Saturday's Child by Robin Morgan Read Free Book Online Page A

are literally fighting for their lives—and thus for your own. This realization invests every action with inappropriate significance. Having such power while simultaneously knowing yourself to be powerless creates a vertigo about capacity. Furthermore, if your family depends on you, you’re trapped. Escape is impossible, so, like the prisoner of war, kidnap victim, or battered woman, you come to identify with your captor: Stockholm Syndrome. It’s crucial to make that captor your friend; if that captor is not your friend, your death is likely. But if you can believe you’re on the same side (and these are your parents , after all, this is your family ), then love must prevail: your love for them ( See how obedient and good I am? See what I’ve accomplished? ), and their gratitude, expressed as love, for you. This means you get to stay alive—contingent on their approval, of course.
    The illogical logic of such a universe is hermetically sealed, a tautology. And this belief system was devised by people with the power to enforce it, people who are larger-bodied than you—who literally loom over you, who can pick up your entire self or knock you down, lock you places, hurt you, exercise control over your body, daily life, and perceptions of them, the world, yourself.
    Moreover, this is the only life you know . You might hear of or witness children living in other ways, but you have no experiential grounds for comparison. So while intellectually you might realize yours is an unusual way to live, what you feel is normalcy—the normalcy of existing in a state of emotional tuberculosis, where your spirit can never quite draw one deep breath.
    Is this a state of privilege?
    All the clichés about child performers who grow into neurotic (or worse) adults have been sadly validated for too long by too many survivors—and by quite a few who didn’t survive.
    Midori, the violinist who made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age ten, had severe “digestive problems” as a child, and is rumored still to suffer eating disorders as an adult. Eugene Fodor, another child-prodigy violinist, was arrested for heroin possession as a grown man. Ruth Slenczynska, a child-prodigy pianist, suffered a total breakdown and reclaimed her adult career only after years of refusing to perform publicly. There are others. …
    Child athletes and young dancers face a shorter career span than musicians, so the race is on: gymnasts trying to stunt their growth, skaters who fight weight with anorexia, teen ballplayers plucked from schoolwork to earn billions for a franchise owner (and millions for themselves, to be lost on booze, drugs, and fees for criminal lawyers defending them against rape, assault, or murder …). There’s a gender differential here, too, as Joan Ryan noted in her prize-winning book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters (Doubleday, 1995; Warner Books, 1996); girls must race the clock against puberty, but boys peak athletically after puberty, when their muscles strengthen. For girls, agility, lightness, and pliability (emotional and physical) are paramount. Olga Korbut, the former Soviet gymnast and Olympic gold medalist, began smoking at age ten to keep her weight down, and has openly accused her trainer of physical and sexual abuse, claiming that many female gymnasts were treated like “sexual slaves as well as sportsmachines” by their trainers. 4 Young tennis stars like Jennifer Capriati have discussed the damage caused by relentless pressure to succeed. Finally, in 1996, the Women’s Tennis Association ruled anyone age fourteen or under ineligible to play professionally at any level; as of the same year, Olympic gymnasts have been required to be at least sixteen years old.
    Child actors usually fare even worse, since cuteness, as much as if not more than thespian skill, tends to be their prime commodity, so