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seventeen, isn't she?" Her eyes were bright with anger, like sparklers on July Fourth. "That's the trouble with parents these days. They don't know when to stop treating us like children:'
"Amen to that," Star said.
"It's not easy for my mother:' I said in her defense. "The entire burden of raising me has fallen on her shoulders. She doesn't have any family support system. It's really just the two of us:' I explained. "I try to be like she wants me to be. I try not to make her any unhappier."
I looked at Doctor Marlowe because she and I had discussed some of this. She nodded slightly.
"I mean, my mother is a victim, too. She doesn't mean to be cruel or anything. She's just . .."
"What?" Misty asked. "Frightened," I said.
Doctor Marlowe's eyes filled with satisfaction and she relaxed her lips into a soft smile.
"It took me a long time to understand that, to realize it," I said, "but it's true. We're two mice living alone in a world full of predatory cats and lots of traps."
"Is that another one of her expressions?" Jade asked. "No. It's one of mine," I said. She shook her head and looked away.
"Did your father hit you, too?" Misty asked.
"No," I said. "He never touched me in a way that wasn't affectionate or loving," I added.
I glanced at Doctor Marlowe. Should I say it now? Should I begin to talk about the deeper pain? Should I start to explain how those fingers burned through me and touched me in places I was afraid to touch myself?
Should I talk about lips that had become full of thorns? Should I describe the screams I heard in the night, screams that woke me and confused me until I realized they were coming from inside me? Is it time to bid the little girl inside me good-bye forever and ever?
In my dreams Doctor Marlowe was standing off to the side with a stopwatch in her hand. I was bracing to begin my flight. Seconds ticked away. She looked up at me almost as she was looking at me now. Her thumb was on the watch's button.
"Get ready, Cathy. Get set."
"What if my legs don't move?"
"They will; they must. It's time. Five, four, three .. ." She pushed down on the button and shouted, "Go! Go
on, Cathy. Get out of here. Hurry. Run, Cathy. Run!"
I let go of the little hand that 1 held and chafged forward, tears streaming down my face. I looked back only once to see a rag doll staring after me. It was Bones, but its face had become Daddy's face.
I ran faster and faster and harder and harder until I was here in Doctor Marlowe's office, surrounded by my sisters in pain.

3
"Mothers can be a lot tougher than fathers,"
    Misty was saying. "And a lot meaner."
"What?"
I didn't really hear her. It was as if she were
    standing behind a glass wall and her voice was muted. "Mothers can't hit as hard, but they can sting
more with their words and their looks sometimes," she
explained with a nod. She looked at Jade and Star,
who just stared at her. Then, looking as if she was
going to start to cry, she sat back in her chair. "Anyway," I began again so I wouldn't cry,
"after the lipstick incident, my mother decided to take
me out of public school and enroll me in a parochial
school."
"Just because of that little bit of lipstick?" Jade
cried.
"I wasn't that unhappy about it," I said quickly.
"I had to wear a uniform and that ended my feeling so
different from the other girls because of the clothing
my mother insisted I wear. No one was permitted to
put on any makeup, of course, even lipstick, which
made my mother happy. Discipline was strict. I knew girls, however, who snuck cigarettes in and smoked them. One was caught and expelled immediately and that stopped the smoking for a while. I got into trouble with Sister Margaret, who was basically the disciplinarian, because I went into the girls' room when two girls were smoking and the smell got into
my clothes."
"So why would that get you into trouble?" Star
asked.
"Sister Margaret is known for her nose, not
because it's too big or anything, but because she can
smell cigarette smoke a mile away.