Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction

by James Henderson

  I started for the door…stopped. One rock would lead to another and then another. Once I started I couldn’t stop. All my money gone, I would get Blue’s money out of her purse. And that would be one more shitty thing I didn’t want to think about.

  The people upstairs arguing, it took forever for me to fall asleep.

  * * * * *

  Saturday morning I walked to the lobby and asked the man behind the Plexiglas for Blue’s last name. He wouldn’t tell me. A snide Arabic comment was on my tongue, but I swallowed it, remembering that Blue’s full name was on the prescription bottles in her bathroom. I was in there when Blue’s brother walked in, caught me holding her presciption bottle.

  Looking frightened and disgusted, he said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Jerry, I’m looking for Blue’s name. Guy up front wouldn’t give it to me.” He wasn’t believing it. “What hospital she’s in?”

  “That’s none of your damn business. I’m calling the police.”

  He started out the door and I rushed after him, touched him on the shoulder. “Look, man…”

  He turned, frowning and brushing the trench coat where I touched him as if bird shit were there. He and Blue didn’t look related at all, same skin complexion but his features were rounder, even his head, under a combed but nappy-looking small afro.

  I said, “Blue’s my friend. She’s the one helped me out when I got here.”

  He got a cell phone out the pocket of the trench coat. “Tell the police.”

  “Jerry, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “My name is Gene,” he said and flipped the cover on the cell phone.

  Where the hell I get Jerry from? “Gene, I was the one call the paramedics for Blue. I got her purse in my room, all her money’s there.” He hesitated. “You want, I’ll give it to you.”

  He snapped the cell phone shut. “Go get it.”

  I did, and he looked at me differently when he opened it and saw the money there.

  The cell phone back in his pocket, he said, “You from Mississippi?” I told him no. “You talk like you’re from Mississippi. You had breakfast?”

  In a tan Volvo, Gene drove me to a Denny’s on Front Street, five blocks down from the Isle of Capri Casino. He ordered a cup of coffee and I a Grand Slam breakfast and a glass of grape juice.

  I said, “You don’t mind, we leave here I’d like to visit Blue.”

  He shook his head. “I just left her, I’m not going back today.”

  “What hospital she’s in?”

  He stirred his coffee, added cream but no sugar. “What intentions you have for Blue?”

  “I told you she’s my friend.” The waitress brought my plate. “What hospital she’s in? I can find it.”

  “If she wanted you to visit her she would’ve told you where she was going.”

  The pancakes were stiff. “She was out of it, Gene.”

  “Has she told you anything about her past?”

  “No.” The eggs were hard, greasy.

  “I didn’t think so. Blue isn’t my blood sister. My parents adopted her when she was twelve years old. Her mother, Sissy Cartwright, was a heroin addict. She was in jail when she learned she was HIV positive, hung herself with a sheet the next day. Blue behaved fairly well the first two years living with us, then she started hanging with bad girls, started doing drugs, hard drugs. Excuse me, but I didn’t get your name.”

  “John.”

  “John, my parents provide for her financially. Blue doesn’t have to live in that rat hole. She chooses to. That’s my point. I’ve tried to explain it to my parents. Some people you can’t help. Some people are born losers. Drugs, alcohol, smoking, promiscuity, they’ll find something to ruin their life. It’s sad, tragic, unfortunate, but all the money in world can’t help them. The welfare of the weak shouldn’t be the burden of the strong.”

  The food suddenly tasted spoiled. “What?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  “What happens when your turn comes around?”

  Gene didn’t answer.

  “What the hell you trying to tell me, man?”

  “I’m telling you it’s bad enough my parents are supporting a doper who gave up on life a long time ago. But I’ll be damned if I sit by and…” He trailed off, sipped his coffee. “This isn’t Blue’s first time in the hospital, and I doubt it will be her last. The last thing she needs is a man in her life. In her condition it won’t take much to tip her over the edge.”

