Drunk Mom

by Jowita Bydlowska

  I’m going to call Frankie, I say, even though I brought no phone cards. But this is supposed to be a goal, right? So I should do anything I can to achieve it, even steal, right? I don’t know where this thinking comes from. Perhaps it’s all the thieves and other petty criminals in here who talk about stealing and holding up convenience stores. On the other hand, I don’t know if I should believe anybody in here anyway. The angel-faced Alex who in one of our earlier trust exercises confesses to being an escort at an agency? Please. She has zero social skills. She barely talks and spends most of the time chewing on the ends of her sweatshirt sleeves. I have a hard time picturing her as a great seductress.

  After the goals, we usually have a fifteen-minute anti-smoking session with an overeager woman whose father died of lung cancer. She is one of the nurses here.

  She brings DVDs and clippings about tobacco-related deaths. She’s full of curious statistics, like comparisons of deaths related to tobacco consumption versus deaths due to homicide or car accidents.

  She plays movies in which people with holes in their throats and oxygen tanks on wheels talk about wishing they had had better foresight.

  The only person relatively interested in these workshops is the main dad pants guy, who’s the first person ever to come to New Hope for help with a smoking habit.

  He asks questions. He’s the one who’s usually silent during our other workshops, where people talk about visiting the afterlife a couple of times thanks to overconsumption of heroin.

  In the tobacco workshops, Dad Pants gets to talk.

  After the morning sessions, we’re given the choice of staying in the Group Room with everyone or going to a one-on-one meeting with a counsellor. Most people choose to stay. I stay almost every time. In the Group Room we’re taught breathing exercises and meditation techniques. The first week they even bring in an acupuncture guy who explains that he will put needles in our ears to stimulate positive energies that will help us to relax, deal with our cravings and help us sleep. I let him stick ten tiny needles in my ear. Within seconds, they detach themselves, one by one, from my skin with a minuscule silver prickle.

  It means that my energy lines are sufficiently stimulated, the acupuncture guy tells me in an excited whisper.

  Plinky-plonky Asian music plays gently around us. Most people have their eyes closed.

  Alex, the anorexic escort in her giant white hoodie and white jogging pants that cover her feet, sits with her back to me, facing the window. Her hair is long and wispy, lit up from the window like a halo. Next to her sits an old heroin addict, a lovable goofy guy in his forties or fifties or sixties. He’s been following the anorexic around and I can’t decide if he wants to have sex with her or protect her. Probably both.

  I close my eyes but I can’t relax. I want to jump up and run out of the room. I want to scream and break through this stupid waterfall music and the quiet giggling and whispering echoing from all corners.

  I open my eyes.

  I see Alex and the old guy in front of me. Now he’s touching her shoulder gently, carefully. He calls for the acupuncture guy in a whisper and explains that a needle fell out of her ear. He’s looking down on the floor.

  The acupuncture guy walks up to Alex and bends down too.

  Now they’re both like this, bowing down on each side of her. It’s the coronation of the Virgin, the two guys moving hands gently, without touching, around her head and delicate shoulders. She sits still in the light.

  Watching this, I feel myself calming down a bit, for the first time.

  POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDERS

  In the afternoons men and women attend separate group meetings where they discuss issues more specific to their genders. The women meet in the lounge downstairs; downstairs is also where all the women have their bedrooms. The men have no access to this floor.

  During one of the early sessions I learn that I’m the only one with an infant, and the women ask to see my son’s pictures, again. He’s so beautiful, they all say. The counsellor who’s with us says, You’re so lucky you’re doing this now. Your sobriety, it’s the best gift you can give him.

  I disagree. I tell her the best gift I could have given him would have been not picking up that first drink at the party we had to welcome him to the world. Or maybe the drink I had in Warsaw before I even knew I was pregnant? Or the very first drink I ever had?

  But there’s no sense beating yourself up about it now, is there? she says and hands me back the album after everyone has looked at it.

