Everything I Never Wanted to Be

by Dina Kucera

  If someone said to you, “If you use drugs, you will lose your family, your job, all your money and your dignity, but your legs will feel like pudding,” what would you say? A normal person doesn’t even think twice about this choice. But addicts and alcoholics could go back and forth for hours: “My family? Pudding? All of my money? Pudding? Hmmm. What do I do?” Most of the people I know would choose the pudding. So at the end of the day, there we are, with legs that feel like pudding.

  I know my brain is wired for pudding, so I have to focus on everything I do or I will end up living behind a dumpster. For me it could happen so easily.

  I would go see my pharmacist “Julio” at his office, which is located on a sidewalk downtown. I’d try using some small talk with him: “Hi, Julio. How’s your family?”

  Julio would just get angry. “Give me the money, I’ll give you the pills, and then you walk away. Don’t fucking talk to me.”

  Drug dealers have zero customer service skills. Their PSS is about 20.

  Drug addiction is only funny if you’re a drug addict or alcoholic. It’s like when you’re a member of a particular ethnic group, you can say funny things about that ethnic group. It’s the same with addicts and alcoholics.

  I have a friend who said to one of my family members, “Hey! I hardly recognized you without the ski mask!” This family member got an idea one night, when his legs were like pudding. He went to the grocery store, got a bottle of expensive vodka, put a ski mask on and ran out. He could have been shot, but he thought it was a good idea.

  I eventually got my car back, but do you know how I got to that place of giving my car away at a house party? Pudding. All the chaos and bullshit in the entire world begins with people who have legs that feel like pudding.

  Losing your car is not the worst thing that can happen when you drink. Sometimes when you drink too much, you lose one of your kids. I don’t mean they get taken away, although that happens, too. I mean, “I can’t find my kid. There was a four-year-old right here, and now, where is that kid?”

  When Jen was two years old, I brought April home from the hospital. April was two days old.

  Jen said, “Where’d you get that baby?”

  I said, “She’s our baby now! Isn’t she cute?”

  Jen said, “Yeah. Well. You could take her back if you want.”

  I said, “Actually, Sweetie, she’s your little sister! You have to help with her and be very gentle!”

  Jen: “Can I go play now?”

  Two weeks later, I was in the kitchen where there was a big window looking out on the back yard. I could see little Jen playing on a worm toy that you sit on and it rolls. April was sleeping.

  I continue what I’m doing, going from room to room doing various things with a cigarette in my hand at all times. I walk by the back window, and I see the worm toy but no Jen. I go out the back door and yell, “Jennifer!” I walk around the outside of the house. No Jen. I go back in the house. No Jen. Now I’m panicked.

  I wake up my father—because, of course, I live with my parents. He jumps up to help, but we can’t find her. Our house is on a two acre piece of land, and the houses are separated by big plots of land. There is our house, the neighbor’s house and then a huge ditch. My dad looks down the dirt road toward the ditch and says, “Stay here.” He later tells me that he didn’t want me there if he found her in the ditch.

  So I’m still looking for Jen on the land by our house, looking up the road. Nothing. No Jen. My father comes back and says he couldn’t find her. We call the police, and they say they got a call from a person who saw a little girl walking down the street with two dogs. He picked her up and took her and the dogs to his house.

  It turns out the young man who picked Jen up is a popular boxer in Albuquerque. He has a big, pretty house. We pull up, and Jen is having the time of her life playing on the swing set with several other children. I run up to her and grab her and hug her. I say, “You cannot ever go for a walk alone! Ever!”

  She says, “I wasn’t alone. I was with the dogs.”

  We thank the boxer—thank God for him. We’re driving home and I say, “Jennifer, you cannot ever do that again!”

  She says, “Okay” and looks out the window. Then she looks at me and says, “So you still have that baby?”

  I also lost Carly. I was in the kitchen again. I seem to lose children when I go in the kitchen.

  Carly is three. She walks into the kitchen, and she is wearing hot pink sweat pants, those plastic high heels covered with shiny jewels you get from Kmart, no shirt, a necklace, and a ton of my makeup on her eyelids and lips. She looks like a three-year-old stripper. She’s holding her plastic pink purse and pushing her Fisher Price plastic shopping cart.

  She says to me, “I’m going shopping now.”

  I say, “Okay! Get me some bread and some dish soap!”

  About ten minutes later I notice how quiet it is. I yell, “Carly!” No answer. I walk around the house. No Carly. I look out the front window and see that the screen to the window is kicked out and the front wood gate is open. I run out the front door. I look both ways up and down the street. Nothing. So I just start to run in the direction of the closest busy street.

  I’m running and I see a Hispanic lady standing on the street. As I run by she says in a very thick Hispanic accent, “There’s a baby, just walking down that street.”

  I run the direction she points. I come around the corner where the elementary school is and look up the street. On the corner of the busy street is Carly with her high heels and shopping cart, and a lady leaning over talking to her. I run to the corner. I get there completely out of breath and say to the lady, “Thank God you saw her.”

  The lady said she worked at the school and was teaching her class when she saw Carly come around the corner. The woman didn’t see any adults with Carly, so she left her classroom, followed Carly, and then stopped her at the busy street.

