Shake Down the Stars

by Renee Swindle

  It’s been two months since I started AA, and while I now know the importance of remaining humble and taking things day by day, I have to confess I’m pretty proud of my sobriety. I’m eight weeks, four days sober, to be exact, and I have two sobriety chips to prove it. The chips look like poker chips and are nothing special—unless you’ve been an alcoholic most of your life; then they’re golden. I keep mine in the box where I keep Hailey’s things. Staying sober can be challenging at times. I had Christmas dinner at the rec center with a handful of other addicts; New Year’s Eve I was alone with a bottle of sparkling apple juice. But I’m also seeing what life as a sober person has to offer—the peace that comes from staying home and watching a movie or reading a book with a cup of tea, for instance. Not to mention the joys of waking up and knowing exactly where I am, or spending time with the girls and not counting the hours until they leave so that I can have something stronger than a glass of wine.

  I attend meetings every single night and on weekends. I keep in close contact with Sherry, too, and I’m following the Twelve Steps; not nearly as religiously as some, but I am trying to be more thoughtful and kind, to others and myself. As soon as I returned from winter break, I spoke to Gladys and apologized for my behavior at school. What’s more, I apologized to my first-period class for passing out as I had. I know some would have left it alone—why apologize?—but I wanted my students to know my behavior was reprehensible and that I hoped to make amends by doing my best from here on out. Some students stared back with the typically bored expressions, while others looked on with skepticism, but most were dumbfounded that a teacher would apologize to her class. As Pernell Clark said, “I ain’t never forgetting this day in all my life. A teacher saying she’s sorry? To me? That’s crazy. That’s just crazy.”

  I even contacted Selwyn. I didn’t have his address, so I sent a card to Livermore’s city hall. I apologized for blowing him off—twice—and thanked him for being so kind and supportive. I still haven’t heard from him and don’t think I will, frankly. I mean, how often can you reject a person and expect him to keep taking it? But it’s about the actions we put out, as Sherry says, not the response.

  Sherry also pushes me to take responsibility for my own actions and has helped me to see how my alcoholic me-ness stopped me from having a more expansive, empathetic view of life. Now when I think of that night at the Reverend’s church, for instance, I at least understand how horrified Mom must have been at finding me in my car with that guy, and how my choice to seduce a man in front of her church was totally out of line. Hell, I can’t even use being a drunk as an excuse. What I can’t let go of, can’t forgive, however, is that she slapped me—more than once. Not to mention the disgusted look in her eyes when she called me a heathen. Last Sunday at the mourners’ group, a woman named Janet talked about her close relationship with her mother. At one point she said, “Mom was everything to me. Our mothers tell us who we are.” If she’s right, it’s no wonder I’m so messed up. As a young girl, I saw Mom go through man after man, so why should I be surprised that I acted out sexually when I drank? Sherry and I both agree she’s my biggest hurdle, but I’m still too angry to deal with her right now, and since I haven’t heard from her, I have to assume she feels the same.

  Gladys mentions next year’s budget, and there’s a collective moan. “Less money, more students,” she laments. “I know we’re up to the challenge. Meeting adjourned.”

  “Glad I won’t be here next year,” I overhear Sarah half whisper to Tina. Sarah and Tina are in the math department. Sarah has been here only two years, but like many of our newly hired, she burned out as quickly as a supernova and is leaving at the end of the school year. Turnover is one of the main problems at MacDowell, along with a lack of funds, low wages, apathy, high dropout rate, school fights. . . .

  I glance up at the banner behind Gladys’s head as I gather my things—CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE! And I read the words added by a disgruntled teacher in bright red Sharpie: As long as they can afford private schooling!

