Angela goes into the kitchen to retrieve a small square of foil and half a straw. My heart races, and my hands clam up in anticipation. I worry, what if the hype is true? What if it is so great that addiction follows on the heels of this one experiment? Or what if we overestimate my dose and my heart stops? What if . . .
Meth-heads and chemical labels wrapped in skulls and crossbones parade through my thoughts: Drano and battery acid, filthy torn rags for clothes, rotted-out teeth, cold medicine, a bathtub stained brown and crusted with excrement and vomit. Even the delivery system is questionable. Angela creases the square of foil down the middle and empties the rocks into the middle. "Wanna go first?"
I shake my head no, expecting her to smirk and call me a pussy, but instead, she gives me a sympathetic smile and puts the straw between her lips. She flicks the lighter and holds it to the foil just under the rocks. Smoke rises as they start to melt. The smoke, from its burnt marriage of plastic and aluminum, has a bluish-yellow tinge to it that should be green but is not. I feel gross just watching her, even dirtier when she hands me the paraphernalia. I struggle to balance everything without dropping the rocks or melting the straw. She offers to light it for me and takes back the foil and the lighter.
The smoke tastes even more pungent than it smells, like I am sucking pesticides through a straw. Is this what roaches feel like when bug bombs go off? This is nothing like smoking weed or snorting coke, enjoyable activities in and of themselves with the fresh green taste of one and the numbing tingle of the other. No, this, this is absolutely and completely fucking disgusting!
There is enough for both of us to have three hits. It is not a surprise when it has no immediate effect on me. Angela starts to climb after her first hit, yet I feel nothing but dirtiness through the last one. Like cocaine and shrooms and every other drug I have ever tried, it needs something added to the mix before I can feel the proper effect. A few hits off of the pipe should do the trick, but even that just leaves me feeling gross, and I hop in the shower to wash the white trash off.
Meth’s torrid high comes out of nowhere. One moment I am rinsing the shampoo from my hair, trying to will the darkness from my mind, and the next I cannot concentrate on even the simplest task as I am overtaken by a manic state so extreme it feels unreal. With it, there is the ravenous need to do something. NOW. What that something is, that is not clear just yet, but it is very, very imperative—that much I do know. My mind whirls and twirls at warp speed, searching its own furthest corners for clues. I scrub my body from head to toe and do not miss even the smallest inch. Body wash, loofah, exfoliant. Must get clean. But this uneasy high cannot be scrubbed away.
This is a different kind of upper than what I am used to. Sadly, it fails to provide the sense of serenity that I am in dire need of. Crystal Meth does not give me hope; it does not reassure me that all will be right with the world. Instead, it burdens me with a sense of urgency and nags me with worry. It is a horrible drug, and I want it to go away. It is also unlike any other drug in that I cannot figure out how to turn it off. It is torture, and it haunts me to move, move, move, move! It is not just the psychological torment that is bothering me, either. My body feels sick, flu-like, one continuous hack as it attempts to expel the chemicals. If this drug succeeds in staving off a mental breakdown, it will be because I am too distracted by how shitty I feel to actually break down.
And then it finally clicks. I know what must be done! I must go to Aunt Rose! She needs me right now, and I need her. I hop out of the shower and yell to Angela that we need to leave. "Right now!"
"Where are we going?"
"To see my aunt."
I do not like driving on meth any better than I like being on meth period. My vision moves faster than the car, and I do everything too soon: stopping before stop signs and turning before curbs have cleared. Good thing the crisis center is only a few blocks from home.
When we arrive, I am ushered into the same interview room where I first met Dr. Novotny. This time, it is not a long wait, and Dr. Brown joins me just moments after I take a seat. He is somber, his greeting no more than a nod. I smile and await the good news while he struggles to put the bad into words. "Something went wrong."
I smile again. This time it is a nervous smile. "What do you mean? What do you mean something went wrong?" My words grow faster and louder, and soon I am standing, demanding to know, "What went wrong?"
Dr. Brown asks me to take it easy, have a seat. "Getting upset is not going to help your aunt."
My head bows in embarrassment as I sit back down and grasp around for the reins to reality. Is the situation as big as it seems? Are my reactions out of scale? Methed out of my gourd, it is hard to tell. What looks normal at the start appears exaggerated and menacing in the echoes of its memory. A conscious effort to shove all of that angry energy down the deep dark hole that is my right leg results in an incessant tapping of my foot. Next I crack my knuckles, keep cracking them even when there are no more pops or snaps left. But then, somehow, I summon all of my willpower and repeat the question in calm, restrained measure: "What went wrong?"
"Well, that’s the weird thing; we’re not really sure." He furrows his brow and shuffles some papers on the table in front of him. "We did everything right. And we’ve checked all the machines, all of the wires; nothing was defective."
He pauses for a while. Stalls. I just stare at him until he clears his throat and continues, "Instead, your aunt experienced," he pauses again, "your aunt experienced a full-body seizure." He had promised me controlled and localized; he promised the shock would do its job in the brain and leave everything else alone. Dr. Brown is silent again like he is waiting for me to respond. But what can I say when just a dribble from the dam will turn into a full-on flood? So I just stare at him and wait for the rest. Three or four long seconds later, he concedes, "On the one hand, she is no longer catatonic. But on the other, she is a complete delusional mess."
