HeartWorks

by Charmaine Gordon

  “I do. I also know that if you don’t work the steps, you’re gonna struggle with it.”

  “I know,” Chantal huffed. “But fuck, man!”

  “But nothing, Chantal. You’ve got me, you’ve got Desi, Grace – everyone from the rooms! You have no excuses. You have a great support system. That’s why we’re here. It’s a we program, remember? We don’t go through anything alone.”

  Chantal smacked her lips. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “I don’t?” Sharon quickly quipped.

  “I don’t remember you getting hurt in a car wreck back and being flat out.”

  “I may not have been in an accident and broken my back, Chantal, but don’t forget that after I got out of the Air Force, three different companies, all of which I worked for, all folded within a year’s time.

  “I was fine physically, but was in a very similar place emotionally and financially. I wasn’t flat out, but my life was. Remember?”

  Chantal looked away. “Yes,” she mumbled.

  “I had no job, no prospects, and my drinking was out of control.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.”

  “And what happened?”

  “You went to the Unitarian Church and you met Peggy.”

  “And Peggy told me I needed to surrender.” Sharon leaned forward. “She told me to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understood him.

  “But I didn’t understand him. I did not understand how God could do that to me. How could he leave me jobless and penniless? How could he allow me to sink lower than I had already been?” She paused momentarily. “How could he let you break you back when you’re finally getting your finances together?”

  Tears streamed from Chantal’s eyes. “Shut up!”

  “Peggy didn’t let me tell her to shut up when she told me I had a higher calling. She wouldn’t let me ignore the fact that throughout my life, God continually revealed himself to me. And he pushed me closer and closer and closer until I had no choice but to acknowledge him. And to follow him.”

  Sharon cleared her throat. “Chantal, like you, I fought it tooth and nail the whole way. It was the last thing I wanted. You know that. But at some point, I finally surrendered. I had no other choice. I realized that it was no coincidence that I was here. That this was a divine appointment; that I was being guided here. And that is was time for me to stop resisting.”

  Chantal’s breaths were shallow and choppy.

  “Chantal, stop resisting.”

  “Stop resisting what?” She shouted back.

  “God. The universe. Your higher power. There’s a message here. You need to slow down. You need to take care of yourself.

  “Do you realize that once you stopped drinking, you became a workaholic? Working, working, working.”

  “I did the next right thing!”

  “But you didn’t take care of yourself.” Sharon paused, and placed a gentle hand on Chantal’s shoulder. “You haven’t taken care of yourself since Azaiah.”

  “Stop it! Don’t say that! Don’t say his name! You don’t know!” Chantal wept.

  “Honey, my point is, now is the time to come to terms. Maybe you don’t need to step your way through this injury, but you have got to step your way through his death.” Sharon sat up. “I’m your sponsor. And your pastor. It’s my job to point this out to you. But it’s also my job to help you through it. Okay?”

  Chantal wiped some tears away. “Uh huh.”

  Sharon pressed her lips together, and waited for a minute. “I love you, Chantal.”

  “Love you too,” she sniffled.

  Chantal finished her water. “You know, Snowflake, you never told me your story.”

  Grace turned to her. “What?”

  “I told you my story. Tell me your story. What brought you to the rooms? How’d you end up sitting next to me right now?”

  “Well…I…”

  “Come on, Snowflake! Tell me your story!”

  “Alright. My name is Grace and I’m an alcoholic.” She paused, and looked down at her hands. “Growing up, my life was pretty normal. Mom, Dad, brother, sister. Typical suburban house. Kind of Donna Reed-ish home and life.

  “Actually, I should tell you that my older sister is ten years older than me. She’s my half-sister. My father was married before, but his first wife died.

  “So anyway, as a kid, I didn’t understand that my older sister sister’s drinking was a disease. I thought everybody drank like that. I figured all of my friends’ parents and all adults would pass out with a bottle of vodka in their hands every night like she did. If my sister did it, didn’t everybody else? Why wouldn’t that be normal?

