The Big Fix

by Tracey Helton Mitchell

  Another day, another morning in agony. The first thing I try to do is move my hands. They are swollen like hard rocks. I slept with them resting on a pillow over my head at an angle that I hoped would make the swelling go down by morning. Gravity failed me last night, as it frequently does when I hit the curb drunk. My hands are swollen from letting a drunken companion dig into them way too many times with a needle. The alcohol and dope are long gone, but the damage remains. My fingers look like sausages. They are bruised around the knuckles—nerve damage from the needles—as if I’d been punching a wall. I try to use my hands to push myself up. Intense throbbing pain like razors slicing away at my flesh. There is no way I am going to make it to class today. I will be lucky if I can use these hands to wipe myself whenever I get the strength to go to the bathroom. My body feels as if a truck ran over me, backed up, and ran over me again.

  What the fuck have I done this time? I think, as I catch sight of myself in the big piece of the broken mirror across the room. It was once a beautiful stand-up mirror until my friend Jeremy got drunk one night and decided to slit his wrists with it. I wasn’t home at the time. I was on a beer run to Kentucky after the liquor stores in Ohio had closed. When I got back, I noticed the drops of blood on the floor before I saw this mess of a young man in the corner. Jeremy was nineteen years old with no ability to take care of himself. I am not sure if his parents had abandoned him, or exactly how he had ended up on the streets in such a small city. He was a beautiful creature with crystalline blue eyes that begged you to take him in. I had been letting him stay with me at my apartment. Two depressed alcoholics were one too many. I reached down to him.

  “Jeremy,” I said, “what have you done?”

  He was in a near-catatonic state with cuts on his face and arms. He had deliberately broken my mirror, or knocked it over in a stupor. In the time it took for me to go get another case of beer, he had systematically cut up his face and forearms in slices that were, thankfully, superficial. There was blood, not a ton, but enough to let a person know a trauma had occurred. The biggest wound was on the inside. He had some type of broken psyche that led him to do these things over and over again. Now I knew why none of our friends wanted to let him stay over.

  I was sad for a moment. Then I became angry, very fucking angry. I was angry that he had destroyed my things, though of course they could be replaced. I was angry that he had made a mess of my apartment, though that could be cleaned. I was angry that he couldn’t see how much I cared for him, how much everyone loved him.

  “Do you want blood?” I asked him.

  I picked up a piece of mirror and sliced my own forearm. It was childish. It was stupid. In that moment, it was also effective. He got up to help me as the gash dripped blood onto the floor. I started crying. I was crying my eyes out as I reached to hold him. What could make a person who was so beautiful inside hate himself so much? I cried as I rocked him and begged him to never do something like this again. I cried so hard my eyes were swelling up as the blood crusted on my arm. I didn’t care. Things were spinning out of control. He had to leave. He couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t keep him there.

  Just like that morning after Jeremy left, today my eyes are slightly swollen. Puffy face—such a great look for me. The bags are creeping up like the rolling tide trying to squeeze my eyes closed. I really could use a drink of water. The sink is way too far away for me to manage at this point. Getting up is going to be a long process. Having a hangover would be more pleasant. At least I could clear that up with some puking and food. This is the aftermath of drugs.

  The last four days have been a blur. I managed to get five days off in a row from my shitty retail job, and I got the “innocent” idea of a little binge to reward myself. I seem to have these binges more and more since Jeremy left for San Francisco. Now, I am hanging on by a thread to my “normal” life. I am struggling to drag myself up, here in my apartment across the street from the university campus. I suppose classes are going on right now. I haven’t been there in a while. School is seriously getting in the way of my partying. I used to be able to snap back from these overindulgences so easily. As I get farther away from my friends and family, things seem to be getting harder and harder. I don’t even know who I am anymore. This latest celebration started with a few shots at the bar and ended up with needle marks all over my hands.

  There had been a slow transformation in my last few years of high school. As an overweight food addict, I had been on every diet possible. Finally, when I was sixteen, one diet stuck. I lost enough weight that people began to notice me as more than just the subject of ridicule. I began to feel differently about myself. Although I had hated being fat, fat was a place where I felt secure. Food provided me with a brief respite from my anger and anxiety. I shoved my feelings down with every bite. Then, after nearly a year of dieting, I was looking for something new to make me happy. Young men were a disappointing substitute. I tried writing poetry in notebooks that had stickers of my favorite bands peppering the covers. I started listening to punk rock music. My neon purple sweaters switched to all black clothes. My Duran Duran poster soon sported the symbol for anarchy over the delicious eye of John Taylor. I was searching for my identity with little guidance and tons of confusion. Most of all, I was bored out of my skull preparing for college. I could not wait to get somewhere else so I could be someone besides myself.

