Mom surprised us both when she sat up on the couch and slid off to her knees. I looked at Dr. Jaffrey and she said, “She’s reliving the interaction with Rafe.” Mom reached her hands up to her face level and fumbled like she was handling something. Then she used both hands and began stroking them up and down on the air but it was clear that it wasn’t air in her memory.
I muttered, “Fuck. No. What an ass-hole.”
Dr. Jaffrey said, “Uh huh. This is what I was afraid off.” She interrupted Mom and said, “Madelyn, let’s move on, okay? Mom just nodded and sat back up on the couch but she didn’t lie back down again. Dr. Jaffrey told Mom to continue on and to stop the next time she was sleepwalking and interrupted by Rafe. Mom seemed to be moving further through her childhood on automatic. Then she stopped and slid back to her knees again and moved her hands back to her face and started stroking her hands again. We understood what she was doing in her mind. Then she started crying and saying, “No. I don’t want to do that. She increased the pace with her hands but she was still crying. Then she said, “Please don’t tell my mom, and then a resigned Okay, but I don’t want to.” She opened her mouth and pushed her lips forward to her hands and started a motion that could only be simulating one thing. Then she gagged as I pictured with disgust what was happening to Mom’s five-year-old persona.
I wondered how much longer Dr. Jaffrey was going to take her down memory lane. This was disgusting but Dr. Jaffrey let Mom move on and the next time that she slid off the couch, both Rafe and Jessica were there terrorizing their five-year-old step-sister. This time Mom readily opened her mouth as she rocked her body forward and back for several minutes and then stopped and moved to her right and started licking the air in front of her with her hands reaching out in front of her just below her searching tongue. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what Rafe and Jessica had forced Mom to do. She started crying hard as she fended away an invisible pair of hands.
Then Mom pulled back and fell against the couch with her hands up like she was blocking something as she looked back to her left. She said, “Rafe. You’re peeing on me.” Then she wiped her face and said, “What is this? It’s gooey and sticky.”
Dr. Jaffrey moved her through one more sleepwalking episode and it was pretty much the same scenario between her and Rafe and Jessica. Dr. Jaffrey looked at me and said, “I guess we have our answer. Now I just want to find out how long this went on.” She instructed Mom to fast-forward to the last time she sleepwalked with either Rafe or Jessica interrupting her. She was ten and it was just Jessica. Mom had previous explained that Rafe and Jessica had been kicked out of the house when she was ten. Rafe had probably already been kicked out of their house. Jessica was soon to follow because Mom’s interrupted sleepwalking episodes stopped but she continued her sleepwalking unobstructed for another six months until her mother found her wandering around the house at midnight in the dark. Her mother interrupted her and she dropped to her knees trying to do the same thing she had learned from Rafe and Jessica. Mom’s mother freaked out and woke her daughter by slapping her across the face. In Mom’s hypnotic trance, she freaked out too and began screaming. Dr. Jaffrey soothed her and asked me to step in and settle her down. I put my hand on Mom’s shoulder wondering if that would trigger Mom to do her thing. It didn’t. Still in her trance, she grabbed me and screeched out, “I’m sorry Mom. I thought that’s what you wanted. I’m sorry.”
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