June 9-15, 2005

naked city

Rag Doll

Illustration by Hyacinth Hughes

Healing parenthood for a survivor of mother-daughter sexual abuse.

by Emily Sinclair

When I was eight, my cousin ripped the head off of my Raggedy Ann doll. I had bet he couldn't do it. I lost. "Stop crying," my mother said, snatching the torn parts out of my hands. "You brought this on yourself."

When she gave Raggedy Ann back to me, something was wrong. My mother had reattached the head — backwards. Sobbing, I begged her to fix it again.

"Stop crying," my mother said. "You're too big for dolls."

Today, Raggedy Ann is at the bottom of my toy box-turned-hope chest. Her red candy heart is still in the wrong place. Her feet point behind her. Is she moving forward but trapped looking backward, or is she looking ahead but stuck in reverse? Maybe she's both.

Soothing lullabies play while I change diapers, dabbing Desitin with my ring finger onto one of the few-and-far-between rashes. I interact with the faces of my twin daughters the most, it seems, during changes. I don't want them to think I'm more concerned with any other part of them. I wonder if I will ever stop sighing with relief once the changes are done. Will I ever be unselfconscious about them, like other mothers are? Will I ever not be nervous that my mother will walk in on this, push me out of the way, find a way to hurt them and tell me it's my fault — just like she hurt me?

I remember being 5, on my back in my bed. I remember my mother and the smell of A & D Ointment. And I remember feeling icky but not knowing why. I was told I had rashes up until I was in kindergarten, but I don't know if I believe that anymore.

I use Desitin because it's not A & D.

In my 27th week of pregnancy, the day after my baby shower, I started getting contractions. I counted them. Ten in an hour. I called my doctor, who sent me to labor and delivery, luckily two blocks from my office. There, I was hooked up to octopus-armed monitors and surrounded by nurses, residents, fellows — all women.

"We keep losing Baby B's heartbeat," one nurse said.

I felt what little color remained in my face drain completely away.

"Oh, don't worry," she said, patting my icy arm in intended reassurance. "She's just being uncooperative."

I sighed with half-relief. "Not uncooperative," I said, defending the child within me. "Spirited and independent."

The nurse smirked, adjusting the fetal heart monitor. "Remember that when they're writing on the walls."

"We're going to check your cervix now," the resident said, giving me one of those smiles that says, "I'm not allowed to say so out loud, but this is going to hurt like hell." I almost laughed. In my high-risk pregnancy, I'd been poked and prodded so many times that I didn't think I had anything left to feel. I was wrong. It hurt. Like hell. Searing pain. I gripped the bed rails until my fingers went white. And I cried. I tried to stay quiet, but the harder I tried, the more I had to fight not to sob out loud.

"It's OK," the fellow replied, sympathetic, her ponytail bobbing. "That's a perfectly normal reaction."

So why did her kindness make me cry even more? Cry for an hour more as I repeated to myself, "stop crying, stop crying, stop crying," until the nurse came in and asked me what was wrong. What could I say? What could I say that she would possibly understand, much less believe? I want Dad to give me my bath. It hurts down there when you do it. No! Stop! It hurts!

Oh, it does not. Stop crying.

When I was 14, I had the pen in my hand, the notebook open on my knees, the page blank but for its blue lines of invitation. Sassy magazine sat by my side, asking for girls like me to write in with their questions about dating, fashion, growing up, blossoming. I had the question perfectly formed in my head: Is it normal that my mother makes me shower in front of her?

So rarely was I able to put my shame into words, and there it was, ready to go. All I needed to do was get it out on paper, slip it into the envelope unsigned, stamp it, and send it on its way.

So why couldn't I? What if they traced the letter back to me, told on me, found out that she had to watch me shower because I didn't rinse my hair properly? What if they found out that I was in Drama Club and told me I was just a teen actress, making this up in some pathetic cry for attention? What if they told me that I was just making a big deal out of nothing, like my mother told me just about every day? What if my mother found what I'd written before I sent it?

I never wrote that letter.

I hate my voice when it becomes shrill, like my mother's would be whenever I tried standing up to her. I don't even remember why, but I remember being 13 and her snapping my bra strap from the front. A common punishment from her. It didn't leave any bruises. That day, I'd had enough. I punched her. I pounded my fists on her collarbone.

"That's child abuse!" I shrieked, a forward-echo of her shriek. "I should call the police and report you!"

"Oh no you don't," she shrieked, "because I'm going to call the police and report you for parent abuse!"

Seventeen years later, I heard that same voice shrieking out of my own mouth when my brother demanded I see my mother again — and let her see my daughters. I finally told him specifics of what our mother had done to me as a child. I thought, once he knew, he would stop pressuring me to allow our mother to see my daughters. I was wrong.

"You have to confront her," he said. "You have to be better than her."

"Why?" I asked, disbelieving both him and myself.

"She doesn't even know what she has to be sorry for," he said, shouting at me from across a continent while my infant daughters slept, safely buckled into their bouncers.

