Drunk Mom

by Jowita Bydlowska

  Rehab.

  But I think it’s a great idea, rehab, and I can’t believe it will actually happen. To me. A little nobody: me. Nobody ever gets to go to rehab unless they are on TV or are a celebrity. I don’t even own a pair of sweatpants. I make a mental note to go out and buy a pair of sweatpants. And a hoodie. I imagine telling my friends, normal people: “When I went to rehab …” A woman I knew, a successful model, was thrown in jail for a night. She often told the story of being put in a cell to sober up, and I remember my insides just searing from envy.

  Yes, I will go, I tell my sister and my boyfriend, and the camera pans out.

  Unlike on TV, the next scene is not of me in a car on my way to the airport on my way to Pine Lodge or Passages. The next scene is of the baby waking on my lap and turning his mouth upside down and me taking out my small breast, like a floppy old sandwich, and stuffing the breast sandwich in the baby’s mouth to shut him up before he starts crying.

  HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

  Someone calls me to remind me about a referral for a rehab and I go to the mental hospital to do another test that tells me I’m in trouble. Then I meet with yet another counsellor after the results are in. We talk about my options. She, too, would like me to go away, remove myself from my surroundings, she thinks that would be the best for me.

  The place is called New Hope. The program is short, less than a month, but it still seems impossibly long to be away from the baby. I’m suddenly not so sure I should be going to rehab. I’ll be fine.

  The counsellor says, well, just in case, she’ll request for me to be put on the waiting list. The next session starts in a couple of weeks and there should be some spaces left. It won’t hurt to think about it. That’s what she says when I say, again, that I doubt I’ll be able to leave the baby for that long. I don’t make a joke about my thoughts actually hurting.

  After I leave her office I go and sit in the waiting room. I have to wait for some of my thoughts to stop hurting before I can leave.

  I often do this—sit somewhere with no reason other than trying to rearrange what’s going on inside my head. I sit in coffee shops, on park benches, at bus stops with buses going by one after another, occasionally in front of liquor stores and, sometimes, in waiting rooms too, after seeing the specialists, though that usually ends up provoking somebody into trying to help me.

  On the wall there’s the typical rack, jam-packed with cheerful-looking pamphlets on things like “Is Your Spouse an Addict?” or “Everything You Wanted to Know About Amphetamine But Were Afraid to Ask,” and a yellowed-paper treatise, “Barbiturates and Alcohol Abuse.”

  I sit in one of the wide chairs with thick grey woollen tapestry that has seen the seventies, and wooden armrests with thousands of fingernails driven into their once-glossy finish. I want to cry.

  I squeeze and squeeze my eyes and nothing comes out, not even half a tear.

  In the end, out of all this effort, my body finally emits a tiny fart into the chair’s spongy essence, letting it mix with all the farts from the past.

  This is our only chance, my boyfriend says over and over when I tell him about New Hope.

  Our chance.

  I worry that you’ll die. I worry that Frankie will die. I’m being selfish when I say I want you to go. Frankie needs a mother. I’ll figure it out with him, this is more important.

  I’m not that bad, am I?

  You are.

  I spend the rest of the day shopping for things I don’t need, spending money, trying to shut up the nagging voice in my head that says my boyfriend is right. In the evening, I fill out an application for rehab and leave a message at the mental hospital saying that I will go. I will go to the earliest session available. Afterwards, on the deck, I quietly, desperately try to get drunk while my boyfriend and the baby are asleep.

  Before I pass out for the night, I remember that it’s Christmas in less than two weeks and that I haven’t prepared for it. I realize, too, that if I go, my New Hope stay will include New Year’s Eve, which makes me extremely unhappy and resentful about not having any more alcohol left tonight to binge on before I have to detox prior to entering the program. I am finally able to squeeze out a few tiny tears, over a sad vision I come up with of myself, alone, in a scrawny hoodie, sitting in a room with bars on windows, raising a cup of grape juice to celebrate the new year.

