Dying to Survive

by Rachael Keogh

  Then I saw him. I knew it was him straight away. My father. He was standing there with all the junkies. My heart sank.

  ‘C’mere, love, for a minute,’ Marion said, waving me over. I was dizzy and felt weak at the knees. ‘This is your daddy, Rachael.’ She motioned towards the man standing beside her.

  I looked at his worn-out face. Years of using drugs had obviously taken their toll. His brown hair was long and greasy and his shiny black bomber jacket was like something from the eighties. I immediately knew that I hadn’t got my fashion sense from him. He was gazing at me lovingly. He came to me and held me in his arms. He smelt of old musk. When he pulled away I could tell that he was crying. ‘I can’t believe how grown up you’ve got,’ he said with pride, as he ushered me away from his friends. ‘You look just like your mother. How is she anyway?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s ok,’ I said, trying to hide my fear.

  ‘She doesn’t know that you’re meeting me, does she?’

  ‘No. They all told me that you were dead.’

  He shook his head and smiled, as though he wasn’t one bit surprised. ‘Rachael, I need to tell you something, before anyone else does. You’ve probably already guessed. I’m a drug addict.’

  Although this was perfectly obvious, part of me was disappointed, but the other part thought, this is cool. I have a young da who takes drugs. Deadly. ‘Yeah, I kinda knew by the people that you’re hanging around with,’ I told him, eyeing his friends. ‘I sometimes take drugs as well,’ I told him, like he was my new best friend and I was trying to impress him.

  He laughed, ‘You’re joking,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m serious, I smoke hash and sometimes I take acid,’ I brazenly told him.

  ‘Who’s giving you the drugs?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, just people around the area.’

  ‘Ok, we’ll talk more about it later.’

  He’d better not start giving me lectures about drugs, I thought. That’d be rich, coming from him. ‘Yeah, I’ll see you at five,’ I said, and walked off into the shopping centre, unable to believe whether the encounter I’d had was real.

  _____

  At five o’clock that evening, I waited outside the Kingfisher restaurant for my father. My friends stood patiently across the road—after I had met my father earlier in the day, I had run all the way back to Sillogue to tell them all the gossip. We were now on an adventure and my friends were my bodyguards, keeping me safe from my junkie da.

  He arrived half an hour late and my friends were getting bored. We decided to go for something to eat—father and daughter, our first meal together. I was already freaked out after our meeting earlier that day and when we got to the restaurant my father sat down beside me, way too close for comfort. I noticed people looking at us. Everyone thinks that I’m his girlfriend, I thought in horror. Then he put his arm around my shoulder. Eww, get your arm off me, I thought, cringing in my own skin. After all my daydreaming about my father, I began to wonder who this stranger sitting beside me was. Was this what real fathers and daughters did together? I had no idea. But I knew that it felt horrible.

  My friends were nowhere to be seen and I was beginning to panic. I could see my da’s lips moving. He was saying something about my ma getting a barring order against him. He had wanted to contact me, but my family wouldn’t let him see me. I couldn’t take in what he was saying: Get me out of here, get me out of here, I was screaming in my head. My da wasn’t doing anything wrong—he was just trying to be a father as he saw it. But I couldn’t bear it. It just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t get away from him quick enough. And when I did, I felt really let down. He wasn’t what I had hoped for. I just wanted to cry and I was embarrassed to say that this man was my father.

  _____

  By now I was lost. Lost in my own world of glass and it was about to shatter even more. The questions went round and round in my head: How could my mother do this? How could she not tell me about my father? Why did she keep it a secret? I loved her so much and wanted nothing more than to be like her and be loved by her. But she had lied to me.

  I was so angry with my whole family. But it was a silent and muted anger, one that was poisonous and slowly beginning to fester inside me. I wanted nothing to do with my family any more. They had all lied to me. And my mother didn’t care anyway. She would dutifully call every Saturday, but although she was there physically, emotionally she seemed detached. No matter what I did, it just wasn’t enough to get her attention; it seemed to me that she just didn’t want to know. Maybe she doesn’t like me because I’m my da’s daughter. Maybe she just wants to forget about that part of her life. And that’s why she left me with my grandparents, I thought. Well, I’d show her. I wouldn’t let her forget about me that quickly.

