I was getting bored with Sillogue, so myself and Katie began to hang around with two girls we went to school with. They seemed up for a laugh and when they told me that they sniffed air-freshener and got a great buzz off it, I was really curious. Within a few hours I had a bottle of Glade in my hand, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen. ‘Just put the bottle in a plastic bag, put it up to your mouth, spray and inhale,’ the girls said.
I was afraid. But I couldn’t let the girls know this. So without saying anything I went into the toilet and did as I was told. All it took was one blast. The air-freshener rapidly worked its way into my mouth, down into my lungs and up into my brain. ‘Ha ha ha, are ye alright in there, love?’ I could hear someone say outside the toilet. I felt fuzzy inside and the room began to spin. Reality was becoming dreamy, and before I knew it I was hallucinating. My hands were bound together with twine. My whole body was being controlled by what seemed to be a black cat. He wore a luminous yellow bandana and he spoke to me in a computerised voice. ‘Getting down to the limit. Getting down to the limit,’ he said, as he pulled on the twine, dragging my body down to the floor. He then put glue on my ear and stuck my head to the toilet bowl and there I stayed for I don’t know how long.
‘What the hell is going on?’ The toilet door swung open and there stood my grandmother. ‘What are you doing?’ she screamed, a look of disbelief on her face.
I still felt as though I were dreaming. ‘I’m stuck. I’m not able to move,’ I told her. ‘What do you mean, you’re stuck? Get up off the floor,’ she screeched and stormed off into the kitchen. ‘Come on, get out,’ I heard her say to the two girls. The fear of facing my grandmother gave me the ability to peel myself from the toilet bowl and without saying a word to her I ran out the front door.
The rest of the day became a haze. After sniffing more air-freshener, we decided to take a walk into the city centre. I was struggling to keep up with the girls and I kept drifting in and out of reality. Before I knew what was happening, my friends had disappeared. It was the middle of the night and I had no idea where I was. I was beginning to panic, but I had completely lost control over myself. Once again, I blacked out. Eventually I woke up, but somebody was carrying me. It was a man who wore a white coat. He lay me down on the pavement and vanished. It was morning time and suddenly my friends were there. ‘Where did you go? We were looking for you everywhere.’ ‘I don’t know where I was. You just left me on my own,’ I spat. I stood up and realised that my hands were black with the dirt and the front of my shirt was ripped. I felt like I had been living in a nightmare. I was just relieved that it was over. But I knew that I had another nightmare to face when I got home.
I was getting into more and more trouble at home as my behaviour began to spiral out of control. Either I would be drunk, high on air-freshener or hash, or stealing from my grandmother. I became increasingly aggressive and stroppy and I took most of my aggression out on John, whom I adored. One day, when I had just started using drugs, John lost his temper. It was dinner time and when I arrived up the garden path, stoned, he smashed a plate of food in my face, disgusted at the state of me. I was so enraged that I fought back and managed to shove him through the front window. There he lay on the front lawn, hair covered in curly kale.
It seems almost comical now, but it wasn’t then, as my family became increasingly worried about my behaviour and unsure what to do about it. My grandmother had a lot on her plate: John, her children, her job and me and, although she was aware of what I was up to, perhaps it was easier for her to think it was ‘just a phase’ than to acknowledge that it might be something more serious. Fighting turned to stealing, first just small stuff here and there, but eventually anything that wasn’t nailed down. And I became a seasoned liar, making up stories to get my family’s attention. Once I pretended the house had been broken into, and I called my auntie Jacqueline when my family were having a meal in my auntie Marion’s house, begging her to come back home. Looking back, I was crying out for some attention from my family, some recognition of the fact that I existed. I would ultimately get all the attention I wanted, in all the wrong ways.