"Why does she need me to tell her?" I demanded. "Why does she need me to be the one to tell her that sticking her fingers into her daughter at bath time was wrong? Why does she need me to be the one to inform her that it wasn't right to make her teenage daughter shower in front of her? Why do I have to be the one to tell her what is child abuse?"

By now, I was shrieking, but the girls were still so young that such noises did not wake them. I watched them breathe, safely asleep.

"So she's never going to see her grandchildren?" my brother finally asked.

After another stunned pause, my voice again went hatefully shrill as I pleaded my case to my brother, in my desperation still clinging to that fantasy that he'd believe me, care about me, put my safety and his nieces' safety over our mother's right to do whatever she wants to whomever she wants.

"Here I am," I said to him, "recovering from surgery, trying to take care of two babies not even a month old, and now this? This is just so — selfish."

My brother's voice had a dead calm that I envied when he said, "I see selfishness on both sides."

And with that, he breathed life into the deepest of my unspoken terrors. He said I'm like my mother.

While I was pregnant, I worried. I worried that, once I had my girls, I would suddenly, magically, abuse them. Because that's what mothers are supposed to do. And then I'd realize that my hurt at my mother's hands was just part of being a daughter, that there was no escape, and I'd have to forgive her and let her back into not only my life but into my daughters' lives, so they could feel her prodding, too. I thought I'd learn that I was wrong and she was right all along, just like she'd always said.

But once my children were in my arms, the opposite happened. At every turn in the tub, with every diaper change, I am assaulted with the realization of how deeply I was lied to. No child's genitals could be so dirty that they would need painful cleansing. No child needs to have her body measured in minute, naked detail just to figure out what size McCall's pattern to buy. No daughter needs to be punished by having her bra strap snapped from the front. No teenager has such poor hygiene that she needs to press herself naked to the shower tiles so her mother can rinse her hair.

Now I know that these things weren't mothering but abuse. And I know I will give anything, anything to keep that pain and shame from my own children.

She doesn't know she did anything wrong, my brother said, so it's my responsibility to tell her. But she didn't believe my pain when I was a toddler, barely old enough to talk but old enough to know hurt when I felt it. She didn't believe my pain when I was an 8-year-old with a ripped doll. She didn't believe my pain as a teenager belittled with a groping front-snap of the bra strap. The evidence does not suggest that she would believe me now and take responsibility. The evidence does not suggest she'll do anything but say, "Stop crying."

Selfish, my brother said. What does our mother want that I'm not giving her?

Contact with me and her grandchildren. A chance to deny it all again, over and over, every time she visits and touches my daughters. But what did I want that she never gave me? Dignity. Safety. The right to protect my body, heart and soul. The right to protect my children.

My daughters need safety, genuine caring, and healthy boundaries more than they could ever need any grandmother. I owe my children every chance to grow up and move forward, not constantly looking backward for what their candy hearts are missing. I have chosen to lose my mother so I can give safety to my children. And if that's selfish, so be it.

Every day has its battles. So far, this is the greatest victory: My girls are happy. Giggly. They like to "dance" — I hold their hands, help them pull themselves up to standing, then they bobble their heads, shake their butts and smile huge, gummy grins. They love to grab my face and head butt me in that baby-affection way. Face hugs, we call them. They started hugging back at five months, and they love to snuggle into the crooks of my arms. They also love to splash in the bath. They don't cry there, like I always did. We don't give them reason to.

They do cry other times, yes, but that's what children do. That's how they communicate when crying is all they have.

"I know," I say, soothing them if I haven't figured out why they're crying. "I know. You're right. It's hard being a baby."

I read the girls a few stories then put them down for their nap. I turn off the soft music, shut the blinds and tiptoe out of their room. Then I go to my room. I find my thread, my pincushion, my needles, my embroidery scissors. Then I go to my hope chest. And I dig. I push aside the guest sheets, the spare pillow, the extra comforter. And there she is. Her feet point behind her, her red candy heart in the wrong place. Rag bits stick out from the wound around her neck and from the holes in her thumbs where I used to chew them.

I lift her to my face. She smells faintly musty, and her age-grimed hair is crisp against my nose. But her black button eyes shine, despite their scratches. Her smile may face the wrong way, but it is wide and joyous. My family may have torn her apart, but she's still here.

I have the tools now. I can't erase her scars, but I can help her to face forward and smile at her future with bright eyes. I gather her up with my thread and my scissors, my needles and pins, and I start to take her apart so I can put her back together.

About the Contest Judge:

Janet Ruth Falon is an award-winning journalist, essayist, poet and teacher. She teaches journaling and creative writing at many venues, including the University of Pennsylvania. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights Publishing), and will be leading the free Just Journaling workshop at the 2005 First Person Festival.

Editor's Note: In conjunction with First Person Arts' First Person Festival, City Paper sponsors a memoir-writing contest. This year's theme was "Skeletons in the Closet," and here is the winning entry.

For more information on the contest and festival, visit www.firstpersonfestival.org