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“Are you sure about that, Zoe?”
“I am positive! The most traumatic thing that ever happened to me when I was young was the death of my father. I was in junior high, and I remember it like it was yesterday.” Jason grasped my hand tighter; he knew talking about my father’s death was very painful for me.
“Hmm, I see. Well, maybe something occurred that you don’t even remember, Zoe. That does happen, you know.”
“Not to me, Doc. Nothing happened, and I would most definitely remember if it did!” I was getting mad offended. He was insinuating I was too dumb to recall my own childhood. Plus, I didn’t like what he was implying. I wondered if he was trying to say I was abused by my parents or something of that nature and hoped he wasn’t. I would’ve hated to get up off the hospital bed and give him a beatdown.
Then Marcella jumped into it. “Zoe, are you really sure?”
“I’m very sure! What the hell is this? What are you two trying to insinuate?”
Marcella replied, “Zoe, to be honest, I was thinking the same thing before Leonard even brought it up. Why do you think you were so obsessed with sex at such a young age?”
“Hell if I know!”
Jason sensed I was about to go off the deep end. “Zoe, calm down, Boo. It’s all good, and everything’s going to be fine.” I clenched my teeth and listened to my husband.
Dr. Graham took the conversation back over. “Zoe, have you ever considered being hypnotized?”
That’s when I broke out in hysterical laughter. I stopped when I realized no one else found it funny. “No, never thought about it and would never do something so silly. There’s no point to it, because nothing happened!”
My mother started squirming in her seat and then raised her hand as if she needed permission to speak. “Momma, you don’t have to raise your hand. What is it?”
Everyone’s attention turned toward her. “Are you doctors saying that everything my baby has done might be attributed to something horrible from her childhood?”
I didn’t even let them answer. “Momma, that’s what they’re saying, but it’s all bull. You and I both know nothing ever happened to me as a child that could even halfway be considered sexually traumatic.”
Marcella got up, went over to my mother, and sat on the wooden armrest of her chair. “Well, is Zoe right? Was her childhood free of such incidents?”
My mother stared at me and whispered, “Not exactly.” Then her tears began to flow.
chapter
twenty-eight
Never in my life had I cursed my mother, but there’s a first time for everything. “What the fuck are you talking about, Momma?”
She just kept crying, and Marcella was rubbing her back, so I turned toward Jason. “What the fuck is she talking about, Jason?”
He looked as dumbfounded as I did. “I have no idea, Boo!”
I wanted somebody, anybody, to make sense out of what I just heard. Confusion turned to terror as all kinds of shit starting running through my mind. Was I molested by my father as a baby? Another relative? “What the fuck is going on here?” I asked.
Dr. Graham swung into action, realizing he was about to lose control of the situation before anything could be resolved. He came over to the opposite side of the bed from where Jason was lying and patted me on my shoulder. “Calm down, Zoe. Just calm down, take a few deep breaths, and relax. It’s all going to be all right.”
I took my free hand and knocked his hand off my shoulder. “No, it’s not going to be all right, because I don’t know what the hell is going on! This shit isn’t making any sense! How the hell could something have happened to me, and I don’t even fuckin’ remember it?”
“Zoe, maybe if you let me hypnotize you, we can all find out the answers.”
I turned back to Jason, who looked more lost than I was. “Jason, I’m scared.” He released my hand, put his arm around me, and held me tight.
Marcella was bent over my mother’s chair, whispering in her ear, and I didn’t appreciate the hush-hush going on over there at all. Enough of the secrets and lies! “Momma?”
Silence befell the room, and I could hear Marcella whisper the words, “Tell her.”
“Yes, Momma, tell me!” Half of me wanted to know, and the other half wanted to crawl up in a hole somewhere with a pair of earplugs so I wouldn’t find out a damn thing. Whatever it was had my mother crying, and it was obvious I wasn’t going to like it.
She got up from her chair and came over to the bed. I reached out for her hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed so her hips were touching mine.