  Chapter 5

  NO GOING BACK

  ‘We’ll get twelve Es—two each for Friday, Saturday and Sunday,’ I proposed to Joanne, trying to be organised. We had been given two tickets for a rave in the city centre. Everyone was buzzing about this place and I had started to feel like I was missing out on some serious action.

  ‘Yeah, cool,’ Joanne said, as we stood in front of our dealer. Her eyes were wide with excitement. The rave didn’t start until around eleven o’clock, so we decided to take an E each and walk into town. It didn’t take long for the E to come up on us. We were full of energy and I felt like I could walk all the way to the moon. We chatted to each other the whole time and we got in to town in the blink of an eye, it seemed.

  ‘Sorry, but you’re not getting in,’ the bouncer said dismissively when we arrived at the club.

  ‘Why not?’ we asked indignantly.

  ‘You’re just not. You’re not old enough for a start and you’re not dressed appropriately.’ I looked down at my purple Patagonia jacket, my jeans and brand new Air Max trainers. And there was me thinking that I looked great. I didn’t understand though. He was letting people in just as young as us and they didn’t seem to be dressed appropriately either. What was his problem? I pulled Joanne aside. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get in. Just wait for a while and we’ll ask him again.’ I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I was getting into the Rave no matter what I had to do. The E had taken full-blown effect, but I was no longer feeling energetic. I wanted to lie down on the ground and go to sleep. I needed to be stimulated to bring me back up. But it needed to be quick.

  I noticed people walking around the back way of the club and I wondered if there was another way in. There was. We couldn’t believe our luck. Oh my God, I thought. The Pavilion was the Mickey Mouse Club in comparison to this place. I could barely see in front of me. The smoke machine coughed out so much smoke that I didn’t know where I was going. But I quickly found my way to the toilet and swallowed another E.

  When I glanced in the mirror I realised why the bouncer had turned us away. I looked like a coal-man. My face was black with the dirt, but I had no idea how it had happened. A few minutes later I took another E and then another one. My ‘organised’ plan for the weekend went up in smoke and before long I had taken Joanne’s Es as well, before returning to the dance floor.

  ‘C’mon, get up and don’t be scagging,’ I heard somebody say, as they shook my shoulder. But I couldn’t move. I shook my head and tried to focus on the music: ‘Drugs taking their lives, giving them drugs, taking their lives away.’ The Empirion track provoked emotions so intense that they had me knocked to the floor. I looked on in awe at everyone dancing. They were like an army of robots. Then I saw Joanne. She was like a banshee. Her hair had turned white, falling all the way down to her ankles. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I watched her in great wonder as she swayed from side to side. Despite the encouragement of others to get up and dance, I stayed on the floor for the whole night.

  It wasn’t until I got outside into the air that I started to come back to life. ‘I can’t go home like this, Joanne. My uncle Laurence will know that I took something,’ I told her, trying to keep my jaws still. ‘I need something to hel
p me come down. I’m fuckin’ flying.’ I had been told about heroin and how good it was at helping people to come down. ‘Will we see if we can get a bit of that stuff off Tony? I heard it brings you down nicely,’ I said to Joanne. Tony was one of the dealers at The Pavilion.

  She didn’t need convincing. ‘Yeah, let’s go to The Pavilion.’

  Tony was there, sitting down the back as usual. He was only too happy to give us some heroin and he even agreed to show us how to do it. ‘Here, put the tutor in your mouth and suck when you see the smoke coming out,’ he ordered. I was apprehensive, knowing already that if I liked it I would probably be doing it every day, along with the other drugs I was taking. But then I told myself, I wouldn’t be doing it every day because I was addicted. I would do it just because I wanted to. And I could stop when I wanted to as well. I was way too clever to become addicted like my da: I would never let myself go that far.

