“You want me to come inside with you?”
It was clean-shaven Officer Renfrew with the iron jaw.
“Nah, I’m good, but thanks. Just being here is enough, just in case you’re needed.”
I went to the front door, feeling invigorated, refreshed, rebooted, shaking off the insult that they had to send a cop as if I couldn’t handle this better than any human alive.
If I had partnered with a man like Officer Renfrew, the adoption agency would have certainly deemed us fit for parenthood. You need to pass a screening to adopt, but anyone can have a child by birth, anyone can do the ultimate sin of bringing a child into this world the old-fashioned way. My own parents certainly never had to pass a screening, and all the hurt they had carved into my soul had brought me to Amy’s front door.
CHAPTER TWO:
Lizard’s Dad, Trey Baker, 19 Years Previous
All Narcotics in Time-Released Safe
Trey Baker read the sign as if it didn’t matter to him, but it did. It mattered to every little sweat bead on his goose-bumped flesh. If his prescription wasn’t behind the counter, he would blow-torch the door right off that time-released safe.
The pharmacist wore a white jacket, her skin was Middle-Eastern brown, and she was counting pills on a plastic tray. She seemed in a trance, so Trey shuffled his feet, hoping the noise would get her attention.
The pharmacist looked up from her pills. “One moment. Be well,” she said through a grin.
Be well? He was trying to get well. He squeezed Lizard’s hand. His own hand was moist with sweat, hers was tiny and frail, but a man who is holding his little girl’s hand isn’t someone who fiends drugs. He isn’t someone who visits pain management doctors who, for a price, shoot out digital scripts to the pharmacy of your choice. He was just a hard-working roofer who was hurt on the job and needed some help to provide for his family.
The pharmacist walked to the counter. Trey braced himself for his worst fears. Last time he tried this at another pharmacy the response was, Sorry, Mr. Baker, there’s been an alert placed on this doctor, and we can’t fulfill the request. Bugs exploded inside each sweat bead, crawled around Trey’s body, and then buried themselves into his flesh.
Hold your shit together.
He gave another squeeze to Lizard’s hand. The pharmacist’s eyes scanned down. He needed Lizard to smile, but instead, her face was contorted and her eyes twitching.
“He doesn’t need this medicine,” she said, her head tilted as if listening to a far-off radio station. “He’s sick, and you’re just giving him more poison. That’s what she told me, at least.”
Not now with that crazy shit. He clenched her hand tighter, trying to shut Lizard’s mouth, but the words still hung in the air.
“And who told you that?” the pharmacist asked.
“She’s got this voice that speaks to her,” Trey interrupted before his daughter could say another word. “We’re not sure why. Some say it’s an autism thing, but I refuse to put her on the drugs they say I should. I hate taking anything myself unless I have to... I’m just here for a prescription for Trey Baker.” He tried to sound confident but his voice cracked like thin ice under too much weight. Don’t let your hands shake.
The pharmacist turned to the bins behind her and started sifting through the white bags. Digging, digging, digging. When she finally grabbed one and turned back to the counter, the creatures ripping his flesh apart stopped for a bit, as if sensing the end was near. Relief was coming. He accepted the bag of OxyContin with a smile. He paid with cash, gave her a nod, and received another blessing to “be well.” He tried not to rush out the store—only dope fiends would rush out the store—and he was a dad, not a dope fiend.
To the car, so close. He opened the back door and guided Lizard inside. She hopped in dutifully, and he shut the door behind her then dashed to the front seat.
He ripped the white pharmacy bag open. The brown plastic bottle, so sturdy in his hand, the twist of the white top, so sweet. He popped two pills into his mouth. Ahhhh. He loved the moment pill met tongue. His taste buds had a spot reserved solely for OxyContin. He grinded them between his teeth, releasing all their fairy dust sprinkles down his throat. Tiny pieces of little army men, that’s how he imagined them, ready to march for him through his veins, and he was their general.
