MY HANDS WERE SHAKING, BUT MY VOICE WAS STEADY.
I had called every attorney in the telephone book. Yes, I actually used a telephone book. It had long been stuffed underneath the cushion of a kitchen chair. This was not in the pre-internet days by any means, but I was afraid of leaving a trace. I didn’t want to be found out.
It was an election year, so the lawyers I rang were all “sorry” but they weren’t taking on clients because they were “running for district attorney.” I didn’t really know what that meant, but I wished them luck and moved on to the next name. I got to the end, anxiety pinching my throat, and made one more call.
His name was Gilman*. He was an attorney that was nearing the end of his career, likely getting ready to retire and use dollar bills as handkerchiefs. I think he agreed to take my case for the novelty of it. Maybe he needed the pro bono work to bolster his legacy. Maybe he just wanted to work a kind of case he’d never worked before; go out with the bang of a gavel in his favor.
*Not his real name
THIS ALL HAPPENED A FEW WEEKS BEFORE MY SIXTEENTH birthday, the age at which you can petition for emancipation in the state of Maine. I had done my research. While other girls with spring birthdays were planning Spring Break Birthday Bashes and lusting after the cars or trips they were going to beg their parents for, I was signing legal documents.
I had not mentioned my plan to anyone other than a few close friends. I grew up in a small town where everyone talked. The gossip about my family was deeply rooted and was not something that particularly concerned me. If anything, I thought maybe the uproar I was about to ignite might deflect some of the attention away from those in my family who were only victims and didn’t deserve anyone’s harsh judgment.
I, however, was somewhat resolved to becoming “the kid who divorced her mom and dad.” I didn’t expect anyone to understand it. I knew I’d spend the rest of my high school life trying to explain it — and escape it. I knew that my “good girl” reputation might get completely thrown out and I’d earn a badge of “troublemaker”, a horrifying side effect of taking care of yourself, especially when it goes against the normative social current.
I still celebrated my sixteenth birthday by dropping off my petition for emancipation at the district court on the way to what was a semi-surprise party thrown by a few close friends.
The surprise, of course, came from me.
Their reactions were supportive, relieved —with hardly detectable but expected overtones of envy. What teenager didn’t dream of living on their own? What kid my age didn’t want to have to listen to their parents?
The sad truth was, I wanted nothing more than a family who was able to appreciate, care for and understand me completely and unconditionally. I dreamt of someone caring about my wellbeing. I wanted someone to be embarrassingly affectionate toward me. I wanted a place to call home.
It wasn’t that I was trying to run away from home; I was trying to find it.
EMANCIPATION IS NOT AN EASY PROCESS. There is, as with most occasions on which you “lawyer up”— a lot of paperwork. Within a month of my petition, my parents were served papers. Shortly after, I met with Gilman, the attorney. I sat across from his overbearing mahogany desk, my back straight and eyes unwavering from his brow as he mulled over the statement I’d presented him with. After a few moments, he took his glasses off and looked up at me.
“Did someone help you write this?” he said.
I shook my head, mildly insulted. “No, not so much as a grammar check.”
I paused a moment, my eyes flicking down at my hands. “You told me that I had to write it completely on my own, otherwise it wouldn’t stand up.”
He nodded. “Right. So, can anyone attest that you wrote this yourself?”
“Why are you questioning it?”
“Because you’re a sixteen year old girl. No judge is going to believe you wrote this.” With that, he plopped my single-spaced statement into his pile of papers.
He leaned back in his leather chair, with an air of dubiousness.
“Well, I did write it. Every word. I don’t know how to prove that.”
“Can your teachers at school submit writing samples? For comparison?”
I shrugged. “If you think that’s necessary. Sure. English is my best subject.”
He nodded, reaching for the phone. “Then this shouldn’t be too difficult.”
My teachers immediately jumped to my defense. Gilman was a little unnerved, but reassured enough to proceed. I had a court date.
June 19th, 2007.
Right in the middle of finals.
I WAS NEVER ANY GOOD AT MATH ANYWAY,
I thought as I sheepishly handed in my math final. The third final I had taken in the course of just a few hours. I needed to leave early to make my court date, but I couldn’t risk not getting all my finals in on time. My grades were the only thing that mattered to me. They were my ticket out of there in two short years, and that reality weighed heavily upon me as I rushed through my notes that day, trying to make it all okay.
