New Orleans was an hour and half from the town where I lived, so I’d pack up Raine and searched for a sitter and a place to stay almost nightly. We would sleep on floors or couches or anywhere I could find. It didn’t take long to realize the situation was untenable, so I quit my job and looked for one in the town where I lived.
A giant black and gold sign that read “Gold Rush” flashed in front of a standalone building that occupied a gravel lot on the corner of a busy thoroughfare. At 10:30 a.m. the bar was closed but I pulled the heavy wooden door open balancing Raine on my hip, in hopes someone was hiring inside. Stale cigarette smoke clung to the walls and mixed with the soured smell of spilled beer and stinking urine. As my eyes adjusted to the darkened room, I saw two pool tables side by side to my left and scattered tables and chairs to my right. A long bar made of battered wood stretched out in front of me. Behind the bar, counting money from an open cash register was a tall man in a black t-shit and skin-tight jeans. Beside him was a woman who looked half dead and years older. Her skin was pasty white and swollen, reminding me of a dead reptile bloating in the sun. She was nearly bald and I could see her hands shake badly.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for the person who hires people. I’m looking for a job.”
“Is that right? What kind of job you lookin for, hon?” the man asked.
“A bartending job,” I replied.
“Well, hon, I’m Ronnie and this is Dora, she owns the place. I just help out, right, baby?” And he kissed her forehead, tenderly. “We ain’t lookin’ for no nighttime bartender but we need someone to clean the bar in the mornin’, that means floors, bathrooms and tables and get the bar set up for the night. We do a little lunch business too. You’d have to start day shift first; then we’ll see what comes.”
“Okay.” I said, “I’ll take it. I’m looking for childcare too, do you know anyone?”
The woman spoke for the first time. “My cousin lives just off Grand Caillou road and she has a daycare. Ronnie I'll give you her number.”
I started two days later at nine thirty a.m. cleaning the bar from the night before and tending bar all day. The smell of the Gold Dust in the morning was like licking the bottom of an ashtray, rinsing with urine, and washing it down with stale beer. I tried everything to block the offending odor from rubbing Vicks Vapo Rub under my nose to holding my breath and running outside gasping for air, but nothing worked.
Fortunately, I moved to the night shift after a couple of months where I made so much money, I didn’t know what to do with it. I hid one hundred dollar bills inside my socks and stuffed them deep in my dresser drawers.
I met a crowd who partied and I quickly fell back into the drug scene, leaving Raine night after night at childcare. Dora’s cousin who’d babysat during the day was willing to keep Raine overnight. In the beginning, I’d pick him up at 3a.m. after work but it wasn’t long before I didn’t pick him up for a couple of days. I don’t know why the woman never reported me to child services, but she didn’t.
I thought running from Aaron would change things for me and Raine, but it turned out, I was the same frightened, insecure girl with no self-esteem. I quickly returned to destructive behavior becoming a danger to my precious Raine.
I had no contact at this point with my father and seldom spoke to anyone in my family, including Maggie.
Months later Maggie came to visit our dad, and to see me, but I avoided her. I didn’t want her to see my life although, at the time, my excuses of “being too busy” seemed valid. Finally, after Maggie’s persistent nagging, we spent the last couple of nights together. Maggie began to plead with me, to come home.
“Nita,” she said, “come back with me, come home. You need help with Raine and you party too much.”
I looked at her sideways as I drove. “No, way. I’m not going. Raine is fine, don’t worry about it.”
“You party every night, Nita. You look like shit and so does Raine. You need to stop.”
“Don’t get all high and mighty, Maggie. Like you don’t party too.”
“I don’t have a kid.”
“Whatever.” I fired back. But Maggie did not let up instead she changed her tactic saying,
“Just let me take Raine back with me. Just for a while.”
“No, fucking way, Maggie!” I said angrily. “I’m his mother and he needs me. He stays here.” “He needs someone to take care of him.” Maggie said.
