Still Candy Shopping

by Swinson, Kiki

  As I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, my roommate entered the room. This was the first time I had laid eyes on her. She said hello as soon as our eyes met.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  She walked by my bed and sat on the edge of hers. I turned my head toward her. “So, you must be Faith,” she said.

  “Yep, that’s me. And you must be Denise,” I chimed in, and then I looked at her from head to toe. Denise wasn’t the pretty type you’d see in one of those music videos. OK, well, I didn’t look like one of those chicks on the music videos either, but before I became a full fledged heroin junkie, I could’ve gotten a booty-shaking job at the snap of a finger.

  But, Denise, on the other hand, wasn’t your feminine type. She was an average looking chick sporting a mo-hawk hair cut. The hair was completely shaved on both sides of her head while the hair in the center of her head was dyed blond. She was also on the chunky side. If I had to guess, I would bet money that she was every bit of two hundred twenty-five pounds, even though her clothes fit kind of baggy. She was definitely your typical man trapped inside a woman’s body. But what was so unique about her was that she had positive energy surrounding her, despite the sports bra she was wearing to hide her huge breasts and the body piercings she had in her tongue, the right side of her bottom lip, and over her right eyebrow.

  “What’s your drug of choice?” she asked me.

  “Heroin.”

  “Welcome to the club. I used to be on heroin too.”

  “How long?” I wanted to know.

  “Twelve years.”

  “Wow! That’s a long time. How old are you?”

  “Forty-four. And you?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “How long you been using?”

  “A couple years now.”

  “Is this your first rehab?”

  “Yeah.”

  Denise sighed heavily. “Get ready, because you’re about to go on the rockiest ride of your life.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said.

  Denise got up from her bed and walked over to her TV. After she turned it on she looked back at me. “Gotta favorite show you would like to watch?”

  “Denise, I can’t even tell you the last time I sat down and watched TV.”

  Denise picked up her remote and started sifting through channels. Then she took a seat back on the edge of her bed. “Are you married?” she asked.

  “I used to be. After I got hooked on drugs and started hanging in the Huntersville neighborhood of Norfolk, my husband divorced me and filed for full custody of our daughter.”

  “Drug addiction will definitely tear a family apart.”

  “Yeah. But I am going to get my family back. Because as soon as I’m done with my treatment, I’m going back to my husband to see if we can make this thing right.”

  “What if it’s too late?”

  “Oh, it’s not too late. My ex-husband loves me. And so does my daughter. As soon as he sees that I’ve gotten my mess together, he’s going to welcome me back with open arms.”

  Denise sighed. “OK. If you say so,” she commented and then she changed the subject. “If you need anything like some soap, deodorant, or just a clean T-shirt, just let me know.”

  I looked down at the dingy tank top I had on and quickly took Denise up on her offer. “Can I borrow a T-shirt?” I asked.

  She smiled and stood. “Sure you can,” she told me as she walked over to her locker and grabbed out a few garments. After she finished going through her things she pulled out a couple of shirts and two pairs of men’s blue boxer shorts. “Now I know I’m a few pounds heavier than you, so these T-shirts and boxer shorts will be a little baggy on you, but you’ll be all right.”

  I sat up in my bed and took the things she handed to me. I smiled at her and thanked her. “Oh, you don’t have to thank me. I’m just doing what my old roommate did for me when I first came into the program,” she told me and then she walked back over to her locker.

  I got up from the bed and stripped myself of my old, dirty clothing. After I slipped on a pair of Denise’s boxer shorts and a T-shirt, I felt really clean. At that moment I wanted to throw my old dingy clothes into the nearest trashcan, but Denise told me to throw them in her laundry basket and she would wash them with her clothes in the morning.

  Denise and I chatted some more after I changed and got back into my bed. She told me about her life before she came into the program. She told me about the woman she had out on the streets that introduced her to drugs and how that same woman was still out there using. She also told me that her family accepted the fact that she was gay. They just hated the women she had in her life. All of her women were gutter trash chicks who hung out at gay bars and either had an alcohol addiction or a drug addiction.

  “How long you been gay?” I asked her.

  “I was always a tomboy, even when I was in middle school. I always played men sports and ran track while I was in high school. So when my parents sent me off to college, I was able to spread my wings and be myself.”

  “I take it that’s when you came out of the closet.”

  Denise nodded. “Yep, that’s exactly when I came out. My first girlfriend’s name was Liz Carter. She stayed off campus but we had two of the same classes, so we saw each other a lot.”

  “Where did you go to college?”

  “I’m originally from northern Virginia, so when my parents sent me down this way to attend Hampton University, I went buck wild. But you want to know something that’s so crazy? I didn’t start using drugs here. I started drinking like crazy and smoking a little bit of pot here and there, but I didn’t start using heroin until I went back home.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “This is the fifth rehab center I’ve been to for treatment, and I can say that I am finally done with using drugs. They were dragging me to my grave very fast, and my parents were being affected by it. I come from a middle class family of college graduates. My mother is a retired high school counselor and my dad is a retired chief of police. So not only was I hurting them, but I was bringing shame to them.”

