Chapter 2 - Emma Had Tried to Tell Us Before
Children rarely give you adult-quality disclosures.
They do not sit across the kitchen table and say:
Grandma has established a coercive punishment system involving confinement.
They say:
“I don’t want to go.”
Emma had been saying exactly that for:
months.
The first time, she was six.
I was tying my shoes before work when she said:
“Daddy, can I stay at school after?”
“After what?”
“After school.”
“Grandma’s picking you up.”
“I know.”
She looked down.
“Can somebody else?”
I smiled.
“Grandma hurts your feelings again?”
She shrugged.
That should have stopped me.
Instead I said:
“You still have to listen to her.”
Because that was what Margaret had taught me when I was a child.
Adults give instructions.
Children obey.
Emma nodded.
Conversation over.
Except it wasn’t.
It simply went underground.
A month later Laura told me:
“Emma says your mom puts her in a room.”
“Time-out?”
“I think so.”
“Okay.”
“She doesn’t call it time-out.”
“What does she call it?”
Laura looked uncomfortable.
“The glass room.”
I laughed.
“The sunroom?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what she means.”
Laura frowned.
“I don’t like it.”
I told her:
“She sits in there when she’s upset. Mom probably uses it because it’s quiet.”
That explanation came from:
me.
Not Margaret.
Not Emma.
I supplied the innocence myself.
May you like
That was clue one.
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