by Cathy Lamb
Same scent.
The death scent. The same scent I’d smelled three times before in my life.
It was clingy, scary, life-sucking, and black.
Please, God, not Damini, not the triplets.
Please, God, not Tate.
Not Tate.
“Tell me more about my Other Mother.”
I flinched, deep in my gut. Tate and I were on stools at the butcher-block island counter. I’d lit the apple cider candle. I’d made us chocolate-cinnamon hot chocolate and So Delicious Sugar Cookies, Tate’s name for them, for dipping. It was raining, cool and light, creating a cozy environment to talk about the drug-filled needles my sister had consistently stuck up her arm.
I have not hidden information from Tate about Brooke’s drug usage, but neither have I been graphic or boldly forthcoming. It’s a small town. Had I not told him, someone else would have, precisely in this way: “Your real mother is a drug addict.” In fact, he’d already heard it, several times.
I bit down on my simmering anger at the very thought of what Brooke had done. “We grew up in the Hollywood Hills with Nana Bird and your grandpa until we moved here as teenagers for the rest of high school.”
“But tell me more about her. Tell me something new about her.”
“She was, for years, a ton of fun. She was curious about life, books, traveling, animals. She was funny, bright. We were best friends. We experimented with herbs and spices and made all these weird recipes. We collected shells and rocks, which I have in the greenhouse in a blue cardboard box. We talked about boys. We helped take care of your great-grandma’s gardens here and memorized all the plants we had to plant in our own gardens because we descend from a long line of witches, as Grandma Violet used to say. Don’t believe the part about the witches, Tate.”
“I know. You’ve told me a million times. But what happened? Why did Other Mother get into drugs?”
Why why why? “She hit her teen years. She started hanging out with the wrong kids.” The avalanche of pain, terror, fear, and anger began for our family at that moment. “She had mood swings. Looking back, I think she might have suffered from depression and was trying to self-medicate, but Brooke also wanted to belong, and we lost her to partying and drugs.”
“I know what it’s like to not belong.”
“I know you do.” We sat quietly in that loneliness.
“Why else did she do drugs?”
“She had been bullied at school in the Hollywood Hills. We both had. It’s a fast culture down there, and with Nana being a soap opera star, the other kids would say many hurtful things. ‘How come your mom is so pretty and you’re . . . not?’ Or, ‘Your mom is tall and elegant . . . but you’re, well, you’re kind of fat. . . .’ I had other friends, I shrugged it off, and I had a temper even then and my impatience for stupid girls was legendary. Brooke, sweet and sensitive, took it to heart.”
“I’ve been bullied, too. I’ve been told that I’m never gonna get laid or married. One girl told me my face gave her a nightmare.”
I swear a rock of pain lodged in my neck.
“I get asked why I’m ugly.” Tate dipped another cookie in milk. “I get asked why I’m a creeper. When they ask if I’m retarded, I usually say yes then start in on explaining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.”
“You’re a handsome man, Tate, don’t you forget it.” Gall. The unkindness of children. “Brooke wanted to be invited to parties, to events, dances, places. . . .”
“I’m hardly ever invited anywhere by other kids.”
“Her backpack was stolen several times.”
“Mine, too, in middle school. I didn’t let it off my back from then on. Last time two kids tried to take it, I karate-chopped their noses.”
“I remember. One of their dads called because you broke the kid’s nose.”
“Yeah.” Tate laughed. “I heard Witch Mavis screaming at him over the phone. You scared even me. You made mincemeat of that father. You made mincemeat of the mother who called, too, and both kids apologized the next day. They haven’t bothered me since.”
I humphed. “Brooke’s pencil case ended up in the toilet, her books, her calculator. I wanted to cry for my poor sister all over again. I had protected her many, many times. Even had a few fistfights.
“My jacket ended up in the toilet. One of the cool beige ones Nana Bird bought me.”
“Brooke’s hair was pulled. She was tripped.”
“I can relate. My head has been hit by milk cartons, pencils, baloney sandwiches, pens, and, one time, cheesecake. Road Runner has been hit by a grape and Mickey Mouse has been hit by a baseball. Last time Chris Kochito tripped me for the third time, I was so pissed, I ran back up the stairs and banged his head into a door.”
