Karen Palmer, SHE'S UNDER HERE: A Memoir
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[0:44]Karen Palmer is the author of She's Under Here, a love story, a horror story, a reckoning.
[0:50]Karen is a push card prize winner and has received grants from the NEA and the Colorado
[0:54]Council on the Arts.
[0:56]She's under here, grew out of her award-winning essay The Reader is the protagonist, first
[1:00]published in Virginia Quarterly Review, and selected by Leslie Jameson for inclusion in
[1:05]Best American Essays 2017.
[1:07]She is the author of the novels All Saints and Border Dogs, more recently her short story
[1:12]Birds of Paradise won the 2022 Emily Clark Bunch Prize for Fiction.
[1:17]Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Canyon Review, Arts, and Letters in Caliope
[1:21]among others.
[1:22]A native of Los Angeles, she currently teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver,
[1:27]Colorado, and lives with her husband in California.
[1:30]Welcome, Karen.
[1:31]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about She's Under Here, a love story,
[1:36]a horror story, a reckoning, and memoir.
[1:39]Congratulations.
[1:40]Thank you.
[1:41]Wow.
[1:42]All right.
[1:43]How do you feel about this memoir coming in?
[1:45]Well, it took me a really long time to write it.
[1:50]It was about 14 years in the making and many false starts and starting over and it took
[1:57]me forever to figure out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.
[2:04]So the idea of seeing it now actually out in the world is kind of amazing.
[2:11]Wow.
[2:13]So did you know which piece of it, I mean this is your whole story, right?
[2:18]So maybe explain a little bit about some of what the horror story in the book was.
[2:24]I mean, you take us through your whole really most of your life and your relationships
[2:29]and the fear and the panic and your parents and your kids and your ex and your new relationship.
[2:36]I mean, we're in it with you, Karen.
[2:37]We are so in it.
[2:39]Oh, well, the book is about having changed my identity in order to escape my dangerous
[2:48]ex-husband and my second husband and I virtually overnight we disappeared.
[2:55]We took the kids out of school, we quit our jobs, we did phony documents to create new
[3:02]identities, we moved out of state.
[3:05]We really went as far as you could go in order to escape and so the book is about the
[3:12]how and why of that and then it's also about the repercussions, you know, what actually happens
[3:19]in the aftermath of such a dramatic act, you know, there are always unforeseen consequences and
[3:26]there were there were plenty of those here.
[3:28]Oh my gosh.
[3:31]You write about books in the book a little bit and I was, could I just start by reading a couple
[3:35]of these beautiful passages?
[3:37]Sure.
[3:38]When I was a child, my mother read to me a lot.
[3:40]Our family life was often fraught, my father, uncommunicative, physically absent and emotionally
[3:45]cool.
[3:46]Mom either at his throat or steeped in hostile despair.
[3:50]Reading was her lifelong escape.
[3:52]One effect this had on me was that I believed books were alive, not just the tales within
[3:56]them, but the objects themselves seated in my mother's lap with a story.
[4:00]The stiffness of the cover told me what it was to have a spine.
[4:04]The words in their regular rows were like heartbeats.
[4:07]The pages turning, fluttered like wings, and then he said later, the novel I'd stopped
[4:13]reading months ago.
[4:14]I couldn't recall the plot or even the title.
[4:16]Once stories had seen me through everything, they'd been my teachers and companions, my
[4:21]savers, my family, but standing there though I felt the shape of their absence.
[4:26]I was unmoved.
[4:28]Yeah.
[4:29]Yeah.
[4:31]The year that I spent before we ran was both the most frightening year of my entire life,
[4:40]and also in some ways the most exhilarating.
[4:43]But because everything was so over the top, I lost my ability to read.
[4:50]I had been, as that passage says, a lifelong reader just like my mom, and it was shocking
[4:59]to me that I had no ability.
[5:02]Again, this is 35 years ago.
[5:05]Now we all sit here with the drama in the world and nobody can read.
[5:11]It's like our attention span is occupied by other things.
[5:14]It's like the world has caught up to that kind of experience.