  “She’s twenty-two years old, right?” He nodded. “Then she’s grown! Let me tell you one other thing.” I wiped my mouth, tossed the napkin on the plate and stood up. “I got a job, I don’t need your mama and daddy’s money.”

  “Where you work?” he said. “Where?”

  I walked out.

  Chapter 27

  A white van delivered Blue in the same clothes she’d left in to her room in a wheelchair. She’d been gone two weeks. The crap her asshole brother said stopped me from immediately going over to see how she was doing. An hour later we both stuck our heads out the door.

  “You okay?” Her skin looked pale, but her eyes were bright.

  “I’m fine. Why did you call the cavalry?”

  “I thought you were dying.”

  Blue mumbled something and stared at the seagulls flying over the landfill a rock’s throw away. She invited me in and I sat down on the bed.

  “Do me a favor,” she said. “Never give my brother anything that belongs to me.”

  “Okay.”

  “You wanna do something?”

  She’d changed into a blue jogging suit, dual white stripes running down the sides, the tips of her breasts obvious in it. “Yeah, I sure do.”

  “I’m talking cocaine, what are you talking about?”

  Pulling that top off. “I stopped getting high, haven’t smoked anything in two weeks.”

  “Really?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  Blue, leaning against the doorframe, crossed her arms, covering the tips. “Two weeks, huh? Are you attending meetings?”

  “What meetings?”

  * * * * *

  In a conference room on the second floor of a Methodist Church in North Kansas City, I sipped coffee and watched Blue hug several people, more than one asking where she’d been, what she’d been up to.

  Everyone, a dozen or more, took a seat in metal chairs placed in a circle. Blue sat next to me, her legs crossed, a whiff of vanilla about her.

  A muscular, biker-type said, “Hi, my name is Roy and I’m a dope fiend and a alcoholic.”

  Huh?

  The guy sitting next to him gave his name and said he was a drug addict. I looked at Blue; she was whispering to the woman on her right. The confessions were working around to us. She hadn’t mentioned any of this during the drive over. I pretended to read the Narcotic Anonymous book Blue had given me.

  Blue’s turn, she said, “My name is Blue, I’m a drug addict and alcoholic.”

  Everyone was waiting on me. “Uh…my name is John…and I came with Blue.”

  Blue burst out laughing.

  A white woman said, “What’s important is that you came. One day at a time.”

  No one here struck me as a drug addict, except the obscenely tattooed Roy, and even he was neatly dressed in a starched camouflaged shirt, khaki pants, and hiking boots. Middle-class blue-collar workers and housewives with too much time on their hands.

  A short, geeky-looking white boy named Glen was talking. I guessed him a pothead. Or a caffeine addict. He mentioned a million dollars and got my full attention.

  “…that’s how much I spent on drugs. I’m not bragging, I can’t believe it myself. My wife, Liz, ex-wife rather, she says it was more than that. See, my rationalization was, ‘I’m not doing crack, heroin, meth, therefore I’m not a drug addict.’ But I was spending over a thousand dollars a day on painkillers. Oxycontin, Dil
audid, Percodan, Demerol, you name it. On the street one pill cost twenty to a hundred dollars.” He tapped a finger on his temple. “Popping thirty to forty pills a day and I’m not a drug addict, huh?

  “The printing shop my dad owned he opened in sixty-two, forty-one years ago. It was the only job my brothers and I knew. My son was supposed to work there. In one year I ran it into the ground. Half the million I mentioned came from checks I wrote on the shop. My mom and my brothers wanted to prosecute me, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. He and mom are now living in government housing, bankrupt, too old to start over again. But I wasn’t a drug addict, huh?” He paused, lighted a cigarette.

  The entire room was silent, everyone watching him, this lanky, baby-faced white boy in a green plaid shirt, green Dockers, and penny loafers.

  He continued: “Liz and I were arguing one day. She said if I didn’t have a problem give her the pills. I did. A few hours later I told her to give them back. She wouldn’t. I demanded she give them back. ‘No, you said you can take em or leave em. You’re leaving these.’ I hit her…with my fist. I’d never hit a woman in my life. She fell down and I hit her again and again, until she told me where the pills were. But I wasn’t a drug addict, huh? I didn’t use crack, heroin, meth, huh?

