K. Randis - Spilled Milk

I nodded.

“What brings you here all alone?”

“Well, I knew what insurance my parents had, so I looked up counselors in the area. There were a few but they had co-pays my mom didn’t want to pay. But I needed to talk to someone. So my boyfriend’s mom found this place.”

“You looked up counselors based on your parents insurance?”

“Yea.”

“How old are you?” A smile spread across her face, like she was laughing inside.

“Fifteen.”

“MmmHmm. All right well before we get too deep, just a few things I need to tell you first so you know what to expect. We can meet for an hour today, and any other day you want to come back and talk to me. There’s never any charge, and everything we say in this room, stays in this room, under the law, you understand?”

I nodded. It was good to know.

“Now, there are a few exceptions.” She held up her hand. “By law, I have to report the three following situations. If you tell me you’re going to hurt yourself.” She flipped up her index finger. “If you tell me you’re going to hurt someone else, and if I suspect or you tell me about any child abuse. Reason being is you’s only fifteen, you still a minor.” She wiggled all three exceptions. “That’s the only three times I can ever tell anyone about what we talk about in here. Understand?”

“Yea.” My heart dropped when she told me about having to report child abuse. I didn’t know how I could talk to her without her needing to report something. I suddenly felt like I made the wrong choice. What if someone found out I was here? What if Gina told?

“Now look, I want you to know this is a safe place.” She opened her arms and looked around the room. “There ain’t one thing you can tell me that I haven’t heard already and I’ve heard a lot of things. But no need to rush, I feel like we gon’ be good friends you and me. I don’t want to push you to tell me anything you ain’t ready to tell. Sound good?”

I sighed and relaxed a little. Her accent made me feel like I was in a movie somewhere in the south.

“So, Brooke, tell me about yourself. Anything and everything you want to tell me, go ahead. If you got a question, go ahead and ask it.” She rested her arms into the crest of her stomach and let me have the floor.

“I want to know what domestic and sexual violence is. How do you know if you’re being abused, like, what would it look like?” I tried to make my question hypothetical.

Midge nodded and pulled something out of a folder on her desk. “That’s a great place to start. A great question.”

She handed me a paper with a pie chart. In the center were the words Power and Control and each pie piece represented a different category of physical abuse.

“This is the best way to explain it, so you can see how domestic violence is a whole bunch of things put together and not everyone’s situation is the same.” She pointed to each section of the chart to explain them.

“This one is called emotional abuse. Not everyone gets abused by getting hit or slapped around, no child. Some people get put down by being called names or the abuser makes them feel like they crazy and that the abuse ain’t happening.”

She slid her finger across the pie chart. “This here is economic abuse. Sometimes abusers like to keep all the money or control when and where a person can work. Sometimes abusers don’t let they family have jobs at all because it lets them have outside relationships.”

“Domestic Violence can mean isolation or threats too. The abuser will control who the other person sees or where they go or where they live. They make threats to hurt you. Or they’d say no one would believe you.”

She moved her hand over to the last section of the pie chart. I leaned over in my chair in anticipation, hanging on every word.

“This here is sexual abuse. That’s anytime someone make you do something with any private parts of your body that you don’t want. Sometimes abusers make people do things to their private parts too. It’s all sexual abuse. Big thing to know is that if you don’t want to do it, and they make you, it’s sexual abuse.”

I shook as I tried to absorb everything Midge said. She laid my entire life in a pie chart before me and everything started to come together. The move to Pennsylvania, Dad’s control of the money and food in the house, making it seem like nothing happened between us so much that I felt like I was going crazy. It was all there. My trembling fingers reached out to take the chart from Midge.

“Okay.” How could I word my next question without outing myself? I thought carefully before speaking.

“What happens…if someone didn’t know that this stuff was wrong? Like, what happens if they didn’t know they could say no? What if they thought this happened to everyone so they never knew they didn’t have to do it?”

Midge narrowed her eyes and brought her body closer to mine. Her voice was smooth and reassuring. “Child, let me make one thing very clear. In the state of Pennsylvania, no child, not one, can ever consent to any type of sexual things if they under the age of sixteen and there’s a four year or more age difference. Never. You understand?”

My head bobbled around as she continued. “It don’t matter if you didn’t know, it don’t matter if you never said no. What matters is they was breaking the law, that it’s not your fault. You ain’t the adult, child, you done no wrong.”

I blinked away tears and focused on the paper sized window on the far wall of the room. I nodded at Midge and I think she could sense that we had an understanding. “Tell me more about you, tell me about your family and where you from.” The hour flew by and Midge had to hold up her hand to tell me we had to end our session for the day.

“Already?” I looked at the clock.

“Now look at you, already coming out of your shell. Let’s go downstairs and schedule another appointment and you can come back here and tell me more about Long Island and your school and your big family.” She meant it; her eyes told me she wanted to see me again, even if all we did was talk about friends and teenage things. I asked her if I could keep the power wheel.

“I’d prefer if you did.”

I scheduled my next appointment and rushed outside. As I flung open the door Gina didn’t even have to ask how it went. “I’m coming back next week. I made the appointment. You sure you can still take me? Maybe I can give you some gas money.”

Gina held up her hand and told me to buckle up. “Nonsense. I’ll take you as long as you need to.”

I slept with the power wheel under my pillow. Serving as a constant reminder, I would check it every now and then to make sure that what Midge had said was still there in black and white. A rush of empowerment surged through my head over the next couple of weeks. Rage flooded my veins when I would hear dad downstairs beating on Thomas or Adam. Mom would beg for more money for food. The signs were all there, every piece of the pie chart.

Midge and I met at the same time, once a week until the end of tenth grade. I gave her Gina’s cell phone number so if there was ever a cancellation or issue she could call her so she didn’t have to call my house. She was right, we became good friends.

I told her all about Paul and my job, my siblings and the role I had with them and school. She knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, and she was impressed with the passion I had for writing.

What I liked best about Midge is she never asked me to talk about my Mom or Dad unless I brought it up. For weeks we would talk about superficial things like football games and grades. Sometimes I would tell her about how my dad yelled or the way he shoved my brothers around, but the second I thought she was getting too interested, I reverted back to talk about my boyfriend and anatomy homework. She would never mind though. She’d rest her arms on her soft stomach and nod and probe me, but she never pushed me.