  I haven’t really looked at these pictures since coming here, I’m just showing them to people. There’s no lying on the bed, staring at my baby’s face, crying.

  It’s not that I don’t care. I’m still numb, locked inside myself.

  After this group session is over, the counsellor asks me to meet with her one-on-one. She asks how I feel when I look at his pictures, possibly picking up on my keeping the album shut close on my lap once it made it back to me.

  I don’t know, I say.

  The counsellor says that maybe I’m dissociating. It’s a normal part of recovery. It happens even in the first week of recovery.

  Dissociating? Like how?

  You’re not entirely in touch with the painful emotions, you’re protecting yourself from the pain that the pictures may bring. And the dissociation may be due to post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Like what? I say.

  Birth. Even birth. Even birth can cause post-traumatic stress disorder.

  This is one of those things that therapists talk about. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Anything can cause post-traumatic stress disorder, it seems. It’s not just for Iraqi war veterans anymore. Becoming a new mother, immigrating, getting married, getting fired—everything causes post-traumatic stress disorder if the mind isn’t ready to absorb it. We’re a walking fucking trauma, all of us.

  Isn’t the human condition a post-traumatic stress disorder? I ask the counsellor.

  She says, In a way it is. That’s a good way of seeing it.

  Really.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder or not, I’m able to appreciate the photographs of my son for their aesthetic value. He’s a beautiful child. In my mind he is exactly the way he is in those pictures—two-dimensional, perfect, silent. Not real. Before falling asleep that night, I try to imagine some other details to make the picture a little fuller: how his chubby feet smash against the floor when he’s excited.

  There are two phones downstairs where the women are. Both phones are occupied constantly between meals and activities. Donna the white-toothed crack addict is on the phone the most, especially in the evening when her lover is back from work. She enters the women’s lounge with a glum face every evening after she finishes her calls. From the beginning, she’s been missing meals and even some group meetings to answer the phone, which seems to be ringing for her all the time. Her man is calling and threatening to take up with someone else if she doesn’t return to him soon. He’s doing coke all the time, she cries. I’m not sure if the crying is for him or for all the coke being done without her around.

  He doesn’t know how to take care of himself, ya know? she explains further, and nobody thinks this is weird.

  I do. I think it’s awful and weird because if she goes back to her man to serve him, she’ll be dead soon. She takes the dressing off her chest on that teary evening too and reveals to us her “special friend,” an IV catheter in her chest.

  I had cancer. It’s for chemo, she explains.

  What do you mean? asks Tina, the alcoholic. They put the chemo drugs in there?

  Aha, she says.

  Did you ever put—?

  Oh yeah, Donna says, I didn’t want them to remove it, ya know?

  The phone calls from her man increase throughout the day, right before the weekend. He’s now calling the front desk, we find out from my roommate, who knows everything. He calls the counsellors and he calls both phones available to us on the women’s floor. This creates lots o
f tension because suddenly nobody else can get through and we use the phone calls to break the monotony of the day. Donna apologizes all the time. But we all grow sick of her and her apologies and her crazy boyfriend.

  She leaves that evening, on Friday. Sade says something about this Friday being the social assistance day.

  What do you mean?

  Her welfare cheque? The cheque came, he wants her to cash it, buy rock, goodbye, so long, she giggles. Sade says Donna’s man came to pick her up.

  The women meet in the lounge to talk about what happened with Donna. Donna has written on the blackboard in the lounge that she’ll never forget us and that she has learned a lot in these past few days, more than she had in years.

  I don’t believe for one second that she’ll stay clean. She learned nothing. We addicts often learn nothing. Which is why we keep going back. Or die.

  LEARNING

  It’s the morning after Donna leaves and I find her absence at breakfast jarring but also hopeful. We can leave here. Of course we can leave here. One of the counsellors says that Donna’s leaving like this is a normal part of recovery. Overconfidence is a normal part of recovery.