“She wants me to be buckled,” Lizard said from the back seat. “She says it’s not safe.”
“Who says?” he asked, not waiting for a reply because he needed more of the marching white men. He pulled out two pills, placed them on a Metallica CD cover, and crushed them with an expired credit card under his palm. He shaped them into two powdery piles, glorious silver-white mountains ready to snort.
“She’s screaming at me, Daddy. She doesn’t need to scream. Why does she scream?”
“We’re going to the park soon. Just chill.”
Two snowy whites lay next to him. He bent down, held one nostril, and then snorted the Oxy deep into his nose. The army of white smacked into the base of his brain. Ahhhh… An electric current ran down his spine. He decided to save the last one for later, and tucked the Master of Puppets CD cover safely on the passenger seat.
See, I can ration and make this bottle last like I promised.
Life was beautiful. Glorious. He was ready to be a dad again.
“We’re going to the park, Lizard, the one with the curvy slide and the turnabout thing that makes you dizzy.”
Yes, the park. She needed it. The morning had a chill and he’d forgotten her jacket, but the sun would soon warm up the day, thaw the earth, and summon flowers from the cold ground. Lizard needed something normal, like a park, because there really was something wrong with her. He could hear her mumble from the back seat as if speaking her own language.
He stopped at a red light and cars zipped by in front of him, off to elsewhere, people with lives unencumbered by the weight of his war. He envied them. He pitied them. They would never know the beauty of a victory such as he’d just won, oblivious to his grandeur as they went off to other directions. He had different miles to travel, his daughter in the back seat and the chopped-up pile of Oxy riding shotgun next to him. Oxy asked for his time, for his life, for his soul—just like everyone else who needed something from him. His roofing job needed him to show up early and work until sundown, his wife needed him to split the bottle of pills he worked so hard to get. His daughter needed someone who understood what the hell she was saying.
The general needed more from his fairy dust army to win this war.
The traffic light was still red. He leaned over the middle console, fast and fluid as a cobra strike. He placed the rolled-up dollar bill to his nostril and lined it up to the pile of Oxy…
Thump.
Lizard kicked the back of his chair, acting crazy again. No time to yell at her to stop, just stay steady. Dollar found its mark, vacuum snort, base of his brain coated in white.
Ahhhhh…
“Dad, she’s still screaming, not whispering. She says I have to buckle.”
His body was mush, his foot slipped off the brake, the car crept into the intersection.
T-bone strike.
The grill of a Ford Ranger rammed into the side panel of his Honda Civic. Glass shattered, suspended in air, then rained down like diamond confetti. His femur bone split open exposing the marrow, and the compound fracture sliced into his skin. In the back seat, nine-year-old Lizard had become a projectile. Her body whipped from one side of the car into the other and her tiny head smashed against the window. Her skull cracked, and she was deposited on the floor.
Silence followed. Lizard was unconscious, her father dazed, confused. His thoughts were shattered like the glass of the car. His bone had punctured through the thick of his thigh. His car sideways in the intersection.
Lizabeth in the back seat…
Lizard.
Oh God. She’s bleeding. Her eyes are closed.
He tried to lean over into the back seat to tend
to her but the sharp stab of a sword that was his femur bone stopped him. It jutted out of his pant leg, and blood soaked his jeans. He was going to bleed to death. He would die there. Both of them would.
The pill bottle. Where is it?
He had to find it. He fought off the pain with primal moans and clamored for it on the car floor, digging between Mountain Dew cans and fast food wrappers, ignoring the searing pain where the split bone had sliced through his leg. Tiny bits of glass were cutting his fingers as he searched, blood spots popping up everywhere. Outside the car, a crowd had gathered.
There. He finally saw it. The brown plastic bottle, white strip taped to the side, contents safely inside, and the bottle was secured in his hand.
Ah good, everything is safe.