[5:19]But back then, that was my major source of entertainment and education and how I dealt
[5:27]with my children.
[5:29]Books were really important to me.
[5:31]And to lose that was painful.
[5:34]Yeah.
[5:35]Well, losing any sort of comfort in what was such a time of upheaval and terror, oh my gosh,
[5:44]I totally understand wanting to sink into the comfort of books and yet feeling like
[5:49]even the most soothing things sometimes, it doesn't do the trick.
[5:54]Right.
[5:55]You have a whole section later where it's a flashback on you, younger, and a pregnancy
[6:03]that you had.
[6:04]A child you gave away and you, which was really beautiful and poignant and everything.
[6:10]Can I read a little bit of that as well?
[6:11]Sure.
[6:12]Okay.
[6:13]Stretched out, I confronted my lonely looking body, who did it belong to now?
[6:17]Not me and not the baby.
[6:19]My belly was still mounted where my child had so recently been.
[6:24]In the hospital, they'd given me a shot to dry up my milk, but my breasts still felt
[6:27]hard and my nipples leaked grudgingly.
[6:30]I bled scarlet threads that wound out into the water from between my thighs.
[6:34]When the tub cooled, I drained it a bit before blasting the hot again.
[6:38]On the radio songs came and went, Diana Ross sang as it directly to me about mountains
[6:42]and rivers that could never get in love's way.
[6:45]I was my son's mother.
[6:46]That was a fact forever, but he deserved a mother and a father.
[6:50]But then his mother would never be me.
[6:52]What made a mother?
[6:54]Yeah.
[6:55]Yeah.
[6:56]As sort of a defining experience in my life, having a baby and giving him up for adoption
[7:04]led to every single other thing that happened to me in my life, I would not have met
[7:10]my dangerous husband without it, and even if I had met him, I wouldn't have been drawn
[7:17]to him.
[7:19]The trouble I had was that I was only 16, and then after being in a home with mothers
[7:26]and this terrible experience of saying goodbye to a child, I did not want to give away.
[7:34]I couldn't deal with boys' my own age anymore.
[7:38]My ex-husband was 19 years older than me, and the sort of classic thing is you were looking
[7:45]for a father.
[7:47]I was looking for a father, but not so much for me, but for my potential children.
[7:54]I was drawn for him because at least in the early years of our relationship, he was dependable,
[8:01]and he was fun, and he had his own business, and he seemed like someone that I could go
[8:08]through life with, but didn't work out that way.
[8:13]When did you have your first inkling that it wouldn't be something you could fix?
[8:18]There's that one chapter in the book, which was one of the last chapters written, because
[8:23]it covers 14 years, I couldn't decide how to write about the years that we were together
[8:31]when so many of them were normal, and it's like how they describe firefighting boredom
[8:41]punctuated by terror.
[8:46]I eventually settled on writing that chapter in a series of vignettes that would convey
[8:51]this arc of being wildly in love with this man and infatuated with him through marrying
[8:58]him, through having the two children, through incidents that taken alone maybe didn't
[9:07]mean that much, but when you start looking at the whole shape of the 14 years, and then
[9:12]leading up to this realization that not only does he not love me, but I no longer love
[9:19]him, and that's what allowed me to finally leave him, my gosh, and you had the time
[9:25]where he took one of your daughters, and you couldn't get back to her, which as a mother,
[9:31]I just, I mean, I was in a cold sweat reading this passage of your book, talk a little
[9:35]bit about that, and looking back even how you feel about it.
[9:40]Well, again, it was terrifying, terrifying.
[9:44]I was going to pick up my older daughter, who was seven at the time, she'd been visiting
[9:50]my mom down in San Diego, and she was flying back on the plane with her father, and
[9:55]I was going to meet them in the airport with a little one, and...
[10:00]When he got off the plane with Aaron, my older child, I had this moment of,
[10:06]oh, I'm just an ordinary woman and here's my family.
[10:10]You know, it's like I felt right back in the marriage.
[10:14]But as he came toward me, he was exuding the most intense hatred
[10:20]that it was, you know, it was like being shoved.