"Delusional?"
"Yes," he reaffirms. "She believes she is dead."
Holy hell, this was a bad day to experiment. No, that is not true. I would not have had the courage to be here if it were not for the insane importance meth focused on this mission. Now that I am here, the mission must be seen through. My aunt needs me even if she is difficult to take.
"What do you mean she believes she is dead?"
Dr. Brown shrugs and clasps his hands together so that his knuckles turn white. "For whatever reason, we can’t figure out why, your aunt woke up during the procedure. She had a major seizure which she apparently interpreted as her death, and now she very much believes that she is dead."
"But she isn’t dead?"
"No, no," he shakes his head adamantly. "She is very much alive. Her speech is a little slurred, and her short-term memory is shot, but that is to be expected with seizures of that magnitude."
"I don’t understand." He assured me electroshock therapy was a safe and effective procedure. He had not mentioned anything about potential side effects or adverse reactions. "I thought she was going to be sedated. You said . . . you said that only her feet and hands would twitch. You said it was nothing like the movies . . ." A tear starts to form in the corner of my eye. "This sounds exactly like the movies." It falls down my cheek, a trail of regret to my chin.
He reaches across the table and grabs my hand. Instinctually, I pull back. My skin feels sick enough from the inside; the outside, I fear, is downright disgusting, as if the dirty drug can be felt through my epidermis. "We had no reason to think that something like this would happen to your aunt, Jane. We would have never performed the procedure if we had any reason at all to believe something like this would happen."
It makes me wonder, "How often does something like this happen?"
The question catches him off guard. "I," he stumbles, "I don’t know for sure. It certainly isn’t very common. I have never seen anything like it."
"How often does something go wrong in general? How often is someone shocked into a ful
l-on seizure?"
"I, I," again, he stutters. "I, I don’t know the exact number."
"How about just your best guess? What? One in a thousand? One in a hundred? More?" My blood is about to hit the boiling point. The meth sweat starts on my forehead, and a cough hacks in my lungs, hollow and hoarse, the poison worsening the hint of a cold I have battled over the past couple of days.
Finally, he admits the truth: "I don’t have the faintest idea."
I lean back in my chair, my arms folded across my chest, my voice threatening. "You mean to tell me that you recommend this treatment to patients and their families, but you haven’t the faintest idea about the side effects?"
He looks off to the left and stares at the wall as if he is searching for the proper words, the perfect argument, the defense that will get me off of his back, the clause that will make it all OK. Whatever it is, he never finds it and changes the subject instead. "Would you like to see your aunt?"
I follow him to the back of the ward and down a short hallway lined by metal doors, each with no more than a three-by-three window. A guard paces back and forth, peering in the miniature windows as he sees fit. Dr. Brown calls for him to unlock room four. My aunt is in a locked room. My aunt is in crisis, she believes that she is dead, and they have locked her up away from life on the back ward. What sense does that make? The guard takes a key card from his right breast pocket and swipes it in front of the lock on room four. He pushes the door open, and the doctor leads me in.
It is a real-life padded room, like in the movies but much smaller. It is hard to fathom how a person could possibly get better while confined to a space small enough to drive one mad all on its own. Aunt Rose sits in the middle of the room and rocks back forth on her tailbone. She mutters nonstop to herself, but I can only catch bits and pieces here and there. And she is butt-ass naked.
Dr. Brown explains, "She tried to strangle herself with her hospital gown."
I consider it for a moment and then ask him why someone who is convinced she is already dead would try to kill herself. Of course, he does not have any more of an answer for this than he does for anything I ask.
"Rose?" he calls.
She does not respond. "Can I just have some time with her by myself?"
"It really isn’t safe," he protests.
"I’ll be fine." I roll my eyes; who is this guy kidding? "Can I have a gown for her please?"
I am surprised when he obliges. Perhaps he can see the determination, or maybe even the illusive mission, in my eyes. Dr. Brown leaves, and the guard returns with the hospital gown. "If you need help," he instructs, "yell or make some noise, and I will come get you, OK?"
"Yeah, sure . . ." These people do not know my aunt at all.
"Knock on the window when you’re done, and I’ll open the door for you."
I kneel down a couple of feet in front of my aunt, but she does not acknowledge me. Her eyes are open, but she does not see me. Her lips move, but she does not speak to me. She continues to rock back and forth.
"Rose?"
Mumble, mumble, mutter. She throws a screech in here and there.
"Rose?" I hold the gown out to her. "How about you get dressed, Rose."
12
(Rose) My final judgment stands before me—the one I've wronged the most, the one who I've hurt and failed and denied. Now it'll all be brought out in the open. I must confess! I must confess before my sins are paraded out in front of her. It's my only hope for redemption. Hell's nothing compared to the evils that have been done here on Earth.
13
Aunt Rose will not take the gown from me, but she does raise her voice so that I can hear her better. Her words are garbled and come out in strings and slurs of lucid vocabulary buried in a bog of madness.