  After breakfast, from the cafeteria, I watch the lake and its shimmering grey-blue waters. It’s a sunny day and there are people walking on the boardwalk. Couples and families. I’m sure there’s at least one alcoholic or drug addict among them. There must be at least one mother pushing a stroller, a mother who’s also sipping discreetly out of her coffee mug, eyes darting side to side. Perhaps not. Perhaps I was one of a kind and it’s all sweet and proper on the other side of the fence. I sit by the window and watch the tiny people move about as I peel orange after orange—they have the most amazing, delicious oranges here at the New Hope centre.

  Alex the teenage escort has meltdowns all the time. In women’s groups she’s mostly quiet but then will burst into tears or swear at the counsellors—but not really at them, it seems; it’s more of a general fuck-off with her emotions playing out briefly on her tiny anorexic face, big mouth quivering before she suddenly shuts down. Once she shuts down, she’s calm, almost comatose with blank eyes. If asked a question she shrugs—that universal teenage movement intended to crush everyone around her. I’m dying to hear her escort stories—I feel bad about it but I’m dying to hear them nonetheless—but it seems she’s unable to formulate sentences that go beyond, “This is so fucked” or “I fucking hate this shit.” Even after coming off the Oxys she seems to be in a fragile state, hands still hidden in sleeves, eyes outlined in so much black she looks like a sick panda. My roommate tries to get her to talk but even she gets discouraged after too many grunting answers.

  I wonder if she has brain damage, but I know she doesn’t because I’ve heard bits and pieces of conversations she has at the dining room table during meals, stuff about music she likes, and she’s surprisingly eloquent.

  She only talks to guys, I mention to Sade.

  Yeah, she’s young, dumb and full of cum, my roommate says.

  Since she’s the youngest girl in here, perhaps she’s just acting the part. She and I share a counsellor, but I never get to see my counsellor because Alex is in her office crying all the time. One time I watch her throw her MP3 player on the floor in the counsellor’s office, then pick it up and throw it with more force so that it smashes. The counsellor sits in her chair and watches this. She looks up. Our eyes lock, and she gives me a sad smile.

  Well, at last it’s entertaining, I think to myself, though I’m still pissed off that the little bitch is stealing my time with the counsellor. That’s how bored I’m starting to get—I begin to look forward to my one-on-one sessions with a counsellor.

  I entertain the thought of grabbing a couple of oranges from the kitchen and going downstairs to the basketball court and then throwing them at the counsellor’s window. Alex could go on smashing things inside her office and I’d do it outside. Maybe we could drive the counsellor to drinking or using Oxys.

  Because I can’t get to see my counsellor again, that night I go to the group meeting, where we’re told about a test we’ll be doing to see how best we can get along with each other. This is interesting because by now we all know each other and it’s not like we need any more icebreakers. I bring this up and am told that I can always use True Colours results in the real world.

  We’re given sheets of paper and are told to answer yes or no to statements such as: I prefer my desk to be organized, I enjoy meeting new people. I write in my own statement, perhaps inspired by Alex’s bratty behaviour: I shit only when absolutely necessary.

  After the questionnaire, we look at pictures that are supposed to represent us and our values, badly done drawings of mimes (you like art!), chessboards (you are analytical!) and such. After all of this is done, the counsellors promise, we’ll be assigned a colour, which will correspond to our personality and suggest possible alliances and potential landmines in each other. I find out I’m Green-Blue. Sade is Gold and she’s very proud of herself, is shouting to everyone that Golds are the best.

  We are given worksheets where we have to draw a line, from the time we were born to age one hundred. I look at the line and see that in my case I can look forward to sixty-eight years of possibly clean, happy life if I stay with the program and die at one hundred.

  And it makes me think of now—the hours of boredom, the hours of obsessing over dumb teen bitches, the hours of personality tests. The now, it’s so tiny, I can’t actually subtract it from all the time in the rest of my life that I will get to spend with Frankie. It’s nothing, barely a speck on the lifeline.

