Lust(22)

"Did your mom have a lot of boyfriends?" I finally asked.

She shrugged. "Kind of. I mean, I thought she did, but it was over the  span of eleven years so I guess it wasn't that many. I obviously don't  know how many she dated when I was really young, but I remember most of  them once I reached the age to remember."

"And they were good to you?"

"Yes. Some of them didn't have much to do with me, but the ones that did  were always really good to me, treated me like I was their own kid. Two  of them even ended up moving in with us. I remember those two the most.  It was the last one that told her she needed to get help. He was the  one that ended up getting me out of there." She was soft spoken and had a  hard time keeping eye contact with me while she explained her life  while living with her mom.         

     



 

I reached out for her hand and she reluctantly gave it to me. I pulled  her gently with me until we were back in the kitchen so that I could  finish making dinner while she watched. The last thing we needed was to  burn the place down. I waited for her to resume her place on the kitchen  counter as I went back to cutting up the chicken for the frying pan.

"Okay, so the book is good but you're having a hard time reading it  because of your mom. Do you think that maybe reading it could help you  learn more about the things she struggled with?" I needed to put my work  hat back on and think more like her therapist and not her friend or  something more.

"I guess. Mack doesn't really remind me of my mom, though. I mean, aside  from being crazy. The things she does in the book aren't the things my  mom did, which makes it easier to read, but I still can't help but think  about the things I had to grow up around. The thoughts Mack experiences  trigger the things I actually lived through. I'll finish the book, it's  really good and it's about way more than her mental disorder, but it's  just bringing up a lot of things I had thought were buried long ago."

"That's not always a bad thing, Ivy. You can't expect to compress things  and be okay. All it does is fester and grow and you never know it until  it smacks you in the face. You have to deal with it head on. Face it  and move on. Have you ever talked to your mom about it?"

"I can't-she's dead."

Why the fuck didn't I know that?

"She killed herself a few weeks after social services took me away."

"Where did you go? What happened to you?"

The room was silent aside from the chicken sizzling in the frying pan.  The silence affected me-her silence ate me alive. I was desperate for  something other than the sounds of dinner, anything to make the internal  suffering go away. I knew once she started talking the pain wouldn't go  away. She would more than likely tell me a slightly different version  of my own life. I wasn't prepared for that. I was conflicted. I wanted  to yell at her to stop talking while at the same time beg her to  continue.

"You already know that; I was sent to live with foster families."

I took a deep breath, fighting with myself on whether or not I wanted to  dig deeper. Ultimately, the therapist in me won out. No matter what she  said or how it was going to affect me, I needed to know more. If not  then I would never be able to fully understand her. And I needed to know  everything about Ivy Jaymes.

"What about your family? What about your dad?" I asked; now I was the one avoiding eye contact.

"I never had a dad. I don't even know who he is. There was never a name  listed on my birth certificate. And at first, I had gone to live with  relatives, but they said they couldn't handle me so that's when I went  into the system."

My gut clenched as I heard the sound of her voice when explaining that  her family couldn't handle her. That's never something easy for a child  to hear; it's incomprehensible at that age …  at any age, really. I knew  exactly what that felt like and could feel her pain throughout my entire  body. The abandonment she must have experienced couldn't have been easy  for her to handle, first from her mom and then the rest of her family.

"How old were you?"

"I was eleven when I was taken from my mom and sent to live with an aunt  I really didn't know for six months before I was shuttled off to  another family member. I only lasted a few months there before they said  they couldn't care for me the way I needed. That was their words.  Translation-they didn't want me, either."

"Did you have anyone at all that you trusted?"

"The second foster family I was placed with was a very good family. They  didn't baby me and the woman was really understanding with my episodes.  I was there until I was fifteen. She didn't do long-term placement and  needed the space for younger children. I think that was just an excuse.  I'm sure she tired of me as well."

"Episodes? What kind of episodes?" I felt like I was learning more about  her in that one conversation than I had the entire week we had been  talking.

"My mom never let me go to school; she always kept me at home. So when  the state came in to take me away, I didn't have any kind of formal  education. I was really far behind the other kids my age and had  difficulties catching up. The first foster family I was placed with  didn't work out because her kids went to the same school that I had been  enrolled in and they teased me a lot. In fact, the whole school teased  me. I hated going there so I didn't go most of the time. When I went to  live with the Kellys, she worked with me a lot at home in the evenings  and on weekends. It took the rest of the school year and all summer,  working every single day for me to finally be able to survive with kids  my own age. Well, not my own age, I ended up a year behind where I  should have been. But still, that was a lot closer than I had been when I  first started.         

     



 

"Although, it didn't stop some of the kids from teasing me. I had really  short hair when I left my mom and it had started growing it out. Mrs.  Kelly did her best to make it look stylish as it was growing, but it  still looked ridiculous. I was teased about that. I was also teased  about my clothes. We didn't have much money so I wore things from  secondhand stores. I can remember going in there with Mrs. Kelly and she  let me pick out whatever I wanted. I had never been shopping before so I  was in heaven. It was the first time I felt truly loved by someone. I  picked stuff out only to learn later by some of the kids in school that  it was what poor people wore. I was called all kinds of names but I  couldn't tell Mrs. Kelly that. It would have broken her heart after she  spent all that money on me. She really did love me and was the first  person that showed me she did.

"But even with all of that, with all of the love she gave me, the  protection she made me feel, I still had an internal struggle that I  didn't know how to deal with. I tried my best but no matter what I did, I  felt like a failure. I could make good grades, wear better clothes,  grow my hair out to what was considered appropriate for a girl, but it  didn't make the voices go away or the discomfort I felt in my own body  disappear."

I listened intently to every word as she spoke, absorbing them as if  they were water droplets during a drought. I could literally feel her  pain as she told me things I was pretty sure she had never told anyone  else before. That meant the most to me-that she felt comfortable enough  to open up and trust me with her inner demons.

"What voices, Ivy? Explain that to me. Like you really hear voices in your head?"

"No, Cade. I'm not crazy. I know I'm fucked up and have a list of issues  a mile long, but I'm not crazy. I'm nothing like my mother-"

"I know." I cut her off in a soothing voice as I stood in front of her  and took her hands in mine. "I know you're not crazy. That's not what I  was implying. I'm just trying to figure out what you mean by hearing  voices."

"It didn't matter how long I went without my mother and the things she  had put me through, I still heard her hateful words or the angry fights  she had with her boyfriends in my head. I could still hear the things  she said to me, the lies she told me. It was as if my mind didn't want  to let it go. It just played things over and over again as if someone  had hit repeat. She was long gone but yet she still lived on in my head,  filling it with hate and lies and vile things. Tormenting me."

I swallowed hard, hoping she didn't notice the rigidness that had consumed me.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," she whispered into the air between us.

"I understand. But if it makes you feel any better, I know exactly what  you're talking about. I know exactly what you've been through. You don't  need to be scared to talk to me about those things. I know better than  anyone what it's like to go through that." I will never know why I  divulged that information to her. I had never mentioned that to anyone  other than my own therapist. But something inside me felt the need to  comfort her, to confide in her that I understood her more than she  thought.