Page 10 of Tied
I feel numb as I’m once again sitting in the back seat of my father’s latest BMW, watching all the houses go by as we enter the outskirts of town for my first visit home. I vaguely wonder if I’ll recognize my childhood home when I see it or if it, like everything else, will be different. There were many promises of me coming home for the holidays and weekends over the past almost two years, but there was always an excuse at the last minute as to why it wasn’t a good time or it couldn’t happen. After a while, I just accepted it and stopped looking forward to it. I got used to feeling disappointed. To be honest, I’m not even excited about the weekend visit I’ve suddenly been granted by my parents. I have my own schedule now, just like everyone else.
At least, being at Merryfield, I’ve watched less television. In fact, everything there was very regulated at first. My exposure to televised news, newspapers, and other outside influences was limited. The focus was learning and coping. And talking. Talking and talking and talking. I learned to cook, do laundry, and plant flowers and vegetables in a garden. I caught up on my education and found out that I was actually still very smart. Sometimes the bad man would bring me schoolbooks during his visits, and he wouldteach me math, reading, and spelling. He would even quiz me randomly. I learned the hard way that he did not like bad grades.
At Merryfield, I learned to share my feelings with a group, and I learned that, later, most of that group would whisper about me behind my back. They called me the Girl in the Hole. Thankfully, my roommate, who had named herself Feather, didn’t say bad things about me. She became my first, and only, friend.
The prince hasn’t come for me yet, but I know he will. I dream of him and his sky-blue eyes all the time, and each dream is more vivid than the last, with a little house in the forest, friendly bunnies, garden faeries, and singing birds. In my mind, Poppy is also there with his broken bark. It’s all there, the things that matter to me most, waiting for me.
“Here we are,” my mother announces in a singsong voice.
I snap out of my daze, my mind having gone blank the whole ride here. I often lose my sense of time still, and hours, days, and months merge together. For eleven years I had no idea what day it was, or even what time of day it was. For me, time was segmented by what was on TV.
Gazing out the car window, I finally notice my surroundings. The artistic New England neighborhood, the perfectly manicured lawns, the big fancy houses. On TV, everything is perfect. Like what I see around me right now. In the TV shows, problems are always easily fixed, and doubt is merely a momentary inconvenience, quickly smoothed over and forgotten until it can be conveniently brought up again to create drama, only to be forgotten again. I’ve learned that real life isn’t like that at all. But sometimes I wish some of the fake world I immersed myself in daily was actually real. Then I would know what to expect. Nothingis predictable to me outside of Merryfield, and that’s one of the things I need to learn to cope with.
Wordlessly, I step out of the car as soon as it’s parked in the driveway and gaze up at the two-story brick house. It looks somewhat familiar to me, but I don’t remember all the brightly colored flowers in a perfect circle around the tree in the center of the front lawn or the stone walkway leading to the front door.
The warm fall sun beats down on me, and I’m sweating slightly despite the cool early afternoon breeze. I wipe my sweaty palms on my new mom-purchased clothes—a blue ribbed sweater, dark gray skirt, and black knee-high boots—while gazing up at the house. A few old memories emerge. They are hazy at first, then crystal clear. I’m bombarded with new sights and sounds, like the first day I left the safety of the hospital. I am, once again, a stranger in a strange land.
My father takes my small suitcase from the back seat, and I immediately take it from his hands. “I can carry it myself,” I say quickly, afraid they will take it away from me as soon as we get inside. He frowns, nods, and moves away after he slams the car door shut. He never seems to know what to say to me, so he simply doesn’t say much at all. I don’t know what to say to him either, so I guess it’s all fine and this is just how things will be. At least for now. I hold on tightly to the handle of my suitcase and keep it close to my body as I tentatively walk forward.
My mother showed up three days ago with several new outfits for me to wear for my weekend visit home. I thought this was extremely strange as I already have new clothes, but she informed me I should always have lots of newclean, fashionableclothes for visits outside of Merryfield and she would take me shopping for more. Personally, I like my jeans, which Feather showed me how to distress and put little holes in, and my cozy sweaters and sweatshirts.
I’ve learned my mother is seriously focused on clothes. So much, in fact, that maybe she needs a week or two at Merryfield to discuss her worries about shirts and pants and the potential perils they could cause. I suggested this during our last family therapy session, and the idea was not well received.
My doctor says I need to learn to filter my thoughts and not just say everything I’m thinking. In the same breath, she also told me not to keep all my thoughts bottled up inside. I don’t like all the contradictory and confusing rules of social behavior. I just want to be me. In some ways, I think my parents expect me to be all trained up as a normal young woman, with no defects at all from a deranged past, after my almost-two-year stint at Merryfield. I wish it could be that easy, but I’m still a work in progress, learning new things every day.
