“I think we have a lot to talk about tonight so let’s get started.” Larry starts talking as he shuts the door to the living room. “I’d like to begin with what happened at last night’s session. Lark? Can we start with you?”
As Larry turns the empty chair in the center of the circle to face Lark, she shifts in her seat.
“What was on your mind yesterday afternoon, before the session began?”
Lark looks at Larry.
“Lark? Could you talk to us? Tell us what you were going through yesterday…”
“I’d like to talk about it, Larry.” It is Ben.
“All right, if Lark doesn’t mind yielding the floor then Ben, why don’t you start us off.”
“I was very upset, Larry, that Lark smoked in here. I mean, smoking’s not allowed inside. I think you should know that Lark smoked in here, Larry.”
Silence.
“Hmm. You’re right, Ben. Smoking is not allowed inside the building. Matches aren’t allowed, either. Lark? Can you hear that Ben had some concerns about your smoking inside?”
More silence.
“What did that call up for you, Ben?”
“Huh?” Ben looks confused by the question.
“Why did that upset you?”
“There are rules, Larry. There are rules about that and I don’t like that she broke that rule.”
Can we please get to the point, folks?
“You’re right again, Ben. Lark? Care to jump in? Why did you feel compelled to smoke inside this room?”
Lark looks drugged. She probably is.
“What do you want me to say, Larry?” She slurs her words, but her tone is unmistakably confrontational. “You want me to apologize or something? Is that what you want?”
“What I want, Lark, is for you to talk to us about what was going through your mind yesterday. Were you feeling upset or anxious about anything in particular?”
Lark looks out the window and appears to be mulling over the question.
“What interests me is what led up to your break last night. Because that is exactly what happened here. Who was talking to Rita last night, Lark? Who was that?”
Lark turns back to face the empty chair.
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh, I think you do remember. But just in case, let me help you out. You talked about your father touching you when you were a little girl. Remember? You talked about the curling iron. Who was that talking about young Lark?”
Silence.
“Lark?”
“Donna,” she says quietly.
“Donna? Who is Donna?” Larry asks this as he surveys the group. “Lark? Who is Donna?”
“She sticks up for Lark. She tries to protect Lark sometimes,” she says in a childlike whisper. “But sometimes she can be a bully.”
“Like when?”
“Larry?” It is Keisha.
“Yes, Keisha?”
“I was thinking that maybe Donna comes in when Lark can’t defend herself.”
“An interesting observation. Tell me more about that.”
“It’s like, um, maybe when Lark gets pinned down or somethin’, like with her daddy, Donna comes in like a wrestler to try to be strong for her when she can’t be strong for herself.”
“What made you think of that, Keisha? That’s a very good point.”
Keisha tips her chair back so far that it is teetering precariously on its two back legs.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“Ain’t nobody gonna hold my arms down, know what I’m sayin’? Nobody. When I leave here? Ain’t nobody gonna ever hold me down again. Uh-uh.”
Me, neither.
“I know you’re leaving, Keisha, and I want to address that in a little bit. For now, though, let’s stay on this topic. Why does it bother you to have someone hold your arms?”
Keisha turns to look out the window. “That’s what they did to me,” she says. “I don’t really remember it, but my therapist here told me that’s what the police report said. That they held me down.”
“When they raped you?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember anything about that afternoon?”
“Naw,” she says, turning her attention back to the group. “Thank God for that, know what I’m saying?”
Lark is still staring at the chair.
“Lark? What do you think about what Keisha just talked about?”
“I wish I couldn’t remember,” she says.
Silence.
“Keep going,” Larry gently urges her on.
“That’s it. I wish I couldn’t remember.”
“Do you think about it a lot?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Do you think that when you do think about it someone else comes in and sticks up for you so that the memory can’t hurt you? Like Donna? Maybe she comes in when you start thinking about it and she takes all the bad out of it for you? Lark, do you know what yesterday was?”
“Yesterday?”
“Yesterday was Father’s Day, Lark.”
Isabel looks at Lark, who is nodding her head.
“I know.”
