51 pages • 1-hour read
The Tell: A Memoir
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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Running”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Free”
Amy’s childhood in Amarillo, Texas, felt like freedom. She loved exploring the open spaces in her neighborhood with her friends, sure “that nothing bad would happen” (12). Her family owned a small chain of convenience stores. In her family’s stores, “everything was perfect” (14), and this order represented “a form of safety” (14). Amy’s grandparents had opened the first store when her father was a baby. After her grandfather died, Amy’s grandmother inherited her husband’s business, expanding the store into nearly 30 locations and becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Amy’s father was devoted to his family, but his expectations of his children were high. Amy’s mother met Amy’s father in college and “became the quintessential homemaker” (20), embracing the Southern expectations “that women should always look good, even while effortlessly juggling domestic tasks” (21). Between the influence of her mother’s “kindness” and her father’s “achievement,” Amy “knew to pay it forward” (22): an attitude that would cause her to grow up to be “a people pleaser” (22). Amy and her siblings were also “ambassador[s] of the family business” (22). Painfully aware that “people were watching,” Amy always “wanted to make [her] family proud” (22).
Athletics were an important part of the small-town community, and Amy played a number of sports. During middle school, she began running. She would run around the public park near her middle school, but she always avoided the school itself, as if she “wanted to pretend the school wasn’t there” (24). After she lost the election for president of the student council to a boy, Mr. Mason, one of Amy’s “favorite teachers,” approached her in the hall and told her that she was “the real leader of [the] school” (25). She was determined to live up to these expectations and began staying after school later and later. Often, the only other people left were Mr. Mason and her volleyball coach, Coach Taylor. She felt that these long hours were proof of her “commitment.” She also strove to be kind; when Claudia, a girl in her class, couldn’t afford a dress for the school dance, Amy discreetly lent her one. When Amy graduated from eighth grade, Coach Taylor presented her with a special award for leadership, kindness, and academic achievement, but when she accepted the award, she inexplicably “felt utterly alone” (27).
Growing up, Amy was aware of the gender inequalities that surrounded her. She also believed “that striving for exceptionalism” was her “superpower” (29), and she developed a damaging obsession with perfection. Looking back, the author reflects that she was “ruled by fear” (29), but the source of this fear wasn’t readily apparent. In high school, Amy was consumed by “responsibility” and told herself to “work three times harder than everyone else” (31). By her senior year, she was the school president, captain of the volleyball team, and top of her class. However, she failed to win the coveted title of homecoming queen, which seemed to “[confirm] some private, ugly unworthiness” (34). She knew that she was loved, but she often felt that love was tied to her many achievements.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Danger”
After high school, Amy attended the University of Virginia and continued running daily. Growing up, she had been taught “that [her] virginity was sacred” (40), and before she was even a teenager, her father told her that he expected her to remain a virgin until she was married. Amy had a boyfriend in high school and dated a few men in college, but sex remained “utterly foreign” (39). Her father also made it clear that he didn’t trust boys; Amy learned that the milkman had attempted to assault her mother once when she was a young woman. Ultimately, Amy saw relationships through the same “principles of achievement” (41) that governed other aspects of her life, reasoning that if a man were to “choose” her, her “value” would be “confirmed” (41).
Amy spent the summer after her freshman year in Austin, sharing a house with several female roommates. One night, a man broke into the house and assaulted one of the girls. He was later arrested and identified as a serial rapist. Afterward, Amy always slept fully clothed. She saw sex as “a terrible push and pull” (43) in which men wanted to take women’s “purity,” “chastity,” and “goodness” and women had to defend themselves.
Two summers later, Amy was studying in London. One day, her father called to tell her that the son of a friend was also in London. Amy went on a date with the boy, James, then accompanied him back to his flat, where they drank wine and talked late into the night. Nervous, Amy realized that she was drunk and had no way to get home safely. James insisted that she could stay without feeling “any pressure,” but they were in bed together before she knew what was happening. She asked him to stop, then disassociated until he finished moving on top of her. Crying afterward, she admitted that it was her first time, and James replied that he “never would have done that” (48) if he had known.
