One Day at a Time (excerpt)

excerpt from One Day at a Time (rough draft;  was formerly Girl Broken)
by Shelley Stoehr
www.shelleystoehr.com
www.myspace.com/crossesshelley

contact shelley:  [e-mail]



Chapter 1



         Believe me
         I want it.
         I want
         to believe!
         “You are not alone,”
         “One Day at a --

         -- My mother nudged me, hard, in my side, a pointy elbow that stabbed me and drew me back from my notebook, where I was trying to write a poem about this basement full of strange people -- the man with the craggy face and twisted lip who wouldn’t shut up... the woman in a very rich, fashionable suit wearing heavy gold who was probably hiding out here from Orange County... the tattooed man and the young women very Corona with their bleached hair and thin, no-nonsense bodies... a woman obviously from Norco, inbred ugly, saying she’s afraid to ask for help from a man because he’ll want to have sex with her, and I’m like, her?... all around, back to my mother, dabbing her eyes with a tissue as white and translucent as her skin... and me, plain me with dyed-black hair streaked with nearly white bleached blond, a paunchy belly which I shouldn’t rightfully have on speed, but since I quit like weekly, I always spent a few days binging on doughnuts and dark chocolate covered blueberries from Trader Joe’s.
         Whew.
         The place, my mother’s first AA meeting, a place with grayed linoleum and painted cinderblocks and no AC, but the cool musty odor of underground.  Oh my God, was this it?  Was this where my mother would finally get better?  I stopped looking around, and focused on her, because that’s what this was about her, and I wanted to support her... although shouldn’t she, the mother, be taking me, the daughter, to rehab or something and not the other way around?  Not that I’m an addict, but I mean, still...
         Everyone was so pumped up, I wanted to be an addict, just to feel the love come my way.  I sniffled.  My mother eyed me sideways, but I didn’t think she suspected anything.
         I was so out of inhibitions, I raised my hand when the tattooed gray dude at the end of the table asked if anyone was close to a drink or needed to share.  “Hi I’m Jenna,” I said, “and I’m here with my mother, who --”
         I would’ve kept talking, because my head and my mouth just wanted to go, but my mother elbowed me again, so I tried to pull her hand up into the air, but when everyone looked, she didn’t say how great I was or special, she just looked at me kind of pissed, as if she knew I was high, although how could she?  I’d hardly done any, I mean it was hardly enough to be called a line, it was more like a dash --
         “Hi, I’m Amy, and I’m an alcoholic,” she finally said.
         Like they couldn’t tell by her shaking like a leaf about to fall off a tree and die in a dry crinkle on the ground.  Pulling away from my mother, I noted but didn’t care that my gushy love for her, and this crappy place had flipped to anger.  That always happened with me.  I didn’t know how to handle stress, that’s why, I thought.  I looked around, trying unsuccessfully not to scowl.  I felt totally dissed, and didn’t understand why my mother was being such a loser, and why she wouldn’t let me talk, and why everyone kept looking at me funny.
         My anger turned to discomfort, and I felt weird and itchy in my own skin, being there.  I chewed on my lower lip and tried to refocus.  I should’ve done a whole line before.  But I mean, how much less cool could I be already, doing meth in the bathroom of a church down the hall from where my mother was at her first AA meeting?
         I stared at the faded red and black calligraphied slogans preserved in sheathes of plastic and posted on the wall.  “Keep it simple,” I read.
         Looking back at my mother, the shrunken, scared version of her, I remembered when my father first died, and she’d take me to work, hidden in her cubicle at the telephone company.  I used to draw picture books of her crying and then an angel taking her away.
         Later, she worked at Neiman Marcus, and she used to bring me fancy, expensive clothes to try on.  Last year, after I met my best friend Paige, I always used to search the thrift shop for the familiar brand names.  Paige scoffed at me, saying she hated brands because it was other people trying to force their values on her.  Even so, tonight my mother was wearing a pair of Tommy Hilfinger jeans I got her for only three dollars.
         My mother was an alchoholic, that’s what she told me today, as if I didn’t know it.  That’s how she wanted to explain Frank, her husband and my stepfather the asshole, the guy who took her home from a bar one night, and then a couple weeks later, came and got us and loaded us into his pick-up truck that smelled of grease and sweat, stale beer and cigarettes... Frank, the dickweed with the heavy hand and heavier threats.
         My emotions were a rollercoaster.  From gushy to pissed off to scared to suddenly pitiful -- tears wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let them.  I read, “Live and Let live.” 
         We were still living with Frank a year later.  And just this morning, I saw a cigarette burn on the inside of my mother’s arm, a sunken, blackened hole against the pale white, sloppy sag of her skin.  But she said not to worry, we’d get through it, and I let her drag my ass to a meeting, even though I was not an addict, no matter what my mother thought.
         The fact that I liked to be at Paige’s house getting high more than I liked being at home with my own mother (well, that’s how she put it, in italics like that -- my own mother) it had nothing to do with me liking crystal meth more than my own mother, or me being addicted to anything, unless maybe I was addicted to being away from Frank, and yes, even my own mother sometimes! 
         Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat, and my throat tightened.  I wanted to cry even more, but I didn’t.  I was tough.  I was stronger than one small dash of meth in the bathroom, and I wouldn’t stay on the bumpy ride of my emotions any more.  So I tried again to focus, and tugged on the hem of my old tee-shirt, which I’d found in a box when we moved that had said “Amy’s things” on it, which she was going to throw out, but I’d kept. The shirt proclaimed, “Meat is Murder,” and it was my mother’s, back before she had me, back when she was cool, and she listened to dark, punkish bands like The Smiths, and she didn’t eat meat, and she hung out with artists and poets like my father.