  It was as though Tony could read my mind. ‘Just don’t think about it. It’s not going to kill ye,’ he reassured me, as he began to burn the heroin. The little brown blob of heroin rolled its way down the tin-foil. I carefully followed it with my tutor, feeling the smoke enter my lungs, tasting like burned toffee on the back of my mouth. After doing two or three lines, I could feel it taking hold. It crawled its way through my body, wrapping me up in a warm, cosy blanket and holding me protectively like a mother. Making me feel like a baby again. This was the feeling that I had longed for all my life. I instantly fell in love.

  _____

  My predictions had become a reality. Myself and Joanne started smoking heroin every day. All my friends were doing it now. Gangs of us, up on the thirteenth floor in the Hedges tower in Ballymun, leaving tin-foil traces all over the walls.

  My family sensed that my drug-taking had reached a new level and they began to watch me more closely. One day I was on my way to the flats when I sensed that I was being followed. They must think that I was born yesterday, I thought to myself, knowing full well that my mother and auntie Jacqueline were following me. I stopped in my tracks and turned around and waved at them. ‘Hello, I can see you,’ I shouted across to them, as they tried to hide themselves behind the health centre. I walked over to them. ‘What are you following me for?’

  ‘Rachael, we know exactly what you’re up to. You’re taking heroin, aren’t you?’ said my mother, her voice trembling.

  ‘No. Who told you that?’ I couldn’t believe that she had found out.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who told us. We know you are,’ she replied. ‘And you’re taking things from the house so you can pay for your drugs. Where are you going now?’ she asked.

  ‘Never you mind. I’m just going over to my friend.’

  ‘Who’s your friend? Your father, is it?’

  My heart was in my mouth. ‘How could it be my father when he’s dead?’ I spat, glaring at her.

  ‘Rachael, we know that you found out about him. You don’t understand what type of person he is. We were only trying to protect you,’ my mother implored.

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t need you to protect me, I can do that myself. So leave me alone,’ I roared. I ran off as fast as I could, away from the two of them. I was in a rage. How dare my mother offer to protect me, now, when it was too late! Where was she when I really needed her? I certainly didn’t need her now.

  I needed to get a bit of gear. I thought of my da, who was living in the same block. He had split up with Marion after they’d had a big row. He had met another girl. She was a drug-addict as well and they lived next door to each other. Maybe he’d lend me some money. I knocked on the door of the girlfriend’s flat. I didn’t beat around the bush. ‘Any chance of lending me twenty pounds?’ I asked him.

  ‘What’s it for?

  ‘A bag of gear.’

  He laughed. ‘No, I haven’t got it.’

  ‘Well, then, have you any gear?’

  ‘I have, but I’m not giving it to you.’

  My eyes lit up. I knew that I would get around him. ‘Why not? I’m going to do it anyway. So at least you know that I won’t be getting into any trouble. I won’t go out. I’ll do it here. Please, I’m really sick. You’re hardly going to see me sick, are you?’ I looked at him imploringly.

  He looked at me sympathetically. ‘You can’t. I have no tin-foil.’

  ‘Ok then, I’ll have a turn-on.’ Instead of smoking the drug, I would inject it. I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just desperate to get something into me.

  ‘Not a chance. I won’t be responsible for giving you your first turn-on.’ My da was horrified.

  ‘Look, it’s only a matter of time before I do it anyway. If you don’t give it to me, I’ll have to go shop-lifting or something and I could end up getting arrested. If I don’t get arrested, I’m going to have a turn-on anyway. So you might as well just give it to me.’ I was using every skill in manipulation that I had.

  He eventually agreed. ‘Ok, fair enough. I can’t believe you’ve talked me into this. C’mon into my flat and I’ll do it for you.’

  I watched him intently as he put the heroin on the spoon along with the citric acid. He then lit a flame underneath the spoon until the powder turned to a dark brown, bubbling liquid. As he prepared the turn-on, my head was screaming. ‘What are you doing, Rachael?’ the voice said. Your da’s about to give you a turn-on, one bit of me thought, unable to believe what I was seeing. This isn’t what fathers do. This isn’t right. But the other part of me kept urging him on: ‘Don’t think about it. Just do it.’ My head wouldn’t stop. But I couldn’t say no. I had already gone too far.

