Memoirs Aren't Fairytales: A Story of Addiction

by Mann, Marni

  “What are you doing?” Mom asked from behind me.

  I held the vodka to my chest and turned around. My hands were shaking so bad the vodka looked like waves.

  “You're trembling,” she said.

  “Please,” I said. “Please don't take this away from me.” I was hugging the bottle like it was Blinkie, the glow worm I lugged around as a child.

  Her eyes had been staring at the bottle, but they weren't hard like they had been seconds ago. They were soft and watery.

  She reached her hand towards me, and I took a step back.

  “I'm not going to take it away from you,” she said. She reached forward again, and her arm went around my shoulder. I held the bottle against my heart.

  She walked with me to the living room, and when she turned to go to the guest room, I led her to Michael's office. As soon as we got inside, I wiggled out from her arm and crawled under the desk. I crouched into a ball and drank until my throat burned.

  She climbed in and sat next to me. I couldn't look at her. I looked at the wall and swallowed.

  She pulled a piece of hair off my sticky lip.

  I took another swig.

  Her hand touched my back, and she gently pushed forward, so she could squeeze in behind me. “Relax, baby, it's going to be okay,” she said. Her legs went straight, sticking out from under the desk and they pressed against mine.

  She rested her chin on my head. Her fingers circled around my shoulders and down my arms. “Summertime, and the livin' is easy,” she sang softly.

  When Michael and I were growing up, mom had always sung that song whenever one of us was hurt. And by the time she'd dabbed our cut with peroxide and wrapped it with a Band-Aid, the song would be over.

  I didn't taste the next gulp or the one after, the same way I hadn't tasted the beer I drank in college, or the blood that had dripped down my throat when I blew coke, or the bitterness that had covered my tongue when I shot heroin.

  “Your daddy's rich, and your mamma's good lookin', so hush little baby,” she sang.

  The bottle was empty. And even though I was buzzed, vodka wasn't heroin. Booze didn't give me that warm feeling throughout my body and it didn't let me nod into a beautiful dream.

  “One of these mornings you're going to rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky,” she sang.

  I leaned back with my head on her chest.

  Her arms crossed over mine. “But till that morning there's a'nothing can harm you with daddy and mamma standing by.”

  My shoulders relaxed, my chest loosened, and my eyes closed.

  Mom's heart was beating so loud it woke me up. Or maybe it was the cramp in my neck or the awful odor I smelled. Still, I was comfortable with my head on her chest, and I wasn't ready to get up.

  “What the hell—”

  “Shh,” Mom said. “She's sleeping.”

  But I wasn't anymore. Dad and Michael were kneeling in front of the desk and their hands were covering their noses.

  “Can you grab me a bucket and rag?” Mom asked.

  The smell was coming from the pile of puke next to mom and me. I didn't remember getting sick.

  “You slept in her vomit all night?” Dad asked.

  “I didn't want to wake her, it's been a rough night for her.”

  Dad looked into my eyes. “You drank the whole bottle?” he asked, holding the empty fifth in his hand.

  I shook my head. “Only half.”

  Michael lifted me out from under the desk and carried me to his bathroom. He set me down on the toilet and ran the bath water.

  I leaned forward, holding my stomach, and he bent down so we were eye level.

  “It's that bad, huh?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “The rehab center called. They can get you in tomorrow morning,” he said.

  They'd give me drugs to take away all this fluttering and the cravings, and meds to help me sleep. One more day. I could do this, for him, my parents, and the baby.

  He stood, and I grabbed his arm. “I was pregnant, you know.”

  He looked down at me with a crease between his brows.

  “The second time, not the first,” I said. “I was eleven weeks and decided to keep the baby, but I lost it…”

  “I didn't know, I couldn't believe—”

  “I know. And I'm sorry for what I said.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed before he left me in the bathroom.