14
(Rose) I don’t know where to begin; there’s so much to confess. I hope that you’ll understand that not everything’s my fault, and I did what I did with the choices that were available to me. Maybe things would've been different if I’d had better options. Maybe things would be very different for both of us right now. But that’s life. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. It still doesn't seem fair.
Regardless, as I leave this life, I need you to know how sorry I am for everything. For all of the ways that I've done you wrong from the moment you were conceived until now. I never told anyone the truth about what happened. They all said I was a slut. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. When I told my mother I was pregnant, hate burned in her eyes, and she said, "Serves you right for fucking around." I was a virgin, but there was no telling her that. She never gave me the chance to explain.
Your grandmother never could spare an ounce of love for me. My whole life, all she had left after she showered Darla with affection was criticism and blame. Even when I was just a small child, she picked the most ridiculous fights. Like if I left a carton of milk on the counter or forgot to take out the trash. She’d dig into me. Take her whole shitty day out on me over something stupid. One night I was fifteen, we got into such a terrible screaming rumble that I ran out. A friend was having a party, and he had stolen a bottle of gin from his parents’ liquor cabinet for us to share. So I drank and drank and drank away the fight along with all of my mother’s hate.
I can’t say exactly what happened, but I woke up with my so-called friend on top of me—INSIDE of me! I screamed but he covered my mouth. When he was done, he spit on me. I felt so dirty. I have never been clean again since that night. I have never been free from his demons.
And I never got the chance to weigh my options, either. I only had a vague understanding of reproduction. I had missed my period, yeah, but it was not something I ever paid much attention to, and I was probably in denial more than anything. By the time my belly forced me to face the obvious, abortion was no longer an option.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just . . .
[I bite my upper lip fighting tears. Not sure if I can go on.]
Six months after he did that to me, people started asking questions. I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret forever, but I sure tried. The demons got worse as you grew inside of me. It was like they were growing with you. Their voices got louder and louder until I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I came up with all sorts of rituals to keep myself calm: bowing in entryways, snapping my fingers with personal pronouns, checking and rechecking the locks on the doors and the knobs on the stove. But I lost control of the rituals—repeated them over and over.
Everyone tried to convince me that adoption was the best choice. I was too young, too irresponsible, too unstable, too wild. I refused to consider it. I was determined to bear my cross. Even if that meant being at war with the fetus inside of me, the product of my stolen innocence. To carry a child and give it away, I knew, would destroy me more than anything.
But I'd already been destroyed. When they took you away, it was just the icing on the cake.
They were right of course. I couldn’t care for you. It hurt to hold you. Every time I saw you, I relived the whole thing. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry, Jane. I'm so sorry! I wanted to love you!
But I got a second chance, and I tried my best to do right by you even if I could never tell you the truth. Your forgiveness is all I ask for. Please, please forgive me.
15
With her final apology—for all the ways in which she believes she has wronged me, all of the lies she has told, all of the secrets she has kept—Rose lies down on the flimsy mat that serves as her bed, crosses her arms over her chest, and goes to sleep for what she believes to be the last time.
Overcome by a peculiar calm, I leave her to rest in peace. Maybe it is shock, denial, or simply that everything has yet to sink in, I don’t know.
Back at Angela’s car, she asks, "How’d it go?"
I brush her off with the standard "fine" and ask her to drive me home. This dreadful high has finally started to dissipate, and all I can think about is curling up in bed. "I thought this shit was supposed to la
st for like a whole day or some shit?" I ask, leaning the seat back as far as it will go, shutting my eyes for the short ride home.
"I don’t think we did enough," she sighs. "Are you coming down already too?"
"Uh-huh," I nod. "I’m glad it’s over. That shit was stupid."
An hour later, I am in bed but near tears. My muscles ache, every single one. Shit, my whole body hurts, from my bones all the way through to my pores. I am sick to my stomach as well but too dehydrated to throw up and too nauseous to eat or drink. All I want is French fries. "Please don’t go to work," I beg Angela. "I need you to stay and take care of me."
"Shit, then who is going to take care of me?"
"Call in sick." I pout. "And go to McDonald’s for some fries."
16
(Julia) This is bullshit. How did I end up living in Felony Flats? Living next to tweakers and child molesters but the rent’s the same as what I paid for my duplex on the north side of town. My duplex had new carpet, lawn maintenance, and washer/dryer included. This place has broken stairs, smelly neighbors, and fleas in the ratty-ass old carpet. There’s a notice from the city sanitation department stuck to my neighbor’s door.
But I’m not about to let it stop the party.
Everything is still in boxes except the stereo and the dominoes. Daemon’s been spending more and more time with his other bitch, but he is here for me tonight. So is his cousin Chauncy and his partner Beanie. The only homegirl that comes through is Jane. The group dynamics are strange, and I find myself having to choose my battles. Daemon and Jane are still on the outs over missed calls, voicemails, and liquor that didn’t belong to either one of them. Chauncy is after Jane’s ass. He’s fighting with his baby mama and on the hunt for a revenge fuck. And Beanie is all about egging everyone on.
Jane. Page 29