While I stare at Mary, a door opens behind me. I spin around and see a priest standing there. For a moment I am afraid. I can tell he’s trying not to look surprised as he takes in my clothes, my face, my bare feet. He looks surprised anyway. He smiles, but it’s a tight smile. He seems tired, exasperated by me already. He says hello and asks me to follow him. I don’t want to follow. I want to stay here with Mary, because she is not tired. I want to tell him it’s okay, he can go, I’ve found what I need. But I don’t say anything. I just stand up and let him lead me out of Mary’s room and into a dark, narrow hallway. There is no carpet anymore and my bare feet are freezing. He stops in front of a closed door, opens it, and walks inside. I assume I am to follow him in, but first I sit down on the tiles to put my shoes back on. It takes me forever to fasten all the tiny straps. My face burns, my nausea is taking over, and I wish he’d tell me to just leave the shoes off and come inside barefoot. But he just waits and watches.
When I’m finally done, I look up and he gestures toward a chair on the opposite side of his big wooden desk. I stand up, walk to the chair, and sit down. My chair is small and plastic; his chair is large and leather. I want to ask him for a blanket to cover and warm myself, but I stay quiet. I sit in my chair and look at him and he asks me why I’m there. I tell him about the abortion and then about the drinking and the drugs because I need an excuse for the abortion. I try to tell the story sadly, try to make my voice tremble, try to sound young and lost. I feel like I just got found four minutes ago, but it seems important to be lost when I speak to this man. That is my job here, and I need to do my job so he can do his and we can be done. He sits far back in his chair, folds his hands in front of his face, and listens to me. His face does not change, not at all, the whole time I talk. The only emotion he shows is seriousness. This is all very, very serious, and it seems of utmost importance to him that I know that.
I don’t like it in here. The light is harsh and fluorescent and I don’t want to be lit up with all this artificial light, looking like I look, feeling like I feel. And it is not the right temperature for me in here. The priest is watching me shake and I know he’s thinking that I’m some kind of junkie, and I am, but I’m also just cold. He has on long pants and long sleeves and a high collar. He’s covered; my skin’s exposed. I want to go back to where Mary and I were warm and lit up by the gentle, true, real, forgiving flames of people’s prayers.
Just a moment ago, I was with Mary, who seemed to understand that sometimes love hurts so much that you have to cut it off with booze and food and abortions. But now I am here with this priest, God’s spokesman, and he is folding his hands at me and he disapproves of all this nonsense. Moments ago, God was a mother, but now God is an administrator. I was in God’s womb, but now I’m in God’s office, waiting to hear my punishment. Through his folded hands, the priest starts saying strange things like: “When you see your baby in heaven, your baby will not be angry with you—he’ll just be waiting patiently for you at heaven’s gate. Your baby forgives you. Your baby will receive God’s full acceptance because God does not hold children accountable for the sins of their parents.” He delivers these facts flatly, without emotion, like he’s reading me my Miranda rights, like he’s delivered these lines a hundred times before. How could he possibly know these things about me and God and what happens after an abortion? And how can this man know how it feels to be young and shocked and bad and good and hard and tender, pregnant and afraid? Mary knows.
Finally it seems the priest is almost finished. He says: “You, too, can be forgiven, if first you will repent.” Then he is silent.
It is clear I’m supposed to respond now. I tell him, “Okay, then. I’ll repent. Where do I start? Who should I apologize to? The baby? My parents? Craig? You? Everyone?” I wonder if he knows that all I do is apologize. That’s all I do. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for being me. My whole life is an apology, and that hasn’t made a damn thing better. Mary had known. She had understood: A woman doesn’t need to be told, yet again, that she’s bad. She needs to be told that she’s good. Mary didn’t ask me to repent. She asked me to rest. But sitting in the priest’s office, I see how the system works here. I have to repent to him so I can go rest with her. I do what I’m told. I apologize. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I want to be better.” He nods again and then offers some magic words I’m to repeat twenty times. After I say them, I will be forgiven.
