I would listen as Kilo and Craig talked about saving enough money to start a legitimate business. Josh envisioned himself as the Donald Trump of the Boise meth market. Shadoe was determined to keep on the way he was until the police tried to drag him out of his house, at which point he would, “go out with guns ablazin’.”
Me? I say I never thought about it, but as I sit here reflecting, I realize that even if I didn’t admit it to myself, I thought that my “out” was with Allan and the money he owed me. That’s not something I’m comfortable admitting, but the more I think about it, the more valid it seems. The reason I never thought about the future was because I assumed that what he meant by paying me back was taking care of me once he became stable. Once Andy and I moved in with Allan, we were partners for life as far as I was concerned. From my point of view, we got along exceedingly well, bought a house together, paid our bills together and shared holidays at each other’s parents’ houses. We did everything a married couple would do.
Of course, my view was skewed because there was no “we.” Not in his mind, anyway. I think Allan was as trapped in the situation as I was. At any point, either of us could have said, “Look, enough is enough. Let’s cut our losses and go our separate ways.” But we both stayed, pursuing our own agendas, and neither of us was honest with the other. My agenda was love; Allan’s was financial. I often wonder how different things would have been had he not been pulled out of line at the airport that day.
Chapter 13
My brother, Chuck, moved into an apartment just a block away from us. He was driving cab at that time and had visitation with his two children every other weekend. It was nice having him so close because when my niece and nephew stayed there, Andy could visit them. The three of them adored each other and when Andy spent the night, it was like party central for kids: pizza, movies, video games and lots of time at the playground of the schoolyard that bordered Chuck’s backyard.
My brother has his share of downfalls, but the one thing I will say for him is that he’s great with kids. Especially his nephew. When Andy was born, Chuck was living on a beach in Hawaii with nothing but a knapsack in which he toted his few belongings. As soon as he heard that Andy had arrived, he somehow bummed an airplane ticket off a woman he didn’t even know, and was home within forty-eight hours.
Jaden and Majel grew up with Andy as their older cousin, and there were never any questions about why he was different from other kids or why he talked so funny. They just accepted him as a surrogate big brother and loved him unconditionally.
Chuck worked nights, so our hours were similar. He was usually getting off work about the time Andy left for school. Allan started working again, and most mornings he left as soon as Andy’s bus was gone.
For a while, Chuck’s visitation schedule was opposite that of Allan’s and his son, so Andy was able to spend time with his uncle and cousins one weekend, and with Allan and his son the next. My brother and I spent our time together on weekday mornings.
“Okay” I say, clicking the phone shut. “Any bets?”
“What? Who was it? Kelly? Man, that guy’s a pain in your ass, isn’t he?” My brother, Chuck, and I are in my living room getting high at 8:30 in the morning.
“Uh huh. What’s your bet?”
“Mmmm...hole in the pocket. No wait! Left it in his other pants.”
“Okay. I’ll go with the hole in the pocket. Is that empty?” I take the glass pipe, reload and melt down the rock of meth in the bowl. “I told him to meet me at Lou’s at eleven. You about ready?”
“Let’s just finish this bowl and then I will be. The bet’s the usual, right? Double Jager?” We finished what was in the pipe and headed for Lou’s.
Lou’s is one of a couple of bars in Boise that open at nine in the morning, serving only breakfast the first couple of hours, but no alcohol until eleven-thirty.
I’m sitting perched on a barstool in front of a video slot machine toward the back of the bar. Bars aren’t built with daytime in mind, and a hard jag of sun spots me as if I’m a vaudeville act every time the back door opens. The vendors are crashing dollies bearing kegs into the back door and walk-in as they change out the empties. Liquor bottles clink and tinkle as the obscenely cheerful a.m. barkeep restocks vessels, some amber, some clear. The smell of soap steaming from the dishwasher chases the loitering stench of cigarettes and spilled beer, and the jukebox is still unconscious from last night.
It’s jarring, this early morning scene, and it sets my teeth on edge. I feel wired, weird, wanky and uneasy with the mechanics of my own body, like an aardvark trying to gavotte. The back door closes a final time and I feel the delivery truck in my chest as it rumbles out of the back lot. The bar has turned its back on the sun and I ease into the shadows cast by the lights over the pool tables while the warm glow of neon signs speak to me in jingles from the walls.
Three or four sagging figures hunch over the bar with nicotine-tinged fingers and trembling hands, waiting for the alcohol to flow. I avoid eye contact because I feel their despair in the marrow of my bones, but I wonder what their lives must be like to bring them to this shadowy place every morning. I think that demons have chased them from the sunlight and better days, when tomorrow held more than the promise of drink. I think they come here to hide. They come here to forget about the sun.
The brotherhood I share with these men is utterly lost on me. The four yards that separate us are my moat of denial. I don’t reflect these men directly, but I am their sister in a sideways world: a parallel existence where, while the details differ, we walk the same path. I am female, they are male. They are alcoholics, I’m an addict. They appear closer to the end of their lives than I do, yet in this sideways place, the path simply is, and time is irrelevant.