  “When I was six, I had my first sleep over. It was with my friend Lisa – at her house. I’ll never forget it. Her parents each had one glass of wine with dinner and that was it. That was it. Just one glass. I remember asking them why they weren’t having more. They laughed at me.” She stopped. “They laughed at me,” she said so softly, Chantal could hardly hear her.

  Grace coughed. “So, that was that. Life continued on as normal. My sister hated my mom. I don’t know if it was because her own mother died, or because my mother tried to stop her from drinking, or both. Probably both.”

  She straightened up in her chair. “As we got older, things became more and more tense between my mom and sister. My sister kept drinking. She never moved out. She flunked out of college. She couldn’t hold a job. She was an alcoholic parasite. It was just so bad.

  “I didn’t start drinking until my freshman year of college. I went away to school to UNLV.”

  “Where you from, Snowflake?”

  “South Bend, Indiana.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.”

  “So I came out to Las Vegas. During my freshman year – my first semester, in fact - our house burned down.

  “It was horrendous. Everything was gone. I mean everything. No pictures, no clothes, no furniture, no personal little things or toys or letters, not even a wall. It all burned. Everything burned to the ground. I felt so guilty. I thought if I had stayed home, it wouldn’t have happened. I could have saved the house – or maybe even have prevented the fire in the first place. Here I was, living the high life in Vegas and my family was now homeless.

  “I didn’t know what to do. Should I fly back home? To what? A pile of rubble? And if I did, what would I do? What could I do? There’s nothing there! But if I don’t go, does that make me a bad person? Am I obligated to go? What do you do? I still don’t know what to do, and at eighteen, I really didn’t know what to do.”

  Grace looked down at her hands. She sat silently for a minute. “It didn’t take long before everyone in my dorm knew. A kid down the hall was a known drinker. He came over to say he was sorry for what happened and he offered me a drink. A wine cooler, I think it was.

  “And that was it. From that moment on, I needed more and more. I drank and drank, but it was never enough.”

  Chantal pulled herself up to look at her better.

  “I never did go home.” Grace looked over at Chantal. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t face them. I couldn’t see the empty lot that used to be our home. I couldn’t bear to see their pain, nor deal with my own. I couldn’t function with alcohol, but I couldn’t cope without it. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything.”

  She quietly cleared her throat and sat up. “I don’t even know how much time had actually passed. It could have been a year, it could have been a day. I don’t remember much. I drank to black out so I didn’t have to remember anything.

  “One day I went to a small bar. Up until this point, I always went to the strip. I felt like a tourist, even though I was a student. So this one day, I decided to go to a local bar. Some dive in North Las Vegas. Boy did they love me there. A bunch of local guys all sitting at a bar at five in the afternoon. And in comes me. Little, blonde, naïve, student me. They never expected to see jailbait like me come in through that door. But I did, and it was a win-win situation for all of us.<
br />
  “They all bought me drinks so I’d pay attention to them. I paid attention to them so they’d buy me drinks. It was the perfect cycle. I drank with them for hours. The whole night.”

  She inhaled deeply. “I finally left some time after eleven. I just stumbled my around the streets. I was over by Decatur and Craig, this I’ll never forget. Everything else was fuzzy, but this is clear as a bell. Decatur and Craig. So, I saw a big old pick-up truck had just turned onto Decatur. It was perfect. I felt horrible because of everything. I was drunk as a skunk. That truck weighed a lot more than I do. It would be the perfect way to end the pain.” Grace stopped. She pressed her lips together. Her hands became shaky and uncoordinated. “So,” her voice quaked. “I ran in front of it.”

  Chantal shot up. “Oh shit!”

  “The driver hit me. Well, she kind of just knocked me to the ground. She stopped within inches. She jumped out of the truck and began waving her arms and screaming for someone to call 911. Someone final stopped and called.” Grace swallowed. “She ran to me, picked my head up and placed in her lap. She was trying to apply pressure to my head – I was bleeding. My head was bleeding. She tried to apply pressure to get it to stop. The paramedics came quickly. They took me from her. I could still hear her crying when they loaded me into the ambulance.