         I took the shirt, and the whole box because I wanted to be like she used to be, to live the stories she told about the “good times.” To know my father before he died, really know him and not just the sullen, shrunken guy who bought me pink ribbons and dressed and shoes on the internet as if that was love --
         I hardly ever drank alcohol, not just because anytime I’d ever stolen booze from my mother she’d noticed right away because she kept track of every drop, but because Paige taught me never to mix alcohol with speed because I’d get dehydrated, which is probably why after forty-five minutes in the windowless meeting room, I was so hot and sweaty and gross and thirsty, and wishing I’d brought a water bottle with me which was like Paige’s and my trademark, to always have a bottle of water in one hand.  We were vegetarians too, like my mother used to be, only we didn’t actually eat vegetables.  We didn’t eat much of anything because you don’t eat when you’re doing meth, but we did drink lots of Odwalla Superfood, which was green like vegetables, and everyone knew was absolutely mandatory nutrition for a tweeker.  Which maybe I was, I guess I was, but only in the very back of my mind did I ever think I wanted help, and only when I felt really shitty.  Mostly, like if anyone asked, I’d tell them I was, for one, having a good time, and for another thing, trying to take care of my mother and my grades and a lot of shit and -- 
         OhmiGod, my head was crawling with thoughts, like a horde of ants swarming over a piece of candy.  Glancing furtively around the room, I wondered if anyone’d noticed I was high.
         Looking down, I scrawled the rest of the last line in my poem, one of the corny platitudes from the wall, “One Day at a Time,” (which made me think of that old TV show that I TV’oed after I read a book about all the famous people doing drugs, like the actress from One Day at a Time, who OD’ed and then still made it onto the set...)
         OhmiGod I am too fucking high, I didn’t think I did that much. 
         I shut my notebook.  I smiled at my mother, smiled for real, although maybe my smile was stretched a little tight.  My mother reached for my hand and held it.  I hoped she wouldn’t notice the hot sheen of sweat that seemed to be everywhere, even on my palms, or the ripples of shivers that were passing through my insides, making me queasy and reminding me that if I didn’t do another bump I was going to start coming down, and that wouldn’t be pretty.  I looked at the door.  I swept my eyes back, over everyone’s heads, to the clock.  I told myself, I can handle another ten minutes.
         Some lady was talking about how she always used to tell herself, “Well, I haven’t done this yet, I haven’t done that yet,” stuff like losing her job (my mother hadn’t done that yet), or hitting her kids (does Frank count?) or beating up her husband (oh, if only, but while the talking woman was meaty, tall and wide, my mother was tiny and slender, actually stick-thin, and brittle, easily broken by loveable ole Frank-enstein).  The lady, who was white-haired and like seventy years old, went on to say that eventually all the “yets” came true.  She beat the crap out of her husband (her words!)  From beneath the spin of my broken thoughts came mirth, a bubbling up of laughter at the very idea of that prissy old lady in the baby blue sweater set saying “crap” much less doing it!  Meanwhile, my mother poked me with her elbow again, and made me stop tapping my pencil.  Lowering my head, I studied the linoleum and started to zone out -- actually it was more like disconnecting, and I didn’t even mean to do it, it just happened, like my mind soared right out of me... when all of a sudden, my mother dropped my hand and started toward the front of the room.
         OhmiGod, she was getting another 24-hour coin!  She had, like, two or three of them already at home.  Plus, this time she wasn’t even twenty-four hours sober yet!  But my mother always believed in warping time to her needs, like for example, when we lived alone and she used to post-date the rent checks. 
         Oh shit, she was going to say something!  I thought she’d just take her coin and her hug and her applause, but there were her lips opening --
         Her shoulders bent over herself in shame, but she managed a smile, and said, “Hi, my name is Amy and I’m an alcoholic.  I want to thank my daughter, Jenna, for being here with me tonight.”
         When we’d first come in, I wanted everyone to see me, but not anymore.  I shrank backwards into my hard metal chair, trying to disappear, which was pretty impossible because I wasn’t exactly tiny like my mother or Paige.  I was more like the beefy old lady, at least on the outside.  But I did manage to hide my eyes, dilated pupils and all, by staring down at the frayed hems of my boys’ jeans, and the smudged front ends of my Converse.  My hair hung over my eyes in shaggy chunks.
         I’ll never be what she wants.
         So what if I used dope a little?  I’d never beat the crap out of anyone, thank you very much, and I wasn’t asking for a damn coin either, though I would say that “One Day at a Time,” I liked when I could keep a little buzz going, and since I was only sixteen, what was so bad about that?
         I’m not saying anything, I thought to myself, trying for arrogance, staring hard at my mother, still not crying, well okay maybe a little I realized because it was hard to see her up there through the blur like a shroud around me.  I was getting crazy disoriented, like my mind kept flipping between seeing the line on the back of the toilet in the public restroom, and seeing my mother up there, and seeing but not seeing myself, twisted up, tweeked inside.
         My mother smiled, embarrassed and shaking all over, and headed back to her seat by me.  “I love you Jenna,” she whispered, tears in her voice.
         Oh damn, Mom.  Why did she always get me like that?  I freakin love you too, Mom.
         In fact, if this was for real for her, I would never do drugs again.  Mom and I were going to start a new, clean and sober life, and probably Paige would leave Kevin and move in with us and be straight too and go back to art school, and I would be a writer, and none of us would eat meat, and everything would change and be better this time, One Day at a Time.
chapter 2