I nod and flash back twenty years. I’m at the neighborhood pool waiting in line to buy ice cream. The ice cream man is selling Popsicles for a dollar each, while a high school kid who has broken into the truck is passing out free Popsicles from the back. The ice cream man hasn’t a clue what’s going on behind him. I wonder if the priest knows that while he’s up here charging for forgiveness, Mary’s back there handing it out for free. He must not know, which is why he is insisting that God’s forgiveness has a price. I am pretending to believe this and promising to pay so I can get back to Mary, who is at the back of the truck hosting a free-for-all.
The priest tells me I can go and I am flooded with relief. I want only to be back in the candlelit room where I can put my bare feet on the warm carpet and breathe in the smell of God. I keep my voice very small and tell the priest, “Thank you, thank you very much.” He dismisses me in a way meant to assert his disapproval, and I am not surprised. What surprised me was Mary’s approval. I need to get back to where I’m approved of. I excuse myself and I wobble back through the dark hallway, past the glass doors, down the aisle, and back to Mary. As I sit there in front of the candles, Mary, and her baby, I remember a story about churches letting homeless people sleep in their pews. I feel homeless. I wonder if the priest will let me sleep here tonight. But then I hear the door open again. It is the most painful sound I can imagine, worse than silence, worse than music. I don’t turn around this time. The priest clears his throat and tells me it’s time to go. He needs to lock up. I want to cry. Instead I beg. “At night? Why do you close at night? That’s when people need to come.”
He says, “There are many valuable things in here.”
“I know. I know there are,” I tell him. But he doesn’t know what I mean, so I say, “I’m sorry. I’m going.” I stand up and walk out. There is no time to say good-bye to Mary and her baby.
In the lobby I see a basin full of holy water. I stop in front of it and sink both of my hands into the water, all the way up past my wrists. Then I push open the heavy doors and walk out into the cool night. I stumble back through the parking lot and into my car. As soon as I’m back in the driver’s seat I stare at my hands. I lick the holy water off of my fingers so it will be inside me. Then I start my car and drive. I cry the whole way home. I do not cry because of my abortion or my parents or my alcoholism. I cry because I wanted to stay with Mary. As I cry, I realize that I am not acting sad. I am not acting. I am just sad. I feel sad, but real. Mary saw the good me trapped inside. Someone saw, and that makes me feel like the good me is real. I wish so much that the priest wasn’t in charge over there. I wish I’d lit a candle for myself. I wish I’d asked Mary to remember me.
4
I STAY SOBER FOR TWO WEEKS. My sobriety strategy is to outrun my addiction, to become a moving target so my pain has nowhere to land. I stay late at work and plan extra projects for my students. I rearrange the furniture in my house and shop for far too many shoes. When I watch TV, I pace back and forth in my living room. I make it through the days by never slowing down, but as soon as the sun sets, my anxiety rises. Craig tries to help me through the nights by showing up at my house with fake beer. We sit side by side on the couch and drink, but it’s as if we’re trying to get somewhere without any gas. Our conversation is forced and our sex, awkward. Alcohol drove us into the same world, but now we’re just living in parallel worlds. Without the alcohol we feel alone, together.
One night Craig insists that we get out and go to a party a mutual friend is hosting. It sounds like a terrible idea to me, but I tag alon
g to avoid complete aloneness. The second we walk into the party room, I’m back in high school trying to look aloof in the midst of a low-grade panic attack. I don’t know where to stand or who to stand with or what to do with my hands or how to arrange my face. People keep offering me drinks and I don’t know how to respond. I watch them flitting and flirting and drinking and I feel furious with them. Why are they all laughing? What is so funny? I can’t imagine what was ever so funny. And why are we all just standing around in this room? Is this what we’ve been doing for the past decade? Just standing around? I can’t imagine what was ever so interesting about this. Still, I desperately want back in. I want back into their world, but I don’t have the booze I need to get there. I stay in a corner, and when I can’t handle wallowing in my awkwardness and unbelonging for another moment, I tell Craig that he needs to take me home. On the way out I stare at the vodka, whiskey, and rum bottles on the counter and I think, There I am. My personality, my courage, and my sense of humor are trapped inside those bottles and I can’t get to them. I am not in here, I am in there. What is the point of getting sober if I don’t even like my sober self? I start hiding bottles of vodka under my bed and take swigs before I go anywhere. I tell myself that drinking is really just part of getting ready. Booze is a tool of transformation, much like my makeup and my hair dryer. It’s part of the armor my representative needs to survive out there. I will not send her out unprepared again. If life doesn’t want me to drink, then life should quit being so damn scary.