  I get a confirmation that I can attend the upcoming session at New Hope. Then, right before Christmas, my boyfriend sees multiple flashes of light that aren’t there. We don’t know this yet but it’s his retina detaching.

  This is an emergency like any other: nobody is prepared for it. That is the nature of emergencies.

  It’s the middle of the night, silent cab ride through the empty streets. Fogged-up green street lights in an unusually warm winter. Then it’s waiting rooms, the eerie soundlessness of the middle of the night and the middle of waiting rooms. Sticky juice on green plastic chairs, the linoleum floor leading to doors leading to more doors.

  More waiting. Long, anxious waiting for specialists to get back to other specialists to see my boyfriend.

  The middle of the night, the middle of the waiting.

  My sister at home with the baby.

  The specialist finally here, the specialist saying it’s a giant retinal tear.

  Giant? My throat constricting. My boyfriend calmly telling me I cannot have a freak-out right now—this is not about me.

  I remember this about myself: I used to be good in emergencies. I can be calm, collected. I am the person people used to ask for directions. I can organize a rescue squad. I can hold your hand and get you through the worst.

  It is only afterwards that I crumble.

  I only hold my shit for so long. When the sirens are on. Once they turn off, I’m gone.

  Right now the sirens are on.

  I am sorry, I say and I sit quietly, calmly, absorbing all the explanations.

  The specialist leaves.

  We’ll be okay.

  You’ll be okay, I tell him.

  He cries. He is terrified.

  I love you.

  He is terrified. He cries.

  I don’t cry. I don’t know how.

  I go home to check on the baby.

  I’m back in the hospital first thing in the morning.

  I spend hours in the hospital, in more waiting rooms, with the baby in the sling. My beloved boyfriend may be going blind. I cannot think about it.

  I want to ask the surgeon if it’s possible to take my eye out and give it to him. I am a failure anyway. I am wasting my beautiful, healthy eyes on looking at labels on bottles, on reading charts online about how long alcohol stays in breast milk. I don’t deserve my eyes. Is there a way to make this swap?

  Stop freaking out, my boyfriend’s voice echoes in my head. This is not about you.

  Make yourself useful, I order myself.

  When he lies in recovery, I go to get him his favourite Booster Juice. I get lost in the hospital on the way back. A very tired doctor tells me I could take the staircase—it will be faster. He doesn’t seem to notice the baby on my hip, my frantic and useless eyes. I thank him and he unlocks the staircase door with a card.

  I carry the cardboard tray with the cup via the emergency staircase. I feel special—I was let into the secret passage. This sort of adventure is perfect for my secret-agent ways. I’m walking up flights of stairs, balancing the tray and the baby on my hip, in the sling.

  When I get to the right floor the door seems to be locked from the outside.

  The baby is stirring.

  I am sober. I’ve been sober for a long time now, long for me at least. I sit on the cold stairs and breastfeed.

  The juice cup is sweating. Droplets of water sparkle sickly in the fluorescent light of the staircase.

  I hear the door open above me.

  I shout to wait for me. I shout that I’m locked in here and that there’s an emergency. People come down and somebody takes my tray and we walk
through the door and I’m led to the recovery room.

  I run into my boyfriend’s surgeon and he says that the surgery was successful. I ask him if my boyfriend will be able to see once he recovers.

  There’s an 80 per cent chance, the surgeon says.

  I don’t like that. I want more.

  Yes, I always want more. But right now I really need more. Just 20 per cent more.

  Anything else? the surgeon says.

  No.

  In the recovery room, my boyfriend is lying on his front, his eye bandaged.

  The baby squeals through his sleep.

  I hold a straw to my boyfriend’s lips.

  How are you feeling?

  Terrible.

  But it’s over, it’s done. We’ll be okay.

  Okay.

  He is falling asleep. He is exhausted, in pain.

  This is not fair, I think.