“I remember. I had to go in and argue with the principal about why you shouldn’t be suspended.”
“You didn’t argue long, Boss Mom. I remember. Witch Mavis was out that afternoon and flying. You were shouting. We were in and out of the principal’s office in ten minutes, and Chris was suspended. In fact, you’ve had a whole bunch of kids suspended over the years.”
I humphed again. That was true. I would never stop fighting for my son to be free of harassment and flying fists at school, and I had the attorneys come in to prove it. “My sister wanted to be accepted.”
“Me, too. That’s one of the reasons I want to play basketball. She and I have a lot in common.”
I did not want him to have anything in common with my sister. I did not want him to relate to her or build false sympathy or unearned affection for her.
“Nana Bird must have been upset with Brooke banging up drugs.”
“She was hysterical. As was my dad.”
“Were you?”
“I cried and worried all the time. My worry made me sick. Brooke was about fourteen when she started using drugs. I was fifteen. She did what you would expect a brain-fried drug user to do. She lied about the drugs, she came home stoned, tripping, shaking. She’d have insomnia, then she’d sleep forever, she’d be aggressive, then fall into jack crying, she’d lose her appetite, then she would eat as if her stomach would never be full. She fought vociferously with our mom and dad, and they ended up crying or yelling while she slammed out the door, stealing money if she could. Our whole house was in total upheaval all the time. She later on would leave for days or weeks at a time to get high.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It was. One time Brooke was gone for over a year, and when she came back she was pregnant with you.” I shuddered. She was eight months’ pregnant when she showed up here. It was summer and I had finished my first year of college. My mother and I were outside in the garden. The cosmos were in full pink and white bloom. The summer herb garden was growing, the lettuce, corn, tomatoes, carrots . . .
“Oh my God,” my mother whispered as a tiny, broken figure hobbled through the red poppy field. My mother darted past rows of roses, wrapped her arms around my sister, and sobbed into her shoulder.
I followed my mother but not for the same compassionate, relieved reasons. I wanted to kick Brooke for the fragile wreck she’d turned my mother into. But when I saw Brooke, pale, crumbling, scared, I couldn’t hit her.
Brooke had tracks on her arm. Her clothes were torn. There was blood near her crotch. Her hair was matted to her head, and there was dirt smeared across her face. She smelled like rot and pot and a body that had not been washed in months.
I felt my anger dissolve in that crashing moment. She was too pathetic to be angry at, too destroyed with those huge, purple circles under her exhausted, now old, eyes.
“Hi, Jaden,” she whispered. “How are you?”
She passed out in my arms, a puff of wind blowing the poppies around us. I held Brooke in my lap under that golden sun while my mother flew off to call an ambulance.
“We didn’t know, Tate, that she was pregnant until she arrived here.”
“And you said you never knew who my father was.”
“That’s right. We asked her.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that she didn’t know. I’m sorry, Tate.” Oh, the pain my sister has inflicted . . .
His face was grave, troubled. “The drugs are probably what caused my head to be like this, isn’t it?”
“This happens with parents who don’t use drugs. But it could be, Tate. Drugs eat up a healthy person’s body as if the drugs are starving.”
“Maybe it was because of The Curse?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “The Henrietta and Elizabeth curse?”
“There isn’t a curse.” I handed him another So Delicious Sugar Cookie. “Silly. No curses. No witches. No warlocks.”
That Grandma Violet had a younger sister who had a cleft palate was normal, statistically speaking. That she also had twin cousins with extraordinarily large ears was also normal, statistically speaking. That my mother’s cousin, Beth, had a sixth toe could also be explained, somehow. . . . That Grandma Violet’s mother had one leg shorter than the other and a niece had a missing arm . . . and her grandma’s sister’s son had two rows of teeth . . . this stuff happens....
“I feel sorry for her.”