“Forget it.” I finished.
We pulled up in front of a lone trailer that had rust stains dripping like paint from its roof.
“Wait here,” I said to Maggie, “I’ll be right back.” Cicadas sang their nighttime songs and air thick with moisture saturated my skin. I went inside eager to get my fix quickly but after several minutes passed, Maggie became impatient and surprised me, throwing open the trailer door and coming inside.
“Hey, hey, now. Who’s this here? You just walk into someone’s home, baby?” said Hollywood.
Hollywood was my contact for everything intravenous and was willing to shoot me up. I still couldn’t do it myself. He was tall and blond with delicate features that belonged on a woman. His face was clean shaven, dimpled and his chin had a deep cleft. You would think that women would swoon over him but he was more feminine than masculine. We all thought he looked like a movie star which is how he earned his name.
My arm lay across Hollywood’s lap. I held the end of a belt, black and cracked with age, tight over my bicep. Its worn buckle was a dingy grey. The hard metal square bit into my arm squeezing doughy flesh through tiny openings. Hollywood had stuck the needle into my vein emptying the syringe just as Maggie barged in.
“Oh- my- god, Nita! What the hell are you doing?!” Maggie screamed. “Oh, my, god, you are totally fucked up. Take me back to the hotel. You are disgusting!”
Neither of us spoke on the way to the hotel where Maggie was staying. Maggie’s visceral disapproval and disgust radiated from her body and bounced in the car. It consumed anything that was ever good between us.
“I can’t believe how fucked up you are, Nita. Please, let me take Raine with me.” Maggie pleaded.
“No way, Maggie. Raine, stays put. I don’t do it all the time. Lighten up.”
“Oh my God,” Maggie sighed. “You are so fucked up.”
It was the next morning when piercing cries pulled me out of a dead sleep. Raine had somehow escaped from the confines of his crib and stood at the foot of my bed clutching a bottle in his little fist. I glanced at the clock beside me, it was eleven a.m. I saw thick yellow custard float on clear water supported by a sledge of yogurt like substance through the bottle’s milky plastic.
My son’s chest was bare showing an outline of ribs as he sucked in air. A diaper, heavy with urine, hung from his bottom nearly dragging on the floor. His face was red and dirty. His eyes brimmed with sadness and need instead of tears. Anger boomed across his sweet red lips. A single tooth jutted from his top gum and I couldn’t remember its coming. In that instant, I saw the retched neglect clinging to my child like a fever. Had I really sunken so low?
“Oh my god,” I cried, “Oh my god.” I leapt out of bed. Regret and shame pounded through my veins. Jesus Christ. I thought. What have I become? I saw my failure, gross and unthinkable. The knowledge bloomed like a hideous vine that choked my very soul.
The reality of just what I was doing took months to awaken to. I lived in a constant state of denial and escape just as I had with Aaron. I was nineteen and my beautiful Raine was eighteen months old.
I was unaware of the disastrous consequences my behavior would bring. How I ended up in the situation seemed to happen without my knowing.
When I awoke to my son’s painful cries that morning, I saw myself through Maggie’s eye’s. I witnessed
my utter neglect. Before picking Maggie up to drop her at the airport, I called my mother.
I gripped the phone with sweaty palms and pressed it tightly to my ear, “Mom,” I cried, “I need help.”
“What’s wrong? Are you ok?” my mother asked alarm in her voice.
“I can’t take care of Raine. I’m tired and can’t get up in the morning and….”
I tried to force words through the knot in my throat.
“He’s hungry and, I’m a bad mother. I’m neglecting him and he needs someone” I sobbed. “He has his top tooth and I don’t remember when he got it.”
“Alright, Nita, calm down and get a grip. I’ll help you. Send Raine to me. Is Maggie still there?”
“Yes. She is coming back today.”
“He can come back with Maggie.” she said.