  “My heart rate was in the forties. My blood pressure was really low. I was going into shock. I don’t know how they were able to get an IV in, but they did. And they flushed me out. They ran so much fluid through me.

  “I remember being in the hospital, after they stitched me back up, two cops were there and they started asking me questions. They asked me what happened, why I ran in front of the truck, how many drinks I had. I was being interrogated in a hospital bed! I can only imagine what it must have been like for them to watch me and talk to me. Between the alcohol and medications, I was a wreck. I don’t know how well I spoke, but I told them everything. When it was all said and done, they wrote me 2 tickets. One for drunk in public, and one for jay walking.”

  “For real?!”

  Grace glanced over at her. She smirked and nodded her head. “Yeah.”

  She rubbed her temples with her hands for a moment. “But while I was in there. I met someone. A nurse. A really good nurse.”

  “A stripper turned nurse,” Chantal whispered. “Desi.” She said louder.

  “Yes, Desiree. She told me about the program. She told me it could help me. She told me it saved her life. She told me there was so much more to live for and that I was saved and brought there for a reason.”

  Chantal smiled. “Damn she’s good!”

  Grace smiled back. “Yes she is! She gave me her number, too. So I went to my first meeting with her, and she’s been my sponsor ever since.”

  Chantal smiled. What a great story.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Now what about you?” Chantal asked.

  “What about me what?”

  “You hounded me about my hope. What about you? What’s yours?”

  “My hope is in the fact that my family is restored. My sister is in the rooms back home in Indiana. I took her to her first meeting during a trip home. My older sister is my sponsee!” Grace giggled. “My hope is that my family has a new home, and it is beautiful. We all have such a great connection now. My hope is to buy a house someday. My hope is to live each and every day without alcohol. As much as life can hurt, my best day drinking will always be far worse than my worst day sober. I take life one day at a time, but I set goals for myself. I give myself these goals so that I can have hope as I continue to achieve. My hope is that this very moment is exactly as it should be, and for that, I am grateful.”

  There were a few moments of silence before Chantal finally spoke up. “Wow, Snowflake. That’s some powerful shit. You got one helluva story, girl!” She tried to straighten up. “Seriously, that’s some incredible stuff. You got a great story. Thanks.”

  She reached over and gently touched Grace’s hand. Grace wrapped her fingers around Chantal’s, and the two smiled at each other.

  Chantal reached over and grabbed Desi’s hand. “I can’t do this.”

  “Yes you can,” Desi soothed her. “It’s gonna be okay, honey. I’m right here. Remember, he can’t hurt you. This is for you – to help you. It’ll be fine.”

  Chantal looked at her with tears in her eyes.

  “I know, baby girl.” Desi said softly. “I promise you, it’s gonna be okay.”

  Chantal nodded. She looked at the phone. She took in a deep breath, as if it was her last. With excruciating pain and fear, she dialed the number.

  It rang. It rang again. It rang a few times. Good, maybe he won’t answer. She doesn’t have to leave him a message.

  “Hello?” A deep, smooth male voice answered.

  Chantal hesitated. “Is this LaMarr Johnson?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “LaMarr, this is…” Dear God, could she really say who she was? “This is…Chantal Thompson.”

  The other line was silent. “Oh shit!” He whispered.

  “No…no. I’m calling…to apologize. To make amends to you.”

  “You? Make amends to me? What is this? Twelve step shit or something?”

  “Actually, yes. I am in the program. I have eight years of sobriety.”

  He hesitated. “Good for you.”

  “LaMarr,” she lost her breath. “I…don’t even know where to begin.” She sighed. “I’m sorry for not staying with you guys that night. I’m sorry for screaming at you and blaming you. I’m sorry that I held so much anger towards you all of these years.”

  “Yo, yo, yo! Stop, man. Please. I can’t hear this shit.”

  “But it’s okay, LaMarr.”

