In third grade, my teacher noticed that for the first hour of every day I would run and hide in the cubby room. The teacher found me zipping and unzipping my bookbag to see if the Kidz Easy Reader Bible was still there. Apparently, I was anxious that God would punish me if it fell on to the ground, or the toilet, or anywhere insulting to the Almighty. The teachers at Tupelo Street Elementary were a well-intentioned bunch. They dutifully called my mother, knowing full well they never understood a word she said. Our kinfolk from Honduras lived on the Bay Islands and spoke English and Spanish in a strange patois. The particulars weren’t audible to Midwestern ears, “Yes Mrs. Fisher, Francie is acting very unusual. ʷʰᵃᵗ ᵈᶦᵈ ˢʰᵉ ˢᵃʸˀ̣ Yes, she’s obsessed with her bible falling into the toilet. ᵈᶦᵈ ˢʰᵉ ˢᵃʸ ᵗʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ʰᵃᵖᵖᵉⁿᵉᵈ ᵇᵉᶠᵒʳᵉˀ̣”

After some discussion, it was decided that the guidance counselor should observe me. The guidance counselor followed me around for the next two days. He noticed I always walked off the school bus with my fingers in my ears. After being asked why, I told him I plugged them, because I was afraid that if I heard the “f-word” that God would send me to hell. 

He asked my bus driver if I was being bullied, and he said no but that the fifth-graders  were incorrigibly profane. The guidance counselor called my mother to ask after my habits, but Mom was different in that way too. She knew it wasn’t healthy to fear the unknown in this way, but in our family it was normal, inherited even. Though, she didn’t believe in that sort of thing. Psychology. Diseases of the brain. To her it was a curse put on our lineage’s souls, the painful essence of our mortal coil. The only treatment generations of islanders had settled on was avoidance. Of course, the guidance counselor heard none of this. Her voice alone was enough of an inconvenience. “That’s nice Mrs. Fisher. We’ll talk to you again soon. ᵈᵒ ʷᵉ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵃᵗʰᵉʳ’ˢ ʷᵒʳᵏ ⁿᵘᵐᵇᵉʳˀ̣” 

Not many people were given a proper diagnosis for OCD in the late 70’s and even fewer before then. The administration had a simple solution at an overcrowded school like Tupelo Street Elementary: let the guidance counselor tack an asterisk onto my record that said, “special needs,” and suggest a few psychologists in the area. It was a short list with comparatively uncomfortable settings: Bedlam-like hospitals that loom over hilltops, attracting vampire bats and lightning. Or, for more modern options, there were covert little offices in the backs of hospitals, frequented by wealthy housewives. 

“Isn’t there anything else?” my father asked. “Can’t she just talk to you?” The guidance counselor continued to beat around the bush. It wasn’t his forte, dealing with true mental illness. But if there’s one thing for certain, it was that Francie Fisher wouldn’t pass the third grade if things went on like this. Dad looked at the brochures. They all seemed to read the same way. At Blah-Blah Facility, your child’s shame will be thoughtfully shielded from society. Please park your car at the back of parking lot A and submit a check for $3000. And look! We have a cafeteria!  My father grimaced, trying to suppress his opinion. 

The guidance counselor looked at my father. Most parents that came through his office thought spending money on a psychiatrist was about as absurd as sending your kid to fat camp. The fact that Mr. Fisher was here at all, meaning he was open minded. Most men wouldn’t think of running to the school over “anxiety” in their children, but a man still has his limits. If he still wasn’t sure, there was one more option for low-income–er…hesitant families. The school kept a retired psychologist on a volunteer basis. He worked Tuesdays and Thursdays out of the middle school gymnasium. I imagined Dad grimacing at that categorization, “low-income.” He swallowed his pride and took the psychologist’s card. 

We parked our car at the local middle school where the psychologist met his “clients,” and were directed to a converted janitor's closet across from the gym. He was a trim old man who wore tweed jackets and liked to mention his time in West Germany. When Mom described him she did a German accent, though Dad always said he actually got his degree in Kansas.