  “Wow! So this recovery isn’t just for you. It’s for your parents too.”

  “Yep, it sure is,” she agreed.

  Denise and I continued to chat about our lives and how heroin stripped us of everything that we’d once claimed was ours. After about an hour into our conversation my body started aching really bad. And then the aching pains in my back and stomach made me want to regurgitate the food I’d eaten just a short while ago.

  When I felt my stomach muscles rupturing, I jumped up from my bed and ran straight for the trash can near Denise’s TV. Without hesitating, I buried my head into the trashcan and regurgitated every single food particle I had inside my stomach. Denise saw how pitiful I looked and rushed over to help me. The only thing she could do for me was massage my back. There was absolutely nothing else she could do. This was the first faze of my heroin withdrawal, and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get through.

  After ten minutes of constant vomiting, I had nothing left in my stomach to regurgitate, so Denise escorted me back to my bed and helped me lie down. Not even an hour later I started experiencing hot flashes and heavy perspiration. The sweat from my glands started filtering from my body very rapidly. Denise stayed up with me part of the night as I rocked my body back and forth. I tried to get out of bed to leave the facility over a dozen times, but Denise wouldn’t let me go. “I gotta’ get out of here. I can’t go another minute feeling like this.” I cried as I pushed my way by Denise. Denise wouldn’t budge. She pressed all of her body weight against me. I tried to fight her, but she blocked ever blow I threw her way. It finally sunk in my head that all my escape efforts were useless. Denise had no intentions of letting me out of her sight. She knew what it felt like to go through a heroin withdrawal. So, if she’d allowed me to quit then I had defeated the purpose of being ther
e.

  It seemed like forever but it took me almost seventy-two hours to detox, and I owed it all to Denise. She was the one who talked me into staying. I knew I could not have gone through that ordeal without her. She was a gem in her own right, and I would forever be indebted to her.

  Once my detox was complete, I was ready to start the program. We had a morning NA group meeting, an afternoon one-on-one session with our drug counselor, and an AA group meeting with outside volunteers. This was our schedule three days out of the week. The other two days we had to attend substance abuse classes where we talked about drug addictions, took random tests, and watched movies. When we watched one movie I learned that drug addiction not only affect the drug user, but it affect family and friends. Coming to this place was the best thing I could have ever done.

  The Candy Shop part 2 Kiki Swinson

  Reaching Out To My Family

  Today marked my sixth day in the program. It seemed like the longer I was in the facility, the better I felt about being there. I credited Denise for holding me down during my stay. If it wasn’t for her, I would have been gone after the first day. The only down side to this whole thing with Denise and all the favors she had done for me was that I knew she wanted to fuck me and maybe engage in some kind of relationship. I was not down for that bumping and grinding on another woman’s pussy. That was just not my thing. Now I’d fucked random niggas, I sucked their dicks, and I even fucked two to three niggas at the same time, but I’d never been intimate with a woman. I wouldn’t even know how to embrace the idea of it. So the next time she tried to come on to me, I was going to play her ass to the left and act naive as hell.

  But I wasn’t going to let my potential problem with Denise ruin my outlook. Since I had been clean for six days, I figured it was a good time for me to reach out to my in-laws and tell them the good news about my recovery. I was sure that they’d be really excited for me. Immediately after our afternoon NA group meeting, I rushed into the hallway to snag one of the payphones before they all became unavailable. After I used the change, I was going to be completely broke again. I needed some cash and a few personal items, but I was certain that after I’d gotten in touch with my ex-husband’s parents, they would come to my rescue.

  My heart rate sped up a bit while I listened to the phone line ring. When I heard Mrs. Simmons’s voice as she answered the phone, I instantly became nervous. “Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded faint, but I could still hear her.

  “Hi, Mom, how are you?” I asked. I tried to make my voice sound upbeat.

  She paused for a second. “Faith, is that you?” she finally asked.

  I smiled. It felt great to know that she remembered my voice. “Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “You won’t believe it when I tell you. But I’m in a drug rehab,” I said with excitement.

  “Where?”

  “I’m at the Salvation Army in Virginia Beach off Virginia Beach Boulevard.”

  “My goodness! I didn’t know that they had a drug rehabilitation center.”

  “Yeah, they do, and the staff members that work with us are great people.”

  “Good for you,” Mrs. Simmons replied. Then she fell silent again, which made me feel a little awkward. It was like she didn’t know what else to say. I chimed in and asked her about Eric and Kimora.

  She cleared her throat and said, “Oh, they’re fine. Eric should be here any minute. He called about thirty minutes ago asking me if I’d watch Kimora for about an hour so he can run a couple errands.”

