Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher Page A

rubbing against her, grabbing her from behind and calling her names. She also was heavier than most of her classmates and worried about her weight. She bought some diet pills and lost weight rapidly. Charlotte loved the light, airy feeling she had on those pills. She started smoking cigarettes to help herself lose weight. Charlotte stole her Virginia Slims from the Quick Stop.
    Rob and Sue hated her smoking, but they smoked too and couldn’t take the high moral ground on this issue. Sue and Rob didn’t like her friends, her constant dieting, her music, her falling grades or her mouthiness. Conversations became tense and angry. Charlotte stayed in her room or out of the house as much as she could.
    The summer of her eighth-grade year she started “partying,” a euphemism for getting loaded with friends. She met kids at a sand pit south of town and drank beer and cheap wine around a bonfire until dawn. She told me, “Getting baked erased my life.”
    Once Rob showed up looking for her, but she hid behind a cotton-wood tree while her friends lied about her whereabouts. Several times Sue and Rob called the police to help them find her. She was grounded, but she slipped out her window and went anyway. Finally Rob and Sue had what Charlotte described as an “emotional meltdown.” They gave up and let her do what she wanted.
    That is, they gave up until she began dating Mel. He was twenty-two and had a job at the co-op that paid him just enough money to buy beer and lotto tickets. He was good-looking but sleazy, and Rob and Sue were adamant that their daughter wouldn’t date him.
    Unfortunately, Charlotte no longer obeyed them. She wore seductive clothes, dyed her hair Madonna blond and did whatever she pleased. With guys she was quiet and docile, eager to please—exactly the kind of girlfriend Mel wanted. The harder Rob and Sue fought, the more appealing the forbidden fruit became, and eventually they lost this battle too.
    When Charlotte talked about Mel, I was surprised by how realistic her perceptions were. She knew he was a loser and disapproved of his heavy drinking and gambling. She even admitted that sometimes she was bored with him. All they did was rent movies and drink at his place. Now and then they fished for catfish and carp, but as Charlotte said, “Those trips are really an excuse to stay out drinking all night.”
    Mel didn’t even like to have sex that often. But Charlotte was fiercely loyal. Mel was the first guy she dated who wanted a relationship with her. As she put it, “With him, it wasn’t wham, bam, thank you ma’am.”
    Mel had confided to her about his own difficult family situation. His father was the town drunk in the town just west of them on the highway. Once Mel came home from school to find all their furniture had been sold to buy booze. He had memories of Christmases without presents, of food baskets from churches delivered by his classmates and of nice kids not being permitted to play with him.
    Charlotte’s eyes softened when she talked about Mel. She had a mission—to save him and to make him happier than he’d ever been before. She conceded that, so far, Mel didn’t seem that happy, but she thought that in time they could get their lives together.
    Mel was the only person she trusted—she hated high school boys, who “only wanted one thing.” Most of the girls at her school were “snobs.” Her friends who had babies were okay, but they were busy now with their own problems and not “there for her.” Rob and Sue argued a lot and “weren’t as sweetie-sweet as they acted in therapy.”
    She particularly hated the school and her teachers. She felt her math teacher, Mr. Jenson, deliberately humiliated her. Her Spanish teacher looked at her breasts whenever he could. None of the courses had anything to do with real life. The kids who brownnosed got the good grades. The lunches were “slop.” When I asked her if there was anything she liked about school, Charlotte thought