_____
Joanne was a quiet young girl who lived in the same area as me. She had milky-blonde hair, with pale skin. She always seemed to be on her own. So, when I saw her hanging around Sillogue with my other friends I was quite surprised. She seemed really funny and down-to-earth and we got on with each other straight away. She told myself and Katie that she had a boyfriend from Poppintree. ‘He’s a bit older and he goes to all the raves,’ she said. Myself and Katie were intrigued. Raves were new to us. ‘There’s a rave on this weekend called The Pavilion,’ she continued. ‘If you want, you can come with me. I’ll introduce ye to me fella and his mates,’ she said, with a glint in her eye.
Myself and Katie could barely contain ourselves. We were so excited about going to The Pavilion. Everyone seemed to be going to these raves and I was eager to find out what all the fuss was about. After drinking a couple of cans and smoking a few joints, we made our way to meet Joanne. It was a warm night and the orange lights on the streets guided us up to Poppintree.
‘Where is this place?’ I asked, not knowing where I was going.
‘As far as I know it’s in the back fields,’ Joanne replied, as much in the dark as I was. After making our way through some bushes, I realised we were in an open field. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see a thing. I could hear dance music coming from the mid-distance. We followed its trail, with our hands held out in front of us, hoping that we wouldn’t fall in the dark.
‘Is this it?’ Katie said, disappointed, as we arrived at what seemed to be a concrete changing room for football players. I held onto Katie’s hand as we followed Joanne inside. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was used to going to innocent little parties where all the girls would sit together, giggling amongst themselves, waiting for one of the boys to ask them up for a slow set. This was in a league of its own. One that was much more dangerous. There was nobody on the door asking me for id. There was no fancy bar, and there were no disco balls hanging from the ceiling at this club.
The first thing that hit me was the body heat and the overwhelming smell of sweat. For such a small place, a lot of people fitted inside. The place was packed with kids just like me. All the boys had their tops off and everyone seemed to be in a trance, dancing exactly the same way, like puppets on a string. I was afraid and excited, all at the same time.
‘Up this way, keep going to the back,’ Joanne urged, as myself and Katie looked on in amazement. We pushed and shoved our way up to the back, which was badly lit by a couple of candles. ‘Redser, these are me mates, Katie and Rachael,’ Joanne shouted, trying to introduce us to her boyfriend. Redser had no interest in myself and my friend. He had a deranged look on his face, as if he were possessed. The dj was in the corner with one hand on his ear-phones and the other on his decks. He was playing music that I had never heard before. They called it ‘House Music’.
As my eyes began to adjust to the dark, I noticed that there were people sitting on the ground. They were hunched over, inhaling something that they were burning on tin-foil. It appeared to be hash oil, but I wasn’t sure. Joanne made her way over to one of them. She tipped him on the shoulder and he glanced up. ‘Tony, this is Katie and Rachael,’ she said again. ‘Alright,’ he said with a cylinder of tin-foil hanging from his mouth. ‘Are yiz looking for any Es?’
‘What’s Es?’ I asked.
Tony burst out laughing, smoke coming out of his mouth. ‘Yeah, right, as if yiz don’t know what Es are. D’ye want them or not?’ There was a pause. Then Tony realised that we weren’t joking. ‘Wha’—have yiz never done Es before?’
We shook our heads.
‘Ah, yiz don’t know what yiz are missing. They’re fuckin’ deadly. If yiz want, I can get ye Mad Bastards, White Doves or Mitsubishis. You’re probably better off going with the White Doves if it’s your first time, and only take a half of one.
’
‘Is everyone on Es here?’ I asked Joanne.
She looked around the room at the crush of bodies, all dancing as if in a trance. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘What will we do?’ I said to Katie, unsure if I wanted to try out this new drug. With hash, I knew where I was, but this was different. ‘D’ye wanna get some?’ Like me, Katie didn’t seem too sure, but she said yes anyway. We paid Tony ten pounds each and swallowed half an E each. We were completely unaware of what we were putting into our bodies. But everyone seemed to be having so much fun we didn’t think much of it.
‘There’s nothing happening, Joanne. How long does it take for these to work?’ I asked about twenty minutes later.
