A Song for Julia

treating us all like we’re your personal punching bags. I’ve had enough of you talking to us like there’s something wrong with us.”
    She narrowed her eyes at me. “Who do you think you are? You don’t speak to me that way, young lady. Now go away until you can be civilized.”
    I stared at her and said, “Do you remember my senior year in high school, Mother? In Bethesda?”
    “Of course I do,” she said viciously. “The year you shamed your father and nearly wrecked his career by letting that picture get out?”
    With my left hand, I started slowly sliding off the bangles and bands I always wore around my wrist. In a conversational tone, I asked, “Mother, why did you never ask me when and how that picture was taken?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “Why would I want to know? Why would I ask when my oldest daughter had become a drunken slut?”
    Carrie gasped, and Alexandra sat up her in her seat, eyes wide and shocked.
    You’d think, when she threw out words like that, I would want to cry. That I’d want to hole up in my shell, wrap myself back up in that safe cocoon that protected me ever since my senior year.
    I was done hiding. My wrist clear of obstruction, I ran my fingers up and down the scars on the inside of my right wrist. Her eyes widened when she saw the scars. I said, “Do you remember when I came to you on New Year’s Eve of 2000? You and Dad were getting ready to go out, and I came in crying? Because I needed a mother for a change? You said, and I’m quoting, ‘ Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad at school if you hadn’t behaved like a slut.’ Do you remember that?”
    She winced. Good.
    “I remember it, Mother. Because I needed you. And not long after all of you left, I went into the bathroom and slit my wrists. These are the scars.”
    She gasped then ordered, “Alexandra, Carrie, go upstairs, right now.”
    Alexandra didn’t wait around. She was gone in a flash. But Carrie said, “I’m staying here with my sister.” Then she reached across the table and took my right hand in her left.
    My mother turned on me then. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this up now. I don’t even know who you are.”
    “Of course you don’t. You never bothered to ask. You never asked me what was wrong. Mom, that stupid picture? I was fourteen when it was taken, and the boy was eighteen. I needed help from you. I needed you. But you were too busy that year, weren’t you? With George Lansing? Am I right?”
    She clenched her fists. “Whatever you thought you saw that night, you were mistaken.”
    Carrie’s eyes were wide. I’d never told her about Mother’s little secret.
    “Is that why you shut me out that year in China, Mom? Because of Mr. Lansing? Because you were too busy having your tawdry little affair to notice that your daughter was in an abusive relationship with someone years older?”
    My mother stood up, her lips compressed into a tight line. “I don’t have to listen to this.”
    “Yes, you do! You’ve treated me like dirt for the last eight years!” I shouted. “When I came home from that hideous abortion clinic in Beijing, you never even asked me what was wrong or where I’d been! Didn’t you notice all the blood on the sheets, Mom? Didn’t you notice how sick I got? I needed a mother and all I had was …” I shook my head. “Nothing. Not once were you there when I needed you. When Lana sent that picture out, you didn’t offer to help. You didn’t hug me, and tell me it was going to get better. Someone in Bethesda Chevy Chase made copies and stuffed them in people’s lockers at school. They tortured me, Mother. To the point where I couldn’t see any way out but suicide. And what I’ve never understood, to this day, was why? Why wouldn’t you help me? Why weren’t you there when I needed you?”
    My mother’s face twisted, and she started to cry. “I …” she whispered. “I didn’t know it was so bad for you. You’re my daughter. I just wanted … I wanted you to be better.”
    “You wanted to protect yourself.”
    She shook her head. “No … that’s not it at all. Your father and I…we went through a really rough time in Belgium and in China. We thought … we’d fallen out of love. And he had an affair in Belgium. And … yes. I did in China.”
    I wanted to vomit. “So you were just too preoccupied.”
    She looked at me, her face unreadable, and she said, “Julia … what happened in China?”
    So I told her. The whole stupid story of