Excerpt from "Love Letters in the Sand" 2009
I remember standing in my crib when I was not quite two, probably the first real memory I have, watching my parents sleep, legs tangled together, both fully dressed, my dad on his back, snoring loud and drooling a little, that ever-present stubble on his chin. My mother’s blonde hair covered half her face, twitching with every exhalation. Even that young, I knew to be quiet. My parents loved me, but you still don’t wake a sleeping dragon, especially in the morning. I stood and watched them in the strange light filtering in through blue curtains, the bars of the crib just about as tall as my armpits. Over the years I watched them sleep a lot, often being a parent to them. They were both hopeless drug addicts. Looking back now I’m amazed they lived until I was seventeen. But I was lucky compared to a lot of kids with addicted parents because mine adored me and wanted me with them wherever they went. That was how I saw poverty up close and personal. Much as they loved me, they were not above taking me to the seediest of places to buy or sell their drugs; pool halls, bars, seedy little one-room apartments that smelled like puke. My dad was a hustler, I know that now when I remember how he changed sometimes around other people, voice booming and happy sounding about whatever he was saying, like those used car dealers you hear screaming from the TV commercials.
In all that tromping around, hustling and selling, I remember most clearly this one woman they went to see fairly often for a few months. Most addicts either end up in rehab or in jail so anyone my parents associated with was generally a temporary acquaintance, each serving some need for the other. This woman was loud and yelled all the time, especially at her two kids who were boys about nine and two. I was around nine at the time so the boy and I usually found something to do while our parents shot up in the kitchen. The only name I remember in that apartment was Kyle, the two year old. His mother yelled at him all the time, “Kyle, get out of there! Kyle, get down from there! Kyle you can’t eat that! Kyle Kyle Kyle!” I’ll never forget the last time I saw Kyle. The image is clearly etched in my mind, starker than reality. I even tried sketching him once, but it was too sad so I tore up the drawing. We went to that apartment early one morning, a rarity for my parents, but they had been up all night speeding on something, and so of course they needed something else to let them sleep.
We went in the apartment and the boy who wasn’t Kyle was watching a Road Runner cartoon so I sat on the couch by him. “Meep-Meep,” I whispered to try and make him smile, but he stared straight ahead, ignoring me. His mom was unusually quiet too, for once not yelling at anyone. Then I saw Kyle in his high chair by the table, just outside the kitchen. He had a giant knot on his forehead the size of a golf ball, and his eyes rolled in the sockets, but the worst thing was the way he couldn’t hold his head up. There were pretzels on the table of his high chair for him, and his fingers chased those pretzels around but he couldn’t get hold of them because his head was lolling around like a newborn and his eyes were unfocused. This was not the usual Kyle who was always tearing around, something was seriously wrong with him, and his mother was in the kitchen laughing and talking softly as she did whatever business she had with my parents. I know she gave that baby heroin to shut him up, to make him behave, but I don’t know if the angry purple goose egg by his left temple was from his mother or because the drugs made him fall and hit his head. But his head had been hit real hard. While our parents were in the kitchen, Kyle’s brother, whose name I can’t remember, began to rock there on the couch, and I put my arm around him while he struggled desperately with the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks. I like to think my parents called someone to report that Kyle had been doped up that morning, or beaten, or both, but I don’t know if they did. Criminals generally don’t report one another, and, while they celebrated my very existence, I don’t know if that affection carried over to anyone else’s children.
My mom had a trust fund, I learned much later, that gave her a monthly income and so we lived in the same house until they died, not moving around like a lot of junkies have to, and as I got older I cleaned up the puke, made sure they got into bed when they couldn’t make it on their own, and I cooked and did laundry. Mom didn’t really want me to do those things, and often she complained loudly that I needed to be doing things kids do and leave that stuff for her. But I never did leave chores for her. She had the best of intentions but most days she was so stoned by the time I got home from school those things would never have gotten done. When I was old enough to drive, my parents never drove anywhere and I did all the shopping. One of the first things I did when I could go shopping on my own was buy them protective sheets for their bed because a lot of the time they wet the bed like babies when they passed out. And I always made sure they made it to the bed because I didn’t think any of us wanted them pissing on the couch or the carpet.
You didn’t know any of that, and I never had reason to tell you. You only knew that when Donita came strolling in right before July 4th, I didn’t like her. I didn’t like the way she twitched when she talked, or the way she passed out on the floor or the way she treated her boys, like they were flies buzzing around her head. I didn’t like the way her eyes darted around like a trapped animal. I didn’t like the way she was the center of the universe or the way she flashed around all that money she had brought home with her. She was hiding from someone, and I suspected it was someone who wanted their money back. Her boys were so starved for her attention they fought among themselves, which they never did when Donita was gone, so I didn’t like her and I didn’t like what her presence did to her boys, how it changed them and made them seem more desperate than they already were. But most of all, I didn’t like that she reminded me so much of Kyle’s mom.