“Da. Ve could give her earplugs.” the psychologist suggested when he heard the story. 

Dad scoffed, “That’ll only make her stick out even more.” 

Mom cut in, “Can’t we just sit her away from the cussing? I’d prefer that anyway.”

The psychologist shook his bald head. 

“Da, d’you cannot stop ze childrens from doing such things. Intervention vill only vurther bury za unconscious mind. Ve must reach ze source of her anxieties.” The three of them stared at each other for a long while, before Mom finally had it. 

“Okay, the hell is he saying?” 

On Dad’s suggestion, Mom left the janitor’s closet. It seemed like it was best to leave the men to discuss, as usual. Mom kept me occupied on a bench in the empty gymnasium. She listened as I read aloud from a prayer card she had purse, knowing as she did that reading was the only distraction that helped to unwind the horrible knots of fear in my chest. “Read the words to me, Franchesca. Focus on the page now.” 

It’s not my intention that we should come off so devoutly religious. I think we went to church about as much as the next family, but the prayer cards had a certain novelty to us. We weren’t Catholic. Though being, what would you call us? We weren’t quite Hispanic, but we weren’t American either. It just seemed like something people expected of us. 

When Mom came to Cleveland, she didn’t know there wouldn’t be any Honduran stores. Not that we were the typical Honduran. The people on the islands were sort of a thing of their own. An ethnic group within an ethnic group. Still, she always harped on Dad for that. He was a white bread American, she didn’t expect much from him. Sometimes, in a crowded place she seemed to turn inward. If she spoke then people would know she was different, the only one of her kind for a thousand miles...the closest thing she could get was the Caribe/Cuban Mart. That's what the sign says on the top of their store. When we went there (which was almost everyday) Mom always pointed out their shrine to Mary, though they called her La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. 

The statue was porcelain with a little yellow dress sewn from real silk. Her bare porcelain feet rest on a crescent moon. Below her, young boys in a boat raised up their hands in prayer that she’d save them from the storm. Indeed she did, and from that day, Caridad del Cobre was the patron saint of Cuba. The shrine had offerings of fruit and a tiny cup of wine. Sometimes Mom would chat with the shop lady, swapping broken island Spanish for the shop lady's beautiful Castilian. Regardless, if they were filling the little cup on the shrine they’d offer Mom a glass too. 

Down the aisle from Caridad were the prayer cards next to the smelling salts and the bruja candles. Light this candle to achieve lust. Light another for riches. Take a card and recite a Prayer to St. Jude, Patron St. of Lost Causes or St. Lucy, Patron St. of Eye Disorders. Then there was another card, Prayer to Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots. I thought of the conversations I had with Mom and Dad when the thoughts made me do things. Before the Kidz Easy Reader Bible, it was flushing the toilet. I had to make sure none of the water particles flew up from the toilet and touched my skin. If there was no way to be certain, then a tactical inspection became necessary. Running my hands down my arms and legs, I felt for moisture that would indicate exposure. Before each inspection of my bookbag or body, the sensation of a giant knot sat at the opening of my esophagus. At times I did a visual inspection of the back of my mouth. Was there something back there that made it hard to breathe? I looked at the card of Mary, she held a long rope of knots that she untied, one by one. Maybe that meant God knew the feeling? Maybe He sent Mary to do something about it. I picked up the card and brought it to my Mom at the shrine.

The psychologist and my father gave my teachers tips on how to soothe the unconscious mind. Stuff like, “assign sweet children to sit near Francie,'' and “keep ze girl vin a quiet corner of das classes.” My teachers resented that they had to take care of 30 kids and now on top of that, the unconscious mind. It was the 70’s, and in their opinion, the best course of  treatment was a slap. Eventually my classmates caught onto what was happening. Adults would never pay that much attention to a kid, not unless there was something wrong with them. One day in class, my deskmate, Leanne dropped her pencil. 

