by Smith, Yessi
She was proud of me, I thought, and felt my composure try to slip away. I looked back at her, my throat too tight to speak, and mouthed the words thank you.
We sat in silence, listening to Shayna’s even breathing. I knew I should leave; Sofia was probably waiting for me to leave, but I didn’t want to turn away from the comfort I had found.
Sofia was the one to break the silence with a small cough. A purposeful cough meant to catch my attention. “Trent’s mom,” she started, “called your phone while you were with Shayna. I know I shouldn’t have answered the phone,” she put her hands up in surrender, “but I got nervous when Shayna…” she trailed off.
“What did she want?” I asked, but Sofia didn’t answer. “Is Trent okay?” I asked, my stomach tightening again.
“Si, mi niña. Trent is fine. Leah wanted to get together with you tomorrow night.”
“What?” I asked, my mouth opened wider than it needed to be, so I deliberately shut it. “Why?”
“She wants to take you to an AA meeting with her.”
“She – what?” I demanded.
“I told her you’d go.”
“Sofia,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice low so I wouldn’t scare Shayna who was still asleep on my lap. “You had no right.”
“Leah said she wants you to understand her better.” Sofia’s eyes begged me to forgive her. And as angry as I was, I couldn’t not forgive her. She was all I had left of Camilla and I couldn’t lose her too.
“Yeah, ok,” I told her, forcing a smile on my face. “I’m not angry at you Sofia,” I relented, realizing it was true. I was angry at myself for continuously hurting a good man whose only crime was trying to be there for me. I wanted to tell her, confide in her, about the argument Trent and I had the previous night, but couldn’t bring the words to my mouth. Instead I stood up from the couch and headed towards the door. I kissed her cheek and thanked her for spending the day with me and Shayna, feeling empty, needing my best friend.
After tucking Shayna and myself into bed, I searched through my phone for my Pink folder until I reached Beam Me Up. Listening to the song, I willed myself to be taken to the parallel universe she sang about, just for a short while, so I could speak to Camilla one more time. I missed her. Every day I missed her.
Chapter 28
Shayna
She had a sister. A sister that loved and her and didn’t get angry at her for being a dumb, no-good little girl. A sister who told her she wasn’t bad. A sister who hugged her and sang to her when she was scared. A sister who wouldn’t send her back to Momma.
She had a sister that she loved. She had a home. She had a family. Just like Nate had promised.
Chapter 29
Erin
I owed Trent. That’s the only reason I kept my impromptu date with Leah. And because I wanted one last memory of Trent before I let him go forever. But I didn’t think of that as I got ready. I only let those thoughts creep in during my more sincere moments. Which, when it came to my own emotional state of mind, wasn’t often.
Leah and I walked in, fifteen minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, but already it was full of people. The room was painted a mundane beige. There were four walls, but none of them were symmetrical to the other walls in the room. People were littered all over the room; some huddled with a group, others alone. I caught myself contorting my hands and purposely straightened both arms along my side. I squared my shoulders, took a breath and allowed Leah to lead me to a nearby chair all the way in the back. I checked out my quick escape routes and forced a smile when I saw Leah watching me.
“Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experiences, strengths, and hope with…” Here we go, I thought, petering between the think line of sanity and insanity, only mildly realizing a more stable platform was a few feet away.
I tried to pay attention to the speakers, I really did. But I was too conscious of everything and everyone around me. The breathing was too loud. The lady scratching her head in front me of made me want to run to the store to get her a bottle of shampoo. The walls were too muted. There was someone tapping a pen, shuffling their feet, fake coughing with an occasional sniffle thrown in for good measure.
My own breathing rang in my ears, as did the sound of my heart beating against my chest. Loudly, demanding to be heard.
I looked at Leah and saw her intently watching, and probably listening to a beautifully tanned woman in her thirties. She wasn’t disheveled or disorganized, but carried an atmosphere that demanded respect. She didn’t look hateful or angry or embarrassed, but proud. Not at all like an addict.
“The more I used,” I heard the woman say, “the more I became dependent on the world I had made up, my moments of make believe. But, in the end, I created a world even I couldn’t live in.” She looked up from her podium and smiled at us as she walked back to her seat.
I thought I heard applause, but I don’t remember. I was so completely absorbed watching this woman. This strange woman, who was bursting with pride. And I was disgusted. Pride? I wanted to shake her, ask her how pride factored in. What about the people she had hurt? The people she let down? No, she shouldn’t be proud of herself, or her accomplishment. That was wrong. But still, a little glimmer of hope crept in…
I got up from my seat, neither acknowledging Leah or the people who watched me leave. I got into my car, turning the radio on, letting the DJ play whatever he felt was right for the moment, and put my head on the steering wheel. I stayed like that for a while before I heard a tapping on my window.
After a moment’s thought, I opened the door and got out to Leah’s embrace. Which wasn’t completely unwelcome, but still a bit unnerving.
