and don’t say anything.”
Inside his office, the psychologist began questioning Fanny about her age, her name and so on. Fanny did not respond but kept twitching her fingers and talking to someone over the psychologist’s shoulder. The doctor pulled out some blocks and began asking her to do things with the blocks. Fanny haphazardly arranged them as she continued to twitch her fingers.
“So how do you like where you are living, Fanny?” he asked in a soothing voice.
“I don’t like it much,” Fanny said as she went back to twitching her fingers.
“What don’t you like about it, Fanny?” he asked, trying to draw her attention.
“I don’t know,” Fanny answered distractedly.
“She doesn’t like anyone or anything,” Mamma said abruptly with a worried look on her face.
The psychologist put a finger to his lips and shook his head at Mamma. He was trying to connect with Fanny, but it was futile. After about twenty minutes of getting nowhere, he took off his glasses and turned to Mamma. With a solemn look, he said matter-of-factly, “She is not taking her meds, is she?”
Mamma looked at Fanny and raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “We have tried, but she knocks them out of our hands and runs from us. It is impossible, but I guess we can try again if you think it is that serious.”
The psychologist nodded thoughtfully. “If she is to have any quality of life, she must be on her meds.” He put his glasses back on and looked at some papers.
“So, you have had Fanny about eight months?”
Mamma nodded.
“And how is that working out for your family?”
Mamma shrugged. “She is adjusting to our customs and our ways of dressing, but most of the time she is so absent-minded she doesn’t even seem to care.”
“Uh huh, I see.” The psychologist studied Mamma’s face. “And how often do you engage Fanny in conversation and activities?”
Mamma shrugged again. She was obviously nervous now. “We live on a farm, so there are countless chores and lots of animals … that is just about all the stimulus one could hope for.”
“And does Fanny have a lot of chores?” he asked with interest.
Mamma’s face turned red, and she nodded vigorously. I envisioned the many bruises up and down Fanny’s body, as well as my own. If only the good doctor could see them, I thought. But here was no reason for him to suspect anything, and no way for him to see the numerous bruises on Fanny’s breasts and arms and legs.
The doctor paused and then matter-of-factly stated, “I am just not sure that your home is the best environment for Fanny.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Mamma seemed to panic for a moment, but then she leaned forward with a deceptively shocked face. “Why would you say that?” she asked, as if she really cared. “I don’t understand; this is my sister and I love her. It would make my whole family sad if she left us.”
The psychologist looked at Mamma curiously, and I wondered if we were the first Plain people he had ever seen. “Well,” he looked back at the papers in front of him. “She is off her meds, and the progress notes from her last visit in Arizona clearly show that she has relapsed and any kind of progress she was making there has been lost.”
“Yes, that may be true,” Mamma leaned forward again. “But they were also ready to ship her off to an asylum where they could keep her locked up since she has the tendency to run off whenever she gets the chance.”
“And how do you prevent these episodes?” the psychologist asked with raised eyebrows.
“One of my daughters, or I, is with her at all times,” Mamma said defensively. “And besides,” she added, “you have to admit the fresh open air and good farm food are way better for her than the stale, closed-in environment at one of those homes.”
Although I could see the psychologist did not like Mamma, her words seemed to convince him, and he nodded slowly.
“All right,” he said after a moment of thought. “I will write you a prescription, and we will see how it goes from here.”
He stood up from his desk and walked us to the door. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. For a split second, I toyed with the idea of grabbing his arm and begging for help, but then I remembered he was a worldly outsider who was going to hell. It was a catch-22 situation, so I walked past him letting yet another opportunity for freedom slip through my fingers.
Mamma seemed relieved and wanted to celebrate, so she stopped at Burger King and got us all hamburgers. It made me sick that Mamma was in a good mood. She was trying to be nice to us now when she was usually so mean. I shuddered as she put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it while she gloated about her ability to fool the government.
I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or luster, or name.
—H.P. Lovecraft, Nemesis
In May, we got the results from the psychologist’s evaluation: Fanny had the IQ of a three-year-old. He recommended that a social worker visit our house to check our living conditions to be sure they were suitable for a person with special needs. However, his review arrived too late. Mamma had completed the paperwork that would give her full custody of Fanny. Because of the psychologist’s suggestion, however, the social worker said she would still like to visit the house.
Mamma went to see her to tell her our church did not like having government people in our homes, and that the church could punish her for disobedience if she allowed the visit. The social worker bought Mamma’s story and told her to just send some family photos for her file, and the matter would be closed. This was just one of the many close calls Mamma and Brian were having with the law of late.
Mamma bought a disposable camera, and one sunny day we all lined up with fake smiles to have our pictures taken. There were pictures of Mamma hugging Fanny and of Fanny sitting on the hay while Samantha and I worked. When Brian took a picture of all the women standing together, I pointed out to Mamma that I was supposed to be in Canada. She just told me to smile. She must have forgotten and did not seem worried that anyone would remember.
Those pictures were so bogus, how could a government employee not realize she needed to come out here and check up on us? Weren’t they trained to know that abusive people are some of the best liars in the world? We were “falling through the cracks,” society’s anonymous victims who would live and die in unacknowledged misery.
A year passed and summer came once again to the mountaintop. It was a welcome relief; winter always seemed to bring out the most brutal aspects of Mamma and Brian. Once Mamma had given poor Grandma a freezing bath and had laughed as she screamed.
At seventeen, I was still a slave on the mountain and had fallen into a deep depression. Aunty Laura and Uncle Bill had stopped visiting; Grandma no longer recognized them anyway. I wondered why I should continue to live.
One day, when Fanny was supposed to be mopping the front porch, she accidentally broke the mop head off the handle. She held the two mop pieces. As I walked from the pig pen to the house, I felt a knot grow in my stomach, as if some impending doom was descending. Mamma came out the front door and looked at Fanny.
“What the h**l did you do?” Mamma yelled.
She grabbed the metal pole and began to beat a crying Fanny with it. The