         Loving
         Was
         Is
         Never enough.
         I should’ve known.
                             -- Jenna Walker


         After my mother sat down, she squeezed my hand again, smiling at me with tears in her eyes.  It felt like my hand was going to melt away in hers, she was so strong right then.  Meanwhile, my insides were shredded, pain shoot out of my midsection, and it was like there was nothing in there, under the rolls of pudge.  When I shut my eyes for a second, the world seemed to lose hold of me, and I had to swim hard back to reality and bite my lip to land back in my chair from the outer limits. 
         I focused on my mother, and I felt really shitty for not believing in her from the start.  Closing my eyes, I tried only to feel my mother’s hand in mine, and that softened the pain of not just coming down physically, but of kind of admitting that I had a problem too, and that I should do something about it, and not tomorrow, but starting now  -- and my face started to bunch up like a baby’s fist -- and I couldn’t believe I -- we -- had gotten to here. 
         My mouth was dry, and I felt like I’d eaten paste and tears were rising up, and it was getting hard to stay present and keep control...  Opening my eyes, I gazed at her, expecting, I swear, to see like a warm wash of light flowing around her.  I wanted to see it, I wanted her strength to last. 
         But when she looked back at me, she looked scared and like a very old and withered child.  She needed me again.  I had nothing left to give her.  I’d told myself I was not going to do any more meth, but that wasn’t enough, I could see that as I watched my mother’s eyes go from clear to guarded, flitting around the room.  Her hand shook, and my hand shook, and I thought, What a fucking mess!
         Then the meeting was over, and we all held hands and said a prayer and everyone shouted, “Keep coming!” and they were like all happy and patting each other on the back, and then they gathered outside to smoke.  My mother was caving, I could tell by the way she was clawing in her bag, getting frantic because she couldn’t find her cigarettes.  She started to cry and breathe shallow, desperate, so lost breaths.  When a glamorous black lady with huge gold hoops and a sweeping length of scarf trailing down her back tried to give my mother a meeting book with phone numbers in it, my mother just kind of grabbed it.  Then she grabbed me, and yanked me to the car.  Don’t do this to me, I thought -- Come on Mom, your cigarettes are right there on the dashboard, so what’s the big?  What happened to the strong, smiling lady from inside?
         Don’t do this to me again, I thought like a child.  I started having trouble breathing.  Next thing, I was crying full-on, unsaid tears sliding unwanted over my cheeks, mingling with my sweat. 
         Here we go again, I thought without meaning too, but it was true.
         “I’m sorry,” my mother said after awhile of silence, just before she pulled into a familiar parking lot.  “That was hard,” she said,  “I swear though, this time it’s going to get better.  I love you Jenna, I really do, no matter what happens.”  Her skirt clung to her legs, and I could see them shivering.  I could feel her goosebumps and nausea and anxiety like it was my own, maybe because it was my own.
         “Please don’t,” I said, letting my eyes close for a moment.  As I chewed my lip, I knew, I knew that it was not going to be okay, like she’d promised, like I’d hoped.  I knew that even before she parked under the bright yellow lights and asked me to hold her cigarette while she went inside.
         “Mom!  Stop!  Think!”  I cried, using another stupid slogan from the meeting in a last, desperate effort to keep her sober.
         Her tears flowed faster for a long moment.  But just as quickly, she stopped crying and wiped away a dribble of snot with her sleeve.  “Just one little nip,” she said.  “I swear.”