  The bubble bath turned cold, but I didn't get out. Mom brought me a plate of toast and some coffee. She turned on Michael's radio, and some weird music started playing. Birds chirping and waterfalls with this opera-like voice that sang in the background. The last time I'd taken a bath was in my parents' tub, a few weeks after the rape. Mom had played the same kind of music and tried to make me eat. That was before—heroin, heroin, heroin. I needed to shut my brain off.

  I'd have to change my whole life if I wanted to stay sober after rehab. I wouldn't be able to talk to Sunshine anymore or visit Claire, knowing Sunshine lived next door. I'd have to move out of Boston because I'd be too tempted to go to Richard's or Roxbury. I'd have to retrain my brain to think bags were to hold sandwiches, spoons were to eat cereal, rigs were tractor-trailers, and John was just a guy's name.

  I lay in bed, tossed and turned. It was still bright outside, but I thought a nap would get rid of my hangover. The TV was playing in the living room, and the smell of lasagna was coming out of the kitchen. I paced between the window and door. There was nothing to look at besides the four white walls. White walls, white powder. Brown carpet, brown powder. Black nightstand, black resin. Silver handle, silver spoons. I was surrounded.

  Dad asked me to watch a movie with him. He told me the name, but I forgot it after a few minutes. I couldn't concentrate on what the actors said or follow the plot.

  I helped mom cook dinner. She asked me to take the bread out of the oven, and the baking dish hit my arm. I screamed when it burnt my skin, and the pan dropped out of my hand. The loaf rolled around on the floor. I'd ruined dinner.

  “Put your arm under the faucet,” Mom said. She already had the water running, washing vegetables for a salad.

  I put my arm under the stream, and it cooled off the burn.

  “I'll get you some Neosporin,” she said.

  My track marks still looked fresh, like I'd shot up just a second ago.

  “Don't bother, my arm is full of scars anyway,” I said.

  She turned my arm so she could see the marks on both sides. And then she bent her head and kissed the skin by the deepest hole. “They'll heal, honey.”

  No they wouldn't. Like the doctor had said, I was damaged.

  I wanted to call Sunshine. I hadn't spoken to her since the morning of my overdose. Claire had told me Sunshine came to see me the second day I was in the hospital, but I was still unconscious. When Sunshine was in the hospital, I visited her every day.

  Besides the balcony, there wasn't anywhere in the apartment where I could talk without my parents hearing me. And when I had gone on the balcony to smoke a cigarette, mom came with me and wouldn't let me stand close to the ledge.

  I grabbed my pack of cigs and opened the sliding glass door. Mom was right behind me and I turned around. “I want to say goodbye to Claire,” I said. “Will you just give me a minute?”

  “A minute,” she said and sat on the couch closest to the balcony.

  It was just after ten o'clock, and the people walking on the sidewalk below looked like shadows under the streetlamps. If I weren't at Michael's, I'd be working the track with Sunshine. Hopefully, I could catch her in between tricks.

  I dialed her number from my cell phone.

  “Hello?” she said, after the third ring.

  I could hear cars swishing by and honking. She was in our usual spot.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Ain't been high since you left,” she said. “Been going to Roxbury and getting shit that's cut. S
o weak, it barely gets me straight.”

  “You miss me? Wait—why aren't you buying from Richard?”

  “When you coming back?” she asked.

  “Sunshine, I'm going to rehab.”

  “Just come home and go to Richard's for me, will you?”

  “Why won't you go?”

  “I can't,” she said.

  “Did something happen? Did he get busted?”

  “No.”

  Mom was staring at me through the glass. She pointed to her watch, and I held up my half-smoked cig.

  “Will you tell me what's going on?” I asked.

  “He hurt me, okay? There was no guy who pulled me into the alley and held me at gunpoint. Richard put me in the hospital.”

  Richard? She'd made up that whole story to protect Richard? But why? Because his drugs were better than anything we could buy on the street? I thought of the blood on her legs.

  “He did more than just beat you, didn't he?” I asked.

  “He raped me, and then he fucked me with a—” she said and stopped.

  I waited for her to keep going, but she didn't.