[10:23]So I was very flustered, the baby was squirming.
[10:27]You know, I wanted to talk to my older daughter and so I gave her to him.
[10:33]I passed her over and he started walking and he walked ahead of us.
[10:37]We were going towards baggage claim and I thought,
[10:40]okay, let him get ahead a little bit.
[10:42]You know, he can spend some time with the baby and maybe it will remind him
[10:47]of his duty of care toward his family.
[10:51]And then I knelt on the ground to say something to my older girl
[10:55]and when I stood back up, they were gone.
[10:58]And it was nine days before I got her back and it was, you know,
[11:05]it sounds over melodramatic but you want to die.
[11:11]You know, it's like I was so afraid that he would vanish forever
[11:16]because he certainly had the capability to do that.
[11:20]You know, he had been a petty criminal for years
[11:23]and he had multiple IDs and he knew people all over the country
[11:28]and he could have just poof.
[11:30]So it's very ironic that in the end,
[11:34]I ended up doing what I was so afraid of him doing.
[11:39]So, you know, therein is the conflict in this story
[11:43]because it was such a terrible thing that he did taking her
[11:47]and then I took her.
[11:49]The difference is he took her to punish me
[11:52]and we were trying to protect the kids.
[11:55]So how do you just move on from that?
[11:59]How do you like pick up and go to the grocery store
[12:03]and do the normal things after something that terrifying has happened?
[12:08]You know, I was not normal for a long time.
[12:11]When we first moved to Boulder, I had, you know,
[12:15]like severe PTSD where I would see him around every corner
[12:20]and like I was constantly thinking he was going to show up
[12:24]and it took years to lose that major edge over it.
[12:30]But it's never left me even now.
[12:32]I mean, my children are 44 and 39
[12:36]and I still dream about them as children
[12:40]and about them being gone.
[12:43]So I figure I mean, that's it.
[12:46]That's with me, with me til the end.
[12:48]Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry.
[12:51]I'm so sorry this happens.
[12:53]You know, your resilience is amazing
[12:56]and I know there was not really a choice
[12:58]but you did have a choice
[12:59]and, you know, there's a moment later in the book as well
[13:02]where you're feeling, you know, is life even worth living.
[13:06]You said for a few weeks,
[13:08]I obsessively cleaned the house,
[13:10]emptiness and then abruptly the last
[13:12]of my self-sufficiency drained away.
[13:14]I couldn't feel my edges.
[13:16]Food tasted strange, dusty and dry
[13:18]or rotten or fishy or mushy.
[13:20]I stopped eating.
[13:21]I cried and cried and cried.
[13:23]I'd never felt suicidal and didn't now
[13:25]but for the first time I understood
[13:27]how seductive not existing could be.
[13:30]It's heartbreaking.
[13:32]Yeah, that was after we decided to move to Oregon
[13:35]and I was there by myself
[13:37]and it was the first time since all this stuff happened
[13:40]where I was alone for a couple of months
[13:44]where I found us the house
[13:46]and, you know, I did all the paperwork
[13:49]and dealt with the realtors
[13:50]while my husband was frantically trying to wind down his business
[13:54]and prepare the house in Boulder
[13:56]for the new owners that we're coming in.
[13:59]So I don't know.
[14:02]I fell into this horrible,
[14:05]it's like it snowballed.
[14:07]It was a very small thing initially
[14:09]where I couldn't sleep
[14:11]because the people that were upstairs
[14:13]sounded like they were bowling all night long
[14:16]and so I would lie awake
[14:18]so I didn't sleep
[14:19]and then I stopped eating
[14:21]and then I started crying
[14:23]and it just was this really, really fast thing
[14:27]that came on me all at once
[14:29]and it's like it took all this trauma
[14:33]and I had been holding it together for so long
[14:37]and finally just gave in to
[14:42]how terrible it was
[14:44]and how hard it was
[14:46]and so, you know, in a way
[14:48]it was an awful experience
[14:50]but every single one of these things
[14:52]are, you know, there's always another side.