  “My son, Bryan, called nine-one-one. Dad, the same man I’d sent to the poor house, posted my bail, begged me to get help. Three days later I was back in jail, caught in a drugstore after closing time. The judge gave me a break, sentenced me to three months in rehab. I wasn’t a crackhead, I didn’t belong in jail or rehab, huh? My first night there I sneaked out, copped some Dilaudid, came back and pretended all was well. Next day I was on my way to prison.

  “That’s when I started thinking maybe I had a problem. When I was being led to a cell and all the homeboys were jeering at me like I was a piece of meat, I knew I had a problem. Three years, two months, nine days and fifteen hours, that’s how much time I spent in prison the first trip. I wasn’t sexually assaulted…I was raped, more than once. When I got out I swore I would never go back, but I started doing the same thing that led me there, popping painkillers.

  “Six months later I was arrested again, forging a prescription. I started praying. I broke down in front of the judge, told him I was a drug addict, I couldn’t stop using, please don’t send me back to prison. He sentenced me to a year, but this time I wised up, went to NA meetings like this one, talked to a counselor. It finally sunk in. My problem wasn’t painkillers--I didn’t pop em in prison; I could live without them. My problem was my inability to deal with my problems. Anger, resentment, frustration, guilt, especially guilt, kicked my ass.

  “The gist of it was, I didn’t like myself. Painkillers told me I was okay, told me there was nothing wrong with my thinking--everyone else was fucked up! Not me! Huh?” He laughed. “Addiction is a cunning liar, very convincing. The book says it’ll lie and lead you to one of three places: jail, an insane asylum, or a cemetery. I’ve been to jail, also done a three-week stint in the nuthouse, so there’s only one place left for me to go. Twenty-nine-years-old I’ve got a lot of life left, and I don’t want to go there. No doubt about it, I am a drug addict. I’ve been clean two years and four months now, and I intend to stay clean, one day at a time.”

  Everyone started clapping. The meeting ended with everyone standing and holding hands and saying a prayer.

  * * * * *

  Before us was a tollbooth entrance to the World of Fun Amusement Park. Dark, the loopy roller coaster ride looked like a steel dragon. Behind us, over a hill, a current of headlights and taillights flowed north and south on I435.

  Blue was eating a Wendy’s double cheeseburger and sucking on a Frosty. I wasn’t hungry; my mind on Doreen, where it had been since leaving the meeting. Elvis sang In The Ghetto on the radio.

  Chewing, Blue said, “At first I didn’t like that song. Thought Elvis was playing the race card. Mac Davis wrote it. My mother loved Elvis.”

  “What?”

  “Glen’s story struck a nerve, didn’t it? Reminded you of something, or someone, didn’t it?”

  She sucked on the Frosty; the sound grated on my nerves.

  I said, “Why are we here?”

  “I come here sometimes, enjoy the quiet. My mother used to bring me here. Are you married?”

  “Sorta, why you ask?”

  “Sorta? Either you are or you aren’t.”

  The cup was empty, but she kept sucking on the straw, like a damn kid.

  “Do you have to do that?”

  “Am I getting on your nerves?” I didn’t answer, and she sucked louder. “Your wife, what’s she like?”

  A silly damn kid. “What’s your husband like?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “What’s your boyfriend like then?”

  “I don’t have one. Never had one. You’re my first boyfriend.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Blue leaned over and kissed me, quick. “No, I’m not,” she said, laughing, and started the Cherokee.

  Back in her room, Blue said, “John, you take something out you need to put something in its place. A balance. Something to keep your mind occupied till you’re stronger.”

  The drive back, I told her I wasn’t attending another Narcotic Anonymous meeting. I didn’t need to spill my guts to a group of strangers to stay clean.

  “What you have in mind?” The kiss made me want more.