The guidance counselor had to take me to court. I guess since the school was now somehow heavily involved, there needed to be some kind of representation. Maybe they just didn’t believe me; maybe getting involved was enticing because no one had ever gotten emancipated at my high school before. Everyone loves a good courtroom drama.
At this point, I had no idea if my parents would contest it. I hadn’t lived with them in several years, and my relationship with them was strained at best. At the time, no one believed that the living situation I was in wasn’t a good one, mostly because small towns tend to look the other way. No one likes to think that their good neighbor is actually malicious. My pleas were ignored in a way that quite blatantly said, “We see you suffering, but we’re just not going to get involved.” It was frustrating, but also fostered in me a grim outlook on human nature. The toughest lesson to learn was that I had to save myself.
There were, of course, a few people who looked out for me. If there hadn’t been, my emancipation simply wouldn’t have been possible. No one can survive without some kind of support system. Luckily for me, those who were supportive were also undeterred by the threats of those who wanted to encapsulate me in their web of manipulation and power. The most interesting thing about child abuse, to me, is the idea that the adult in the situation is the one with all the power.
That simply isn’t true.
The child is the one who ultimately has the power. The adult tries, relentlessly, to strip them of it. They beat them, they humiliate them, they turn their words to garbled, untrustworthy thoughts, they dominate them in every possible way, even sexually at times. But the child who survives—who thrives—is the one who has the power.
Sitting in district court on that early summer say, I didn’t feel like I had any power at all. At that point, my future was dependent on the decisions of other people: my family, my lawyer, and the judge.
My hearing got pushed back a few hours because a custody battle was taking longer than the court had anticipated. I sat in a small room with Gilman, and the somewhat out-of-place guidance counselor, and looked out the window at the street. There was a slight breeze coming in the window, which I remember because I told myself it was the reason I had goose -bumps.
Gilman stepped out of the room for a moment, and returned to say that while the judge was ready to begin my hearing, my parents hadn’t shown up yet. In emancipation hearings, the parents are allowed to contest. I had been prepared for this by my lawyer. It wasn’t my parents I was worried about — they were, in all actuality, not the family members who were the most dangerous to me. But, they were the ones whose legal guardianship of me would inhibit my ability to escape the web of hurt I was currently in.
I looked out the window again and saw my father walking up the courtroom steps. A few minutes later, he came back out. He walked to his car and drove off. Confused, I turned to Gilman to as what happened, but he had left the room again.
He returned with a small, white envelope.
In it, a brief note that said my parents were not going to contest my emancipation.
He threw the note on the table in front of me.
“Relax,” he said. “Go in there —don’t cry—and you’ll get it by default.”
EVEN THOUGH MY PARENTS WEREN’T GOING TO FIGHT I still had to go before the judge, read my statements, and answer her questions. What I had thought was going to be an all-out Battle Royale turned out to be a strangely muted and calm conversation. I took the oath on the Bible, wondering as I repeated the words if I had mentioned my Atheism anywhere in my statement, and proceeded to read the story in front of me. To me, it did feel like a story. I had told it, rehashed versions of it, so many times in the last few weeks that it had ceased to feel like it belonged to me.
The judge complimented my writing. I was thrown off, because it wasn’t like I was in an oration competition, but I sheepishly thanked her. She asked me a few questions about my plans for a living situation, money, health insurance and school. I answered her in the measured voice of an adult. I wasn’t even play-acting as an adult anymore. Sometime over the last couple of months, I had become one. That was all she needed to see, and after just twenty minutes, it was all over.
I shook Gilman’s hand and thanked him. He told me good luck and, with a confident stride, headed back to his office. I got into the guidance counselors car and sighed.
“Do you want to get ice cream?” she asked, starting the car.
I looked at her incredulously. What kind of question was that?
She shrugged. What else could she say? I looked down at the paperwork in my lap. All that was to come was defined by one, single piece of paper that declared me emancipated. My freedom papers.
I rolled down the car window, took in a big breath of fresh air. The journey was just beginning and I knew this was the last moment I would have to breath easy for many years to come.
As the guidance counselor pulled out into traffic, she asked me where I wanted to go.
I choked on my breath before I said “home.”