“Pick it up,” she ordered. I didn’t hear her. I was too preoccupied zipping and unzipping my bookbag to check if my Easy Reader Bible was still there. She looked peeved by my lack of interest. “Do it,” Leanne demanded again with her tiny fists on the desk, “do it or I’ll say the word.”  Finally, she found her gusto. “Fuck!”

“What did you just say?” our teacher interrupted. It was too late, my ears perked at the naughty word. I had never heard the full word, and after years of warnings, even thinking about it felt unclean. Anxiety mounted that whole evening. What if I think it? What if I think about it while I think about Mom or God? Does that mean I’m cursing them too? That night I was too anxious to eat the dinner Mom cooked. Instead, I sat at the television and worried over a roll of pan bolillo. 

“You don’t want spaghetti?” Mom rubbed my back while I sat hunched over, staring into the television. Tom and Jerry hummed while I picked past the crust and ate chunks of the soft white bread. A morsel dissolved in my mouth, and the word flashed through my mind. 

“I keep thinking it,” I whimpered. Through mouthfuls, I tried to explain what I heard my deskmate say. The power that compelled me to stick my fingers in my ears and continue to zip and unzip had focused its full force onto what might happen if I were to accidentally say the word. I hoped that Mom would punish me or tell me how to banish these thoughts from my mind forever. “What if, what if I accidentally say the word to Jesus while I pray? He’ll hate me.” 

Her eyes seemed red, like she had allergies. “God doesn’t care about that crap.” she insisted, wrapping me in her arms, “And if he did then he wouldn’t really be that good of a God, would he?” Her tenderness untethered the knot of repetition of my mind. That night I went to sleep without any more thoughts, just love. 

The next morning, I heard low whispers humming from the kitchen. Mom sat at the yellow oak table, hands wrapped around a hot cup from the dishwasher. She shivered off the December chill. Dad poured a cup of coffee. He sat beside Mom at the table and passed her a cup. “So you’ve thought about it? The psychologist?”

She sighed a sigh of defeat, and wiped the corner of her eye. “It wasn’t the humidity that made Mamí kill herself. It’s all that evil in our blood.” 

Dad played with the ring on Mom’s finger, “Alright then. It’s settled.” I poked my head out into the kitchen, weakly concealing my eavesdropping. “Come here sweetie-pea,” Dad said, and I joined him in looking at Mom’s ring.

I remembered how Mom said they met. Dad was delivering vegetables to a great-aunt of some connection she was living with at the time. I’d been curious when I’d heard that. What made Mama’s aunt so great? Mom had only laughed when I asked her a few weeks prior, and so I ventured to ask Papa where Mama’s auntie was. She really couldn’t be that great if she’d never so much as sent a present for Christmas or a card for her birthday.

“Who are you talking about?” my father similarly chuckled, taking a sip of coffee.

“The great one. The one Mom lived with when you met.” 

A look of hesitation overcame Dad’s face. He sort of winced and looked at my Mom. Mom didn’t hesitate, “My Mamí is busy up in heaven, that’s where she is.” 

“Oh.” I said. I didn’t know how to tell him her answer didn’t do much to satisfy me. I guess being with God would make you great, sorta. For the remainder of the day, I continued to ponder what they’d said. I didn’t know what it meant to kill yourself. In fact, I assumed she had misspoken, combining the island pidgin with plain Midwestern English. All that evil caught my attention. And how did evil get in my blood? What if that means I’ll kill somebody? What if…what if?

The next day, the psychologist from Kansas attempted to begin psychotherapy with me. My teacher let us go to recess early, and we advanced through the slushy mid-December blacktop. Children from the earlier recess period swung and chased each other with screams of glee. “Shoo, shoo,” the psychologist grunted, waving children away from the picnic table. The psychologist, though well intentioned, was not particularly fond of children. In the years since I’d heard some talk. He’d enjoyed making observations on developing mind from retirement for some time now. The schools allowed him his small, though unofficial, practice. 