  I am so sorry, my love, I think and say nothing.

  I am sorry for too much to be able to contain it in one sorry. I am sorry for everything.

  Later, at home, I call the rehab place and explain to a tired-sounding woman that I have to cancel this term after all.

  It’s a family emergency, I say, and I know she doesn’t buy it. People probably call her with excuses like this all the time.

  You have to believe me, I tell her.

  Okay.

  I really want to go, I lie.

  She says, Of course. No problem. These things happen. The next term is in March or June, she says. Could you make either one? The March term falls on Easter.

  I’m not religious, it’s not why I can’t make it this time around, I insist.

  Of course.

  I worry that by March my son will be dead.

  I worry that by March I will finally, drunkenly, climb the steep stairs to go to his room to pick him up to kiss him and carry him around, but instead I will, finally, stumble and slip and slide all the way down, with his head bouncing off the steps like a wet deflating ball full of blood. I’ll wake up on the carpet afraid to open my eyes again. This time it will be better that I don’t open them.

  Is there anything earlier than March?

  That’s the earliest. After that it’s June.

  In June Frankie turns one. There’s no way we’ll live to see it if I sign up for June.

  March, please. And if there’s anything earlier—

  There isn’t. Sorry.

  Well, I’m not ready to quit drinking anyway, I think to myself, trying to forget all the other morbid thoughts.

  The woman on the phone reminds me that New Hope is a nonsmoking facility and asks if I need to go to a detox before showing up.

  I’ll have to make sure to get myself in at least a week early. They may test me. She says, You don’t want to get turned away right at the door, you see. So it’s better to detox before.

  I don’t need to go to a detox, I say as sternly as I can.

  The option is there.

  No. No detox.

  A memory pops into my head. It is one of unmade beds, blank walls, and between the walls dozens of dazed women with matted hair and matted skin. This mixed with the smell of unwashed bodies and tears, candy and tobacco. In the past, as part of practising my own recovery, I used to go to these places with the message of sobriety. In the past, I was better than detox. I’m not better than detox now but I am stubborn.

  The woman on the phone says someone will call me in the beginning of March to do my official intake.

  Fine.

  She says, I think that’s all, unless there’s anything else? Good luck with everything at home.

  I want to shout that she better be sincere about that because I’m no liar and I really, really need the good luck.

  When I’m done talking to the rehab woman, I lift the baby out of his crib, get him changed and shoved into his snowsuit. I go to a liquor store and buy bottles of wine and vodka. For the first time in months I don’t have to hide any of it. My boyfriend is not allowed to move.

  In a last, goodwill effort I call up friends and let everyone know to come over and help.

  People show up with food and audiobooks and they sit and talk to us, my boyfriend immobilized on the couch. He has to move as little as possible for the next two weeks. There is a gas bubble in his eye that’s supposed to help reattach his retina.

  My sister shows up frequently to help with the baby.

  I keep the booze outside and get obliterated night after night after a whole day of taking care of the sick boyfriend and the baby.

  I’m horrified by my actions.

  I am so sorry.

  I am pathetically sorry.

  If the house is on fire, well, it’ll just have to burn.

  On Christmas Eve, we take some photos. Baby’s first Christmas. In the photos, my grin is the biggest and my boyfriend looks terrified. His right eye is covered with a black patch. The eye recovery is going well even though he’ll never regain full sight in this eye.

  In the pictures, he looks like a pirate in a suit. He is extremely handsome despite or maybe because of the patch. Despite looking terrified. I am not terrified. I am faking being cheerful. Or maybe I am cheerful. I have no idea. I don’t know what I am anymore.

  My sister’s mouth is smiling but not really—it is a tight little smile as if she were trying to eat her lower lip. I can tell from this look that she knows I’m drunk. New Year’s Eve is a sad blur of screams and unfinished dinner. I have no idea how this year ends and the next one begins. I black out.