         Brushing the back of her hand against my cheek, she said, “I mean it this time.  I’m sorry Jenna!  I’m just fucking overwhelmed right now, and I can’t take it right now!  I can’t!  It’s too much all at once.  I just really need to calm down a little.  I swear, just one nip.  Look at me, I’m shaking!  I feel like I’m going to die.  Don’t you get it Jenna?”
         I was shaking too.  I was coming down.  I was crying.  I was helpless.  I believed.  I got it.
         “Just one nip, I swear.”
         I turned away, and she got out of the car and went into the liquor store.  Looking at the door, I ran my fingers through the choppy ends of my hair.  I saw myself in the rearview mirror, and I was pasty white, but with a crystal meth flush high in my cheeks.  My forehead was sprinkled with chemical pimples, my hair was black with bleached-out, white streaks and looked clownish in spite of Paige’s promise when she was coloring it that it would look cool, and me believing her. 
         My lips were held together hard so I wouldn’t scream, but then I let go and did scream!  I smashed my fist against the seat, and I would’ve done a line right then, but I didn’t want my mother to see me and use me as her excuse, even if she was mine.  Guess what Mom, I get it, all of it, like you don’t even know.
         Pushing open my door, I took off in my Converse, running, running, running, until I was all the way over at the high school.  Under the bleachers, I did a rough-cut line that burned the crap out of my sinuses because I couldn’t crush the crystal properly.  I didn’t care.  I was just glad for the bitter taste in the back of my throat and the new spin on things my head started to take as I began to fly.  With trembling fingers, I pulled my cell out of my pocket and called Paige.
         “Good meeting?”  she said.  I heard her exhale, and saw the cloud of white, chemical-smelling smoke in my imagination.
         “Bite me,”  I said, smiling a horrible, toothy smile that I couldn’t help.  “Just come and get me, bitch.”
         “Okay bitch.  Where are you?”
         “Nowhere, bitch.  Everywhere.”  I laughed, but it wasn’t funny, and my laughter sounded bitter, a hurt that came from deep inside me in spite of everything I’d done to cover it up.  “I’m at the high school.  Meet you by the street,” I said quickly.
         “Mommy let you out to play?”
         “I ran.”
         “Excellent.  I’ll be there pronto.”
         “Bring a bowl,” I said, meaning a full pipe.  I was going to get so high they were going to have to peel me off the ceiling in a couple days.
         Even so, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for my mother.  I wanted to call her and tell her I was okay, but I was afraid I’d end up back home taking care of her again the whole night.  So instead, I closed my eyes and watched my thoughts lighting up my brain, and yearned for the pipe and higher higher higher amperage.  And Paige, of course, my best friend.  Like my mother used to be.
         I am not my mother’s keeper, not even One Fucking Day at a Time!
         Out came the fierce anger I’d forgotten was locked up in the cage of my love for my mother, and I wondered whether her “Higher Power” was going to clean the vomit off the kitchen floor, or get her ice after Frank pushed her around a bit.  Before I got too bitter, thankfully, I heard the beep beep of Paige’s old VW Bug.  Forgetting about my mother -- purposely leaving her behind -- I ran to the car and climbed in.
         Sometimes I freaked out when I smoked speed, but as Paige passed me her swirly-blue, glass pipe, I didn’t even care if my heart exploded, I would have done anything to get away from the shitty world of my real life.  I had to regain control of my emotions.  I had to get away for a while!  I had to be happy -- I deserved to get high!
         What they’d said at the meeting about surrender -- why would I ever do that?  Screw surrender!  I liked control. 
         Holy Shit, I even thought, maybe my “Higher Power” is crystal meth...
         I felt really profound.
         “Aaah,” I said as I passed the pipe.   
                   