“It’s a bit much,” Leah told me, and I agreed, not knowing if she was referring to the meeting or her spontaneous hug.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, she asked me to have dinner with her. And while I wanted to reject her offer, I found myself nodding, thinking about Trent, wondering if he knew I was with his mom. I followed her car for some time and tried to smother my annoyance when I saw us approaching the toll booth to Key Biscayne. I stole glances of the beaches and caught myself swerving when I saw Miami lit up at night when we crossed the bridge. Miami, with its busy city lights and even busier beaches, was mine. And that’s what made it so beautiful to me.
While parking, I noticed that neither my breathing nor my hands were steady and tried to collect myself before going into the pizza parlor Leah had chosen for us to have dinner. My mind was a jumbled mess of thoughts, ranging from my hatred towards to my mother to the insufficient love I felt for Trent.
“Does Trent know we’re together?” I blurted out while I took the menus from our waitress, not able to look at Leah.
“Yeah, of course he does,” she reassured me, but I found no comfort in her words. “Trent and I talk every day,” she told me, letting her words sink in.
Of course I already knew he must have told her about my mother and how I had dismissed his feelings towards his own mom, who had become nothing more than addict to me once I found out about her. But with her confirmation, I felt a familiar anger begin to lurk in the gut of my stomach, threatening to steal all the good I had felt towards Trent. Our conversations, our arguments, our intimacies were supposed to be private.
With the silence growing between us, I wished I hadn’t agreed to go to dinner with her. A simple no and this was discomfort wouldn’t have been necessary.
“When I called yesterday,” Leah started after we ordered our pizzas, “I heard Shayna crying and Sofia told me what was going on. I understood then why you don’t like me, but I also knew I was right to invite you tonight. Come with me again.”
Go with her again? Was she out of her mind?
“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I told her and was taken aback when Trent’s hurt eyes looked back at me. “If you understood, you wouldn’t ask me.”
“I just thought that if you unders
tood me better, you and Trent might…” she trailed off. “It made me so happy to see how happy he was with you.”
“I don’t know how to make Trent happy. That’s why we’re not together,” I told her. “It’s not because of you, but because of me.”
“He loves you, you know.”
“Yeah, well,” I told her, knowing love wouldn’t be enough. Not when trust was our big issue. I couldn’t trust him, didn’t know how to. But I was pretty good at hurting him and pushing him away.
“I came from a really good family,” Leah told me, distracting me from my own thoughts. “I know that’s not the norm with people like me, but I did, I had a great mom and dad that loved and supported me. So where’d I go wrong?” she asked.
I looked down at the table, staring a hole through it, waiting for her to answer her own rhetorical question, wondering what scenario she had planned out in her head. And with the patience that was irrevocably Trent, she waited for me. Annoyed, I looked up at her, my eyes glaring. “I don’t know, Leah. And to be perfectly honest, I—”
“I don’t know either,” she said, cutting me off midsentence. “I stayed out of trouble in high school. I partied a lot in college, but did well. I got married. Then the kids came,” she paused, tapping her fingers on the table gently, barely audible. I watched her, waiting out her agitation. “He’s such a good man, my Ant. And the boys. I wanted to be a good mom and wife, but I still wanted the freedom of college.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I don’t know how I got to the point that I did, but one day I woke up and hated everything about my life, especially myself. My boys deserved so much better, but I couldn’t see past my needs and my wants.” Resigned, she looked up at me expectantly.
But I didn’t know what she expected. Sympathy? I almost laughed at the thought.
“I thought getting sober would be so hard, but once I made my mind up, that was the easy part. Staying sober,” she smiled, “now that was the hard part. My last drink was a few weeks before Trent’s tenth birthday. December eleventh at two AM. Before I even took the first sip, I knew I shouldn’t. I remembered how disappointed Trent had been after my first relapse and resigned by the second relapse. But once I opened the bottle, I figured I’d already screwed up, so I poured myself a glass. I didn’t even finish what I’d poured myself before I dropped the glass on the floor. I fell to the ground, trying to pick it up before Anthony or the boys woke up and saw what I had done.” Leah stopped tapping her fingers on the table and looked at them as if they were a foreign part of her body. “Trent saw me and I yelled at him to get away, but the glass had cut my knees when I had knelt down and he wanted to help me,” she said, her voice strained.
That was Trent, always wanting to help, no matter how useless the situation was.
“That boy made me sit there while he cleaned up my blood in a way I had never done for him. How worthless I felt at that moment,” Leah told me with a tear streaming down her face that she frantically tried to push away. And for that moment, I understood her. Not the decisions she had made, but definitely the pull that drove her to her addiction and to her sobriety.
“He knew you wouldn’t relapse again,” I told her, not looking at her, but still feeling her eyes on me. “He told me that he knew that would be the last time.”
Leah let out a low sob, and I tried to give her as much privacy as I could.
“He always knew me better than anyone else.”
Our pizza arrived shortly after we fell into silence once again, which was perfect. I was grateful to the wait staff and wondered whether they recognized the negative energy we emanated from our bodies and had waited for us to finish our conversation. Two souls, not quite lost, but not completely found.
Looking for safer territories to speak about, I told Leah about Vanessa between bites, who I had encountered only a few days before at work. I hadn’t gotten the chance to tell Trent about her, but hoped Leah would tell him.