“Maybe that’s what was so difficult for you. Maybe the fact that yesterday was a day for all of us to think about, to honor, our fathers was upsetting for you. It’s not an easy day for you, I know.”
More silence.
“It takes a lot of fortitude for a woman—for anyone—to overcome abuse at the hands of a man,” Larry says. “That abuse colors everything we are and everything we will encounter. It’s incredibly difficult to move past it, to trust again. And even then it’s an incomplete trust. So patterns develop. We repeat them because they’re familiar. In your case, Lark, the abuse started with your father and since then—and correct me if I’m wrong—you have continued in other similarly destructive relationships.”
“What’s that?” Katherine pointed with her triangle of toast at a mark on Isabel’s leg.
“What? Nothing. I don’t know,” Isabel said, brushing off the inquiry.
“It’s a huge welt, Isabel.” Her mother continued chewing. “You don’t know how it got there?”
“Mo-om,” Isabel whined, knowing it wouldn’t be too difficult to deflect her mother’s probe since her parents had become quite accustomed to her adolescent mood swings. They were quick to back off and give her space when she started turning their names into two syllables.
“I told you, I got it somewhere…I don’t remember. What’s with the third degree?” Isabel knew the bruise was ugly. But she thought it looked far worse than it was. The accompanying cut and scab turned the black-and-blue mark into special effects material.
Isabel and David had been dating for six months—since the first week of freshman year in high school. One night he began pressuring her to have sex, and what began as a gentle rebuff while kissing turned into a fight and, before David stormed out of the truck he drove, he punched the seat in frustration. But he missed the seat and caught Isabel’s leg instead. Later, when Isabel was alone, she tried to reconstruct the scene to figure out how it was that he punched the side of her leg instead of the seat and couldn’t. So she bought David’s explanation of a misdirected right hook and let it go. The mark had been easy to cover up, since her school uniform hit her just below the knee. But her mother noticed the bruise on this particular day because she had a tennis match and her game uniform was short.
Dating David was like being caught in a light spring drizzle. At first the infrequent drops of water are cool, refreshing even. Isabel had never had a man wanting, almost needing, to know everything about her. She reveled in this newfound attention. It no longer mattered when her father missed a play—David was there. When her father canceled dinner plans, David was there, ready to whisk her out for pizza. But the drizzle that had been light ultimately soaked Isabel to the bone.
David told Isabel his father had given his mother six stitches on their honeymoon. Though it horrified her, Isabel was strangely drawn to this troubled guy who had had to grow up so fast. She loved feeling needed: his insatiable fascination with the wholesomeness and stability she represented was intoxicating for her. It became an addiction for both of them. David’s sad stories about his family, the hardships he had to endure, and the pain he was in as a result, touched Isabel in a profound way. To David, Isabel’s home life was idyllic and dangled in front of his desperate eyes like a carrot in front of a hungry rabbit.
But love only fed the flame on the slow burn that was David’s anger. Over time he tired of having his face pressed up against the glass and his anger turned to bitter resentment. She began feeling the heat of David’s hate directed at her. Isabel began to represent all that had been denied him.
Isabel was shocked the first time he hit her, but David was sufficiently apologetic and all was soon forgotten.
The next time the slap was backhanded, with more force. And then, mixed in with apologies was subtle blame: I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I love you, I’m sorry, but you did twist my wrist backward when we were wrestling and it hurt like hell. But I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
It was ingenious: slowly but surely David was making Isabel feel she deserved to be hit.
Isabel withdrew from her friends and allowed her relationship with David to consume her. The bruises became a part of who she was and she made an unsettled peace with it.
“Now, Keisha, I know you are getting ready to leave and I want you to know that we here in the group support you and wish you well. Does anyone have any parting words for Keisha?”
“Bye, Keisha,” Ben dutifully replies.
“Yeah, good luck,” Regina says.
“We’re all pulling for you,” Kristen chimes in.
Isabel doesn’t say anything. Instead, when the session ends and before Keisha stands up to go, Isabel moves to the seat next to her.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she says.