  I head to the trailer where we hold after-school study hall. Supervising study hall once a week is another task I signed up for. Mrs. Fitch started study hall last year as a way to give students a safe and quiet place to study after the school closes. So many of our kids go home to parents who don’t enforce homework, or their homes are too noisy for them to focus. She came up with the idea to open one of the trailers next to the science building from three o’clock to six thirty. The trailer is even more dilapidated than the rest of the school, with a droopy ceiling stained brown from water damage, and missing tiles. I say hello to Sylvia, the teacher I’m replacing, and take out the papers I need to grade after she leaves. A boy and girl sit up front working intently from thick history books. The only other students here are Sharayray, who sits on a desk in the back combing Martina’s hair, and Jesse, who’s so busy texting that he doesn’t bother looking up.

  I look around the empty room with feigned drama. “It’s so crowded in here, it’s a wonder you can get anything done. So many students taking advantage of study hall. I’m amazed.” The two students up front take their eyes off their books long enough to determine whether I’m joking or not. I don’t recognize them and assume they’re enrolled in one of our four AP classes. Sharayray, who’s had me for English for two years now, ignores me.

  The two brainiacs return to their studies, hunched over and as intent as monks grappling with an ancient text. I carry a tinge of resentment toward our AP students, grouped together from the start after achieving a high test score in early elementary school and from then on placed in higher-level classes with stricter standards, tracked from their early years to succeed. In other words, they have a chance.

  Sharayray trades her brush for a comb. Martina leans back and pops her gum. “Ladies—gentleman,” I say to Jesse. “This is study hall, not a beauty salon. Let’s stop combing hair and focus. Jesse, take your phone outside if you don’t plan on working.”

  “We’re hella studying,” Sharayray quips. “We’re just taking a break.” She takes a wad of Martina’s hair and uses a comb to make a fine part scissor across the back of Martina’s scalp. Supposedly Sharayray has a gift for “designing” hair, and she makes money on the side by styling hair at her house and during lunch breaks at schools. What students don’t know is how smart she is. Sharayray has always been embarrassed by her high marks and tends to hide her achievements from other students or blow them off. “I just be guessin’ the right answers,” she says.

  “Miss Erin lets me do hair up in here. She don’t care what we do.”

  “Do I look like Miss Erin?”

  She sighs loudly as she climbs down from the desk and sits next to Martina in a loud huff, leaving Martina’s hair looking as if it’s suffering from a personality disorder with one side neatly braided while the other side shoots out in wild strands.

  “What about my hair?” Martine whines. “I can’t go outside like this. She looks to Sharayray for help, but Sharayray only shrugs in my direction. I’ve been tempted to tell her how her words of wisdom inadvertently saved me from the Neanderthal. Of course I won’t, but it was her voice I heard before clamping down on that idiot’s ear (“I pulled a Mike Tyson on that motherfucker”) and escaping his apartment.

  “Well, okay. Hurry up and finish.”

  Jesse exchanges his phone for a game. Martina slaps his arm. “What?” he says.

  “Miss Nelson wants you to study, not play around.”

  “I am studying! I’m studying this game.”

  Blond and blue-eyed, despite his baggy jeans and ratty plaid shorts, Jesse has the solidly Waspy looks of someone who belongs at Park Royce Preparatory, one of the top schools in the Bay Area. But he lives in a foster home and grew up in the hood, as they say. He’s been dating Martina since they were freshmen, a lifetime in teen years. His foster mother, Eula, dotes on him, and his foster brother, Angelo, a senior, makes sure h
e’s treated just like everyone else.

  He and Martina continue to bicker like the old married couple they’ve already become. I tell them to quiet down. “Why are you all here, anyway? People are trying to study,” I say.

  They look up at the brainiacs as if they’ve never seen people study before, then answer at once: “We are studying!” “There’s nothin’ to do outside!” “It’s chill in here!”

  “Well, if you’re staying, please find something productive to do. I know at least two of you have English homework.”

  Martina smiles her I’m-so-cute smile and takes out Long Day’s Journey into Night, our final play of the year. When she slaps Jesse again, he takes out a math book.

  Everyone finally quiets down, and I’m in solid grading mode, one essay after another, until I hear Sharayray: “Miss Nelson, is you a alcoholic?”