“You do?” For years I felt sorry for Brooke, too, when she’d stumble home. She looked so pathetic, her hair matted and greasy, way too skinny, her arms spotted and scarred, her teeth chipped and yellow. But my mother was always in semi-Brooke hysteria, and my father, my sweet and funny father, who adored all of us, would go into his den and work on his TV scripts, his movie scripts, whatever he had going at the time, to bury his relentless grief. He told my mother one night, when he didn’t know I was listening, “I didn’t know you could worry this much and not have a heart attack.... I didn’t know my imagination could take me to such dark places.... I miss her. I miss her all the time, Rowan.”
My dad held my mother a lot, and about twice a week, at night, he would take Caden and me to get chocolate mint or peppermint ice cream. We’d climb in his Jeep, listen to rock music, and come back and talk.
Brooke ruined our family. All the attention went to Brooke; Caden and I often felt we were far seconds behind Brooke and her problems. We felt that our parents loved her more, cared for her more. Of course they didn’t, but try explaining that to teenagers. My parents would repeatedly pay for rehab, I would watch both of them visibly relax when she was locked up, but out she’d come and it would be back to the drugs. On and on.
“Yeah, I feel sorry for her, Boss Mom. Think about it. What rules her life is drugs. Every day. She probably feels sick and always tired. She probably doesn’t have any money, so she has to steal or do bad things to get it. Sometimes I think of her out there, maybe living outside, maybe homeless, under a bridge or something, and I feel bad for her. I know she gave me up, I know she walked out of the hospital. I get it. She’s not a good mother at all, but then I think of her alone, when she could be here, with us, making chicken pancakes, having movie night and Oregon Trail Turkey Dinner Night in honor of Faith and Grace, but instead she’s alone. She has nothing.”
Tate’s face scrunched up and he put his fists to his eyes, the tears seeping down. I hugged him close. Brooke did not deserve his compassion, but I had a compassionate son.
“Can we find out where she is and check on her?” His voice crackled.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Brooke and her massive problems back in my life again. I didn’t want her upsetting Tate, or my mother, or Caden. “Tate, I appreciate and understand your concern about your mom. But don’t romanticize this, don’t romanticize her. She’s a drug addict.”
“I’m not romanticizing her. I am not even into romance. I can’t even get a girlfriend because of General Noggin.”
I thought about what my mom, Caden, and I had heard about Brooke in past years. She was found in an alley with a needle in her arm and carted off to the hospital (two years ago). In the hospital for overdosing (multiple times). She was arrested for drug possession (also multiple times). She was arrested for stealing (three times).
Brooke had been arrested for prostitution when we were teenagers, which was the last of the terrible nights before my parents gave up and we all moved to Oregon when we were in high school. I remember them crying, their bodies heaving over their prone, beat-up, and unconscious daughter in a hospital bed. Brooke had been working as a hooker. Her pimp had been unhappy with her and had bashed her to pieces. Want bad? That’s soul-curdling bad.
“She’s my Other Mother, and I want to know how she is.”
I felt anger bubbling inside me. “Your Other Mother? She’s never been a mother to you. Ever. Not even an Other Mother.”
“But I still care about her!”
“That’s nice, Tate, but she doesn’t care about anyone.” The expression on his face hurt, but coddling him would not be helpful. “I’ll see what I can find out about her, okay? I’ll see.”
His anger simmered down as quick as it had come. “Okay. Thanks, Boss Mom. I need to know if she’s still alive. And I really, really want to try out for the basketball team!”
She was still alive, I knew it.
Damn.
Not damn that she was alive, not at all. In my secret heart I hoped that Brooke would one day return to the craft-loving, garden-planting, outdoor girl she had been.
I did not want to find this Brooke, the addict Brooke. Not one bit.
Later that night I turned off all the lights in our house, lit a jasmine-scented candle, curled up with one of my great-grandma’s quilts under a photograph Grandma Violet took of her peonies, and thought about Brooke.
7
Three days after Tate was born and whisked out of the hospital room, amidst Brooke’s echoing screams and a rush of blood I have tried to forget my whole life, I sat down next to her on the bed. She was still weak and had been pumped full of donated blood. She was also detoxing, the nurses were helping her through it, but it was tortuous to watch. Brooke was sweating and her breathing was troubled. She took deep breaths, then panted, then back to the deep breaths. She’d thrown up many times and was clearly anxious, jittery, and emotional.
