Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

37 REBECCA

Uncle Joley talked my mother into joining the self-help group for abused wives when she returned to California after my plane crash. He said when you’re with other people living the same life as you, you feel better-and as always, she believed him.

In this case, it was a good idea. She never told my father, and since I was still practically a baby she took me along. She’d pick me up from preschool and we’d go to a therapy session. There were seven women. I’d crawl around the floor playing between their shoes with my toys. Sometimes a red-headed woman with bright jewelry would pick me up and tell me I was pretty; I think she was the psychologist.

The way the sessions began was what I liked: women who were almost always crying lifted up clothing to reveal welts and bruises in the shapes of kettles and pelicans. Other women would hum softly, or touch the less tender parts of the bruise. They were hoping to heal. Those, like my mother, who had no physical signs to show, brought their stories. They had been yelled at, put down, ignored. At this early age I could see the differences between physical and verbal abuse. I’d stare at the splits and swellings of the battered women. My mother always told a story. In comparison I thought we were lucky.

Within several weeks my mother stopped going to the group. She told me things were fine again. She said there was no reason to continue. My mother did not keep in touch with these battered wives. As mysteriously as we had met those women, we never saw them again.