         

chapter 3


         A day like this
         Coming hard,
         Becoming free,
         May not last.
         Excitement
         Singes us.
                             -- Jenna Walker


         I woke up on the bare mattress Paige had on the floor of her room, well, hers and Kevin’s room.  Old man Kevin, her boyfriend who’d been her professor at The California School for the Arts, before she dropped out.  She introduced him to crystal meth, and recently he’d dropped out of teaching, so I wasn’t sure where he was getting his money right now, maybe from dealing, but also he did freelance stuff for corporations who raped third world nations.  Logos and shit.  Basically, he was the devil.  But he always bought the drugs, and he was almost never home, which suited Paige (and me) fine.
         I was itchy from the worn mattress cover.  Hot from the quilt Paige had thrown over me.  Mouth dry.  Stomach deflated, sharp pain rolling around in there, like rocks.  Shaking, and yet slow, everything slowed down.  Needed meth.  Didn’t want it.  Didn’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, be anyone.  Was it still Sunday, no school?  How long did I sleep after my binge?  Depression made my whole body ache.  If I were Paige, I’d have just stayed up, but in the end, I always tired of the party, always wanted to sleep and shut off my thoughts, although dreaming was still racy.  Nightmares and dreamscapes.  I wanted to go back to sleep, but now that I was up, fear for my mother coursed through me like a glass river. 
         I want my mommy! I thought, rather pathetically, but it was true.  I wanted to talk to her, I wanted her to want me home.
         Rolling across the mattress, I squinted against the harsh light beaming through the glass patio door.  I was like a vampire, recoiling as soon as I grabbed my cell phone.  I heard a splash from outside.  Collapsing on my back, I felt prickly, hungry, sad, low.  After gulping back tears, and rubbing my eyes awake, I called my mother.
         First I heard only silence.  “Frank?”  I said.
         “Fuck you want?” he said.
         Too tired, burnt, empty to argue, I said, “Is my Mom there?”
         Long silence, some scuffling noises.  Then she said, “Jenna?”  She sounded blurry and dull, like me.  Like mother, like daughter.  Hangover time.  I wanted water, I could barely lift my sticky, heavy tongue to speak.
         Still, I squeaked, “Mom.  I’m sorry for running away.  I’m at Paige’s.”
         Her head must’ve been pounding, but she raised her voice anyway -- “I told you I don’t want you over there anymore.”
         “She’s my best friend.”  Where is a cigarette?  I reached around through the muck on the floor with my free hand.  Hot California sunlight lit my fingers bright white.
         “She’s a bad influence.  She’s too old for you,”  my mother said, and groaned.  I heard the click of a lighter.  She had smokes.
         Finding mine, I said, “How much did you drink last night?”
         “When are you coming home?”
         “Did Frank behave?”
         “You have school tomorrow.  A paper due.”
         “I don’t know what Paige wants to do today.”  What did I want to do?  I wanted to go home -- my mother just had to ask.  But I thought of Paige splashing in the pool, high, and I wanted that too.  If I could just feel better, I’d do anything.
         “Your books are here.”
         Paige came in from the patio, the door scraping as it opened.  Paige was about ninety-five pounds dripping wet, as she was then. The pool would be nice, I thought, but I couldn’t bear to leave my cave either.  The hand holding my cigarette squeezed so hard, the cigarette broke, and Paige laughed while I tried to put out the ember with a bare foot.  Paige dripped her wet hair on the burn hole, and it stopped smoking.
         Covering the mouthpiece of the phone, I said, “I need some,” but Paige knew that already, of course.
         “Jenna?  I want you home,” my mother said.  She whispered, “I need you.”
         Okay, so maybe five minutes ago that would’ve worked, but my frenzied mind, burnt foot and shaking, clutching fingers changed everything.  I wished everything didn’t make me feel so horrible and guilty -- I’ll quit tomorrow, I promise, I thought.  I took the bong made out of a Febreeze bottle and said thanks.
         “For what?”  Shit, I forgot my mother was still on the phone.
         I covered quick, had to get off the phone anyway. “For you, Mom.  For being you.  Love you.  Gotta go.  Be safe.”
         “Jenna!”
         “Later, Mom.” 
         My heart was pounding in my chest, anticipating the hit.  I sucked, held, blew out, lit up again, sucked, held, blew, and then I drank the water Paige offered, gulping down the whole bottle, feeling my brain light up, feeling more like myself than I probably deserved, stopping caring that I’d deserted my mother, stopping thinking about her and realized I’d chosen “drugs, not hugs,” which made me crack up.  Getting out of bed, jumping out, I was suddenly ready to go anywhere.  Smiling.  Free.