  “I ain't going over there,” she said. “So get your ass back here.”

  Mom opened the sliding glass door. “Come on, Cole, time's up,” Mom said.

  “I'll talk to you soon,” I said to Sunshine and hung up.

  I wondered why Richard had snapped. What had she done that had caused him to beat and rape her? But what really mattered was that she had lied to me. I'd gone to Richard's house every morning for years. She knew how evil he could be and never once had she warned me.

  Mom packed all my new clothes into one of Michael's suitcases, and we got into the car. I sat in the backseat next to her, and Dad drove. Michael turned on the radio but kept the volume low. We pulled out of the underground garage and drove down Massachusetts Avenue. Ten blocks behind us was the track where Sunshine and I tricked. We passed the Prudential Building, where I had panhandled. We turned onto Commonwealth Avenue, where Que and Raul had lived. The park, where I had hung out with Eric and Renee. The bench, where Renee and I had slept the night Eric had died, the same spot where I'd seen the squirrel eating an acorn and thought my life was perfect.

  Twenty minutes later, Dad pulled off the main road and parked by an unmarked brick building. There wasn't a gate around the property or a security guard inside the door. Mom held one of my arms and Dad held the other. Michael rolled my suitcase up to the desk. He gave my name to the receptionist, and she picked up the phone, telling someone I was here.

  A man with a red ponytail and thick glasses came out to greet us. He said his name was Walter and shook all our hands. He told me to say goodbye to my family and that I'd see them again in thirty days when my visiting privileges were instated. I gave them all hugs, and they told me they were proud of me.

  Walter brought me into his office where he asked me a bunch of questions about my drug use. He searched through my suitcase, and a female nurse patted me down and checked my underwear and bra. He gave me a copy of the rules and daily schedule, and then he brought me into a second office with an exam table and lots of diplomas on the walls.

  Dr. Paul examined me. Since I'd already detoxed in the hospital, he wouldn't give me any meds. He told me the facility didn't believe in methadone therapy or anxiety pills, they took a natural approach to rehabilitation with yoga and meditation. He said he'd give me a vitamin to help me sleep.

  “Can I at least have a Xanax,” I said. “I'm freaking out here.”

  Dr. Paul pointed a flashlight in my eyes and took my pulse. He unlocked a cabinet and took something out, dropping it in my hand. It was a pill, about the size of a dime.

  “Can I have some water?”

  “It's chewable,” Dr. Paul said.

  “What is it?”

  “A vitamin with extra B-12.”

  It tasted like the Flintstone vitamins mom gave me as a kid. If this was a joke, I wasn't laughing.

  Walter showed me to my room, which was smaller than the room I'd shared with Sunshine. The comforters on the twin beds had giant Chinese symbols on them, and there was a framed poster of a woman stretching on the beach.

  “The girls' bathroom is down the hall,” Walter said. “Justina will show you.”

  He pointed with his head towards the beds. There was a girl standing between them. I hadn't noticed her when I looked around the room.

  “Group is in fifteen,” Walter said. “I'll see you there.”

  I wheeled my suitcase into the room. “Which bed is mine?”

  She pointed to the one closest to the door. “What are you in for?” she asked.

  “Heroin. You?”

  She was about my size with hair so blond it was white, and the sides were dyed red. There was a horseshoe shaped-ring through her septum, and she had two different color eyes, a brown and a blue. None of my tricks had had two eye colors. Maybe she'd lost a contact lens.

  “Meth,” she said and smiled. Her teeth were like Heather's, black and rotted. “I'm here on a court order.”

  She was like Henry, dumb enough to get caught.

  “I tried to kill my mom during a binge,” she said. “Tied that bitch up with rope and dumped gasoline on her. But I'd used up all the butane on a hit, so I couldn't set her on fire.”

  They'd stuck me in a room with a crazy?

  Group was held in a room off the cafeteria with couches set up in a circle. I sat next to Justina and watched everyone take their seats. There were about fifteen of us, guys and girls of all different ages. Since I was new, Walter asked everyone to say their name and drug of choice. There were a few alcoholics, oxy-heads, an ecstasy popper, a huffer, and the rest did either coke or H.