  I look up and all eyes are on me. I buy time saying, “The question is ‘Are you an alcoholic?’”

  “Well, are you?”

  Since we alcoholics are masters at lying, honesty is a huge focus of AA meetings, but I’m not sure that admitting my addiction to a group of teens is the right thing to do. Even so, most of the faculty knows about Jesse’s mother’s drug addiction, which is why he was put into foster care in the first place, and the brainiacs must be here instead of at home for a reason. Which is my way of saying these kids have seen it all.

  They continue to stare.

  Oh, fuck it.

  “Everyone has struggles in life, and I’ve struggled with alcohol, but I’m trying my best do better. We all have challenges, but as long as we’re alive, we’re capable of change. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m here for you and I don’t plan on giving up on any of you.”

  Martina chomps on her gum. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Hearing her question, Sharayray and Jesse throw up their hands as if she’s gone too far. “You can’t be asking her shit like that!”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  “You asked her if she was an alcoholic!”

  “That’s different!” Sharayray says.

  “How?”

  “It just is!”

  “I ask all my teachers if they have boyfriends!”

  “But it’s beside the point,” says Jesse. “We were talking about something serious, and then you have to get up in her business.”

  “I wasn’t in her business any more than you were, fool.”

  The matter of my alcoholism is soon lost in their bickering, and after another minute I tell them to go back to their reading. Martina has a mouth, and I’m sure she’ll spread what she heard here today, but I’m not worried. I have a feeling most won’t care. Besides, I’m doing my best now, today, this hour, this minute; that has to be enough.

  Thirty minutes later, Jesse and Martina have decided they’ve studied as long as they can handle it and start to leave the trailer hand in hand. “Use protection,” I tell them as they walk past my desk.

  “Miss Nelson! Dang!”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  Jesse adds, “Don’t worry, Miss Nelson; the last thing I want is a baby.”

  “And you think I do!” Martina shrieks.

  “No. I was talking about me.”

  “If you’re talking about making a baby, you’re talking about us! Unless you’re making babies with somebody else!”

  “I’m not making babies with anybody; that’s my point!”

  They continue their back-and-forth as they head out the door.

  When it’s quiet again, Sharayray raises her hand. “Miss Nelson, you remember how you gave me that list of books to read summer before last?” She’d just finished her freshman year and hadn’t earned a grade lower than a B+. But I was onto her and wanted to keep her love of reading alive, so I gave her a list of fifteen books, everything from Their Eyes Were Watching God to The Hunger Games. She read them all. But by her sophomore year . . . with all my drinking, I dropped the ball and stopped paying her or any of my students much attention outside the bare minimum.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Can I have another list for this summer?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was thinking maybe if you can help me with my writing a little, I could work on that, because I already like to read, Miss Nelson. I’m good at it. I understand all the themes. I’ve just been thinking, if you give me another list, I can read and work on my writing. I’m thinking I want to go to Berkeley. You know. I can go there if I want to.”

  As soon as she says Berkeley, the male brainiac turns to look at her, and she immediately gives him the finger. “Whatchu lookin’ at? You think I can’t go to college? You the only one think he can go to Berkeley? Yeah, I’ll see you there. You little—”

  “Sharayray.”

  “Sorry.”

  The boy turns in his seat, and Sharayray sticks out her tongue.

  “Sharayray.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Of course you can go to Berkeley,” I say.

  The brainiac frowns at me as if I’m the purveyor of false dreams, then shakes his head and returns to his book. When I know he’s not looking, I stick my tongue out at him, then look over at Sharayray, who is already focused intently on reading the play in her hand.

  I place my bet on Sharayray.

  • • •

  A week later, I’m standing on Clem’s porch with a box of cookies from Lulu’s. I spoke with Sherry about how lonely I sometimes feel, and she recommended something I already intuitively knew: I need more friends. Hence, Clem. I’ve thought of her from time to time since Friends of Friends in Mourning. She was the only person who seemed as lost as I was that night, and that her husband, child, and brother all died at once still seems unimaginable. When I told Deacon Morris about her, he suggested in his own way that instead of merely thinking about her, I should put some action behind the thought and see how she’s doing. Kindness, he reminded me, is a verb.