  “No, no it ain’t. Do you know why we walked instead of having my mother drive us?”

  “No.”

  “Because I couldn’t wait five more minutes. Exactly five fucking minutes. It was 4:55. Mom just wanted to watch the last five fucking minutes of Oprah, and I told her to forget it. So we left. And then when we got jumped…”

  She could hear him sniffling.

  “I ratted him out. I told them he had twenty bucks. I hoped he’d just give it to them and they’d leave. But he didn’t. That stupid fucker didn’t.” He sobbed into the phone. “Before I could do anything it was just ‘pop pop pop!’ It was so fucked up, man! I fucking ran for my life. I left him there…”

  Chantal took a deep breath and tightly squeezed Desi’s hand. “Well, we can’t undo the past. Do what you gotta do to live with that, to come clean with God or whatever. Just know that I forgive you, and I am sorry for my role in it. I’m sorry if I hurt you. God bless.” She hung up. She had to. She couldn’t hear any more. She did what she had to. It was done.

  She dropped her head into her hands and wept. She was crying with such force, she could hardly breathe.

  “You did good, baby girl.” Desi said as she rubbed Chantal’s back. “You did good.”

  Chantal was writhing in pain on the couch when Grace came over.

  “Are you okay?” She asked.

  Chantal moaned.

  “What do you need? What can I do to help you?”

  “Shit,” Chantal exhaled. “I don’t know. Everything is so tight. It just hurts.”

  Grace thought for a moment. “Do you want me to give you a massage? It’s not going to be as good as when Noreen comes, but it might help.”

  Chantal was breathing heavily. “Anything’s gotta be better than this.”

  “Okay.” Grace bent down and carefully guided Chantal onto her stomach. She then walked over to the side of the couch by her lower back. Grace carefully pulled up Chantal’s shirt. She revealed a muscular back, tastefully adored with a couple of tattoos. Her almost caramel-colored skin looked warm and soft. Grace softly gasped at this sight of beauty that she had never seen in Chantal before.

  Composing herself, Grace began to gently rub Chantal’s back. She watched her tawny skin wrinkl
e and stretch under her pale, delicate hands.

  “Ooh! Yeah. Right there,” Chantal moaned.

  Firmly but gently, Grace did her best to manipulate Chantal’s muscles. She pushed and pulled them, hoping to loosen them up. She carefully kneaded them, trying to work out the knots. Her hands seemed so small and unsure, but periodically, Chantal would groan, indicating that she was doing well.

  “You like this, Snowflake?” Chantal grunted. “You like seeing my bare back? You like looking at my skin? You like touching me?”

  Grace hesitated to respond. “Well…I…uhhh…yeah…I, guess.”

  “You guess? Do you or don’t you?”

  “I do,” she murmured.

  Chantal began to chuckle.

  “What?” Grace asked in utter confusion.

  “You have Jungle Fever! I gave you Jungle Fever!” Chantal sang. She roared with laughter.

  Grace laughed. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You! You like me! I gave you Jungle Fever!”

  “What’s Jungle Fever?” Grace chortled.

  “You don’t know Jungle Fever?! Shoot! Damn, girl!” Chantal paused to choose her words wisely. “Jungle Fever,” she lowered her tone. “Is when a Caucasian person, such as you, cannot resist the draw and sexuality of an African, such as me.”

  Grace laughed. “I see.”

  “Once you go black…”

  Grace chortled. “If you insist.” She stopped massaging Chantal. “How’s that? Any better?”

  “Yeah, Snowflake. Thank you!” Chantal winked at her.

  “Oh man, Desi was here last night.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.” Grace said, as she continued to fold Chantal’s clothes.

  “It was so nice having her here. I love it when she’s here. She makes everything better.”

  Grace paused. Her faced dropped. She quickly glared at Chantal, and then resumed her focus on the laundry.

  “I mean, it’s just, she knows me better than anyone. She takes care of me better than anyone. No one can do for me what she does.”

  “Oh really?!” Grace blurted out.