  “Wow! That’s great. Maybe I’ll be able to speak to them both before I get off the phone. I mean, it’s been almost two years since I’ve last seen Kimora, so I’m sure she has gotten taller.”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s sprouting up like a bed of flowers.”

  “How is she doing in school?”

  “Oh she’s doing great. Eric brought her over here a few days ago so me and her granddaddy could spend some time with her.”

  “I’m sure she had fun.”

  “She had a ball. We took her outside in the backyard and let her play on the swing set we bought her. And then we let her ride her new bike up and down the sidewalk in front of the house. She loved every minute of it.”

  “I’m sure she did,” I replied, and then I changed the subject. “Has Eric asked about me?”

  “Well, um . . .” Mrs. Simmons began to say, as if she was trying to collect her thoughts. “He brought your name up a couple of times,” she finally admitted.

  Hearing her say that he had talked about me gave me a sense of hope that we still had a connection. It was like music to my ears. “So what did he say?” I asked, pressing the issue.

  “Well, um, the reason he brought up your name a couple of times was because Kimora has been asking her daddy when you were coming home. She doesn’t like the fact that Eric went on with his life and got remarried.”

  Shocked by Mrs. Simmons outburst my heart sunk and I thought about what I was going to do from this point forward since there was no chance that my ex-husband and I were going to reconcile. Not only that, the thought of my baby girl asking him when I would be coming home made me feel even worse. It was obvious that Kimora wanted her mommy and daddy back together, but with his new bitch in the way, that would surely pose a problem.

  I stood there with my back against the wall while my heart began to crumble. All the hopes of me getting my family back were trickling down the drain, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. He had already moved on with his life and gotten remarried, just like his mother had said. I was just a distant memory.

  “Faith, are you there, honey?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m here,” I replied as my voice began to crack.

  “Sweetheart, I am so sorry!”

  I cleared my throat and wiped the tears from my eyes. “There’s no need to be sorry, Mrs. Simmons. I did all this to myself,” I said. And at that moment I realized that I had called her Mrs. Simmons instead of Mom. And before I was able to utter another word I heard Kimora’s voice in the background.

  “Hey, Grandma, who are you talking to?” I heard her ask. And the moment my baby opened her mouth, I felt a flutter in my heart. My heart felt somewhat empty, but there was still a spark left inside me. I felt a connection to her immediately and I couldn’t get her name out quick enough.

  “Is that my baby?” I got excited. “Please, can I talk to her?” I asked.

  Mrs. Simmons hesitated. “Well, um, let me ask Eric if it’s all right,” she finally said.

  “Ask Eric?” I snapped. “Why would you need to ask him if I can speak to my daughter?”

  “Well, um—” she started to say, but I cut her off.

  “Look, Mrs. Simmons, it’s been two years since I talked to my baby. Now you’ve already expressed to me that she keeps asking Eric when am I coming home, so it’s apparent that she misses me. If you would kindly put my child on the phone, I would greatly appreciate it,” I replied sarcastically.

  “Wait, hold on a minute,” she said, and then she put down the phone.

  While I waited for her to put my baby on the phone, I was thinking about all the fucking names I could’ve called that lady. I mean, how dare she tell me she had to get permission from Eric so I could talk to my damn child? What fucking planet was she from?

  A couple minutes passed and I didn’t hear a damn sound. I thought the crazy lady had hung up the phone on me until I heard some rattling sounds. And then I finally heard a voice, but it wasn’t my baby Kimora. It was Eric. “Faith, what do you want?” he didn’t hesitate to ask.

  Stunned by his candor, I said, “Well, initially I called to talk to your parents to see how they were doing and tell them about my news of being in drug rehab. But then when I heard Kimora’s voice, I wanted to speak with her.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”

  Hearing Eric tell me that I wasn’t going to speak with Kimora got me really
irritated. “Why not?” my voice screeched.

  “Because I said so,” he snarled back.

  “Because you said so!” I mimicked with sarcasm. “You’re going to have to give me a better excuse than that.”

  “Listen, Faith, I am not going to sit on this phone and argue with you. I told you that you are not going to talk to her, and that’s final,” he roared.

  “What you’re doing isn’t right, Eric, and you know it.”

  “No, correction, Faith, what you did to me and your daughter wasn’t right. You damaged her when you left.”

  “Do you have to keep reminding me of that? I know I fucked up. And that’s why I’m getting help for it now.”

  “It’s a tad bit too late for that, Faith. We don’t need you around anymore. Our lives are so much better since you left. I have a new wife, and Kimora has a new mother, so things are perfect for us.”

  “That bitch is not her mother!” I screamed through the phone.

  “Kimberlie may not be her biological mother, but she’s a better mother figure than you’d ever be,” he snapped back.