I cradled Tate in my arms. He was wrapped in a yellow blanket, sleeping peacefully, his coloring perfect, the blue color he’d been born with gone. I looked into those tiny, uneven eyes in the middle of that big head and I knew, as I had known that first day, that I loved him.
“Good luck, Jaden,” my sister panted, her arms tracked with vicious lines from her soul-sucking addiction. “I can’t do it.”
“What?” What did she mean, she couldn’t do it? I felt ill.
She pulled an IV out, then swung her bony legs out of bed, moving slowly, her emaciated arms barely able to hold her up.
“Get back in bed, Brooke. You can’t get up!” She was sick and frail, deathly.
“Yes, I can and I am.”
“You’re not supposed to, the doctors said you’re still sick and you’re still bleeding. You’ve had stitches, you have to finish getting the drugs out. Please lie down. Mom went home for a couple of hours to rest, she’s coming right back—”
“This is a hospital, not a jail, sweet Jaden. I’ve been to jail, I know what it’s all about.”
I swallowed hard. “What . . . what did you go to jail for?”
“For bad stuff I did. I’m not going to tell you. It’s over and done, and that’s it.” She climbed into her jeans, bending carefully, while I pleaded with her to stay. The jeans were too large for her, a far cry from the stylish jeans she used to wear, with her colorful tops, and pretty jewelry, some of which she made herself. She was as skinny as a wisp of wind. Frightfully skinny. She pulled a rope, not a belt, but a rope, through the loopholes and knotted it tight so the jeans wouldn’t come off. The daughter of a woman who wore couture was wearing a rope.
“Did you even eat today, Brooke?” What had happened to my gentle and kind sister? The one I made daisy rings with for our hair? The one I cut out paper dolls with and explored Mom’s garden in Hollywood and Gra
ndma Violet’s garden in Oregon?
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“How can you not be hungry?”
“I’m not.” She was jittery, hyped up. She’d come in to the hospital with unexplained bruises, and they were now turning purple, green, and blue. “I’m leaving, Jaden, I’m sorry.”
“Please, no, Brooke. Stay.” I hugged Tate close.
“I can’t.” Her green eyes were bleak holes in her face, her skin pale and lined. The drug use had aged her ten years. It was making her shake.
“I want you to stay—”
She muffled a sob, hand to her mouth.
“We can help you, Brooke!” I loved her. I wanted her with me, with us. There is little worse than knowing that the person you love will probably kill themselves with drug use, and I wanted her healthy again. I wanted my sister back.
“I don’t want help, I don’t need help.”
She pulled on a black sweater, even though she didn’t need it, the day sunny and hot. She added a black sweatshirt and flipped out her red hair. Her hair looked so much better than it had when we’d first arrived at the hospital. Then, it was matted and dirty and stringy. It smelled of smoke, dust, and mildew. The nurses had cleaned her up, as had my mother, who had cried while she brushed her daughter’s hair, then used scissors to cut the knots out, and chopped six inches of fried tangles off the ends.
“But Tate needs you, Brooke—”
“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t need a drug addict for a mother.” Her eyes filled. “I’m leaving him with you, Jaden. I’m done.”
She was done? The mother of the baby was done? “What . . . What do you mean?”
“I mean that I can’t be a mom to him.” She put both hands to her head. I knew it was throbbing. “I can’t bring Tate into my life. Tate won’t . . .” She gasped, then put a hand to her mouth. “He won’t survive.” The phone next to her bed rang and she picked it up, so irritated. “Austin, shit, quit yelling, I’m coming downstairs now. Yes, by myself, what did you think? No, I’m not bringing the baby. I don’t care if you don’t want kids around. Yeah, I’m still fat. I had a baby, you ignorant shit.” Her voice cracked and splintered, and I heard her take a huge, shuddering breath, her body quaking. “Did you call Darrin? He’s waiting? Stop talking, I’m sick of it.”