Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher Page B

for a while. “I’d like sewing class if the teacher weren’t such a bitch.”
    One day Charlotte brought up sex. “Before Mel, I needed to be drunk to have sex. Otherwise, I remembered things from the past. When I was high, it didn’t matter.”
    “Have you been raped?” I asked softly.
    Charlotte pushed her brown hair off her face and said in a flat voice, “I’ve had trouble you can’t imagine.”
    She looked younger and more vulnerable as we sat quietly with her words. I didn’t push for more information. It would come out in future sessions. I thought about William Faulkner’s line “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”
    Even though Charlotte was from a small, sleepy town, she exemplifies the problems of girls in the 1990s. She had an abusive, alcoholic father. Her mother divorced when Charlotte was young, and the family was poor and overburdened for many years. As a teenager, Charlotte is in all kinds of trouble—she drinks, smokes pot and cigarettes, diets and is flunking school. She has run away from home and she has been raped. She’s distanced from her parents and is alone except for an older, chemically addicted boyfriend. Especially with men, she’s docile and other-directed. She does what she thinks she should do in order to be accepted.
    Charlotte has made many choices that sacrifice her true self and support a false self. Her choices show in her face. There’s deadness to her demeanor that comes from inauthenticity, from giving away too much. Charlotte is evidence of a childhood lost. And what has replaced childhood glitters but is not gold. I hope the therapy can help her find herself. It will be reclamation work.

LORI (12)—ON THE CUSP
    Last month Lori, whom I had known since her birth, started junior high at a large school known for its wealthy, competitive students. I visited her home to see how she was taking to junior high. We met in her newly redecorated bedroom. Lori was proud of her Elvis stamp poster and Elvis bedspread and curtains. She had a white desk neatly arranged with paper, pens and a dictionary, pink beanbag chairs and a large glass cage for her gerbil, Molasses, “Mo” for short.
    I was struck by how fresh and cheerful she was. She was dressed in green sweats. Her short brown hair curled over silver star earrings. She bounced around her room showing me a book she liked, her swim team trophies and Mo’s tricks. Lori made me feel I was in another place and time, back in the fifties in a home with plenty of money, happily married parents, and children who were not afraid or stressed. The cynical part of me wondered, Where’s the skeleton in the closet? If I hadn’t known this family for twenty years, I would have been even more cynical about so much happiness.
    Lori is highly gifted, which in our school system means her IQ is higher than 145. She qualified for a special tutor, but she felt that this would isolate her from friends. She preferred a combination of regular and accelerated classes. Lori loved junior high. She liked elementary school as well, but said that by the end she had outgrown it. Junior high was exciting, with its hallways full of kids, nine different teachers, a tableful of friends at lunch and a swimming pool in the gym.
    She was busy in and out of school. She swam and danced several nights a week and sang and acted whenever she had the chance. This year she was taking voice lessons at the university. Her mom was a stay-at-home mom who could run her to all these lessons, rehearsals and swim meets. Her dad was an attorney who could pay for these activities and who showed up for her meets and performances.
    Her younger sister, Lisa, also swam and danced. Lisa was gifted in piano, which gave her a unique talent. Lori was social and bubbly, Lisa quieter and more introverted. While Lisa curled up with a book or played piano in the living room, Lori talked on the phone for hours.
    Lori kept most of her old friends and made many new friends at