Later, James called. Amy assumed that he wanted to apologize, but instead, he told her he “didn’t use anything” (49) and that she needed “to get it taken care of” (49). Shocked and ashamed, Amy went to a clinic to ask for the morning-after pill. She and James had sexual encounters a few more times throughout the summer. Amy thought this might make her “pleasing to him and neutralize the ugliness of what he’d done” (49). One night, he asked her why she never moved during sex. Amy was surprised; she didn’t know she should be “feeling any sensation at all” (50) during sex. One night, she drank too much on purpose and told James that her father would “kill” him if he knew what he had done to Amy. She felt an intense relief speaking these words and “releas[ing] the rage within” (50).
As graduation neared, Amy got a job with a media company in New York City and moved into a West Village apartment with her childhood friend, Rachel, and three other girls. Determined to fit in with the big-city lifestyle, she also tried to “stay in motion” (53), constantly running through the city— even at night, when being out alone was more dangerous. Amy saw her “body as something that was functional—something to be pushed, if not punished” (53). She ran the New York City Marathon and landed an assistant job at Sports Illustrated. Amidst her new lifestyle, she often felt like something was missing. She dated men she had nothing in common with and “felt listless and confused” (56). A friend suggested therapy, so Amy made an appointment. Minutes into the session, she was overcome with tears and felt deeply unworthy. She left thinking that therapy wasn’t for her and instead signed up to run a marathon with a program that supported disabled athletes. She was paired with a blind man named Eddie and felt “useful” again. The training sessions improved further when a handsome man called John Griffin joined their group.
Amy quickly developed strong feelings for John. After Eddie successfully completed the marathon, John invited her to be his date for a black-tie fundraiser. The date was a success, and the two were soon inseparable. Although men had always felt dangerous to Amy, she felt completely safe with John, and he asked her to marry him within the year. Amy felt as if she could finally stop running and begin to live her life.
Nevertheless, her need to stay in motion persisted. She often “felt like something was chasing [her]” (63). At dinner before her wedding, for example, her sister Lizzy compiled a video of Amy’s friends and family sharing stories about her childhood. Her former babysitter told how Amy had hidden her underwear after she’d gotten her period. Furious at having this long-forgotten secret exposed, Amy rushed to the bathroom after the video was finished. It was “a tell [she] couldn’t yet see” (64), so she kept running “like [her] survival depended on it” (65).
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Mirrors”
Slowly, Amy began to realize that she was hiding something from herself. There was “something unexplainable, something deep” (67) that she couldn’t speak about or understand. Instead of examining these feelings, Amy kept running. Once her four children had been born, she threw herself into motherhood. On the surface, her life “looked glamorous.” Amy loved to show off her achievements to her family back in Texas, but she was plagued by inexplicable anxieties that worsened with time. She experienced claustrophobia, and on one occasion, she rushed out of a dentist’s office sobbing uncontrollably. When John suggested enacting a bondage fantasy, she was struck with an “urgent need to escape” (69). She also suffered from unexplained back pain and frequent sinus infections. Although she underwent surgeries on her back and both hips, she was still threw herself into exercise and trained for a triathlon. However, completing the race left her with no sense of accomplishment, and she quickly began looking for “a new mountain to climb” (71).
Amy had supported John for years as he built his investment firm, so she decided to start her own, specializing in supporting female business founders. Her children were then entering their teenage years, and the work brought a new sense of meaning to Amy’s life. However, her children were also beginning to challenge her rules and boundaries. Her oldest son brought his girlfriend home, and her older daughter tried to sneak out of the house in clothing that Amy considered inappropriate.
One night, Gracie, Amy’s 13-year-old daughter, told her that Gigi, her younger sister, was sad and wanted to talk to her. Amy was shocked when ten-year-old Gigi told her mother that she was “nice, but […] not real;” it was difficult for her children to “relate to” Amy because she did “everything perfectly” (74). Confused and hurt, Amy didn’t know how to respond, so she stormed out. She was particularly bothered by the assertion that she was “perfect.” She did strive for perfection, but she felt that “[b]eing noticed for it invalidated it” (74). She was also frustrated because she felt she did “everything” for her children and “did not know how to bridge [the distance]” (75) between them.
She continued running to escape her feelings, but “more cracks appeared” (75). One night, out to dinner with friends, another woman confessed to being abused by an older man, and Amy was surprised to find herself crying. Meanwhile, John was coming to terms with some of the traumas from his own past. He did some sessions of psychedelic-assisted therapy and was eager for Amy to meet his therapist, Olivia. For Amy, however, drugs had been strictly off-limits; even in college, she had never done more than pretend to smoke marijuana. She did notice that John was “more open” after his sessions. He was honest about things that he used to brush over, such as his father’s PTSD and his sister’s suicide. It was enough to make Amy curious.