“Do you remember living here?” my mother asks as we walk toward the front door.
“A little…,” I say, frowning and glancing around again, “but I don’t remember the flowers. And I thought the big front window was different.”
She smiles, and I know I’ve said the right words. I almost expect a little pat on the head for remembering correctly. “You’re right,” she says brightly. “We didn’t have flowers like this back then. We have a landscaper now who does all that. There’s also a pool in the backyard now. And all the windows were replaced a few years ago, so you’re right about that, too.”
When I follow her through the front door, I’m welcomed by a sprawling WELCOMEHOMEbanner stretched across the foyer, and Zac, his girlfriend Anna, and Lizzie take turns hugging me hello. I count to ten in my head until the touching is over. I reward each hug with a smile and a “thank you.” My brother usually comes to Merryfield twice a month to visit me. Sometimes Anna comeswith him. I don’t mind because she’s always nice to me and brings me chocolate, magazines, and books. She seems to have a keen sense of what I like and takes the time to learn about me by asking me questions with real interest. Lizzie has never visited—not even for the required family therapy sessions that happen every month.
“I’ll show you to your room; then we can have dinner and maybe watch a movie if you’d like that?” my mother asks, leading the way out of the living room.
I nod. “That sounds really nice.” The others remain behind, offering smiles of encouragement. I follow her upstairs, and memories of living here start to filter through my mind. I stop at the second door in the upstairs hallway, my emotions bubbling up. Strong emotions I don’t usually feel. “This is my room?” I say excitedly, peering inside. My excitement quickly dissipates. Everything is different. My pink comforter is gone, along with my bookcase full of books, my unicorn posters, and all of my stuffed animals, which used to sit on my bed.
Now everything is yellow, and there aren’t any books or stuffed animals. There’s a dollhouse and a tiny table in front of the window with little dolls sitting on the chairs, drinking imaginary tea. I hate dolls and their creepy eyes. What are they doing in my room and what have they done with my teddy bear?
“No, honey, this is Lizzie’s room now.” My mother takes my hand and leads me away from the door. “You’ll be staying in Zac’s room when you visit. He cleaned it up and painted it just for you, and Daddy and I helped decorate it with things we thought you would like. And it has its own bathroom.”
“B-but I w-want my room. Th-that’smyroom,” I stammer, choking back tears and trying to pull my hand from hers. The need to be in my own room is overwhelming, almost crippling. Ineed something that’s mine here. I want to be home, in my own bed, with my own things. I don’t want any more new things. Mom stops walking and smiles sympathetically at me.
“Holly, I know this is very hard for you,” she says slowly and with mild frustration in her voice. “It is for us, too. We’re all doing the best we can. You’ll love your new bedroom. It’s very grown up. You don’t want a little girl’s room anymore. Come see, okay?”
But I do. I want the little girl’s room. I want to be the little girl again and have my life back.
Reluctantly, I allow her to lead me to the other end of the hall to Zac’s room. Or to what used to be my brother’s room and is now minefor visits. She finally lets go of my hand as I enter. New paint, pretty colored throw rugs over the polished hardwood floor, a dark purple comforter and matching drapes—andpresto!—new bedroom for the lost daughter. A huge flat-screen television is mounted on the wall across from the bed, and beautiful watercolor paintings of butterflies and flowers hang on the other walls. On the nightstand is one of those iPad things that Zac taught me how to use during one of his visits. This one is bigger than the one I have at my apartment, so I assume it’s a newer model. In one corner is a chair next to a small table that has a stack of paperback books waiting to be read. I smile, knowing they were put there by Anna. She promised to buy me new books after she and Zac caught me reading my old childhood storybooks at Merryfield. I don’t think they understood that I wasn’t reading them because I had no other books. I read them because their familiarity always makes me feel grounded when nothing else does. They’re still my anchor.
“It’s beautiful… thank you,” I finally say as politely as I can, remembering my new social etiquette. And the roomispretty and so incredibly luxurious. After years of sleeping on an old bean bag chair without a blanket or a pillow, with a cold concrete floorunder me, this room is amazing. My small bedroom at my tiny apartment in Merryfield is nice, but nothing compared to this.
“I knew you would love it,” my mother gushes.
I step farther into the room and set my suitcase on the floor in front of the bed. “I do. It’s perfect.”
It’s not perfect, though. And it’s not that I’m ungrateful that they’ve made this beautiful bedroom for me. It’s just not my room. There’s nothing of me here, no sign that Holly Daniels grew up here. No photographs, no favorite toys from childhood sitting in the corner. No scratches in the paint or scuffs on the floor from me growing up in this room. It’s clean and sterile.
Unlike me.