I fed Raine and drew him a bath and faced the evidence of my life. I discovered a flaking skin condition on Raine’s scalp and his crib reeked of dirty sheets, soiled diapers and soured milk. How does he get out of this crib? A pile of unwashed clothes sat in a filthy heap in a corner of his room. My refrigerator was empty and I looked like shit. I was deep in the throes of addiction. I was lost.
At the airport, at the last minute, I handed Raine, over to Maggie.
“Oh, thank god.” Maggie breathed. “You’re doing the right thing,” and she disappeared down the jetway with my son.
It was crushing to realize my failure but I felt powerless to change my situation. I hadn’t yet admitted that I was an addict. I’ll stop doing drugs tomorrow or this will be my last time, I told myself every day. And I believed it.
I felt free for the first time since the age of sixteen. I was almost nineteen and I didn’t think I would miss my son but I was wrong. Everywhere I looked I saw Raine. I longed for him so badly that my stomach cramped and my breasts throbbed as though they were filled with milk.
Mothers and their smiling children were everywhere. The supermarket, gas stations, restaurants and streets. Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I be a good mother? After handing over my baby to Maggie, I did what addicts do and indulged in more drugs drowning in self-pity and shame. The behavior lasted only a few weeks before I overdosed again.
The Sweetheart Rapist Gets Practice
The couple kissed intimately and caressed each other, buzzing with what lovers want. They were parked in a remote area touted as “Sweetheart’s lane.” They embraced on the car’s long front seat squeezed together in passion. It was dark and private and the windows steamed with the evidence of their passion.
Headlights harsh and bright sliced through the rear windshield and seconds later a there came a tap-tap-tap at the passenger’s side window. Convinced it was a cop, the woman rolled the window down. She drew back and gasped at the gun barrel inches from her face.
The man in the mask’s adrenaline was in high gear and his breath was ragged. Without hesitation, he reached in and grabbed the women firmly by her hair and ordered her to open the car door.
“Don’t scream,” he warned as he held his gun to her head. “I’ll shoot you.”
He barked at the man who, only moments ago, was swollen with lust.
“Get out, mother fucker and get in the trunk or I will kill her.”
“No fucking way man,” the startled lover replied. I’m not gonna do that.”
The man in the mask, fired a shot that whizzed over the woman’s head, and placed the gun’s snout firmly against her temple and said, “She’s next.”
“Okay, okay, man, take it easy,” the young lover, who was now scared shitless, responded.
“Open the trunk,” the man in the mask ordered. “Get in. Don’t fuck with me, buddy, I will kill you both. Now get in,” he repeated.
As her boyfriend climbed in the trunk, the woman’s chest heaved and she could not control herself. She knew what was coming and she began to plead. “Oh shit, oh p-please, let me go,” she whimpered. “Oh god please don’t,” she said as warm urine ballooned in her jeans.
Chapter 9
The smell of seat decay, rotting food and the reek of tobacco, went unnoticed as I lay unconscious on the backseat of my car. Dumped like a sick pet by my drug-wielding friends, I lingered alone in the dark, my car driven and parked in a vacant lot.
I’d shot up with a drug called, Dilaudid, a painkiller stronger than morphine. It marched through my veins like a malicious army waging war on my body. Unable to move or speak, my body shuddered involuntarily with dry heaves. The side of my face was slick with thick, gummy spit and my eyes were glazed and at half-mast. My body panted like an overheated animal. I looked dead. I knew those things, because I observed myself from the top of the car. I’d left my body.
Out of my body, I felt acceptance rather than anxiety for my physical state. I understood a number of things at once. I could leave my body and life behind in what we call death, or return to it and move forward. I also understood if I left my body, I would simply go on and that it wouldn’t be the end of me.
There was no right or wrong, simply a choice. I was aware of sounds or vibrations, not from my physical world but from the light I floated in. The light pulsed and danced with life even though I had no body, which had been my only reference to living. I experienced an odd pull of energy to float further into the light, away from my body that lay sick and dying in my car.
