All Is Not Forgotten(11)

Jenny had heard their fights from her room at night—fights that would leave her father in tears and her mother sounding “disgusted” and calling him “weak.” She felt that all of this was her doing, from her inability to exorcise the monster and go shopping for dresses. She felt destroyed inside. And she felt she was destroying her family. Jenny had not noticed the fault lines that were there all along. Children never do.

She answered her mother. Sure, Mom. That sounds good. Maybe we can get lunch first. She forced another bite of food into her mouth.

Charlotte smiled. Great! Then she looked at Tom with smug satisfaction that things were all better.

When Jenny had eaten enough to convince them, she excused herself from the table. She took her plate to the sink and made a comment about needing to get online to chat with her friends.

She went to her room.

I think I’ve described Jenny in some detail. What have I left out so you can picture her? Long blond hair. Blue eyes. Slender and athletic. Her face was somewhere between youth and maturity—the cheekbones had started to protrude more visibly; her nose was becoming more angular. She had freckles and one small dimple on the right side of her mouth. She spoke eloquently, without the usual “um’s” and “uh’s” that teenagers use. And she was very natural in her use of eye contact, which is a skill that must be learned. Some people look too long before breaking away to look elsewhere. Others don’t look long enough. She had it just right, which is something we grown-ups take for granted, as we have all—most of us, anyway—mastered this social acclimation.

Although she had lost her innocence (for lack of a better expression), she was still quite lovely and sweet. She described her thoughts like this. Her tone was flat and she was surprisingly unemotional.

I sat on the edge of my bed and started looking around. There were all these familiar things, things I had picked out or helped decorate. I have rose-colored walls. They’re not pink, because they have too much red in them. That’s what the lady at the decorating store said. I can’t remember the name of the paint color, but it’s basically a blush rose. The bookshelves are bright white and I have all these books on them, though I don’t really like to read much anymore, and not just because of what happened. I stopped reading a lot when I was twelve. I think it’s because I have so much required reading now, being in high school. And they used to have reading contests, which they don’t have in my grade. So most of the books are either for school or they’re really babyish.

I also have a collection of stuffed animals. I still pick one up from every new place I go to. Well, I guess that’s not really true anymore. I didn’t get one in Block Island. I can’t explain why. I know why, but I don’t know how to explain it. If I had to explain it, I would say that I felt like doing things that I used to do felt like a lie, like I was trying to pretend I was someone I wasn’t anymore. Like wearing something blue because you used to like blue and you think you still should like it, but you just don’t now. Does that make sense? I didn’t like doing anything I used to do. I just did them, you know, went through the motions, because I felt like if I didn’t, then everything would just fall apart. Sitting on my bed with all these things I used to love but not loving them anymore, I just wanted to set them all on fire. That’s when I knew I was never going to be all right again.

She went on to explain her decision. It’s shocking to me that people ever make this choice. But I am not a religious person, so for me, the only hope lies with living. Of course, the words “teenager” and “choice” should not be in the same dictionary.

This is where I grow frustrated with the general lack of knowledge about the teenage brain. There is a reason teenagers shouldn’t drink or do drugs or have sex—or drive or vote or go to war. And it’s not because we tell them not to, or even because they’re too “inexperienced” to make good decisions. The teenage brain is not fully developed. It’s hard to imagine this when their bodies seem so mature. I’ve seen sixteen-year-old boys with beards and body hair and buff arm muscles. They look twenty-six. And girls with full breasts and wide hips and enough makeup to work a Vegas trade show. I won’t even get started on the fights I used to have with my daughter about what she tried to leave the house wearing, or with my son, who swears he’s not going to pick up six friends on the way to a football game and try to buy beer with fake ID cards.

In spite of their physical appearances, if you could look inside their brains, you would not find a grown-up within a hundred miles. It is not inexperience that leads them to make bad decisions. They simply don’t have the equipment. Consider Jenny’s thoughts on that night as she sat on her bed:

I closed my eyes and just let the monster in. I pictured him in my mind. He was like a blob of darkness, and I couldn’t really see his shape, because it changed as he moved. But I could see the roughness of his skin, with craters and bumps. I remember feeling him inside my stomach. It was like an explosion of that feeling when you’re really nervous, like right before a track meet, when I’m waiting for the gun, but a million times worse. I just couldn’t take it. I started rubbing my scar. I remember doing it that night. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to scream, but I knew that wouldn’t help. I had done that a lot of times since the rape. I would tell my parents I was going for a run and then I would run, but only until I was far from the house in the field behind the tennis courts at the park. And then I would scream and scream. As soon as I was done, like everything else, running, sleeping, getting drunk or high—as soon as I was done, it would come back. I wanted to peel myself off of me. This had been going on for almost eight months. It was just too long.