         We went to Michael’s, the craft store, carrying chai teas that were too hot to drink, actually they were too hot to hold for long, so I put my down on a random shelf, and I was like, “Hey, what’re we doing here?”
         But Paige was already gone, and I saw her up ahead, although my eyes were blinking fast like my heart, and that was maybe why it was like one second she was next to me, then suddenly she was not.  I hurried to catch up.
         “Where’s the wedding aisle?” she asked a clerk.  Her foot tapped, and she put down her tea, which made me remember I’d left mine back there, somewhere, but how could I remember where?  The clerk pointed, and we spun off in that direction.
         “Oh wait,” I said, spotting my tea.  Grabbing it, I smirked with glee, because everything always worked out when I was with Paige, and I didn’t know why I was always scared when we went out all spun, because Paige knew how to have fun.  Tea in hand, I followed Paige to the aisle of wedding decorations.  “What’s this for?” I asked.
         Running her hand over a strand of tulle, Paige said, “Do you like this?  What about these flowers?  Help me.”
         So we picked out our fave tiny flowers in white, yellow, and lavender, on two inch wire stems.  I still didn’t know what they were for, and we didn’t have a basket, so I put down my tea again, and just held as many flowers as I could.  Paige shoved even more into my open fists.
         Giggling, she tried to close my hands, but they were full.  Turning serious, she said, “I’ll need boxes.  For my bridesmaids.”  While she chose six small wooden boxes, I was thinking, excuse me, but what?
         It made me sick to think of Paige marrying Kevin, and just when I was about to say something to that effect, Paige spun around, grabbed the length of tulle, and said, “Let’s go!”  We left our chai teas behind, which was really funny, and we both laughed all the way to the parking lot.
         “He hasn’t asked, don’t worry,” she said, dumping the bag of boxes, flowers and unfinished veil into her open trunk.
         “What?” I said innocently as I lit a cigarette for her, handing it over before lighting my own.  My breath was fast, my eyelids still blinking like some kind of tic, and in fact, my usual tic -- my shoulder -- kept spasming, jumping up and down like a half-shrug sped up and stuck on repeat, which always happened when I got high, and sometimes it made Paige laugh, which I didn’t like -- her laughing at me when in fact my shoulder really hurt.
         Paige turned the key.  The top was down, but there wasn’t any breeze, and in a moment, she pressed a button and raised it back up.  Good.  My twitching was getting worse and only another hit would make me feel all right again, even though the sun was starting to creep towards the horizon, time altered... 
         “I know what you’re thinking,”  Paige said.  “You’re afraid I’m going to marry Kevin.”  She laughed as she leaned low under the steering wheel, packing the pipe with crystal.
         “It’s not for real,” she said.  “I only got that stuff for something to do, to proj’ out on.  Plus it’ll freak him out.”
         “I didn’t mean to... It’s just that...”
         “I’m too young to get married.”
         You’re too you, I thought.  Paige couldn’t ever marry Kevin, I would die, or she would.  Kevin would kill her, like Frank would eventually kill my Mom if I didn’t save her.
         I always had to save someone -- Paige, my Mom.  Sometimes I wondered who would save me.  Me, I guessed.  Which reminded me, “I should get home,” I said, thinking about not taking the pipe from her, but then I did anyway, figuring one more hit would do me more good than harm, and anyway, I had a whole week to be straight. 
         In the end, I took two more hits before we reached my house, and the small baggie Paige pressed into my hand --
         “No, I’m going straight this week.  I’m quitting.  I just wanted one last party weekend, but--”
         Paige smiled, without quite laughing out loud, which was good because I might’ve hit her.  She acted so smug, but you know, I felt kind of bad for her, because she had a major problem and couldn’t quit --
         “-- in case you run out of ideas and you want to write,” she said, and it was true that writing poetry was easier and more enlightened when I was spun, plus I still had that paper to write...
         I graciously accepted the baggie, even if I wasn’t going to use it,  because, well, although... well, it was good to have, I thought as I shoved it deep into my pocket, because after all, I didn’t know what lay ahead, at home or school, and I wanted to be able to take care of everything, you know, handle it all, cope, whatever -- you know, save the whole fucking world, if I had to, I guess.  Save myself.  It was hard, it was really hard, and the rush of methamphetamine energy helped like you wouldn’t believe, so I was not feeling guilty about going home high, and holding too -- I was more like feeling relieved, like Now I can deal.

          

chapter 4


         The good kid,
         The smart kid,
         The way out far kid.
         The only kid,
         The broken kid,
         The wish on a star kid.
         Me, myself and I...
         We try.
                   -- Jenna Walker