  The first thing Carly said to the teacher was, “Can you cross me? I’m not allowed to step off the curb.”

  The teacher said, “Where is your mother?”

  Carly told her, “My mother sent me to get bread and soap.”

  That’s when I got there.

  I should have known we would have problems when a three-year-old could kick out a screen window with plastic pink pumps.

  To my credit, I never lost April. Not once.

  When Carly was two, my father died of cancer. By the time they found the cancer, it had spread throughout his body. They checked him into the hospital and told him he could have a surgery that would prolong his life for about two weeks, or he could skip the surgery and they would do their best to make him comfortable. All of us adult kids and Mom were standing around his bed. Dad decided he didn’t want the surgery. All his organs were shutting down, and two weeks would just add more pain.

  The hospital began giving Dad morphine. He was groggy for a few days. Then they began giving him huge doses of morphine. After that he fell asleep and never really did wake up, but he lived another eight days. So for eight days, all six of us kids and my mother sat around Dad’s bed, watching him sleep.

  When my father got sick, we tried the loud desperate praying, but he inevitably ended up in the hospital. Right before my father died, he called each of his children into his hospital room, I guess to say something meaningful.

  Each sibling came out crying and said something like, “He said he was proud of me.”

  Then the next one: “He said he loved me and he was proud I was his son!”

  The next one: “He said he loved me and he wanted me to be happy in my life!”

  Then me. I walked in and leaned next to him and waited for something really great. He whispered, “Watch out for the little guy.”

  What? Watch out for the little guy? What does that mean?

  I walked out and the group was looking at me. I wasn’t crying. I said, “Dad said for me to watch out for the little guy.”

  Silence. My brother look
ed down and started shuffling his feet.

  Watch out for the little guy? Really? Are you kidding?

  My siblings and I are close, but not so close that we can sit in a tiny room with our comatose father for eight days. We all have separate lives and children, and see each other when we can, but not often. My sister, Lisa, is a take-control kind of person. She spent eight days taking care of Dad’s blankets and socks, and fixing pillows, and most of all, calling the nurses nonstop. She’d say, “He needs this or that. What about this? Can you fix that?” This went on all day and night. Call the nurse, call the nurse.

  So we began to make jokes about it. Lisa got agitated. We took more breaks outside because she had things under control. We wanted to help somehow, but we couldn’t. Lisa was fixing and fluffing and pushing the nurse button. This was how Lisa got through it, and actually, she’s always been this way. She is an organizer, a manager. If you want something done, call Lisa.

  And in the end, we were all thankful that Lisa was Lisa. We didn’t really want to fluff the pillows or change Dad’s socks. So mostly we sat. We looked at the floor. Had some small talk. Dad would move and we would all quickly look at him. Then nothing. Then he stopped moving.

  Five days in, we got comfortable with Dad lying in the middle of the room in a coma. One brother threw a wadded up piece of paper at another brother right over Dad’s comatose body. The victim responded by wadding up a bigger piece of paper and launching it full speed at the other brother, and almost knocked his eye out.

  “Christ, you idiot,” said my brother. “You hit me in the eye. Lisa, I need some medical attention.”

  We all tried not to laugh, which caused us to laugh hysterically, even Mom.

  We talked about holidays and funny things that had happened over the years. We’d laugh and the nurse would come and scold us for being too rowdy. She’d leave and we’d laugh again. We’d go to lunch and bring back food for Lisa and Mom. I’d go up and down the elevator millions of times so me and my brothers could smoke.

  We sat in that room for so long that when we walked outside, the sun hurt our eyes. Every now and then, someone would just start crying. We would comfort that person and take the elevator down to smoke again. An hour or so later, another sibling would start crying, or Mom would start crying. At one point, we were all crying. Just quiet tears rolling down our faces.

  Carly was a baby so I went home at night to sleep. One morning, Lisa called and said Dad had passed away.

  It was weird. I didn’t really feel anything about it. I jumped up and went to the hospital to be with my mom and my brothers and sister.

  We all walked out of the hospital and stood quietly on the sidewalk as if we didn’t know what to do next. It was a sunny day. For us the world had stopped just for a moment. Nothing was different, yet everything was different. But it was as if the rest of the world had already moved on. People were rushing by with briefcases... people were sitting on the grass... a guy was playing with his dog.

  We were all wondering what we could have said or should have said... wishing Dad would have said a particular thing. You have your dad your whole life, and then you don’t. It’s a very strange feeling.

  I can see my mom standing there staring out at the world, looking lost. Her husband of thirty-eight years no longer here. It was just the oddest feeling. As if it wasn’t real. My mom shook her head, stepped off the curb, and then walked to her car holding a plastic bag with my father’s jeans and shirt neatly folded inside.

  She went back to work for financial reasons five days after my father died. But for months, my brother, Patrick, said Mom would lie in her bed at night and cry herself to sleep. Then wake up the next day and smile, get dressed, and take the bus to work.