As I settle into my morning routine, high on a stool in front of the machine, I feel a tug at the corner of my heart. Denial of what I’ve become allows me to feel pity for my brothers. I don’t see myself as they are. I’m different. I am different. I am different. I am different. I’m a good person. Getting high is how I feel normal, and most importantly; if no one knows (my parents, society, law enforcement, my boss, my son’s teachers, etc.) then there’s no problem.
Shortly after eleven, a beam of light assaults the dim room, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Kelly coming through the back door.
“Hey,” he sidles up to me. He always sidles, like a snake. I point to the cigarette box on the table to my left. “Thanks,” he says slipping the box into his pocket. “Uh, listen, I only have half the money. I guess I must have left the rest in my other pants, but I can get it to you later today if that’s okay.”
“Chuck!” I yell. “You win! Go order yourself that drink and tell them to put it on my tab. And order me a Diet Coke, please. Extra cherries.”
“What’s that all about?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about later today. I don’t want to see you more than I have to. Just bring the money next time.” I’m still playing my machine, barely giving my attention.
“Oh, okay. Sorry about that. I guess I must have put on the wrong pants and...”
“Yeah. I know, Kelly. Look, I need to get going here pretty soon so...” I don’t even look at him throughout the exchange. It’s always the same with him. The only thing I can count on with Kelly in the three years he’s been picking up from me is that he never has all the money with him. He’s a weasel and a pain in the ass, but he’s a consistent buyer and always ends up paying eventually.
“So dancer-boy left, huh?” Chuck says bringing the drinks to our table. He’s missed Kelly’s exit, so I go into my routine for him.
“Yeah,” I say standing up. I start doing a little soft shoe. “Hey! Hey! Look over there. Don’t look over here at what I’m doing. Hey! Hey! Look over there.” My animated Kelly impression makes anyone who’s ever met him laugh. It’s the only other reason I keep him around: he provides great material for shtick.
William S. Burrough
s said, “Junk is the ultimate merchandise. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise; he degrades and simplifies the client.”
Burroughs was writing about his days as a heroin addict, but I think the same is true for all drugs. I was a junk merchant. Simplifying and degrading my clients, if only to myself, helped solidify the “us and them” mentality that kept me trapped in my poison ivory tower.
“Well,” I say half an hour later, “I have to go.” Chuck is already nodding out at his machine and I’m starting to fade, too. I need to sleep.
At home, I bury myself in my down comforter. I’m so tired that I don’t remember laying my head on the pillow. Sleep comes quickly and completely. It’s hard, cold sleep that I imagine death to be - dreamless and dense. I sleep until I hear the van in the driveway dropping off Andy, and my instincts as a mother supersede those of self-preservation.
As I transfer the bail bond line to my phone, I listen to the voices outside my window exchanging goodbyes. I smile at the sound of little boy shoes running up the sidewalk in that funny cadence that’s my symphony of delight.
It’s difficult to explain, the way Andy runs, but any parent of a child with Down syndrome knows exactly what I mean. It’s something in their gait that has to do with the hyper flexibility of their hips. It’s one of a handful of things - folds at the eyes, square hands, stick-straight hair, speech - that unify people with Down’s. You might not notice there’s anything out of the ordinary unless you or someone in your family has Down’s
When the front door opens, I tip my head back, close my eyes and smile at my favorite sound in the world. “Oh, hi Mom. It’s me. I’m home.”
Chapter 14
Despite Larry’s best efforts, Kilo was sentenced to a year in prison. He asked me to take care of his dog, Puppet, until he got out. I owed him $2,500 dollars when he went in, so I sent him money periodically and gave some to his girlfriend whenever he asked me to. Occasionally he would ask me to send her flowers or order him a magazine. Once again, I broke all the rules by doing the right thing: I paid what I owed when not doing so was the custom.
That same loyalty led Kilo to pass me on to his connection, who turned out to be Craig. I knew he had connections in Mexico, but Craig was such an unassuming guy that I never guessed he was the man over Kilo. I was relieved, though. I knew him and we had a good relationship, so the transition went smoothly. It did not go as smooth with the boys or the Laotian community.
That Kilo turned his business over to a woman was bad enough. The fact that he had gone outside his own people only made things worse.
There’s always debt in drugs. The logic is simple: when people owe, they have to keep working. The trick is to find the right balance, and it’s different with everyone. Some people do well with high debt because they can pay quickly. Some do better with a lower balance and the privilege of having a little more time to pay. It varies from person to person, but that’s why I was in debt to Garnett and especially with Kilo. Every time I brought my account current, he’d front me more product.
Before Kilo went to jail, he gave me the names of the people I’d be selling to, all of whom I already knew. He arranged for people I didn’t know to buy from those I did, and he filled me in on everyone’s quirks so I’d know what to expect.
In the beginning, everyone ripped me off. I extended to them the same conditions Kilo had, and they took advantage of it. I’d front someone an ounce and they would come back with no money asking for more. “Swear to God I’ll have most of it for you next time, man.” It pissed me off. I knew they would have been more respectful if I was a man, and they sure as hell would have been more respectful if I were an Asian man. But I was an outsider on both counts. I was the substitute teacher assigned to detention class. So I took away their hall passes and made them lie with their heads on their desks.