         When I was heading away from Paige, towards my house, well Frank’s house, I was feeling pretty invincible, self-sufficient, thoroughly in control.  My head was spinning, light and loopy.
         But beneath that, I was a little, maybe a lot anxious, though I didn’t like to admit that it felt like something was crawling, clawing in my stomach that I didn’t like.  I didn’t like to admit that I might be crazy with the way I was anxious all the time about everything -- like, I was still worried about the AA meeting that was two days ago, and my mother getting drunk again, plus I was concerned about Mom or Frank seeing my wide eyes and knowing I was up to no good again, plus there was the paper due, plus I’d hardly written any poetry all weekend, and there was college to think about --
         Big breath.  Closed the front door behind me, and noticed the muted chaos -- the whooshing of the ceiling fan riffling through a scattering of unpaid bills on the dining room table, the TV on in the living room, shades of blue blinking light my head hurt and I needed water but I couldn’t go into the kitchen I had to go upstairs there’s trouble calm down I can’t.  The Thing was crawling out of my stomach, and I gagged.  I was freaking out.
         In spite of the TV, the fan, the dishwasher running, the dog barking, etcetera, I was drawn to the staircase by the sounds from upstairs of wobbling feet, big stomps, a smashing of glass and I don’t know what, except that it had to be my Mom and Frank, and their door was open.  Climbing the stairs slowly, I tried to ease my mind by focusing on the smell of cooked meat left from dinner, and how that made me nauseous and angry because Meat is Murder, and if it weren’t for, weren’t for, weren’t for fuck him! Frank, my mother would know that.  She’d be so different than
         The woman lurching around her bedroom, knocking over a picture frame, and then she got on her knees to try and pick it up, and Frank closed in on her with a video camera!  What the fuck!  Rushing into the room, I grabbed it out of his giant hands -- stupid, stupid, stupid -- but I had to! 
         “How do I delete this, Oh God!”  I smacked the side of the camera, hitting random buttons.
         Frank pulled the camera out of my hands as my mother climbed up the side of the bed and sat, swaying.  “I don’t know why I,” she started to say, but couldn’t finish.  She was too drunk.  I doubted she even knew where she was.  Oh Mom!
         Meanwhile Frank was videoing again, asking her, “Do you like vodka, Amy?” in a fake, sugary voice that you wouldn’t think would fool anybody, but she was my mother.  The one with the unfinished twenty-four hour coin.  The one smiling and swaying and nodding, “yes,” even as her cheeks blossomed with a mottled pink flush.
         Although I tried again to get the camera, Frank jumped away, agile in spite of his bulk.  Meanness made him slick and nimble and I couldn’t catch him before he grinned evilly at me and asked my mother, practically giggling around the edges of his words -- “Do you love vodka more than Jenna?”
         Ohmigod, was I having some kind of waking nightmare?  Starring in a wacked-out horror flick?  What the--
         “Mommy!”
         Her eyes flickered, just registering me.  Her arms reached for me -- “Sweetie, don’t ever drink, promise me --”
         Frank got between us with his fucking camera and now a third of a quart or something of Smirnoff too, which he waved around near my Mom’s face, in front of his pants like it was his Thing or something, and it was so gross and so weird that panic grabbed me around the waist and throat and wrists and held me tight.  I couldn’t move.  Frank said, “Who do you love best?”  and my mother grabbed the bottle with her outstretched arms -- the bottle, not me -- shit shit shit Mommy!  Goddamn it Mom, get your shit together, please.
         As my mother gulped down a long swallow of vodka, Frank turned on me, backing me against the wall.  “What’d you really come home for?” he said, evil, pure evil a sparkle in his eyes.  He winked.
         I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t run, and my mother didn’t even see me anymore, although she was right there as Frank pushed up close to me, the camera at his waist, the eyepiece poking me in my privates and he knew it -- he meant it, the threat.  I wasn’t sure if he was calling me a slut, or if he somehow knew I was a virgin, or if it mattered.  When he stroked my cheek with a finger, and I smelled his cigarettes and dead meat on his breath, I squeezed my eyes shut.  When it didn’t all go away, I ran.
         I heard him laughing as I slammed my bedroom door, and could hear my mother saying, “Shenna, honeee?  Iyove you!  Shenna, where you been...”
         And then her voice was lost, either to the bottle, or to Frank, and God!  I felt so bad, running away, not helping her, but it didn’t seem like there was anything more I could do but write my paper that was due in the morning so I could get an “A” and go to college and get a good job and make her proud, plus someday, somehow, get her away from this.  Really and truly save her.
         Pretending I wasn’t crying, and wasn’t shivering, I sat at my desk and clutched the pressed wood.  So this is what they mean by “white knuckling” it, I thought, just before I gave in and pulled the stamp-sized baggie out of my pocket.  I was supposed to be quitting, shit!  Okay, I calmed myself, it’s okay.  So I thought I’d be able to stay clean all week, and only use on the weekends when I was having fun with Paige, but hey, it wasn’t tomorrow yet, it was still the weekend, technically, and anyway, I was freaking out and I needed a little bit, just a little, and that was okay.  It didn’t make me a loser.  I was completely in control, no biggie.
         It was a stupid rule anyway, to only get high on the weekends.  I had a life to live.  There was only one way to get that done well, I thought as I snorted a long, thin line and then put all my gear away in my desk.  As I woke up my computer and opened a new document, I thought, Look at what Frank just did!  And my mother!  I had to be brave, for my mother.  I had to get good grades.  I would never be able to keep up being “normal” if I stayed straight, I mean I didn’t even know what normal was anymore.  It wasn’t anxiety twisting my stomach and fluttering in my chest.  It wasn’t fear that held me tight and wouldn’t let me breathe or move.  It wasn’t double-edged exhaustion -- my body heavy with a claim in for sleep, while my mind spun out of ideas and into the crash zone.
         It was this, typing on auto-pilot, words appearing like magic on my computer screen, bitter taste in my mouth, words flowing outward one with the keyboard, protected from Frank, doing it all, plus remembering Paige and what crashing could be like, not wanting that, remembering, memory blossoming like a flower opening or a deep cut bleeding again...