  My father watched me drink my way through life as an active alcoholic for ten years before he died, and never said anything about it to me. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t say something. Like, “I know of Alcoholics Anonymous and you might think about going there.” Or “I think your drinking is making your life difficult.” Or “Hey, you drunk fuck.” Why didn’t he say something?

  All three of my daughters have said they can’t stand it when I give them “input” on their lives. They say they know I’m going to butt into their lives when I say, “May I make a suggestion?” They say that means that if they don’t take my suggestion, I’ll continue to “suggest” it until they do. I like to see it as me reaching my hand out and feeling comfortable with them getting angry with me. I can take the heat. We may be at dinner and I’ll say, “You should go to rehab. Can you pass me the mustard?”

  When Carly was twelve, we lived in a very affluent part of Phoenix, but we were the designated poor people. I had started my job as a checker at the grocery store, and John installed flooring.

  Carly was just beginning her descent into hell. One day, the mall security called me and said I had to come and pick Carly up because she got caught smoking. Cigarettes.

  I picked her up and we were driving home. I said to her, “You know, every day I hear stories about other people’s kids. They’re playing hockey, or they’re honor students, or they’re in the school play. When am I going to get to tell a story?”

  Carly looked at me and said, “Yeah, that’s sort of like how I hear stories from other kids at my school. They talk about their father the doctor or their mother the lawyer. I guess neither of us has a story to tell.”

  I was silent. My first thought was, Just backhand her. Surprise her with a powerful backhand. There’s your story. Then I thought, Wow, she is so smart. She should be a lawyer.

  Time out is for little kids, and tough love is for older kids.

  When my girls were little, “time out” meant the time it took me to get to you. Go ahead and take that time to relax. Take a breather. But by the time I get to you, the entire situation better have taken a dramatic change for the better.

  When my girls were older, “tough love” meant that when you were on crystal meth, I would hang you upside down and shake my money out of your pocket.

  Tough love is different for rich people and poor people. For rich people, tough love means taking something away from your kid. That doesn’t work for poor people. There is nothing to take away.

  I come from generation after generation of poor people. There are no stories of Great Uncle Whatever doing great things. If you needed twenty bucks, you couldn’t get it from Cousin Bob because he lived in a box behind a Kmart. So the kids that made up the branches of my family tree knew ahead of time, you will not get an education past high school. At least not from your parents. You will not get a car at graduation. You will not go to a rehab in the mountains with a stream running through it. You will be sent off into the world with a new pair of jeans and a Snickers bar. Good luck, kid. The world is your oyster.

  At the same time, I acknowledge that it is possible to do it all on your own, and many people in my family have. Two of my brothers graduated from college and paid for it themselves while working full time to pay rent, car payments and take care of their families. But they knew ahead of time that’s the way it had to happen or it wasn’t going to happen. I knew the same thing, but I made different choices. My choices were babies and pudding, not necessarily in that order.

  As a result, if one of my kids became a drug addict, I had nothing to dangle in front of her as an incentive to quit. I couldn’t say to Carly, “Stop using drugs or I won’t pay for your college or your apartment or your car.” The only thing I could say was, “Don’t use drugs because you’ll die.” How lame is that? That doesn’t work. I could punish her by taking something away from her, but I have never given Carly anything I could take back as a punishment— and yes, that’s my own fault. But if I hadn’t made the shitty choices I’ve made, this book would be called, My Sweet Life Will Rock Your World. In the end, the consequences of using drugs are less complicated for poor people. If you use, you die. Period.

  During one of her breakups from Andy, Carly was getting drugs from an
older crowd of men who had just gotten out of prison. The men were also skinheads. Those were the darkest days of my entire life.

  The men had several teenage girls coming in and out of their meth house. The young girls prostituted and gave the money to the men for drugs.

  One of the older men gave Carly large amounts of meth in a syringe. Carly said it was too much. He said it wasn’t, gave it to her, and then raped her while she was high. Carly was so high, she didn’t even remember being raped. She found out about it later, by accident.

  Carly is sitting in a room at the meth house, shooting up. While the drugs are kicking in, something strange happens: she hears her own voice coming from the next room.

  She is high and confused, so she thinks maybe she is hearing wrong. She goes to the door to investigate. She finds that it really is her voice. It’s coming from a video. The video is a recording of the skinhead drug-dealer ex-con raping Carly after he’s drugged her. The skinhead rapist is showing the video to one of the other fuck bags.

  In the video, Carly’s voice says, “I don’t want to.”

  The skinhead says, “Are we going to do this the hard way?”

  Carly says, “I’m only seventeen.”

  Then the man rapes her.

  My fear for Carly while she was around these men was completely suffocating. This was different than Phil. Phil was trying to be a big-shot drug dealer, but he didn’t really have a clue. The skinhead ex-cons were long-time, hard-core violent criminals. And Carly was only seventeen. But we didn’t know where the men lived, and Carly wouldn’t answer her phone.

  Something about this change in Carly took a piece out of my heart. Every day watching Carly become someone I didn’t know anymore... this was like a final confirmation that this girl wasn’t our daughter anymore. She was someone else. There was nothing left of Carly. It felt like a death. I was shattered. I have never in my life been so consumed with sadness.