  See? my counsellor says, when I finally do get to see her the next day. If I hadn’t gone to rehab I could have even more days to subtract, perhaps even years. In retrospect—she promises—this will seem like a small sacrifice for a much greater reward.

  I know, I know, I tell her, but I still can’t justify finding out that I’m Green-Blue—analytical, composed, artistic, loyal—on a personality scale while my breasts swell up with milk.

  Where’s Frankie now? she says, and it feels like blasphemy to hear her say his name, as if she actually knew him. I try to guess if she’s being mean, or if she truly doesn’t know. She smiles encouragingly. She wears the peace symbol around her neck.

  With his dad.

  And how is Frankie?

  Fine, I’m sure.

  Of course, of course. She pats my hand quickly and lets go.

  Do you have any kids? I ask her, and she says she does: a boy and a girl.

  This counsellor’s office, like every other counsellor’s office, is decorated with inspirational sayings and words carved out in wood plaques.

  She asks me what I would like to work on from this peculiar one-on-one menu: Relapse Prevention, Daily Living or Managing Stress?

  I don’t know, I say.

  I’ve noticed you’ve been looking at the words on my wall. Is there one you’d like to talk about?

  I want to talk about one word that I see on her wall. I say, Believe.

  What do you believe in?

  I believe that I can have a regular life. I believe I can be a good mom, I can repair my relationship, get back to doing things I enjoy.

  She looks so pleased. That’s so great, she says. And how about another word? How about Hope? What do you hope for?

  That I’ll stick to it, that’s all. But I’m scared that I will get tempted again. I think about alcohol a lot. I miss it.

  And that’s an okay feeling, the counsellor says. Thank you for your honesty.

  I miss it a lot, you don’t understand. I think I’ll be able to have a glass of wine or two, fine.

  You’re still in love with it, she says.

  In love?

  It can be like a former husband or an ex-boyfriend, don’t you think? That guy that you never got over?

  I try to think of guys I never got over. I was drunk every time. They all blend into some kind of Godzilla-guy monstrosity I never got over.

 
I suppose, I say. There’s always a tiny sliver of hope that we’ll get back together, alcohol and me, even if for just one more naked weekend, just one more night. This can’t be over, can it?

  Well, that’s up to you, certainly. You don’t have to answer all his calls.

  Whose calls?

  Your lover’s. The one who got away.

  Right. I don’t. But what if he keeps calling? I change the number and he keeps calling. I hang up on him, and he calls me right back. That’s the kind of guy he is. But even if he were to finally give up, I myself have a hard time with finality, I don’t want things to just end. Or, worse, to pretend that they’ve ended. I don’t understand how that happens—something is but I have to pretend it isn’t. Like the alcohol is always there. It is. It’s not isn’t.

  The counsellor nods.

  Like the teenage Alex, I’ve given in to strange anger here in this office, with this grown-up nodding smilingly at me. I think: She’s not the most attractive woman. She’s got eyelashless eyes, the face of a stunned bird.

  I immediately feel guilty for thinking that and think of saying something that will please her. So I say, I guess I can just pretend that it’s not there. One-day-at-a-time thing, right?

  That’s the idea, she says, if you can get your head around it, or even if you can’t, you can just choose not to try to get your head around it for one day. Just tell yourself you’re going to think about it tomorrow and until then stay sober. And then you can go through the same routine the next day. And the next.

  I’m lost again. How do I not think about it in the first place? Like, is there a way to just erase that first thought?

  You might have to start first thing in the morning, she tells me. That’s why a lot of people pray first thing in the morning. You’ve no defences when you first wake up, so you quickly say your little mantra, a prayer, whatever you say, and then you’re set for the day. It’s like you’ve built a wall for the day. And it’s harder for those sorts of thoughts to penetrate that wall.