Eventually, of course, I start drinking out in the open again. “I’m actually fine,” I tell Craig, Christy, and Dana. “I’ll limit myself to a few drinks a night.” They don’t say a word. They don’t have to. Within a week, I’m blacking out nightly again. Each afternoon Craig and the girls tell me what I did the night before. I listen with smiles and shame. If you don’t remember half of your life, does it even count? Did you really live it? I pass six more months of my life this way; half alive. Half alive is all the alive I can take.
* * *
One day in May, I wake up at noon, disoriented and dehydrated. I roll over and see that Craig is gone. He’s left a note by the bed: “Call you tonight!” I can tell that Dana and Christy are gone, too, because the house is silent. That’s the difference between us; we all drink, but Craig and the girls do other things, too. Not me. I drink and I recover from drinking. Alternating between those requires my whole self. I put my feet on the floor, pull on sweatpants and a hoodie, and wrap my blanket tight around me. I slowly make it down the stairs, grab a water bottle and a jar of peanut butter, and sit down in front of the TV. As soon as I get comfortable, I catch a whiff of the full ashtray on the coffee table and a wave of nausea carries me to the bathroom. Now I’m on the floor, arms around the toilet. I just have to get it all out and I’ll be fine. My body is racked, and between bouts of puking I rest my cheek on the cool toilet seat. When I think I’m finished, I make my way to the couch, using the wall and the edges of our other furniture to steady myself. The nausea doesn’t stop. Two hours later, I’m still sitting on the floor, leaning over the toilet. It occurs to me that last night my breasts looked extra full in my tight top. I cup my hand underneath one of them and lift. Too much volume, I think, too heavy, too tender. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I rest my cheek on the seat again.
By five, I’m stable enough to drive to the drugstore. I walk over to the pharmacy, choose the cheapest pregnancy test, and grab a bottle of pills for my pounding headache. I place both in front of the cashier and keep my head down. When I get home I go straight to the bathroom to pee on the stick. Then I place the test on the counter next to the sink and sit down on the floor to wait. I feel the chill of the bathroom tiles on the back of my thighs and the solidity of the wall against my back. I sit there until I’m certain that three minutes have passed. I don’t want to stand again so I pull myself up a bit on the edge of the sink and reach blindly until I can wrap my fingers around the test and pull it down into my lap. My eyes are closed. More than anything, I don’t want to have to open them. I open them. There is a small blue cross in the window. I pick up the instructions sitting next to me and read them to confirm that the cross means yes. Yes, you’re pregnant. I’m pregnant.
At first I only feel overwhelming thirst. I use the wall to help me slowly stand up, and since there’s no glass, I lean over, cup my hands under the running faucet, and carry handful after handful of water to my mouth. Water splashes all over my face and down my hoodie and soon I’m soaking wet. I sit back down and stare at the little blue cross. What happens next does not feel like a decision, but a discovery.