[14:55]They're a gift in a way
[14:56]and that time alone
[14:58]even though I had this breakdown
[15:01]it was good for me.
[15:03]It allowed me to see some things more clearly
[15:06]and, you know, each step along the way
[15:09]because, you know, the first half of the book
[15:12]is up till the end of the kidnapping
[15:14]and then the second half of the book
[15:16]is the 20 years that follow that
[15:18]so for 20 years each step
[15:21]it brings me closer
[15:23]to feeling like I can, you know,
[15:26]let it go as much as humanly possible.
[15:29]So what is your life like now?
[15:32]Oh, I'm such a lucky person.
[15:35]My husband and I are still together 36 years now
[15:39]and we, the girls are wonderful.
[15:42]My older daughter lives in Washington, D.C.
[15:45]and I have three grandchildren, all boys,
[15:48]14, 12 and 10
[15:51]and there is a matter of fact
[15:53]I'm going to do an event at a bookstore in D.C.
[15:56]and my daughter is going to be my conversation partner.
[16:00]So, you know, that should be interesting
[16:03]because you'll be able to hear her perspective on it
[16:07]which is of course different than mine.
[16:09]You know, she was so young.
[16:11]It's like she remembers her father.
[16:13]The little one doesn't remember him at all.
[16:15]My current husband is the only father
[16:17]that she's ever known
[16:19]and psychologically that's a different experience
[16:22]than the older one.
[16:24]So how do they feel about this book coming in?
[16:29]They are so supportive.
[16:31]They are so supportive.
[16:33]They have never said don't write about this.
[16:37]Don't write about that
[16:39]or express to anything other than
[16:42]tell the story you need to tell
[16:44]and we're behind you.
[16:46]So something.
[16:47]And how do you get girls?
[16:49]Do you feel that getting the story out
[16:52]and in the public domain and all that?
[16:55]Like, what does it do to you emotionally?
[16:57]And why the 14 years writing it?
[17:01]Are we, like, what are some of the hopes for the book?
[17:05]Is it, I'm sure, to help people who are going through
[17:08]similar things, abuse of relationships,
[17:11]the power to keep going
[17:13]or how to get through really anything like you did.
[17:15]But tell me a little more about making this a book.
[17:19]I was interested in the question,
[17:22]how do you know who you are?
[17:25]It's like, are you yourself,
[17:30]even if you change everything about your life?
[17:33]Are you still you?
[17:35]And what makes you you?
[17:38]So aside from telling this story of escape,
[17:43]it was also an investigation into
[17:46]an existential question about how you see yourself.
[17:51]And it was very hard for me.
[17:53]I mean, that was part of why it took so long to write
[17:55]because even though I am not sorry we ran,
[17:59]not really even for a second,
[18:01]but I still felt terrible about it.
[18:04]And I had a lot of guilt
[18:06]because I always felt that the children
[18:09]were the only thing that made my ex-husband human.
[18:13]But he used them.
[18:15]You know, it's like for years I told myself,
[18:18]well, he's a good father,
[18:19]but a good father doesn't torture the mother.
[18:23]So, you know, like there's a lot of stuff now
[18:26]in domestic violence circles.
[18:28]Not enough has changed.
[18:29]It's you go to court
[18:31]and they'll make an argument for a man
[18:34]who has been severely abusive to his wife
[18:37]that he should have, you know, joint custody.
[18:40]And there are circumstances where maybe that's okay
[18:44]if he has done enough work on himself
[18:47]and has gotten past his violent tendencies,
[18:49]but they don't always make sure of that.
[18:52]And so the woman who has been in this position
[18:55]is now has to relinquish her children
[18:58]to a man that has done this.
[19:00]So part of what I wanted to do also
[19:03]was talk about not all domestic violence is being beaten.
[19:07]There are so many varieties of domestic violence.
[19:11]And most of my situation was what they now call coercive control
[19:17]where the husband, the littles and demeans
[19:21]and pushes around and controls every aspect of the woman's life,
[19:27]you know, who she can be friends with,
[19:29]how often she can see her family.
