could expect, but it didn’t stick. Even though we were in family court and jail was never a possibility, I was sure that once the judge got at The Truth, Mia would be safe for good. What a fantasy. Perhaps what she needed protection from were my own delusions.
The following week I ran into a very upset Carrie in the courthouse. She’d just learned that a respected judge was found fondling his granddaughter. She told me of another judge who watched a videotape of a visitation between a little girl and the father who molested her. When the father entered the room, the girl started screaming and tried to force herself under a low coffee table to hide. It was horrible to watch, she said.
“What did the judge do?” I asked, afraid Mia might face the same fate.
“He shook his head and said, ‘We just have to find a way to get those two back together as a family.’”
To his great credit, Judge Moran did insist Nick complete a full course of MDSO therapy, as in Mentally Disordered Sex Offender, before any kind of contact with Mia, even supervised. Nick got the judge to change the wording to just Sex Offender therapy.
Mia never saw Nick again. But not because of anything the system did. Because he decided not to go to the therapy as ordered.
In between all the madness, Mia and I moved on campus and began what would be two of the happiest years of our lives. When I wasn’t battling my ex, I loved my life. Mia attended the campus nursery school; I majored in art history and film studies.
A few months after starting school, Mia began to smile again. For along time, she started every day by asking if she’d have to see “him” today. One day she was climbing a slide and said, “Are you really really really sure I won’t have to see him today?” Really really really, little monkey. She reached the top of the slide, looked down, and smiled her gorgeous wide smile, and I thought my heart would burst.
The university became Mia’s big playground. The generosity of everyone there was wonderful. Cafeteria workers fed Mia for free for two years, financial aid worked miracles. Mia made friends at school. She rode through our new world on the back of my bike in her shiny red helmet and decided her name was really Queenie Princess Arosia. For weeks, if I didn’t call her that, she didn’t answer.
If one part of me was discovering what was rotten in the world, the mother part of me felt like it was always spring and each new day was green with laughter. I had the joy of looking up from writing a formal analysis of Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” to see Mia clonking about in my high heels and fur coat as she whispered to an imaginary person, “Does it get cold in your spaceship?” Here, she said kindly, taking off the fur, this should help, and my coat is off to Mars. I watched her from around a corner as she solemnly pledged allegiance to the refrigerator, with liberty and dust is for all.
I looked for the flag at her nursery school and, sure enough, it was beside the refrigerator. How vast and inscrutable the world must seem to a child, even their small corner of it. They need for it all to work, so they simply remake it as they go, as it suits them. Why wouldn’t people pledge to honor the big white box where they keep the food?
They remake themselves as well. I overheard her talking to her stuffed animals, “her children” as she called them—“Amember when the mean daddy cut up all the walls? And I patected mudder from all those fings he frew? Well, you don’t have to worry nooooo more, ’acause he can’t come see us!”
I was astonished—where had she kept the memory of that night? I thought she’d forgotten it forever. She’d simply buried it twelve months deep. Until the moment she was able to recall a night of terror as a night of heroism. Till she could transform paralysis to courage. I felt as if I were witnessing the actual creation of a human trait—confidence. She was creating
The following week I ran into a very upset Carrie in the courthouse. She’d just learned that a respected judge was found fondling his granddaughter. She told me of another judge who watched a videotape of a visitation between a little girl and the father who molested her. When the father entered the room, the girl started screaming and tried to force herself under a low coffee table to hide. It was horrible to watch, she said.
“What did the judge do?” I asked, afraid Mia might face the same fate.
“He shook his head and said, ‘We just have to find a way to get those two back together as a family.’”
To his great credit, Judge Moran did insist Nick complete a full course of MDSO therapy, as in Mentally Disordered Sex Offender, before any kind of contact with Mia, even supervised. Nick got the judge to change the wording to just Sex Offender therapy.
Mia never saw Nick again. But not because of anything the system did. Because he decided not to go to the therapy as ordered.
In between all the madness, Mia and I moved on campus and began what would be two of the happiest years of our lives. When I wasn’t battling my ex, I loved my life. Mia attended the campus nursery school; I majored in art history and film studies.
A few months after starting school, Mia began to smile again. For along time, she started every day by asking if she’d have to see “him” today. One day she was climbing a slide and said, “Are you really really really sure I won’t have to see him today?” Really really really, little monkey. She reached the top of the slide, looked down, and smiled her gorgeous wide smile, and I thought my heart would burst.
The university became Mia’s big playground. The generosity of everyone there was wonderful. Cafeteria workers fed Mia for free for two years, financial aid worked miracles. Mia made friends at school. She rode through our new world on the back of my bike in her shiny red helmet and decided her name was really Queenie Princess Arosia. For weeks, if I didn’t call her that, she didn’t answer.
If one part of me was discovering what was rotten in the world, the mother part of me felt like it was always spring and each new day was green with laughter. I had the joy of looking up from writing a formal analysis of Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” to see Mia clonking about in my high heels and fur coat as she whispered to an imaginary person, “Does it get cold in your spaceship?” Here, she said kindly, taking off the fur, this should help, and my coat is off to Mars. I watched her from around a corner as she solemnly pledged allegiance to the refrigerator, with liberty and dust is for all.
I looked for the flag at her nursery school and, sure enough, it was beside the refrigerator. How vast and inscrutable the world must seem to a child, even their small corner of it. They need for it all to work, so they simply remake it as they go, as it suits them. Why wouldn’t people pledge to honor the big white box where they keep the food?
They remake themselves as well. I overheard her talking to her stuffed animals, “her children” as she called them—“Amember when the mean daddy cut up all the walls? And I patected mudder from all those fings he frew? Well, you don’t have to worry nooooo more, ’acause he can’t come see us!”
I was astonished—where had she kept the memory of that night? I thought she’d forgotten it forever. She’d simply buried it twelve months deep. Until the moment she was able to recall a night of terror as a night of heroism. Till she could transform paralysis to courage. I felt as if I were witnessing the actual creation of a human trait—confidence. She was creating
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