  I had to stop by Diane Montgomery’s to find out where she lives. I remembered Clem telling me she was within walking distance of the Montgomerys’, but I had no way of knowing which house. Diane was nice enough to point out her place, a two-story craftsman with the blinds drawn tight—“just up the street”—then invited me in for coffee. When I declined, she made me promise I’d return to a meeting sometime soon. “It’s important we go through a thorough mourning process. You must come back.” I responded by telling her I had enough meetings to attend as it was and left it at that.

  After the third ring I begin to wonder if Clem is home, but then the door creeps open and she pokes out her head. It’s almost eleven, but from the way she winces at the sunlight and clutches the top of her robe, I have a strong feeling I’ve forced her out of bed. I smile, ready to say, Surprise! but as I stare into her perfectly blank face, I think better of it. Why the hell did I think she’d remember me? I haven’t seen her in months. I’m here, however, and figure—“Clem, it’s me . . . Piper? We met at the Friends of Friends in Mourning meeting about . . . five months ago? I was thinking of you and thought I’d stop by. I haven’t forgotten you.” I hold up the box of cookies as a hopeful reminder. “These are for you. You really liked them when we met. Remember?”

  She opens the door but only so wide. Her tousled auburn hair, heavy bags under her eyes, and wan coloring all suggest she’s suffering from one hell of a hangover, and it’s best I make a quick exit. I speak rapidly. “I would’ve called, but I never got your phone number. Diane pointed out your house. I was thinking about you and wanted to say hello, that’s all. I’ll just leave now. Just—here—I’d like you to have the cookies. I don’t know if you ever made it to Lulu’s, but I remembered how much you liked them.”

  She takes the box as though there might be a bomb planted inside. I feel my face grow warm with embarrassment and start to leave, but just as I
do, I catch a gleam of recognition in her eye as if her hungover synapses are kicking in and she’s finally remembering the whos and whats.

  She opens the door farther but then suddenly cups her mouth with her hand and shoves the box of cookies into my chest. “Shit.” With this she turns and runs back inside, leaving the door wide-open.

  “Clem?” I step inside, only to be greeted by a dark, quiet house. “Clem? You okay?” I walk farther inside. The rooms are spacious and well kept, but the curtains are drawn, giving the whole place a haunted-house feel.

  “Clem?”

  I hear a toilet flush and follow the sound down a second hallway that leads to a bathroom. I find her on the floor in ye olde familiar pose: on her knees, head suspended above the toilet. When she looks up, her head makes a wide arc until it falls back. “You might want to close that door less you want to see me—”

  Too late. She pukes again.

  I take a facecloth from the towel rack, run warm water over it, and hand it to her. She thanks me, wipes her mouth, and flushes. She then stares up at me, eyes bright with recognition. “Piper Diaper. Piper the Sniper.”

  “Lactation Station.”

  She laughs and chucks her head toward the toilet. “Sorry you had to see that. Had a little too much last night.”

  She goes to the sink and washes her hands. She looks three times older than when I saw her last, and she wears men’s pj’s beneath her lopsided robe that looks a size too big. She’s got two pairs of socks on each foot.

  She notices me staring. “I must look like glorified shit.”

  “Hangover’ll do that to you.”

  She gazes into the mirror and starts rapidly pinching her cheeks but then gives up. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I follow her down another hallway. My pace slows as I take in the framed family photos lining the wall. There’s a photo of a young Clem holding a little boy; Clem and her husband on their wedding day; a teenager, who I guess is her son, giving the peace sign on a beach; father and son standing on a boat. I’m so busy staring at them all, I’m half startled when I hear Clem clear her throat. I turn and see her waiting for me at the end of the hall, hand on hip. “Kitchen’s this way.”