What I experienced that day was and is difficult to explain. I felt and understood multiple truths, though no words were ever spoken, rather I just knew. I had overdosed before and gone out of my body but I had not experienced this. A choice had to be made, of this there was no question.
It was the light and love of my son that drew me back to my body. The deep awareness that I had so much more to do, kept me. I’d made a decision to live and to heal. When I returned to my body, I was sick but I knew I would pull through. I knew I was finished with drugs too. It was like I took off a coat that no longer fit and left it behind. For me, what I underwent changed everything. With a brief exception a few years later, I never used drugs again. I’d made a decision to get sober and when I did, I called my mother.
“Hi Mom, how’s Raine?” I asked with a clear voice.
“He’s good; he’s such a sweet boy. Isla has him most of the time because my work schedule has changed.”
“I can come and get him,” I said, “I’m ready.” There was silence on the line before she said;
“It’s only been a few weeks Nita. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“But, I’m ready and I want him back, he’s my son. I need him.” I said, my voice cracking with emotion.
“That’s fine, but I need some proof that things are different. I can’t let that sweet boy be mistreated again.”
Giant tears spilled from my eyes so heavy with regret, they scarcely touched my cheeks before splashing into my lap. “What do I have to do mom, how can I prove it?”
We agreed that I must have a clean place to live, a steady job and complete some classes at a community college and no more drugs. I could have Raine if I did this for three months. Three months later, I flew back to California, driving straight to Isla’s to pick up Raine. Maggie was furious, screaming on the phone, “You don’t deserve him. I’ll fight you in court for him. I won’t let you have him.”
It would destroy our relationship for years. But Maggie let go and prayed I’d stay sober.
I pulled open the screen door at Isla’s house and let it slam behind me. I could hear Raine giggling from another room and I was exploding with silly excitement. I clutched a stuffed animal I’d brought for Raine and knelt down waiting for my son to see me and run into my arms.
Raine looked at me as though I were a complete stranger. He walked warily past me twisting a ball between his little
hands as he glanced sideways in my direction. My stomach twisted, my smile fell away. I’d lost my son. I sat numbly on the couch, the ethos of my neglect settling around me in a thick stink.
“It’ll be alright,” Isla said. “He just needs some time.”
I waited choking on tears and self- judgment. I would struggle with that moment for years and blame myself for every stumble Raine encountered during his young life. Eventually, Raine crawled tentatively into my lap and I held my child hoping one day for forgiveness. It would take years for me to understand that I had to forgive myself.
I returned to Louisiana with Raine and a new-found determination, but I was alone and vulnerable, terrified to make another mistake. I needed help and I believed I couldn’t ask my family. Late one night, I sat staring at my phone- I picked it up and called Aaron.
“Nita. I’m so glad you called. I’ve been waiting and hoping you’d call. I’ve changed,” he insisted, “I really have. Just give me a chance. I love you and I want my family back.” Aaron breathed into the phone. “You’re the best thing I’ve ever had, let me prove it.” He begged. “I have a good job and I can take care of us if you’ll come home.”
I wanted to believe him, I needed to believe him. I was afraid of failure and the realities of single parenting with no support or help weighed heavily. We began to talk a couple of times a week. At Aaron’s request, I’d hold the phone to Raine’s ear, “Hey, little man. It’s Daddy. You know how much I miss you? Hey, I bought you some cars we can play with when you come home, would you like that?”
Raine’s face would light up when he heard Aaron’s voice and it broke my heart. Guilt set in. I was denying my son his father.
I began to remember the good things, the sweet things about Aaron. I pushed the rest aside and prayed he’d really changed. I owed it to Raine to try again. So, in a few weeks, convinced I was doing the right thing, Aaron flew to Louisiana, packed us up and we drove west.
The Knowing: Awake in the Dark Page 12