  RESEARCH

  To prepare for rehab, I watch the TV show about addiction, Intervention. I watch it night after night, on my computer—while I drink.

  I try to figure something out. I’m not sure what, because it’s not the addiction that I try to figure out but the thing that makes people addicts.

  I watch lots of episodes. I have seen some before, when I was sober, but now I watch them in a scientific way and I watch them obsessively. I drink and watch. Sometimes I have to rewatch them. That’s how it is lately. I rewatch a lot of things.

  Maybe I’m so into the show because I want to see that I’m not as bad as most of the people on it. The strung-out junkies bouncing off walls, the alcoholics drinking freely out of jars and jugs and bottles while family members look on helplessly. I’m nothing like the meth addict selling her body for a couple of bucks in front of the 7-Eleven; nothing like the girl who eats pills like candy; not even anything like the estranged mother of three who’s in the first stages of cirrhosis of the liver.

  I go through Lornas and Joes and Cristys and Aishas. Their faces twist and their eyes scurry around in their sockets like bugs.

  The more I watch, the closer I feel. To what I don’t know, but I know that one more show, one more success story or even a failure, and I’ll figure it all out and I will be able to fix myself. I’ll get better. At what, again, I’m not so sure, but not moderation because I certainly don’t understand the concept of not drinking more once I drink. Once I drink, I miss the stop sign long before I’ve gone too far.

  Perhaps I watch the show because I need to know if there’s a way to just stop when I want to, but most important, if there’s a way to remain stopped later on in the day.

  Eventually I even see my own story. I see the effects of immigration, stressed-out parents, small city, big city, big dreams crushed, and I even see people from my own hometown, people who speak my native language.

  I never get too close to figuring out how to stop, or what addiction is all about exactly, even though the show’s producers always seem to hint at it, at the possible reasons for why it’s happened. The counsellors on the show refer to addiction as a disease, which only adds to the confusion.

  There’s always a peak in the story when the subject undergoes something traumatic—death, divorce—or when the ongoing abuse escalates and goes over a certain line. This seems to suggest that there’s something—that there is a certain line, for that matter—and that this something i
s what makes a person into a full-fledged addict. It’s as if we’re all floating and sometimes gravity brings us down and we touch a soft spot in our lives and when we do, some of us fall right through.

  No one is just born an addict, because even the ones with addict parents have siblings who never touch the stuff. And the ones who come from so-called normal families—a minority—seem to be capable of falling into a pile of shit too.

  Incidentally, everyone, but everyone, is described as having been a happy baby.

  There’s usually a follow-up: close-ups of fattened-up faces, eyes now crystal clear and looking off to the horizon, hair blowing in the wind. Not always.

  I don’t care about reasons that much. I don’t buy them. Reasons are arbitrary. My reasons may not be somebody else’s reasons.

  I keep watching and hoping for some kind of great reveal. But there’s no way to predict how each story will end—the keenest reformed druggie might suddenly do a 180 and run off with a bag of crack, the crackiest hopeless case will end working up as a counsellor in rehab.

  Only one person refuses to go. His episode is one of the last ones I watch. His name is Adam and he’s an alcoholic. I find myself cheering for him when he tells the Intervention crew to get lost.

  I don’t know why but it feels as if he has escaped.

  After seeing dozens of these shows, after learning nothing and everything about addiction and after Adam destroying whatever I have learned in one powerful fuck-off, I know exactly nothing more about it. And then I finally know one thing—that this is it about addiction. You can film it and talk and write about it but there’s no way to capture it. It’s a black hole. A black hole sucking us—the addicts—in, sometimes spitting us out, sometimes not, sometimes sucking us back in again.

  And again.

  INTAKE

  When I fall flat on my face it’s not spectacular in any way. I just fall on my face. Not quite flat on it, on the whole face. More like fall-on-cheek. I am drunk when it happens but I’m not too drunk. Not fall-on-your-whole-face drunk.