A Song for Julia

about myself. Really bad. All the while, I was protecting her.”
    Sean started pacing again. This was his way of working out his energy, but sometimes it had the opposite effect, winding him up even more. I wasn’t sure what was happening here, because this was as real a conversation as I’d ever heard him have. He never talked about this stuff with us, that was for sure.
    “My mom used to cry at night,” he said. “All the time. I could hear her down the hall, and sometimes when she was crying, it was about me. Like I was a broken toy, and she wanted to return me to the store. Or get me fixed. Every day it was another doctor, and she would tell them all about what was wrong with me.”
    She looked up at him, her hair falling away from her face. “That must have been really hard.”
    “I want … I—” He couldn’t continue the sentence.
    “You want your mother to love you the way you are?”
    “Yes!” he cried out. And the damnedest thing was, I could hear the sadness, the emotion in his voice. My brother, who was always, always monotone, unless he was angry. “Why won’t she just accept me for who I am?”
    He stopped pacing suddenly and slumped down to the floor next to her.
    She answered, “Sometimes … I think parents work so hard to keep us from making their mistakes, they won’t allow us to make our own. I mean … your mother loves you and wants the best for you. Anyone can see that. But she doesn’t know how to say it, except … to push.”
    “Can you really see it? I don’t.”
    “Watch her expression.”
    “I don’t … I don’t read expressions very well. They tried to teach me. My mother used to take me to social skills classes and teachers. They’d show me pictures with little round stick figure faces, and I had to say what the expression was. This person is happy. This person is sad. But those were not real people. I look at real people, and I’ve got no idea what they think. What do you see?”
    She turned to him, her expression somber. “I think your mother may be the saddest person I’ve ever seen.”
    He stared at the floor, and I could see the anger in his posture—his shoulders were hunched and his hands bunched into fists. “Because of me.”
    “No, I don’t think so,” Julia replied. “There’s something else there. Yeah, tonight made her sad … it broke her heart. But, there’s something else, and I don’t know what it is.”
    “You understand people,” he said.
    “Yes and no,” she said and then sighed. “I’ve been … we used to move all the time. Every three years, off to another country, another school, another life. And as the years went by, I got more and more isolated; it was harder and harder to make friends. I had to learn to read people pretty quickly. But when I started high school, I thought that was over.”
    “What happened?” he asked.
    She closed her eyes and leaned her head against her knees. Then she said, “You have to promise not to tell anyone what I say. None of it. Especially Crank.”
    He blinked. Sean didn’t make promises easily, because he knew how painful it was to have them broken. He thought about it, then said, “I promise.”
    She looked up and smiled weakly, but it wasn’t a real smile, because a couple of tears were running down her face. “I don’t talk about this much. But when I was fourteen, we moved to China. I went to this fantastic school there, where all the diplomatic kids from England and Australia and the US went. And I met this boy. He was a lot older than me. He was a senior, and I was a freshman.”
    She shuddered. “I thought I was in love with him. I was stupid, and inexperienced, and terribly vulnerable. And he took advantage of all my weaknesses.”
    Sean’s forehead compressed into angry ridges. “Did he rape you?”
    She shook her head. “Not really. I didn’t say no. I didn’t … I didn’t do anything. He kept saying if I loved him, I should want to make him happy. And that went on for a while, but I wasn’t ready. Not in any way. It was like he … like he dominated everything I did. He’d get mad if I talked to other boys in class, and one time he squeezed my arm so hard it left bruises. I was afraid of him. And then … I got pregnant.”
    Sean was openmouthed. And I knew I should walk away, I should not be listening to this conversation, especially after she’d made him promise not to tell me about it. But I’m ashamed to say I stayed. I wanted to know about her. I