They gave him morphine during the ambulance ride to the hospital. Hours of surgery followed, then a thick cast up to his crotch. Lizard had internal bleeding and the inflammation of her brain pushed against the confines of her skull. They stitched up her injury and wrapped her in bandages. TBI: Traumatic brain injury would be attached to her medical chart for life.
They gave Lizabeth Baker Tegretol for the seizures. The gave Trey Baker more drugs for the pain.
CHAPTER THREE:
Lizard’s Mom, Kate Baker, 4 Months After the Car Accident
Lizabeth Baker
Tegretol 100 mg
Take one tablet two times daily
“What about this? Will this take the edge off?”
Kate’s husband, Trey, hobbled around the kitchen, holding Lizard’s medicine bottle, sick and craving some dope. Kate was craving, too, with a bubbling gut and aching back, like termites were chewing at her spine with sharp, stinging fangs.
Every prescription bottle in the house, other than the Tegretol, was empty, and their regular go-to doctors had all been tapped out and couldn’t help them any longer.
“Tegretol won’t do shit for you. Even if it would—you want her to seize up again?”
Kate looked down at her daughter and remembered the seizures that started shortly after the car accident. Her muscles locked up, rigid and frozen, and her body shook with electric energy as if someone tossed a toaster into her bathtub. The vision haunted her nightmares, especially when she was dope-sick with demon sweat and devil thoughts, trying to sleep, but in her mind's eye, all she could see was her child in the throes of that seizure. The hospital had returned her daughter broken with a crack in her head that was impossible to patch together. From that crack, a darkness shone through. A spotlight onto their failures as parents.
Maybe if you didn’t almost kill her! she wanted to yell back into Trey’s face, but the argument would threaten to break things already fragile.
Every breath he took contained a groan, a cuss, a vow of revenge for an imaginary list of those who had wronged him years ago. Kate didn’t throw these tantrums when she was dope-sick. She’d married a soft man. He knew how to hustle for his highs in the early days, but not anymore. Now, he was just another child to feed. One of her babies was nine years old, the other one thirty-two, and both of them were sick.
“We need to go to the ER,” he said with conviction, itching at the top of his cast.
“Best you’ll get is a Toradol shot. Maybe one dose.”
“Google Tegretol. See if it will help.”
“It won’t fucking help. I told you.”
Kate was cleaning the fridge and throwing out old leftovers. Nobody ever threw them out. It was always up to her.
“Lizard, you want a taco for breakfast? We got taco meat from last week. We'll put it in a pita. Come on, grab a paper plate.”
“Fuck it. No Oxy, we need some H. Call your friend Bucky.” Trey hopped on one leg. Each hop went BOOM on the floor like an exclamation point.
“Watch your language with Lizard in the room.”
“She doesn’t know what call Bucky means. I’ll say it as much as I need to. Call Bucky. Call him now. You know all about it. Go get it. Go see your old boy and bring us some smack, because I know you need it just as much.”
She'd seen Bucky shoot up heroin a hundred times while they lived together. Shooting some, selling some, using people until they were lifeless then discarding the carcass. It took years for Kate to realize Bucky was using her to stay afloat. When she finally broke free, she felt like an escaped hostage. When she met Trey, she felt rescued by a savior, certain it was going to be different. He was a roofer who worked hard and treated her well, but she'd fallen for the same man. Maybe a lesser man. Bucky was always holding heroin, and Trey knew it.
“Look, sweetie,” he begged. “Please. I need it. Just until my leg heals. I’ve been in this cast for months. Once I get it off, I’ll be fine.”
His head was tilted in a sad, puppy-dog style. Seeing him like this made her own aching cells crave some dope just as badly. The disability money was gone, the prescription bottles were all empty, and the unwritten rule they lived by was to help each other fix up by any means necessary. They were each other's constant patients, dope-fiend voodoo dolls. The ultimate love was bringing back dirty money to get your partner high, and their love was about to get deeper.
