A TOMBSTONE IN MY PSYCHE

"This is Sergeant Miller from the San Francisco Police Department. We have a gun in our possession that is registered to Marco Martin. We’d like you to come to the Richmond Station to claim your property. This afternoon, one of our officers apprehended a juvenile who was shooting live bullets into the air. The juvenile firing the gun said your daughter, Rebecca, gave it to him."

I listened, confused and dazed, while he reassured my husband and me that they wouldn’t press charges against Rebecca. The boy, previously known to the police for fighting and carrying a weapon, was being booked at juvenile hall. That no one had been hurt offered momentary relief with little palliative value

As we lay in wait for our twelve-year-old daughter to return home from the movies, we remembered her uncharacteristically affectionate goodbye," Gee Dad, you look like you could use a hug." The same arms that hugged her father stole his loaded gun from an unlocked closet.

Hearing her footsteps upon the stairs, we were two snakes ready to strike. "Get up here, right now!" my husband hissed. And, she, in defiant response, slowed her pace. "Get up here, right now or I’ll drag you up the god damned steps."

Responding to my accusations, hatred and indignation filled her eyes, the all too familiar, "Who the hell are you to talk to me that way" stare, filled her gaze.

"I don’t care what the Sergeant said," she hissed. I wasn’t around Ben today. You can ask Rachel. She was with me all day." She grabbed the phone, "Go ahead call her up! Ben lied or that stupid pig cop got his facts wrong. Give me a lie detector test and I’ll prove it. I’m going to my room and I don’t want to be bothered."

In the forthcoming days, we took away all her privileges. We drove her to school, and picked her up daily. Lest she try to run away, we never took our eyes off of her. And our telephones remained under lock and key.

From morning to night, her hatred and indignation filled every molecule in our atmosphere. And that air quickly became sickeningly toxic.

What kind of parent hates their daughter? Even now in the telling, I want to hide from myself. It’s horrifying. And true.

There is no antacid to stem the vile stench of anger towards your own child. There is no confessional, no act of penance, no soothing prayer to remove guilt for repugnant emotions felt for ones skin and blood.

Several years have passed. Other instances of vile hatred have come and gone. Frustration and helplessness have arisen and dissolved. Love for my daughter has returned and lasted. Now, most of the time, I like and enjoy her.

But the incapacitating guilt from having being unable to summon love, remains a tombstone in my psyche. I visit that grave, now and again. Hatred, my loaded gun, used against myself, and my daughter, has left bullet holes in my heart. They serve as ever present testimony to my own emotional capacity to do violence to self and others.