Obsessive compulsive children were particularly interesting to the psychologist. There was no therapy for these sorts of children yet, aside from Freudian analysis. I imagined he’d probably scoffed at the newer therapies being suggested in the field. There was nothing to be done for the obsessive compulsive mind–however the community could benefit from more analysis. 

Of course, I didn’t know any of this in the third grade. Really, I was just surprised to find that the psychologist was not actually German but that my mother has an excellent fake German accent.  He walked stiffly with a yellow file tucked under the crook of his arm in a quick step that I stumbled along trying to keep pace with. I couldn’t sleep the night before after hearing about “all that evil.” 

Over the course of the morning, my curiosity over all that evil had grown to feeling like the cavity in my chest might burst. What if God knows there’s evil in my blood? Would I want to murder someday? How would you know if you wanted to do a murder? What would my parents do if they discovered I was evil? Maybe I have an evil twin somewhere I can’t see, I thought, checking for signs of a siamese twin, teeth or tiny baby arms lodged in my scalp. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

“Francie, come here,” the psychologist scolded, settling into a picnic table by the swings. “To understand the obsessive compulsive actions that have overtaken your focus, we must tap into the unconscious mind.” He opened the file he had been carrying, revealing a series of cards printed with different items. “Look at the card and tell me what you think.” At the time I thought of the cartoons I had seen of these situations. Based on Tom and Jerry this guy seemed like the real deal.

He revealed a card printed with a bear. 

“Teddy.” 

“Hrrmm,” the psychologist said, writing something down. He revealed another card with a picture of a door. 

“Home.” 

“That mother of your’s works, yes? Are you what they call a latchkey child?” I didn’t know what that meant either. 

“My mom opens the door and makes me a glass of Coke,” I replied. He grumbled and went back to writing. We continued for a long while before the bell for second recess rang, and soon my classmates began to soar from the cafeteria doors. Dread poured over me. I could not let the other kids see me sitting with some weird old man during recess.

“I wanna be done now,” I said looking over my shoulder. 

“We cannot be done. Now look at this one,” he said, holding up a card with a picture of a church. “Say it Francie. Tell me what it makes you think of.” My deskmate Leanne ran past us, going to the swings, and staring all the while. I could see that the psychologist's bald head and oiled leather elbow patches seemed hokey in her eyes, and suddenly I didn’t care about hell. I ran away from the picnic table and joined my classmates on the swings. The psychologist sighed and continued with his notes, “Child suffers from poor attention. Will do more testing.”

A week passed before the psychologist attempted psychotherapy on me again. This time we sat in his converted janitor’s closet.  In the corner of the room, there was a pile of brooms and a mess of paint cans and brushes. There was also a large Steelcase teacher’s desk that took up the majority of the floor. A small degree from Kansas State and other pictures lined the wall. One showed the psychologist in an expensive foreign–looking place. Another picture showed him standing in what looked like an airport shaking hands with another man. The plaque on the frame read the Governor's Office of Ohio. Another showed him shaking hands with a man outside of Cleveland City Hall. I thought of the little desk we had at home where Dad balanced the checkbook. The wall held pictures of Dad’s childhood home in Baton Rouge and another of Mom and me at the hospital where I was born. 

“Francie, we're going to get serious this time. If you don’t cooperate with me you're just going to keep falling further behind the other children while you play with zippers.”

“I’m not playing. I’m checking to make sure my bible hasn’t fallen out.”

“What does it matter if your bible falls out? Your parents can always buy you a new one.”

“But, what if it fell into the toilet, and I didn’t notice?”

“Has your bible fallen into the toilet before?” 

“One time.” 

“Well, I guess I can understand your suspicion. What is it about offending God that makes you so upset?”

“If you're not afraid of God he’ll be mad at you.” 