  If I smoked, now would be a good time for a cigarette. I hate reflecting on my behavior. Fuck that. I am not sure what else could help me get my day started. I look around at my scattered belongings. Where is my wallet? Surely it must be empty. I had just gotten my entire paycheck in cash at the corner store. There was no need to use a bank to cash it. My account is still overdrawn from the last time. My chain wallet is still attached to my pants, which are next to my mattress, which is on the floor. I never bothered to get a bed frame. That would just be something else to trip me in the middle of the night. I pull the wallet over to me. These hands can’t open the snaps on the wallet. I use my teeth to open them. What is in here? Two dollars and a phone number written on a piece of paper. Who the fuck is this? I don’t recognize the name. Some dealer, I am sure. The world starts spinning. Must be dehydration. The only water I get these days is drawn up with drugs in a syringe. Ugh. I’d better lie back down.

  The throbbing in my hands is nearly unbearable. Why did I decide to binge like that? I got tired of spending my whole paycheck on mixed drinks every Friday night. Or on a bag of weed I would smoke up in one sitting. I needed something more. My friend at the bar told me he could get me some heroin. I hadn’t had any for a while. I was getting scores from medicine cabinets here and there, but rarely could I get heroin. I was excited. I would need to wait until he got back from Dayton the next day, he had told me. He promised he would make it worth the wait. He leaned into me to let me know what he had in mind. I know he was just using me for my money. He had been a junkie in San Francisco before coming to this podunk town. He knew how to get what he wanted. So did I. I am sure the gin factored into my poor decision making when I told him yes.

  The following day we were sitting on the floor of my apartment, where I trusted him to inject me in my hands with an old battered syringe. This was the only tool we had at our disposal. In fact, new syringes were so scarce, one couple I knew had spent an entire weekend hooked up to saline IVs so they had an open port to inject into. I had never even used a new syringe. I prepared the dull instrument. I had sharpened the needle on a matchbook in hopes that it would slide into my skin like butter. This was magical thinking. The fishhook needle bore into my skin with a vengeance. We nodded off, puked, ate cookies, and nodded some more. He wandered back to the bar at some point. He came back the next day smelling like cheap vodka and sweat to do it all over again. Now, a few days later, I am broke.

  Ah, of course—the number in my wallet. It starts to come back to me. This guy wants me to call him as soon as I get paid again. I owe him $20 for a shitty bag of coke that I split wit
h my friends, plus I think I might have let him feel my tits at the bar to get him to buy me a few drinks. My life is a constant series of new highs and mostly lows. I take inventory: several bags of heroin, cocaine, a few Vicodin, and cheap booze. I had a productive weekend, I think, as I sit here feeling my loneliness.

  I haven’t had my phone turned on at this apartment, or else my mother would surely be calling by now. The last time I saw her, she knew something was going on with me. It’s been a few months since then. I had gotten a DUI trying to navigate my way back to West Chester under the influence of a few too many cocktails. For me to be able to continue in school, I had to move out of my parents’ house in the suburbs and back closer to downtown Cincinnati. At least when I lived with my parents there were some constraints on my behavior. Now there were none. I imagined the next time I would see her. She would have to get my brother or someone to drive her to come get me to take me back to the house. We would do these check-ins once a month or so since the first D had come home on my report card. My mother was none too happy with what she saw as another rebellious phase. Between the black clothes and my new tattoo, my mother was wondering if I had suddenly become possessed by some kind of devil.

  “Why haven’t you called me?” she will inevitably ask.

  During my last visit, my time was spent dodging eye contact. The sunglasses concealed the dark circles under my eyes. A long-sleeved shirt hid the bruise the syringe had made on my forearm. I had lost a few pounds, but nothing drastic enough to draw much attention. She wasn’t focused on my appearance; for my mother, it is more about my mood. She’s always interested in how I answer questions. As I sat in the living room sipping my diet soda that day, my mind formulated a million excuses.

  My mom gets this look on her face when she is worried. She wears a shade of makeup that is slightly too dark and slightly too thick in a ring around her face. When she gets upset, the makeup crinkles by the corners of her eyes. I have seen this look many times. That day was the first time it was ever directed at me. Twenty years old is pretty late in life to start fucking up. I am making up for lost time. She never saw this coming. My progression from bookworm to party girl has thrown her off guard.

  I had always been the “good girl.” I was the child who had never given my parents any problems. For me, that meant I was invisible to them. My mother focused on my father, my father focused on drinking, and I focused my attention on anything that would get my mind off my misery. Books were my first fix, even before food. I could read a book a day. I could spend hours and hours sitting in my room, absorbed in the stories of other people. I liked to imagine myself as part of the story. I could forget myself as I turned those pages. It was hard for me to live in my own skin. My parents saw me as well-behaved and studious. The reality was I was extremely depressed. I didn’t know a name for it, but I knew this feeling of darkness that would overwhelm me. I would lie around watching television for days at a time trying to escape my surroundings. Inside, I felt as if I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Or break things if I could muster the energy. I remember the feeling of wanting to disappear, which as a teen became a feeling of wanting to die. It was only in hindsight that my mother realized I’d been having trouble finding ways to cope. I kept things bottled up for so many years that I was bound to implode or explode. I chose the former. Everything feels like it is crashing around me.

  During that last visit, I had stuffed my face with the food she brought to me. I hadn’t had a solid meal in days.