Amy and John had dinner with Olivia, who graciously answered Amy’s many questions. She explained that for most of her sessions, she used MDMA, a purer version of the drug commonly known as Ecstasy, and told Amy about her role as a facilitator during the sessions. She answered Amy’s questions about possible legal challenges and complications. Finally, she told Amy that many clients seek out the therapy because they “[feel] that something is missing” (81). She reminded Amy that forgotten experiences are often held in the body, and that these things must emerge eventually. By the end of the dinner, Amy was ready to schedule a session. She was “exhausted” but “[i]ncapable of rest,” terrified of what she might have to face if she slowed down for a moment” (82).
On the day of the session, Amy told Olivia that she knew there was something from her past that she was afraid to face. She took the pill, donned an eyeshade, and waited for the drug to take effect. After just a few minutes, Amy was surprised to see Mr. Mason, her middle school teacher. Her memories came back all at once.
Part 1 Analysis
Part 1 of The Tell covers Amy’s life from early childhood to the first MDMA session that helped her to uncover the memories of her abuse, and it is clear from the first few pages that her life has always been dominated by The Societal Pressures of Perfectionism. As Amy writes about her early childhood growing up in the small town of Amarillo, Texas, she explores how the culture of the rural American South helped create an environment that allowed sexual abuse to occur undetected. First of all, gender roles were strictly adhered to, especially in the context of sexual relationships. Young women were taught that their “virginity was sacred” and that it was their “responsibility to protect” (40) it from the men who would inevitably try to take it from them. Furthermore, there were many topics, especially “adult things related to matters of intimacy, that people just didn’t talk about” (16). Anything that was potentially uncomfortable or outside the norm simply wasn’t addressed, and this general attitude of suppression created an environment in which abuses could easily occur and remain unpunished. Things that didn’t fit were ignored. It was also clear that there was an “ocean” between “appearance and reality, particularly for women” (21) in the American South.
Another important aspect of Amarillo’s culture that kept Amy’s abuse hidden was the close-knit nature of the community. Everyone who lived on Amy’s street was “friendly” and “trustworthy.” Amy knew each and every one of her neighbors and knew she could ask any of them for help if needed. Amarillo was essentially a place of safety. Anything else was largely unthinkable. Because of their business, Amy and her family were also well-known in town, further contributing to Amy’s tendency toward shame and repression in the aftermath of the abuse. Painfully conscious that “[p]eople were watching, all the time” (22), Amy felt compelled to conform to The Social Pressures of Perfectionism, and this issue would continue to plague her adult life as well.
Despite her deep denial of her childhood trauma, bits of her experiences filtered through, often in the form of vague confusion or an unexplained sense of fear in certain scenarios. The author sprinkles her account of her early years with this constant undertone of unease, noting the rapid change from her childhood “freedom” to a “teenage neurosis and an insidious need for control” (31). Although the author has yet to reveal the details of her trauma at this point, her descriptions hint that the sudden change in her demeanor was due to the abuse that she survived. Likewise, her sudden fixation on “work[ing] three times harder than everyone else” (31) was an attempt to compensate for her shame and her feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Striving toward perfection was a coping mechanism that continued as Amy grew older. She ran constantly and threw herself first into her career and later into motherhood with an unstoppable fervor. While some people in her life commented on her inability to slow down, Amy’s determination to do it all was largely celebrated by society, further helping to obscure the pain she was hiding.
Ultimately, Part 1 of the author’s memoir is designed to establish her relatively happy childhood baseline and contrast it with the sudden, as-yet-inexplicable changes that overtook her as a teenager and a survivor of sexual abuse. By creating a vivid sense of her younger self’s outward perfection and internal anguish, the author sets the stage for the intense revelations to come. She also uses her own experience to encourage other survivors to examine their own unresolved emotions and triggers, asserting that even when life’s conventional boxes are checked, it is impossible to ignore the “cracks” through which suppressed memories struggle towards the surface. In her own experience, she discovered that when she could no longer attribute her “tells” to some other inadequacy, she had to face her past.
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