The movie is darkly lit and ominous from the get-go. In every scene, I kept my eyes open for clues. Most of the film is juicy Hollywood gossip fodder. Still, there were a few moments that strummed some taut string inside me. When Joan Crawford gets overly competitive with her daughter Christina in the swimming pool. When she insists that Christina not be spoiled. When she obsesses over cleaning. But my back tensed when I got to the most famous scene. The one with the wire hangers. This was it, I knew, the echo of what happened to me.
When Joan finds the wire hanger, she doesn’t just yell or nag. She screams hysterically, every word rasping the limits of her voice, every syllable extending for seconds: “NOOOO…WIRE…HANGEEEEEEERS!” I remembered the hands and the fact that it had all felt overwhelming and chaotic. I remembered the feeling of a wire hanger zipping through the air, lashing my skin, but…I did not remember the volume of my mother’s voice. If she truly had shrieked at me enough to shred her vocal cords, it must have sounded something like this. So loud, I wrote on a pad of paper. Was it really this loud?
The rest of the scene is totally batshit. Joan beats her daughter with a wire hanger, then throws her into the bathroom and hurls powdered soap on everything, screaming the whole time. In fact, critics cited this scene when they panned the film, describing Dunaway’s wailing as melodramatic and campy. Roger Ebert said the film left him “feeling creepy,” in a bad way. Dunaway herself said she regretted doing the film, saying her acting was a “Kabuki performance.” But it was realistic to me.
The part of the wire hanger scene that was most familiar was the very end, after Joan leaves Christina alone in the bathroom. Christina sits there, still, in quiet shock. While you are getting the shit kicked out of you, there isn’t much room for injustice or disbelief, just survival. How do you calm the monster? Manage their rage? But in this silence, after it’s over, that’s when the sorrow finds you. “Jesus Christ,” Christina whispers to herself, and I recalled multiple perfect reflections of this moment. That quiet slice of time you get when the monster retreats and you have a minute to survey the wreckage—the powdered soap everywhere, the lace dresses strewn all over the floor—and sit with the absolute what the fuck of your life before you have to pull it all back together, clean up the mess, and pretend that everything is fine.
I didn’t cry when I watched the movie. I had no panic attack. I made my careful little notes, closed my laptop, and found Joey in the other room. “We’ve got to get going if we’re going to make the party,” I chirped. But I kept ruminating over the loudness. I had something to work with here.
* * *
—
On Monday, I was back at Eleanor’s office. I was prepared. “I think I have a pretty disturbing memory!” I announced proudly as soon as I plopped myself on her couch. “I watched Mommie Dearest, and it was pretty intense. So I think I’ll go for one of the times my mom beat me with wire hangers.”
“I’m glad. Though that’s a heavy movie, I remember…” Eleanor said, her voice trailing off as she unzipped a vinyl black bag. She handed me a pair of ’90s-looking headphones and two buzzers, which were like tiny, oblong eggs in my palms. “Okay, once again, this is not like hypnosis. If you ever feel uncomfortable or you want to stop, just tell me. But having a safe place might be able to help you, too. A visual place you can return to if you feel uncomfortable. Can you close your eyes and envision a beautiful, peaceful place around you? It can be anything in the world. Whatever you think feels safe.”
I close my eyes. I’ve always said there are forest people and desert people. Forest people are nurturing and fertile, but they have a tendency to hide behind their branches. I’m a desert person. Hard and acerbic and difficult to endure, but honest. You always know what you’re getting in the desert because there isn’t anywhere to hide. In that dry air, you can see a storm coming from ten miles away.
“I’m in a desert,” I say, picturing a cloudless blue sky and the fine, bleached powder in White Sands, New Mexico.
“That’s good. Now pay attention to the sounds and smells of the desert.”
There are no sounds in White Sands. It’s the quietest place I’ve ever been, so silent you can hear the tiny footsteps of stink bugs. There isn’t a smell, either. Dust and ozone, maybe. Just empty expanse.
“Now, I want you to think about your savior. This is one person who is going to protect you. Who do you trust to take care of you?”
In front of me, in a white T-shirt, appears Joey. He stands there, smiling at me.
“Okay,” she says. “Now I’m going to start the machine.” I feel the left egg buzz as I hear a short beep in my left ear. Then the right egg buzzes, accompanied by a right beep. It’s not distracting—just there. “I want you to think of wire hangers and just pay attention to what comes up.”
Buzz, beep. Buzz, beep. The sounds and feelings start to fade. In my head, I see my closet. The brown-orange shag carpet. I picture a ruched floral dress on the floor, a pair of discarded jeans. I see me, maybe six years old, with big eyes and thick, straight-across bangs. I’m wearing a T-shirt and turquoise shorts. And then I see her. Some amalgamation of my mother and Faye Dunaway maybe, screaming, wielding a wire hanger. She is whipping a child version of me as I stand to the side, watching. Red welts form on my child-self’s upper legs.
My mother screams. “How many times have I told you to hang these up? Why can’t you take care of nice things? Why do we spend all this money on you when you just waste it? What kind of daughter are you?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying. I forgot. I’m sorry,” little me says.
“You’re talking back. You’re not sorry! You’re giving excuses! How dare you!” Her voice is unbearably loud. My adult self recoils at the detail of the scene I’m witnessing—it is much more vivid than ever before.
Eleanor pauses the machine. I open my eyes, almost surprised to see her there. “What happened?” she asks. I give a brief summary of the movie that played in my head. “Okay,” she says. “Now keep going, paying attention to the You’re not sorry.”
The buzzers begin again.
“You’re not sorry,” my mom says. “You’re never sorry. You do this to torture me, to hurt me. You’re just like him. You have his huge, flat nose, his stupid expressions. I want to throw up just looking at you.” She is talking about my father.
“But I am sorry,” little me says. “You care about me so much. You take me to tennis and piano practice. You volunteer at school. You give me so much support. I am so grateful. I love you, Mommy.”
Oh my God. It hits me: I was constantly having to beg my parents to believe they were loved. That was my primary job as their child. It should have been the other way around.
The buzzers pause. I open my eyes, and my cheeks are wet with tears, but my breath is steady. “I didn’t expect this,” I manage. I hadn’t trusted Eleanor and her crappy dollar-store fans! I had barely trusted this process! What the hell was happening?