I become aware, there on the floor, that I will have this baby. I am hit with a wave of shame at this decision—more shame, even, than I had ending my last pregnancy. I look down and see my shaking hands, my dirty pants, the filthy bathroom floor. I am a drunk. I am a bulimic. I cannot love a child, because all I do is hurt the people I love. I cannot teach someone else how to live because I am only half alive. There is no one on earth, including me, who’d consider me worthy of motherhood. And yet. As I stare at that little blue cross, it is impossible for me to deny that someone decided I was worthy. Someone, something, sent this invitation. So many things are true at once: I am empty, alone, addicted—and still, invited. I wonder who this persistent inviter is. I think of Mary and her baby and her approval of me. I think of how she invited me toward her just as I was. I think about how she passed out forgiveness and worthiness like grace was a free-for-all. And I get stuck on that phrase as it runs through my mind. Free for all. Maybe grace is free. Free for the taking. Maybe it’s even free for me. This free-for-all overwhelms me, fills me, covers me, convinces me. I decide to believe. Something in me says yes to the idea that there is a God and that this God is trying to speak to me, trying to love me, trying to invite me back to life. I decide to believe in a God who believes in a girl like me.
The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I’ve been waiting. Are you ready to make something beautiful with me? I look at the blue cross and decide I will let it be. I will stop deeming myself unworthy of invitations and trust the inviter. I will test out the ridiculous, nonsensical possibility that somehow, in some way I can’t yet see, I will rise to meet this call.
Yes, my soul says, even though all I see is evidence to the contrary, I will believe I am worthy. I brace myself in case there’s a response. Yes, I say, once more, thank you. Consider this my RSVP. Plus one. I would like to come back to life now, please. I would like to become a mother. What now?
I look up at the ceiling, hoping to see God, but I only see brown stains from a water leak. I close my eyes and remember Mary. She is holding her baby boy and she is smiling and her eyes insist that no one is angry with me, they’ve just been waiting for a yes. It’s time to begin, she is saying. But I am afraid and confused and young and single and pregnant. So am I, Mary says. And then, as I sit on the floor, I remember that today is Mother’s Day. This is the day. Let it be.
I feel warmth and a perfect peace until the next truth surfaces as slowly and solidly as the little blue cross had: Having this baby will mean getting sober. Oh, my God. This is the difference between God and booze. God requires something of us. The booze numbs the pain but God insists on nothing short of healing. God deals only with truth and the truth will set you free, but it will hurt so badly first. Sobering up will be like walking toward my own crucifixion. That’s what it will take, though. That’s what it will take to rise.
I reach up, open the bathroom door, and crawl out into the hallway. I need to get to my phone. I feel afraid out here, because the hallway is big and empty and I need to be held. I stand up, run to my room, grab my phone, and carry it back to the tiny bathroom. I lock the door, sit back down on the tiles, and prop myself up against the wall again. I am still holding the test. I will not let it go. It is my pro
of that I’m invited. I call my sister. She answers on the second ring. “I need help, Sister. I need to get better. I don’t know what to do.”
“Where are you?” she says.
“On my bathroom floor.”
“Stay still. I’ll be there in a half hour.”
On the path of our lives, this is where my sister’s footsteps rejoin mine. She was miles and miles ahead of me, but the moment she heard the words she’d been waiting to hear—the moment she heard I need help—she turned around and doubled back. She ran as fast as she could, sand flying, tears streaming, returning to the exact place I’d sunk to the sand nearly twenty years before. When she reached me, she leaned over, grabbed my hand, and helped me stand. My legs were wobbly so she held on tight. She never asked for an explanation or an apology. She just said, I’m here.
* * *
We pull up to a church in a part of town I’ve never been. We climb the front stairs, open the doors, walk past the church offices, past the sanctuary, and down into the basement where the meeting’s being held. I open another door and sit down in a circle with the first group of honest people I’ve met since leaving the mental hospital. They look tired and banged up, but real. There are no representatives in this circle. When the meeting begins, there is a language spoken that I recognize as truth. I say nothing and that’s okay. There is no social normalcy I am responsible for maintaining. The jig is up for us, thank God. These are the folks who are ready to quit pretending and begin again. I feel safe with them. On the way home from the meeting I tell my sister I’m going to drive to Craig’s and tell him about the baby. She asks if she can take me, and I say, “No, this part I need to do alone. It’s time for me to quit pretending and begin again.”
Love Warrior Page 5