I used the drive home to make sense of all the thoughts running rampant in my head. It was clear that Leah loved her family and was remorseful of her mistakes. She had taken control of her life and had bettered herself not just for herself, but for her kids. I thought back to the night I met her and Anthony at Jungle Island and could still feel the connection they had with one another. She had made amends with them. They had moved past it all and hadn’t allowed her addiction to define her or who they were as a family.
From the moment I met them, I had admired the relationship they shared, but had let my biases cloud my better judgment. Leah was not my mother, and Trent was not me. They had looked past the lies, deception and disappointments and had forged a way for them to still be able to be a family. A family that loved unconditionally.
Before getting out my car to head into my apartment, I put Mirrors by Lil Wayne on repeat, letting the words sink in. I had always been my biggest enemy, allowing my past to dictate my life and how I treated others. I had to stop hating myself, hating the life I had as a child. I didn’t want to be the only person I could rely on. I had to put my past to rest so I could form meaningful time withstanding relationships with others.
With the song still playing, I sent Leah a text, asking her if I could go with her again to the next AA meeting.
Chapter 30
Erin – July
After months of going to AA meetings with Leah, I found myself more relaxed, a bit more confident, almost as if I were removing these invisible little barriers that had kept me withdrawn from my true self. It was with Leah’s help and our weekly venture to meetings that made me understand that who I was today was shaped by my past, but that my past could not define me as a person. Only I could do that.
Leah’s wisdom, gained from both failures and triumphs, weaved itself into my brain, helping me acknowledge and move past memories I hadn’t before wanted to think about. I was healing. Finally becoming the person I had wanted to become when I moved away from Alabama. It had only taken losing my best friend, becoming a sister, falling in love, and then throwing that love away as if I hadn’t needed it like I needed oxygen in my lungs. It wasn’t until I no longer had Trent that I readied myself to open myself up to a virtual stranger in the hopes of finding some sort of restitution.
With this new knowledge I carried around in the forefront of my mind, I thought I should start this declaration of my true self with someone I could rely on, someone safe – Camilla’s mom.
Her initial reaction to the stories I told her hurt her far worse than I had allowed them to hurt me. It was only in realizing that Shayna must have encountered similar abuse that I felt anything. How horrible neither Nate nor I had known about her so we could have saved her from the torment.
Speaking to Sofia gave me the courage I needed to then speak to Leah. Because I knew Leah and Trent spoke every day, I was worried, yet hopeful Leah would share my stories with Trent. If he knew about my youth and where I had grown up, he’d have a better understanding as to why it had been so difficult for me to speak to him. Maybe he’d understand why I had an immediate bias against his mother. Not that my biasness had proven to be right. I couldn’t have been more wrong about Leah. Her kindness knew no boundaries. Leah didn’t realize it, but Trent’s inherent kindness came from her. Like me, Leah only saw the negative when she looked back at her past.
But don’t let me fool anyone into thinking it was all rainbows and unicorns. I still didn’t have Trent in my life and that small little fact was painful. A gut wrenching pain that left me paralyzed, unable to move or think, feeling the slamming of my heart trying to burst its way out of my chest.
I had held my phone in my hands with Trent’s name on the screen countless times. But I never made the phone call. I could have at least sent him a text message with an apology. But I didn’t and I knew I wouldn’t. Instead I continued to see Leah once a week and ask for updates on Vanessa, whom Trent had taken care of as I knew he would. She was in foster care and Trent had visited with her a few times to ensure her adjustment w
as as positive as possible.
After getting to know Leah, I understood why her family loved her so much and stood by her side when so many others would have walked away. And I saw firsthand where Trent got the characteristics I valued so much. Leah’s kindness could only be comparable to one other person I knew. I tried not to ask about Trent; you know, a pride thing. But Leah brought him up frequently, her obvious attempts of getting us back together. And I devoured each little tidbit, trying to sort through them until they formed a coherent story of how Trent really was doing.
I was becoming crazy, if I hadn’t already. Trent, Trent, Trent. That was all my mind wanted to concentrate its efforts on.
Sometimes I wished I could take back all the things I had said to him in anger. But I knew I had to go through all the crap we had gone through in order to get to where I was. I had to lose Trent in order to find myself, thereby helping me be a better sister and guardian for Shayna. Besides, there was no going back in life, only forward.
After a long day at work, I decided I wanted to go to the beach where Shayna and I could eat dinner and play in the sand. Grateful that I always kept a spare set of bathing suits and beach toys in the trunk of my car, I picked up Shayna at ballet and headed towards South Beach.
While at the restaurant Shayna told me about the Halloween show she was going to be a part of with her ballet school. Because she wouldn’t tell me what the show was about or what she was going to dress up as, I relentlessly quizzed her.
“A zombie?” I demanded to know, and she shook her head, chewing on a mouthful of chicken.
I narrowed my eyes at her and smiled mischievously at her. “You know I can tickle you until you tell me.”
“No fair, Erin,” she laughed, inching herself to the back of her seat as if I couldn’t reach her.