  One of the guys in group looked familiar. Actually, it was his nose I recognized. It tilted to the side, and there was a chunk of flesh missing on the bridge like a dog had bitten him. I'd seen him at Richard's, he was one of his squatters. He stared at me and gave me that look—I know you from somewhere, but I can't think of how. I mouthed “Richard,” and he smiled back.

  Walter pointed at me. “It's your turn,” he said.

  I said my name and hoped he'd move on to the next person. The B-12 hadn't kicked in yet.

  “And what's your drug of choice, Nicole?” Walter asked.

  “I love to chase the dragon,” I said.

  The junkies in the group laughed and nodded.

  Walter asked how everyone was feeling.

  Some guy said he was happy, but horny. A woman said she was constipated. Justina said she was feeling nervous because my suitcase was red and that was an angry color.

  The color of my suitcase made her nervous? She'd tied up her mom and tried to set her on fire. Justina was a crazy bitch.

  “The sides of your hair are red, does that mean I should be nervous too?” I asked.

  “Nicole, group is a place where we can all be honest with our emotions,” Walter said. “Justina was just expressing that the color red triggered a feeling inside her. Why don't you share how you're feeling?”

  “I'm pissed off,” I said.

  “And why is that?” Walter asked.

  I decided not to say anything about Justina. We shared a room, and when I was sleeping, she could easily tie me up and set me on fire too.

  “I asked the doctor for a Xanax and he gave me a Flintstone vitamin. I don't see how Fred is going to help with my heroin cravings.”

  Walter frowned, but everyone else smiled at me.

  After group was cleaning time. We were all assigned a duty, and mine was vacuuming. It didn't take me long, most of the place was tiled, and someone else was responsible for mopping.

  When I got back to the room, Justina was there. She'd been given the girls' toilets, and there were only four. She told me it was lunchtime and brought me to the cafeteria. I took a sandwich and a soda, and we sat at an empty table.

  Dustin, the nose guy, came in and sat across from me.

  “It's nice to see someone
familiar,” he said.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  I tried to think of the last time I'd seen him at Richard's, but I couldn't remember.

  “Couple weeks. It's hell and these fruitcakes are making me do yoga and shit.”

  I couldn't picture Dustin doing yoga. I could picture him beating someone up or mainlining, but not yoga.

  “Your parents bring you here?” I asked.

  He nodded. “You?”

  I nodded too. I told him about the overdose.

  “Was that your first time in the hospital?” he asked.

  “Yeah, for an overdose.”

  I'd been to the hospital before—the morning after the rape and when I'd got shot in the chest and after my miscarriage, but he didn't need to know all that.

  “I've died four times and been to three rehabs,” he said. “They're all the same, but this one doesn't believe in meds, which sucks.”

  I agreed, but he already knew that.

  He was good looking in that rough street kind of way. He had scars on his hands and one on his chin like mine. His was from a fight, not a lighter. He had a thick Boston accent—didn't pronounce any r's—and told me he was a Southie. He was twenty-six and had played hockey at UMass until he got injured sophomore year and got hooked on Percs and Vics. He dropped out of school and had been on the streets ever since. Our pasts were somewhat alike.

  If I was going to get sober, I had to start thinking like a sober girl, not a hooker who thought of men as dope money. When I looked at Dustin, he was taking a bite of his hot dog and I pictured his lips around my nipple. I hadn't had sober sex since I'd been raped, but that had to change. Dustin had nice lips. And eyes that were icy blue like Cooper, one of my regulars.

  After lunch, I went to individual counseling. My therapists were Walter and Sandra, who had been sober for ten years. Walter wasn't an addict, he had just chosen to study addiction in school. They both held a notebook and pen, and took notes while I told them my story.

  “Did you speak to anyone after you were raped?” Sandra asked.

  I shook my head.

  “What makes you want to talk about it now?”