The psychologist shook his head and pulled the same yellow folder out as before. “You remember these cards? Look at them and tell me the first thought that comes into your head.” He pulled out a card with a church printed onto it. I didn’t know how to answer that one. How could I? Not without saying what we were just talking about? Instead I looked off into the distance and stared at the picture of the psychologist shaking hands. “What do you think of it, hmm?” repeated the psychologist. “Do you think of your mother? Or that TV show you talk about?” I didn’t say anything. The psychologist cut in, “NOW. Say it NOW.” My cheeks felt hot. I wanted to go home, but he turned to another card. This time it was printed with the continental US. “What do you see?”

The psychologist's intense questioning stirred and twisted my anxieties until I burst out and cried in the janitor's closet. Of course the psychologist assured my parents that this was all a part of the process, but I hated crying in front of this strange man. 

No one at Tupelo Street Elementary questioned the psychologist's expertise when  he volunteered himself from retirement. Frankly, the parents in Tupelo were too busy with other things to think of the particulars. 

“And why should we think about it?” thought the adults in passing, “Before he retired the psychologist’s office had been in the north side of town. Why wouldn’t he be qualified?” Northside had a prep school. The people there spent money on doctors that treated ridiculous parts of the body, like toes, ears, and the unconscious mind. 

Mom was different. She was suspicious of people like the psychologist. Back on the islands the only doctor that tended to her family was a carpenter who sailed from the mainland to widdle the occasional false tooth. It was something that frustrated Dad to no end. Why couldn’t his wife see that doctors in America are different? He wondered. 

  The next day, I heard whispers from my parents through a crack in the bathroom door. Dad spoke while Mom was crouched over the grout with a toothbrush. After a long day working, she still had to clean the house. 

“I want her out of the quack’s office. He’s making her even worse,” Mom argued.

“No,” Dad said plainly. “She is sick and we cannot help her.” 

“No, you can’t help her, but I know what she’s going through.” Silence. 

Dad sighed, “Look I know that guy isn’t the best, but he’s what we have. Mr–whatever his name is. You and Francie…I know you can’t help being the way you are, so maybe if you let her stick it out the therapy will help.” Mom continued scrubbing with her toothbrush, ignoring Dad altogether.  

After a few more sessions with the psychologist, my fear of Hell gestated into a constant anxious hum. “I can’t stop thinking,” I sobbed to Dad one night. “It won’t let me stop thinking.” 

Dad opted to calm me in the way he’d attend to one of my mother’s anxiety attacks. “Why don’t you give the voice a name? That way you can say screw you to the voice. Name it something you really hate, a real asshole’s name.”

“Leanne,” I said thoughtfully, thinking of my deskmate. 

“Yeah, screw Leanne,” Dad continued. “Say it. Say screw you to Leanne.” 

Mom took a different approach. She saw the logic behind Leanne's questions. What IF her daughter wanted to kill small animals. That was a warning sign of a serial killer right? Tío Cuckoo went to prison after he pushed his brother-in-law into the water. Tío knew his brother couldn’t swim and everything. There was a reason normal people in Tupelo didn’t go to pointless doctors. What did someone like Mom need from a psychologist anyway? Our family had been treating this curse all by ourselves for over a hundred years. Her daughter would be no different. 

It was a particularly horrible day of examining the unconscious mind, when Mom burst into the psychologist's office, and plucked me from my chair.

“What are you doing?” The psychologist demanded.

Mom continued walking out into the hallway and toward our car. She yelled at the psychologist over her shoulder, “What in God’s name about this treatment could possibly help a little girl? All you’re doing is upsetting her.” She held me against her while the psychologist walked behind us, wagging his finger. 

“To understand the child’s fears we need to get to the root of her obsessive-compulsive actions.” Mom ignored him until we had gotten into our car. The psychologist looked down on us grimly, though Mom didn’t seem to care. 

“You’re just fanning your pathetic ego,” she said and slammed the car door shut. We soon learned that the school had neglected to check his license. It had expired sometime in the late fifties. That night, I set my mind to Mary, undoer of knots. This horrible knot in my chest meant something. If I could just check one more time, maybe it would become clear…So there I sat, small and confused, tying and untying the knots in my chest. And all these years later I wonder, what was it all for?