         It was last year, before Paige graduated.  She paced my room in a frenzy.  “Thanks for letting me come over, Jenna,” she said.  She was pacing so fast it was making my head spin to keep up.  “I couldn’t stay in that house with that bitch another second.  She was really pissing me off with her, ‘You have to help the boys with their homework, you have to make a contribution Paige, you’re nothing but a no good brat get your head out of the Goddamned clouds.  She said that to me?  They’re her kids, I’m her kid, why do I always have to be the mother?”
         “You wanna sit down, do something, talk or something, or like draw or whatever?” I tried.  I hadn’t had a lot of experience being a friend, but this is what I thought friends should do, you know, help each other out and shit.  Calm each other down.  Get real with each other.
         But Paige couldn’t stop.  She’d been up for three days, and she couldn’t stop.  “Shit Jenna, did you look, are you sure you’re not holding?”
         “No, but don’t you think you should give it a rest?  I mean not that a line wouldn’t be fun, but don’t you want to sleep tonight?”  I glanced at my dresser, hoping she wouldn’t start pawing through it in desperation, because there was some meth in there, just a little I was saving for an emergency, sometime when I needed it to save myself, to fly up to Never Never Land when my mother was flipping out on me. 
         Why was Paige doing this?
         Finally, she collapsed on the bed, crying.  Her fists were clenched, her knees were up, and her face look like it hurt to be so twisted.  Sitting behind her, I massaged her scalp.  She shut her eyes, and her sobbing slowed to quiet tears slipping over her cheeks as her legs slid down, flat against the bed.  She started to relax, and I thought she’d even fallen asleep.  But then her hands floated up to rest against mine.  It would’ve been too intimate, but Paige was my best friend.  We held hands all the time, that’s the way it was in So Cal, especially for Tweekers, everyone was touchy-feely.  Paige was especially touchy-feely when she wanted something, like to get high. 
         “I love you Jenna,” she said.
         “I love you too, Paige,” I said.
         “It’s not that I want to get wasted, but if I had just one more little line, I know I could get through this, crashing sucks, I can’t take it.  I bet I could sleep if I had one little --”
         Sighing, I withdrew my hands, which Paige had stopped stroking gently anyway.  Her hands had turned into pincer grips, sharp bones and tight, desperate skin. 
         Going to the dresser, I fumbled through and found the baggie decorated with small, black skulls that I’d been saving.
         “I knew you were lying,” she said, with a flare of anger that made me step back.  But then she softened, and as she laid out the drugs, she gushed, “Oh thank you Jenna, thank you, I’ll love you forever!  You want?”
         “Naah,” I said, shaking my head.  I was too sad.  Not because I was crashing, but because I didn’t understand why the first time Paige came to my house and got real with me was really only about this, wasn’t it?  All about dope.

         I never did sleep.  I finished my English paper, and it seemed pretty good, pretty profound.  Although there was a tense time when Frank paced the hall outside my door, he never came in.  By the time I printed my paper, letting the pages slide to the floor, the house was quiet.  The only noise was in my head.  Thoughts flying around, hitting me hard, like, Paige wouldn’t be my friend anymore if I quit... My mother doesn’t love me anymore.... Frank’s going to kill us.... We’re all going to die from this shit... 
         I wanted my mother really badly, to hold me and make all the pain go away.  Meth is my mother.
         Bombarded from the inside by terrible, life-sucking thoughts like that, I lay stiff in my bed, my fists clenched and nails digging into my palms.  My eyes stared wide open, zoning in on the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a goat.  Shallow breaths.  Coming down.
         Not going to be like Paige, or my mother, not there yet, except there’s practically nothing left in the baggie, fuck!
         I swore, but I was not there yet.  I was messed up, true, but I was not stealing to get high or moving in with some old guy who could supply me or letting someone scare the shit out of me or beat me just to stay high.  That wasn’t me, I wasn’t that girl. 
         I’m me, I’m Jenna, I’m me, I’m Jenna -- I poured out the last crumbs of crystal and took extra care crushing them into a line -- I am not an addict, I’m me, I’m Jenna, I’m me, I’m Jenna...
         I was not there yet.