I didn’t want to be their mother. I didn’t want to be an outsider, but I had no choice. I cut everyone off unless they came to me with cash, and I jacked their prices up until they paid me off. After that, I slowly started fronting them again, keeping them on a short leash.
I went to visit Kilo in prison to let him know what was going on, and I talked to Craig, because putting my foot down meant things would slow down for a while.
And they did, for a couple of weeks. They said they were sorry. They tried to bargain and finally, they got pissed off and said, “Fuck you, bitch! We’ll just go somewhere else to get our shit.”
So I waited, and they all came back just as they always do, just as I knew they would. I had quality product, my prices were fair and consistent, and I either weighed the meth in front of them, or let them weigh the package themselves so they knew they were getting what they paid for. I was also discreet with no crazy bullshit. Those are rare qualities in a drug dealer and, from what I know of, nearly impossible to find in one person.
Of course they came back.
It wasn’t as though I forgot that I was dealing meth, but the line between doing business and doing illegal business kept blurring. The deeper I got and the longer I did it, the easier it was for me to envision myself as an entrepreneur rather than a criminal. I often compared myself to a Tupperware sales woman, especially when people made comments about me carrying so much meth and paraphernalia with me at all times. “If I sold Tupperware,” I’d say, “no one would say a thing about me carrying my products around with me. Why should this be any different?”
I was beginning to feel invincible.
In 2004, Andy was fourteen years old and settling in as an eighth grader at his new school. At first, I thought things were going well, although his teachers weren’t doing much communicating in his daily notebook.
I got a call one morning, just before noon, from the school nurse telling me I needed to pick up Andy immediately because he’d had an accident. I didn’t need her to explain. I knew what “accident” meant with Andy. He had diarrhea in his pants. This had happened before at school, though infrequently, but strangely, never at home. The thing I could never make anyone understand was that Andy didn’t have diarrhea. He was constipated. To explain:
Since he was a baby, he’s had terrible problems with constipation. I have all too vivid memories of he and I, both in tears, trying to get him to move his bowels. He was so tiny. So tiny that his surgical scars were still angry red slashes. I could put his whole foot in just the palm of my hand.
He’d try. He’d try so hard to go, but he couldn’t and it hurt him, and that killed me. I could feel knots when I’d press on his tummy, massaging down his abdomen trying to get things moving. Jesus, the look on his face...he was terrified. He didn’t know what was happening. All he knew was that it hurt and Mommy wasn’t stopping it. His little face was red from crying so hard, and I’ll tell you this: Andy rarely cried. The only other times I’d seen him cry was when he had to have IV’s put in, or needed to be strapped to a flat board for a CAT scan or MRI. And the truly heartbreaking thing was that since he had almost no practice at it, he still cried like a newborn baby.
His eyes were full of terror and tears, and sweat beaded on his face soaking his baby-fine hair as he pleaded with me to help him. There was nothing I could do. I would put his feet in my palms, push them to his chest, let him wrap his fists around my thumbs and together we would sob our way through it.
There were times when I thought it would split him in two. It looked like the equivalent of giving birth, and most of the time the lower part of his mucosa - the inner lining of his colon - prolapsed, falling outside of his bottom. I would take a wet wipe and gently nudge it until it worked its way back into his rectum. Afterward, I would give him a sponge bath to clean away the hot sweat that covered him, then sit and rock him long after he was asleep.
His doctor and I tried everything to treat the constipation, but nothing ever worked. As Andy got older, I think he learned that going to the bathroom is (forgive me) a
pretty shitty experience. So he would hold it as long as he could which, even in the best of circumstances, will lead to constipation that can manifest itself as diarrhea. His doctor compared it to a cork in a bottle. The cork is solid, but once it’s released, well, you know.
So I knew Andy didn’t have diarrhea, and he wasn’t sick, but this was the first time he’d had an accident at his new school and I understood their concern. I explained the situation to the school nurse and his teacher, and I got the same look I’d grown accustomed to over the years: You poor stupid woman. How can you be so cavalier about your son’s health? I’d seen it in the eyes of strangers as I shopped with Andy strapped to my chest, wheeling his oxygen tank with one hand and a grocery cart with the other. I’d seen it from people when he would cough, causing his trachea to collapse and make a wretched barking sound that I’d grown so accustomed to, I barely noticed it.
I’d seen the look from doctors, too.
When Andy was about eighteen months old, he began having what looked like seizures. He would suddenly go stiff, turn blue and lose consciousness. After a few trips to the emergency room, courtesy of Ada County paramedics, his pediatrician referred us to a neurologist who diagnosed Andy with epilepsy. “There are three choices of medication,” he told me. “Take this literature home, read it and let me know what course of action you want to take. We’ll need to start treatment immediately to prevent any permanent damage.”
I spoke with his pediatrician, who agreed with the diagnosis.
“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s epilepsy.”
“Let me explain it to you,” he said. (Long explanation complete with sketches.)
“I’m sorry, but something just doesn’t seem right. It sounds to me like diagnosis by default.”
(Heavy sigh.) “Let’s go over this again...“
Crystal Clean Page 13