Supernormal. Мэг Джей
happy—or that she wanted something from Jessie—so it might be a day when the sisters would spend the afternoon in the kitchen scraping together the ingredients to make cookies or the money to order a pizza. Deliberate eye contact with flared nostrils meant Charley was hiding something or lying about something, and that left Jessie racking her brain about what might soon go wrong. A downcast gaze meant Charley was in a prickly state and so Jessie should lock herself in her room as her mother suggested.
Jessie passed many afternoons closed away in her bedroom, doing homework and reading books from school. It was then that she discovered Greek mythology, and Athena in particular, a helper of heroes and the goddess of wisdom and war. Jessie was fascinated by this female who ruled with brains rather than brawn; by a woman who recognized the power of being strategic. Jessie knew she would never be bigger or stronger than Charley, but maybe she could outthink her. Jessie was especially taken by the detail that Athena was often pictured with an owl perched on her arm. “Owls are wise. They can turn their heads to see in all directions, and they see well at night,” Jessie says now. “I needed to be like that because it got to be that the nights were worse than the days.”
Contrary to what her mother said, Jessie’s problems were not solved when her mother came home from work in the evening. As Charley got older, fights became about skipping school or stealing money rather than about potato chips or television channels. Now Charley was quick to throw a glass to end a conversation she did not like, although she kept the violence just this side of egregious by fighting mostly with slaps and fists. If their mother confronted her about her empty wallet, in a flash Charley would now pound on her—not Jessie—backing her into her bedroom where she would lock the door and pummel her in private. The dull thud of fists on flesh terrified Jessie and made her feel sick with guilt. Panicked with helplessness and responsibility, she screamed and cried from the other side of the door—“MOM! MOM ARE YOU OKAY? CHARLEY, STOP HITTING HER! STOP HITTING MOM! MOM, OPEN THE DOOR!”
When their mother threatened to call the police, Charley would spend the evening shut up in the bathroom, threatening to kill herself. Jessie never stood outside the door and yelled on these nights. She sat at the kitchen table and worked on her geometry proofs or she memorized countries and capitals for her world history class, thinking to herself, Do it! Please do it! Jessie sometimes thought about putting poison on Charley’s toothbrush in a sort of self-defense but she did not know what kind of poison to get.
At night, Charley’s mother slept with her purse under her pillow and Jessie slept with Charley. When Charley was in a good mood, the two girls talked and laughed in bed like good sisters, and this confused Jessie because it felt like protecting herself and betraying herself all at the same time. What Jessie did not know is that this is what unbroken prisoners do. They look for ways to enjoy themselves, even as they look for ways to survive or escape. When Charley was in a bad mood, she drew a line down the middle of the sheet with a marker and warned, “If you cross this line, I’ll stab you with my scissors.” Jessie learned to sleep on her side on the edge of the bed, always facing away from Charley with one leg hanging down toward the floor. Gripping the side of the bed with her leg kept her from rolling over in the night.
Jessie often worried that Charley would kill her—or her mother—before dawn, so she trained herself to stay awake by setting herself up in a battle against the digital alarm clock on her bedside table. Aiming to be the last person in the house to fall asleep, she willed herself to see the sequential numbers that only came around once per hour. First the goal was to make it until 10:11. Then 11:12. Then 12:34. She lay there and thought about being Athena, or Athena’s owl, and by the end of middle school she could make it all the way to 1:23 or even 2:34 if she set her mind to it, which was the point. In the morning when the girls woke up, Charley acted as if nothing bad had happened—ever—and, though she must have, Jessie felt like she had never even closed her eyes.
***
Jessie began to feel like she was different from other people. Her home was different, she was certain, because when she tentatively shared details about her life with friends, she heard back quickly and casually, “Yeah my brother is a real pain, too,” or “All my sister and I do is fight over makeup and stuff.” With these responses, Jessie knew to say no more. But Jessie felt different on the inside as well. She felt like she moved through the world more strategically than her friends, and maybe she was right. “My life was like a chess game that I was always learning from and mastering,” Jessie remembers. “If I do this, you do that; if you do that, I should do this.” She became so accustomed to Charley’s stealing her things that she developed a habit of taking mental pictures of rooms when she left them; if something was missing or disturbed when she returned, then Jessie noticed right away.
Most resilient children do not know about the amygdala and so they cannot explain their extraordinary nonverbal skills, or how they manage to stay alert all day, and sometimes even all night. They are as puzzled as anyone at their uncanny ability to know when something “ain’t right,” and to react automatically to cues that sometimes they do not even know they see. They themselves wonder how they are able to spot anger and danger before everyone else, and this leaves them with the strange, powerful, and heavy feeling that—sometimes, at least—they can see the future before it arrives.
Sometimes the only way of understanding their superperception comes in the form of a connection with characters that have similar gifts. Like Jessie with Athena and her owl, some supernormals find a kinship with heroes such as Superman because of his X-ray vision or Spider-Man with his spider-sense. Others feel an affinity with detectives like Sherlock Holmes—including none other than Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man—because they, too, use their powers of observation to spot clues and solve mysteries that elude everyone else. “When I was young, my favorite superhero was Sherlock Holmes,” said Lee. “Sherlock Holmes was just a superior human being. So, to me, he was as super as any superhero.”
Childhood adversity is often viewed simply as a factor that hampers development, and indeed many studies have found that chronic stress, especially in early life, interferes with attention, emotion, behavior, and health. But there is more to it than that. One way that the supernormal child overcomes hardship is by developing specialized survival skills, ones that are relevant to her own world. In many ways, Jessie’s vigilance served her well, even outside her house. In school, it simply looked like conscientiousness—a quality often associated with resilient children and teens. Jessie was a thoughtful and diligent student. Always on time to classes or appointments, Jessie was careful not to make mistakes or to make a misstep of any kind. She was skilled at reading the moods of her fellow students and teachers, then managing herself accordingly.
This made Jessie a favorite among teachers and friends, and she attached herself to people she could trust. One way Jessie lessened Charley’s impact on her was by choosing safe places to be and safe people to be with. Studies of children, adults, and primates show us that low-power individuals watch others more than their high-power peers do—and they are more accurate in their judgments about them. The same can be said for supernormals like Jessie. “You had to be able to read people in my family to see when hell was about to break loose,” Jessie said. “So I’m good at watching people carefully. I preempt the bad things. But I know a good thing when I see one, too. I mean, I know what isn’t bad.”
In their landmark study of hundreds of famous men and women, Goertzel and Goertzel concluded that success often came not from being in the right place at the right time, but from being able to recognize being in the right place at the right time. A sensitive amygdala helps us pay attention not only to danger but also to opportunity. Supernormals like Jessie scan their environments, looking for chances to be safe—and even happy—until escape becomes possible, and usually that escape comes from spotting a school or a person or a job that will take them somewhere else. Jessie did go somewhere else: first to college and business school, and then to a high-pressure career in business consulting. She thrived on managing unpredictability and crisis, and her assessment skills were preternaturally advanced. For her thirtieth birthday, Jessie had a small owl tattooed on her back.
***
The relationship between physiological arousal and performance is like an upside-down U. When we are not alert, we do not perform well; when we are