[19:31]You know, those kinds of things
[19:33]and the instability that you go through psychologically
[19:38]when you live with a person like this for a long time.
[19:41]So I had trouble writing about it
[19:44]because I kept thinking, well maybe it wasn't that bad.
[19:47]Maybe people will read this and think,
[19:49]oh, he was fine.
[19:50]You're making a big deal over nothing.
[19:52]So I would periodically get cold feet
[19:55]because that would be mixed in with all my other writing problems.
[20:00]And I would just set it aside and not work on it for a couple of years until I couldn't stand it anymore
[20:05]And then I would pull it out and try it again
[20:09]Well, I feel like it's meant to be now because as you said of course of control is so much in the public
[20:16]I know it didn't used to be talked about as much and now it it is and there are ways to address it and
[20:22]the book is really beautiful and heartbreaking and inspiring and
[20:27]And I'm really glad you kept at it because it was quite a journey even just to read it. Oh
[20:33]That's very kind of you just say that
[20:35]You're so welcome. What happens now? You've poured your heart and soul on to the page. It's coming out. You're gearing up for everybody to read it
[20:44]Where does the next phase of your life take you? What do you think? Back to fiction? Back to fiction. I had somebody asked me the other day for an interview
[20:52]You are a friend who knows that there are things that didn't go into this book
[20:57]And she said are you going to write another memoir and I was like hell no
[21:03]Never again never again. I mean, I'm primarily a novelist. Yes, and I just you know
[21:09]I am so anxious to get back to fiction. I do imagine that I will write essays here and there
[21:14]I am I have an essay coming out in October about the Eaton fire and my cousin who lost her house and
[21:22]I do enjoy doing that, but I will never do another book length memoir project
[21:28]And in this book you wrote about all saints being published and all that you wanted to talk about how you became a novelist as well
[21:36]Oh, well, you know, it's funny because when I wrote all saints
[21:41]I wanted to write something that was as far from my own life as like a possibly get
[21:47]So I wound up writing about New Orleans in the 1950s and I wanted to set something between Brown versus the Board of Education and
[21:58]You know, I forget what the other incident was it's been 25 years this particular
[22:04]you know
[22:05]slice of time and
[22:08]It's like you think that you're not writing about yourself except that you always are when I look at that book now
[22:15]I see all the same issues, you know identity and social social issues and
[22:22]They're all still there, but I wrote it in a complete vacuum. I don't have an MFA. I don't even have a bachelor's degree and
[22:31]I
[22:32]Was not in a writing group
[22:34]I think it was better for me because I know myself and I would have written to other people's taste
[22:40]I would have been too sensitive to the criticism and tried to change things
[22:45]And it was more just to entertain myself and then I got lucky and got an agent and the book eventually sold so
[22:53]amazing
[22:57]Awesome
[22:58]Okay, so for anyone listening who feels that maybe they they have that instinct to run or they are in a situation where
[23:07]It's untenable
[23:09]What what advice do you have?
[23:11]Find somebody to talk to
[23:13]You know, I was really isolated and I didn't feel that I could tell my mother the truth
[23:19]She was a widow at that time and I had spent so much time defending my marriage and my pride got in the way and it cost me
[23:29]so I
[23:31]Would say find somebody to talk to there are women all over the place whenever I read a little excerpt from this
[23:38]It's really interesting. There are people that will come up and talk to me afterwards and say let me tell you what happened to me
[23:45]so it is more acceptable now to speak out and to find support also to
[23:52]I mean, it's easier to say this than to actually do it but value yourself
[23:57]You know feel enough that you are worth
[24:01]Protecting instead of you know, it can be very hard to do if you're with someone who beats you down all the time
[24:07]Psychologically, but there is that spark inside to everyone and I
[24:13]Don't know nurture it and and try to get help
[24:17]Thank you
[24:19]Karen congratulations. She's under here. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, bye
[24:27]Take care. Hope it wasn't too bad. No, it was good. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye
[24:33]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi formerly mom's don't have time to read books
[24:38]If you loved the show tell a friend leave a review follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and
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