  Blue crossed the room and picked up a book on the floor. “Reading,” she said. “It works for me sometimes.”

  “I don’t read books.”

  “John, if you don’t read you’ll get stuck. Stuck on very few ideas. Stuck on the last opinion you heard. Stuck on stupid.” She sat in the middle of the bed. “Come here.”

  I lay my head on her thigh. Blue opened the book and began to read.

  The beginning eluded me; I was too focused on her body, the silky patch only a few inches away. I crossed my legs to conceal an erection.

  Then the story captured my attention. Sounder, that was the title, written by William H. Armstrong. The main character, The Boy, was so poor his parents couldn’t even afford him a name. His father stole a ham to feed his family, the police came and arrested him, shooting the dog, Sounder, on the way out.

  I’d seen the movie version, but the book was far more interesting. Or maybe it was the way Blue read the story, her voice clear and even, as if she were reading to an audience.

  In the morning I woke up with Blue in my arms, both of us fully clothed, the book still in her hand. I kissed her softly on her pretty lips and got up and got ready for work.

  Nine hours later I walked into Blue’s room and an atrocious odor hit me. I thought the commode had overflowed.

  Blue was standing over a pot on the hot plate, smiling. “I cooked you a country dinner. Chitterlings and crackling corn bread.”

  I looked in the pot at three chitterlings swimming in gray, greasy water. The smell almost gagged me. She had to be kidding. “Did you clean them?”

  “That was the hard part. A ten-pound container and only three looked worth keeping. I threw the rest out.” She took a plastic container out of the microwave. Black bumps broke the surface of half the cornbread. “I wasn’t sure if the crackling went on top or you mixed them in the batter. I tried both.”

  She wasn’t kidding.

  Blue put two chitterlings and a slice of cornbread on a paper plate and handed it to me. “Tell me what you think.”

  Hurt her feelings or die of cholera?

  The cornbread was soggy with chitterling juice but still crunchy, the cracklings not fully cooked. I put the plate on the dresser. “Delicious. Mmm mmm. Let me wash my hands.” In the bathroom I gargled with Listerine.

  When I came out Blue handed me the plate again. “Taste them. I need to know before I cook them again.”

  “No,” I said, putting the plate down, “I want to taste you,” and kissed her. Her lips tasted
like peppermint. We kissed a long time and then I tried to work her toward the bed. She resisted. “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t do tricks, John. I’ll grind, but that’s as far as I go.”

  “Grind? What’s that?”

  “We do it with our clothes on.” She moved to the bed, lay on her back. “Come here, I’ll show you.”

  A long time we grinded, humping with clothes on, the equivalent of handless masturbation. Each time I tried to pull out the package, or pull down her blue jeans, she said, “Uh-uh.”

  I got up, had had enough, the package sore and rubbed raw. But for the satisfied look on her face, I’d have told her that people from Arkansas didn’t grind.

  Later, we were sitting in a theater watching Training Day. Not once in the movie did Denzel grind--the one sex scene he and the girl took off all their clothes. Blue clapped at the end. All was fine with her: she’d grind.

  In the Cherokee she said, “You didn’t like the movie, did you?”

  “It was okay.”

  Blue took my hand and rubbed it against her face. “You want to go home and grind some more?”

  No, I’d rather jerk off with sandpaper. “We’ll see when we get there.”

  * * * * *

  Three weeks later, I moved in with Blue. It made sense: I was at her place day and night. Blue cooked dinner and I threw it out once her back was turned. Weekends we went to the casino or a movie. At night she read to me, and now we were halfway through Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown.

  Blue said Zora Neale Hurston and BeBe Moore Campbell were her favorite authors, and said I should discover my favorite authors on my own. But I simply couldn’t get into a story unless Blue was reading it.

  I started sleeping in my shorts, but Blue kept her clothes on, in case we decided to grind in the wee hours of night. We’d grind twice more since the first time, me thinking that it would excite her to do the real thing. Wrong. Painfully wrong.