‘You should be feeling it by now,’ she said, looking as if the drug had taken hold.
‘Well, I’m not,’ I replied. ‘Will I take the other half?’
‘If ye want,’ she said, shrugging. So I took the other half and within minutes I began to feel really alert. My senses were heightened. The music was louder. My thinking was clearer. Even my body felt lighter. A lovely warm sensation was dancing its way from my toes up into my head, massaging every cell in my body and washing away all my teenage stresses. The intensity of it overwhelmed me, making it difficult for me to breathe. I was losing my balance and my eyes began to roll into the back of my head. But I had never felt this good in my whole life.
‘Katie, I’m fuckin’ out of it,’ I whispered to my friend, as if it were some sort of secret.
‘So am I,’ she said, looking around the rave as if she thought her mother was watching.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked her, feeling genuinely concerned. ‘C’mere, give us a hug.’ We embraced each other for what seemed like an eternity. Once again, I felt a rush of energy surge through my body, making myself and my best friend spin. The rave had become busier. It was at its peak and everyone was on the same wavelength. All that we wanted to do was dance.
_____
‘It takes five seconds
Five seconds of decision
Five seconds to realise your purpose here on the planet
It takes five seconds to realise that it’s time to move
It’s time to get down with it
Brothers, it’s time to testify and I want to know
Are you ready to testify...’
_____
The music penetrated my soul.
‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’ people were shouting, with their hands in the air and everyone exploded into dance. We danced until the early hours of the morning, unable to stop, high on the music.
When The Pavilion was almost empty, myself and my two friends decided to go home. ‘Jaysus, you would want a fuckin’ boat to get across to that place. Look at me, I’m full of muck,’ Katie said, as myself and Joanne laughed.
‘But it was deadly, wasn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yeah, it really was,’ I replied, still floating.
‘Ah, you’re deadly swell,’ she said.
‘So are you, and you are swell, Joanne,’ I told them.
‘I just can’t get over it. It was deadly, wasn’t it?’ Katie said again. And this is how it was, all the way home.
Soon The Pavilion became the highlight of my week. On the rare occasions that I went to school, I would sit in class fantasising about the weekend ahead. The rest of the time we would hang around the blocks, talking animatedly about different things that had happened in The Pavilion, feeling euphoric and re-living the weekend just gone.
My family were beginning to notice a change in my behaviour. I was sullen and indifferent at home and I had no interest in anything that they had to say to me. They didn’t understand me anyway, I told myself. They could never understand what my life was like now, mitching from school, staying out all day and all night without telling them a thing. I began to lie compulsively about everything, even to my friends. My appetite had disappeared and I was living on packets of crisps and chocolate. My nanny began to notice different things going missing from the house. I needed money to buy my drugs, which I was now taking every day and so I had begun to steal from them: jewellery, clothes, anything that I thought I could sell easily to buy drugs. My grandmother confronted my friends about the missing clothes and jewellery.
My friends, who were still only taking the odd E tablet at the weekends, or smoking hash, became worried about my increasing dependence. ‘D’ye see those junkies over there, Rachael,’ my boyfriend Steo said, one day, pointing to the drug addicts hanging around the shops. ‘If you keep going the way you’re going, you’ll end up like them.’
This was the funniest thing I had ever heard. ‘Me?’ I said in a high-pitched voice. ‘Look who’s talking! You’re the one that will end up like that. You’ll be hanging around, strung out to bits. But don’t worry, I’ll give ye a wave when I’m driving past in my Porsche,’ I told him arrogantly. I waited for him to laugh. But Steo didn’t find it funny.
Myself and Steo broke up not long afterwards. I had lost interest in him and everyone else in Sillogue and in the tower blocks. They were so immature, I thought to myself. They just never wanted to do anything but doss around the blocks all day, talking about the same things, day in, day out. I had other things on my mind. My new friends, Joanne and the others in Poppintree, seemed to fit better with the new me. At least they didn’t get on my case about taking drugs. And we were always guaranteed a bit of excitement.