Kate lay a hand on Lizard's soft hair. She pulled a few strands between her fingers and then traced a fingertip over the scar as if reading braille, trying to understand what was going on inside. The scar tissue was forming just above her ear. Three major bumps in descending order spread along a line from the middle of her head toward the front. Tiny ones surrounded it like a constellation.
“You’re going to stay here, Lizard. You’ll be okay.”
“Please don’t go,” Lizard said. “He’ll take my pills. That’s what she says.”
“Well, what she says doesn’t matter. I say different. Come on. Go heat up your taco. I’ll be right back. And take that fork off the plate before you zap it. Remember, no metal in the microwave. And take your Tegretol, you missed too many doses.” Kate put the prescription bottle right on her paper plate and realized there were only a couple left.
The sunlight outside her front door felt like disinfectant and exactly what she needed. Just a short ride away to her old life. Bucky would be happy to see her, certainly wearing a smug look of, I told you so, I knew you’d be back.
Her car remembered the way to his house as if following a railroad track, and soon she was knocking at his front door. Bucky answered, and his eyes darted down both sides of the street.
“My Angel,” he said, and gave her a full body hug with hips pressed and memories triggered. “You need to get high, don’t you? I can always tell.”
His house was full of ravaged souls, desperate humans who stayed as long as they could pay for more dope. She did not say no when he led her past them straight to his bedroom. The door closed, he undressed her, and then lay her on the sheet-less mattress. Her fingernails dug into his back muscles when he entered her, digging for an earlier time, a time before Lizard, before her body became so tired, and she found it. A momentary relief of her suffering, a release from her curse, thanking God loud enough for the house to hear when she climaxed.
The two packs of heroin were given freely, as she had hoped. Another time, she might have been offended, but the invisible thread that connected them had never been cut, only been tangled.
“You’re carrying my water now, you know that. I’ll see you soon, see you often.”
Just having heroin in her pocket as she drove home seemed to wake up her blood cells from their cold hibernation. Winter was over, and she was eager for the turning of seasons. Kate hadn’t shot up in years. It seemed she took on whatever addiction her man had at the time, some symbiotic relationship, taking the crumbs of highs that fell off their plates. In just a few minutes, she’d be smacking veins with Trey. He had no idea what was coming. He’d be morphed forever.
She burst through the front door of her house, certain there would be something inside to piss her off, something one of them did that she was unprepared to handle but needed to fix. Best to fin
d out what it was and get it over with.
Trey was standing on one leg, looking even greasier than before, same sweat pants on with pant-leg cut off, same Detroit Tigers baseball cap on his head, face dotted with scruff. Lizard was lying on the couch. Eyes closed. Her cold taco was still sitting on the counter, untouched, with an empty brown prescription bottle next to it.
“What the fuck happened?”
“What the fuck took you so long? Damn it. She did one of those seizures. Started shaking and making noises the way she always does. I took care of it. She’s fine. We made it through. Now please, do you have it?”
“What the fuck, Trey? We need to get her to a hospital,” Kate took a seat on the edge of the couch and felt Lizard’s forehead.
“She’s fine. Can’t even tell if it was a seizure, she just started babbling all crazy then her body got shaky. I put her in a soft spot just like last time and everything is fine now. Tell me you got it. Please, tell me you got it.”
Kate ignored him. Her daughter’s skin was clammy, her eyes just barely open, eyelids fluttering like a flower trying hard, but failing to bloom. Her lips were wet with foam from the seizure. Kate touched the liquid and put the foam to her own lips. It felt unnatural, tasted salty and acidic. It burned, even, as if what was inside needed to punish the mother for leaving her child alone.
There were cracks in her daughter, and more was seeping out.
She would be okay. Right?
Her heart was beating, she was breathing. It’s always like this moments after a seizure.
“We need to take her to the emergency room,” Kate said. “We need to go. Now. What the hell? Why didn't you text me?” Kate didn’t need an answer. She knew why Trey didn’t—because then she might turn around before she scored the heroin.
Lullabies for Suffering Page 8
