still her beauty is. She inhabits a bubble and even though there is this rage going on around her and within her, this bubble of air around her is pure stillness and peace. The first time I saw her, I remember that I wasn’t so much astonished by her beauty, but by the absolute determination in her stillness. It wasn’t until just recently that I learned how she’d crafted that bubble – and why. It’s a skill kids like her have – the ability to move with perfect silence and go completely unnoticed even when they’re running through the room. Twenty years since she escaped the hell she grew up in and she still has that bubble around her.

She’s upset, obviously. She still hasn’t managed to get over that little girl from the case a couple of weeks ago, that little girl who killed her father. Sara hasn’t said a word, but I know she’s wondering what would have happened if she’d got to her father first. She’s scared to get pregnant because she’s worried she’ll hurt our children. She’s terrified that she’s as fucked up as her mother.

She smashed her fist into the locker last night. She’s not saying that it hurts, but she was nursing it this morning when we woke up. The case isn’t going anywhere and Grissom’s being a jackass and she’s spending her time staring out the window at the rain and wondering what she did wrong in her life to make her father hurt her and her mother hate her.

If I’d grown up like she did, I don’t know if I could have survived. But here she is, at the top of her field. If I’d grown up like she did, I’d probably have ended up as a junkie. She went to Harvard and Berkeley. She had cop boyfriends who beat the crap out of her and a supervisor who liked to use her body for his physical release and yet when she smiles she means it and when she touches me, it’s perfect. I want to kick Grissom’s ass and find Brad and cut his lungs out and next time her mom shows up I’ll press her hand down onto a hot stove. As for her father, if I could bring him back from the dead and kill him all over again, it still wouldn’t be enough. The thing is, I know that she wants to do it too and instead of giving into her complete rage she stands at windows while its raining and traces the raindrops with her fingers.

Her stillness is her beauty. In all her inner rage and a mind that is barely contained by the physical restrains of her skull, she carries a beauty to which no other woman can compare. I know she cannot forgive them for what they did to her, so she stares at raindrops. She lets the world cry not for her but for the children who weren’t lucky enough to survive the system.

That old, ratty backpack is on the bed and I pick it up; it’s heavy with the weight of twenty years of foster care memories. This was her only real possession as she moved from home to home. There’s still a pin attached to it – it had to have come from the family that almost adopted her. It’s one of those little smiley faces that Wal-Mart uses now. There isn’t much in here – the envelope with Brian’s things, her old teddy bear, and the picture of her mother that she’s holding in her hand. My childhood life is jammed away in attics and overflowing old boxes and her entire history is tucked into a frayed backpack.

I know her; the picture will go back into the backpack and the backpack will get shoved in the bottom of the guest closet in our new place. Part of me hopes that she keeps everything. I want our kids to know how strong their mother is and what she overcame.

She leans back against me as I move to wrap my arms around her. It’s late for both of us and she needs the sleep more than I do, but right now, with the rain falling in sheets against the window, that bubble of stillness she moves through envelopes both of us and I realize that for the first time in her life, she’s giving trust over to someone else. She is letting me watch out for her and protect her. So I do the only thing I can – I hold her and I hope that it’s enough.

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