_____
My quest to find out more about my father continued. One day, myself and Katie anxiously knocked on Marion Carey’s door. I had asked a couple of old-time junkies if they knew where she lived. I was almost certain that if anyone knew where my father was, she would be the person to tell me.
‘She’s not here, Katie. C’mon, let’s go,’ I said now, but just as we were about to walk away the door opened. I recognised the woman’s face. For a second she looked confused, then she smiled. ‘Ah, Rachael, me little princess. I knew you’d come knocking on my door. C’mon inside. Who’s this with you? Is this your little friend?’
‘Yeah, this is my friend Katie,’ I said shyly.
‘Ah, nice to meet you, love,’ she drawled. And before I knew it, she was leading us up her long dark hallway and into her kitchen. It looked just like the flat that I had lived in with my mother and father when I was a toddler. ‘I think I know why you’re here, love. You’re looking for your daddy, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, someone told me that you knew him,’ I replied.
‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. Your daddy has been waiting all these years for you to come and find him. Do you want a cup of tea? Go on into the sitting-room and make yourselves at home. I’ll be in in a minute and I’ll tell yous all about it.’
‘This isn’t happening,’ I whispered to Katie as we sat down on Marion’s shabby brown couch. I looked around the softly lit room, taking in pictures of her three little boys. I wondered if they were my half-brothers.
‘Now, loves, there yous go,’ Marion said, placing the cups in front of myself and Katie. ‘Now, tell me,’ she asked me, ‘how long have you been looking for your da?’
I told Marion everything, about my mother leaving and about my father calling to me that day from across the street. ‘Ah, Jaysus,’ she said, putting her arm around me. ‘Well, your da will be over the moon. He missed you so much and he’s always talking about ye.’
I could barely take in what she was saying. Even the word ‘da’ was alien to me. I didn’t have a da.
‘To be honest with you, chicken,’ she continued, ‘me and your da are partners. We’ve been together now for years. These are my sons Kevin and David,’ she said, showing me the photos. But she said nothing about the other boy. ‘This is my mother’s flat. Myself and your da live in Coultry. So, what I’ll do is, I’ll tell your da to meet you somewhere if you like,’ she smiled at me expectantly.
I felt anxious. Everything was happening way too fast. But I acted cool and played along. ‘Yeah, ok,’ I sa
id, hearing my voice shake.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ she continued. ‘Why don’t you meet your da on Tuesday at five o’clock outside the Kingfisher restaurant in town. I’ll make sure he’s there, ok?’
Unable to summon the courage to say anything, I just nodded and we left. My heart was in my mouth.
I didn’t know what to make of meeting my father. Although I had barely thought of him over all the years, the prospect of meeting him now, after everything that had happened with my mother, seemed overwhelming to me. What if I didn’t like him, I thought, or if he wasn’t how I imagined him to be? What was the man who used to attack my mother really like? Was he a changed man, or still the same? The whole week was tortuous. Every day dragged on and I thought Tuesday wouldn’t come quick enough. My friends in Sillogue were shocked to hear about my da and they were concerned about me meeting him after all this time. So we made a plan that, once I’d met him, they would follow me and him around town and watch his every move. For all we knew he could have been an axe murderer.
Finally, it was Tuesday. My big day and no matter how many joints I smoked, I couldn’t get rid of the anxiety gnawing at my stomach. I was on the hop from school, walking around Ballymun in my uniform, as though I were invisible. I decided to take a stroll through the shopping centre. The usual riff-raff were there, junkies doing their deals and looking like death warmed up.
Then I saw Marion Carey standing amongst them. Ah no, just keep walking, I thought to myself, almost breaking into a sprint. Then I heard her voice, calling me. ‘Rachael,’ she shouted, loud enough for the whole shopping centre to hear her. I had no choice but to turn around.
Dying to Survive Page 6