  “Tracey . . . I am asking you a question,” she said.

  I tried to put her off by telling her, “I have just been busy, Mom. I have school and work.”

  This was half true and half lie. I did go to work. I needed that money. School was a different story. I had been to five classes since the semester started.

  She tried to get me to look at her. I didn’t want anyone to see me, least of all her.

  “You know how I worry,” she told me. Yes. I know, I thought to myself.

  In fact, I have started to worry about myself. I occasionally hear a faint voice in the back of my mind asking me what the hell I am doing. I suppose it is what is left of my conscience. I drown that voice at happy hour. Let me live my life, I tell it. I spent so many years as a depressed fat girl, this is my time to enjoy life. I almost believe my own lies. Almost. There are moments of sobriety interlaced with the intoxication that creates humiliation. I need more and more substances to cover up the mess I have made of my life.

  My mother loves to talk on the phone on Sundays. My visits have become fewer and farther between, so she depends on those phone calls. Sunday is our day for connection. For a few moments, we can be a normal mother and daughter again. For as long as I can remember, Sunday always has been a special day to us. No matter how much my father drank during the week, he usually made an attempt to be sober on Sunday. He would get stuff done around the house, almost as if we were a normal family. He would go out on the lawn mower or do the grocery shopping. My mom would look out the window, setting her hair for the week, while he raked up the leaves. She wore a modified beehive long after it went out of style. She could only sleep on her back for fear any other position would destroy her look. She coated her hair in White Rain hairspray, sipping on her Maxwell House coffee in her frosted green mug. My father worked as an engineer, sixty- to eighty-hour workweeks with lots of travel. He was rarely home. When he was, it frequently would spiral into chaos. Mostly I was raised by my mother. She went back to work temporarily when I was six and never left. She worked as an executive secretary during a time when secretaries were known as “girls.” My parents work hard. If they ever find out what I am doing, I will be one big fucking disappointment.

  My mind is going a million miles a minute. That is one of the drawbacks of cocaine. It makes me think too much. I put my hands across my eyes. Both are throbbing in unison. I am going to go back to sleep and pray for better luck.

  Six months later, I decide it is time for me to get away from Cincinnati. “Decide” might not be the right word. My terrible choice in company has made the decision for me. My mom used to tell me, “Show me who your friends are and that will tell me who you are.” Well, my friends are slowly becoming people I would have called cutthroats and junkies. I guess I am becoming one as well. I thought I was so different from all the other users. I was a person who cared. I would take people in for a few days here and there, people off the street who were traveling through the city following the Grateful Dead or some punk rock band. They would tell me their stories of dope sickness or some other drug-related malady that I thought was surely in their head. How could some little pill or powder have such a huge hold on you? I thought to myself as I dismissed their complaints as fiction. I was somehow above them because I was too strong to get hooked on anything. I had gone all these years without any issues. It was easy to delude myself into believing I must be fine. The evidence was stacking up against me, yet I turned the cloudiest of blind eyes.

  My judgment has gotten as low as my standards. One blurry night recently changed the course of my life. I was hanging out at a bar—the way I would spend most of my evenings after work—with a friend of a friend, since my usual happy hour companion had passed out early at my place. We’d been downing some cheap fortified wine called Cisco. It’s known on the street as “liquid crack” and tastes like grape lighter fluid. This man used to go out with one of my friends. We spent our time exchanging stories about her. She was a beautiful woman with long blonde hair. She wore liquid eyeliner and always had a Newport hanging out of one corner of her mouth. I loved her and he had loved her. We had this thing in common. Everything else was so very different. He had recently been released from prison. That should have scared me, but the liquor gave me artificial courage.

  He was entertaining me with stories about the predicament he was in that was like something out of a gangster movie. He owed some money to a loan shark. Do those really exist? I thought as I sipped my gin and tonic.
I tried to focus on pacing myself so I wouldn’t throw up later. In the morning, he was planning to present the loan shark with the money: $2,240, to be exact. He had the cash with him, but he said he was a little short on his debt. I had seen the movies. “Are they going to break your legs?” I asked. He laughed at my ignorance. Not at what they would do to him, but at how I stupidly did not understand that these things really existed.

  When we finally staggered back to my apartment, our noisy laughter woke my sleeping houseguest, who got up and left quickly. No time to swap stories with two drunk fools on a Thursday night. Unfortunately, the houseguest took something else with him. Without my knowledge, he clipped my drinking partner. My friend didn’t notice that his money was gone until he woke up later, and our earlier laughter turned into terror.

  “These people are going to kill me, Tracey,” he told me frantically.

  He flipped over my mattress in vain.

  I offered naïvely, “Let me help you look for it.”

  He pushed me back down.

  “No!” he told me. “You have done quite enough.”

  If I wasn’t still so drunk, I would be more afraid.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Let me help.”

  Then I saw it. That look in his face. He picked up a pair of broken scissors and put them up against my face. A theft had turned into a hostage situation. I wasn’t going anywhere, I wasn’t doing anything, until he let me go. I instantly felt sober. He was angry and he was desperate. This made a person dangerous.