  My da took my arm and wrapped a tourniquet around it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, I thought, wanting nothing more than for him to do it. He was just about to stick the needle in my arm when suddenly his girlfriend walked in. We were caught in the act and my da’s face turned a ghostly white.

  ‘Con Geraghty, what are you fuckin’ doing?’ the girlfriend screamed. ‘Take that tourniquet off her arm, now. Oh my God. Wha’ the hell are you thinking? Sorry, Rachael, you’ll have to go.’

  I left my da’s flat that day feeling worse than ever before. I wanted to run. Run as far away as possible, from my mother and father, from the world and even from myself. But I knew heroin would give me the comfort that I needed. It would never let me down and I could always depend on it to make me feel nothing.

  _____

  I was only thirteen years old. But already the heroin had me in its grip, twisting me from the inside out, taking over my mind, my body and even my soul. I despised myself for the person I was becoming. I couldn’t bear to think about what I was doing to my grandmother, robbing from her almost every day to feed my measly drug habit. She couldn’t bear to look at my old friends, Katie, Emer and Mary, who were still going to school and doing well for themselves. Even though Katie had taken drugs, once her parents found out they had punished her severely and grounded her for months. My friends reminded my grandmother of how I should have been. She became bitter because they were doing so well and I wasn’t. I was falling apart.

  My family may have had its difficulties, but they didn’t know about drugs and they had never imagined that I would end up like this, high on drugs most of the time, robbing from them when I wasn’t, just to get high again. They couldn’t see why the blonde bubbly child they had known would turn into this mess. They decided to seek help at the Trinity Court Methadone Programme, but they were assured that I wasn’t recognised as a drug addict. They all breathed a sigh of relief for a while—they could ignore the problem, telling themselves that I was going through a phase, one that I would surely grow out of. But the reality was far from this. I was growing into it. Rapidly spiralling head first into addiction and out of control, until they could no longer bury their heads in the sand and pretend it wasn’t happening. They decided to take drastic action.

  Chapter 6

  RESCUE PLANS

  My legs were agitated and my nose was running. I hadn’t got the energy to get ou
t of bed and I wondered if this was ‘the sickness’ that everyone was talking about, the sickness of withdrawal? I knew my grandfather was downstairs, cooking one of his favourites, sweetbreads or something else which turned my stomach. I could hear him talking to somebody, but I didn’t recognise the other person’s voice. It seemed to be someone with a Spanish accent, though. He’s getting worse by the day, I thought. Letting any Tom, Dick or Harry into the house: John had a habit of meeting complete strangers and inviting them into the house for a cup of tea.

  Then I heard the kitchen door open. They were coming up the stairs. I hid under my blankets, pretending to be asleep as my bedroom door opened.

  ‘Rachael, I want you to meet somebody.’ It wasn’t my grandfather but my mother’s boyfriend, Mick. Ever since that row in my mother’s flat, I had been suspicious of Mick, but I could see why she stayed with him—he was well off now and offered her a secure, comfortable existence. Also, Mick had taken an interest in me, letting me come out and about with him for the business he now ran and accompanying me to the bus stop to make sure I didn’t mitch off school. He was with some man who looked like he was Spanish.

  ‘Hi, really nice to meet you,’ said the stranger. ‘My name is Donal.’

  Donal, me arse, I thought, he was mixed race and spoke with a Spanish accent—he didn’t look one bit like a Donal. What was he doing in my room anyway? I was still half asleep and I wasn’t impressed with my grandfather letting them come up to me. ‘Wow, your bedroom is amazing,’ he continued. ‘You obviously love Bob Marley,’ ‘Donal’ said, looking around at my huge collection of posters. ‘Do you know, I live just next to Jamaica.’ A handsome man, well groomed and who appeared to be in his forties, Donal looked like a film star. I was immediately intrigued by him and the fact that he lived beside Jamaica. It was my dream to go there some day.