Childhood Possessions

Chapter 7

It was two more days of inane questions that I answered as politely and calmly as I could before she agreed to let me thirty minutes a day of supervised time in the computer lab. And when I say supervised, I mean supervised. A nurse had to sit beside me the entire time, watching everything that I did, and reading over my shoulder if I typed anything at all. It was something, at least. But I still wasn't allowed any interaction with any of the other residents, I still had to be supervised in the shower, and I still had to stay in my locked room for the other 22 hours or so that I wasn't with Dr. Whalen, or in the library or computer lab.

But on the fourth day of our visits, she stopped asking interview questions, and started with the real stuff. My heart pounded in my chest. I didn't want to talk about any of it, but she had made it clear that if I stopped cooperating, my privileges would stop, too.

She started out that day with her usual friendly chat, but then she just went straight into it: "That day at school, why did you get so upset when you found out that your father was coming?"

Shit, here we go... "I don't want anything to do with him," I answered.

"Why not?"

"He took off on my mom and me."

"That must have been difficult," she said with a sympathetic head tilt.

"Nah, piece of cake," I said with a sneer.

Dr. Whalen gave me a look, and I knew I was going too far. "I don't blame him for leaving me, but he shouldn't have left my mom. She needed him."

She wrote something down in her notebook before speaking again. "Didn't you need him, too?"

"It doesn't matter what I need."

"Why not?"

I still don't know what made me do it; I knew better, had always known better, but I did it. "Because I did bad things."

Dr. Whalen looked up from her notes. "People do bad things, Maddie. It doesn't mean that they don't deserve the love and support of their parents."

"They don't do the kind of things that I did. Or, that she did, I guess, but to my father it's all the same, and I can't blame him for that."

I started to feel a panic deep in my stomach as I realized what I had done, but it was too late to turn back. Dr. Whalen wasn't going to let me. She stared at me, not with any kind of anger or fear, just with interest. "What does that mean? 'She did'?"

"I didn't mean that..." I started to say, trying to fix things before it got worse.

"I think you did, Maddie. Who is 'she'?" Dr. Whalen was insistent, and I wanted to get up and run.

"It was just me, okay? I was the one who did the bad things, no one else. I didn't mean to say that." Despite my attempts to keep control of myself, I was getting hysterical.

She sighed and sat back in her chair. "All right: then what is it that you did that you think made your father leave?"

"It doesn't matter," I mumbled. I knew I was going to end up losing privileges for this, but what was I supposed to say?

"Maddie, if we're going to really make any progress, you have to trust me. Nothing that you say will leave this room, but you need to be completely honest with me, or I can't help you."

Anger bubbled up inside me. She wasn't going to understand, no one did. No one knew the truth except for my parents, and those men in our house that night. So either I told the truth, and she'd think I was crazy, or I didn't tell her anything, and I'd just end up locked in that room by myself for the rest of my life. Either way, I was screwed - again - because of Lilith. "Well, first I made my parents celebrate my birthday every day for two weeks, and I wouldn't let them leave the house to go to work..."