Zoe Zolbrod - The Telling

ADVANCE PRAISE

Dusk is now settling around my house and Im just emerging from the spell of Zoe Zolbrods transfixing memoir: I sat down, as you will, to read ten pages and ended up devouring the entire thing in one breathless gulp. Though ostensibly a tale of heartbreaking childhood molestation, The Telling is much, much more: A complicated, layered commentary on coming of age in America, on the limits of gender, and on what it means to be a young girl, a young woman, a mother, a daughter, at this moment in history. Spiked with Zolbrods humor and her novelists eye for detail, this layered, ingeniously constructed story reminded me of so many favorite memoirs of recent years, from Alice Sebolds Lucky to Claire Dederers Poser, but Zolbrods spiky, uncompromising style is utterly her own.

JOANNA RAKOFF, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age

Zoe Zolbrods memoir about coming to terms with her childhood sexual abuse is evocative, fiercely intelligent, and beautifully constructed. It also manages to be compulsively readable, a rare quality in a book dealing with such difficult subject matter. In telling her story, Zolbrod becomes a time traveler, making elegant leaps from early childhood to her unconventional coming of age to the embattled but deep satisfactions of her own motherhood. The result is a book that ponders the way the past informs the presentand the mysterious manner in which resilience works. The Telling is a necessary memoir in every way. With remarkable restraint and grace, Zolbrod shows what telling the truth costs us, and what essential essence in the teller it sets free.

CLAIRE DEDERER, author of Poser: My Life in 23 Poses

The Telling is a necessary book; hard at times, yes, often breathtakingly beautiful, and most importantly, I think, profoundly accessible. Childhood sexual abuse is a subject we hide fromits too awful, too taboobut here, Zolbrod gives us nuance and complexity, truth that pushes past the single story of victim and into this beautiful mess of a life. At times, I wanted to set the walls on fire. At times, I wanted to put down the book and hug my small son. At times, I was swept away in the narrative, an expertly woven structure of what a young girl lived and a grown woman understood. And always, the questions: when and how and who do you tell? Zolbrod is telling us. Lets listen.

MEGAN STIELSTRA, author of Once I Was Cool

A gripping read. The Telling is brutally honest, relentlessly passionate, and ferociously intelligent. Zolbrod has written a page turnerone unlike any youve ever experienced before.

ROB ROBERGE, author of Liar and The Cost of Living

One of the most stunning memoirs Ive ever read. In this perfectly-crafted story, Zolbrod exercises her impeccable command of language to explore a dark subject with beauty, humility, and fierce grace. This book burns bright on the list of those that will stay with me for years to come.

CLAIRE BIDWELL SMITH, author of The Rules of Inheritance and After This

The job of the memoirist is to draw our gaze to the things that most scare us, and to hold it. In this way, they show us that it is possible to hold our whole truths. To do this well, they must enact such looking at the most intimate level. Only the most brave and honest writers can withstand this, the ones with a certain fortitude of self. Zoe Zolbrod is one such writer. She withholds nothing in The Telling, invites us into the deep examination of her own most changing experiences and she does so with skill, equanimity, and grace.

MELISSA FEBOS, author of Whip Smart

This remarkable memoir shines a light into the most shadowy corners of the soul and demonstrates the transcendent power of truth. Both authentic and likable, Zolbrod weaves a masterful and compelling narrative and examines tough issues with remarkable nuance and sensitivity. I will not soon forget this beautiful book.

JILLIAN LAUREN,NY Times bestselling author of Everything You Ever Wanted, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, and Pretty

CURBSIDE SPLENDOR PUBLISHING

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of short passages quoted in reviews.

AUTHORS NOTE:

This is a work of nonfiction based on recollections going back to an early age. Where possible, Ive corroborated my memories with journal entries. Dialogue is approximate and appears in quotation marks for the ease of the reader. Aside from all names and some identifying details, which have been changed to protect peoples privacy, this book is true to my experience as I recorded and recall it.

Published by Curbside Splendor Publishing, Inc., Chicago, Illinois in 2016.

First Edition

Copyright 2016 by Zoe Zolbrod

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948130

ISBN 9781940430799

Edited by Naomi Huffman

Cover image by Mark DeBernardi

Author photo by Elizabeth McQuern

Designed by Alban Fischer

LETTER TO A JOHN

Words and Music by Ani DiFranco

Copyright (c) 1994 Righteous Babe Music

All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC

All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

WWW.CURBSIDESPLENDOR.COM

TO MY CHILDREN

AND THE OTHER CHILDREN

AND EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN A CHILD

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

GABRIEL GARCA MRQUEZ

I got an extra month of maternity leave when my first child was born, and before I went back to work and Anthony quit his job to stay home with our son, we flew to Albuquerque to visit my family.

In the photos from that trip, my shirt is a collage of wet spots of indiscriminate origin. My baby and I were a sloshing pair, our fluids still intertwined. His incessant screaming and crying did not yet yield tears, but it made us both sweat, and my breasts spurted and leaked, and he was plump and a profuse drooler. After a hard few months with a distressed infant, I found it a pleasure to be in dry, sunny New Mexico where at least liquid evaporated quickly and where there were people who shared our awe for the baby. My parents had been divorced for about a dozen years, but they came together to coo at their grandson. Being in the same room with the two of them eased an ache I hadnt allowed myself to acknowledge. Anthony and I even felt confident enough to go to a movie alone, to make a visit to an adjoining town.

Mostly, though, our days were quiet, structured around our sons fledgling sleep schedule. At naptimes, a hush fell over everything. My moms house was on the newer side of town, in a development built on a hill, each street sitting above the other so as to maximize views of the Sangra de Cristo mountains to the east. The living room section of her first floor was two stories high, with tall windows and skylights. Thats where we sat during one naptime toward the end of the visit, going through the bags and bins of baby clothes that my mom had collected from clearance sales and second-hand stores. We knelt on the Berber carpeting and sorted the little jackets and jeans and sleepers into piles