Chapter 19 Ruby
Ruby
Grandma had had a serious stroke. We did not know if she would walk or talk again, the damage was so great.
Mom was furious that I was out of rehab.
I tried to convince her that I had stayed sober for ten days, but she called Longhurst and they told her that I’d been asked to leave.
I was angry that they had broken my confidentiality like that, but Mom, via Dad, had paid the hefty fee.
Their contract was with her, not me. I told her I’d go back in; I’d apologize to everyone.
This time I meant it. Everyone was right, alcohol was controlling me.
I could no longer deny it. I had lied, and it was eating me up inside.
I knew that one of the steps in the Twelve Step programme was about apologizing. How could I ever do that?
But right now it was all about Grandma. I told Mom that it had just happened while I’d been there.
This was true, I suppose. Maybe she would have had a stroke anyway, or maybe my admission of the truth had caused it.
Part of me hoped that Grandma wouldn’t recover so that she could never tell anyone what I’d said about Milo Kelly, but the bigger part of me wanted her back.
I loved and trusted her even though she had no reason to trust me.
If God let Grandma live, I would not drink again.
After a hellish forty-eight hours in the Emergency Room, she was finally assigned a room of her own.
Mom called her brother home from Australia.
Grandma regained consciousness the next day.
She seemed to be alert but could only communicate with her eyes.
My uncle Dennis arrived at the end of the week.
He was tall and good-looking, and seemed much younger than Mom.
He had a wife and children back in Perth.
He was happy to see Mom and to meet me for the first time.
He was sorry that Grandma was in such a bad way and regretted not coming home sooner.
But later, a family secret was revealed.
The reason Dennis had left Ireland in his early twenties was to escape the drinking culture.
He was a recovering alcoholic who had got himself into a lot of unspecified trouble when he was young.
I asked what he’d done, but it was bad enough that, if it had been disclosed, he’d never have got that visa to live in Australia, and nobody would say what it was.
Reading between the lines, I guessed he had harmed somebody drink-driving.
Maybe even killed them. He managed to find sobriety eventually in Australia, but shame had prevented him from coming home.
When Grandma saw him, her eyes lit up and tears fell down her cheeks. When she looked at me, I could see only disgust.
Living independently was out of the question for her.
Mom found a nursing home not far from where Grandma lived.
I was terrified that, somehow, she would reveal my filthy secret.
But she couldn’t speak, and even using a chalkboard was useless because I think she could no longer read or write.
I held newspapers up in front of her, but her eyes slid from side to side, up and down.
Her entire right-hand side had collapsed, and her left leg was useless without her right.
One of her arms still worked and with that she grasped her rosary beads.
I could see her mouth moving in silent prayer.
Was she giving thanks for having survived, or praying for release? I couldn’t tell.
I went through cold turkey by myself. I called Longhurst, apologized, begged to be readmitted.
They reluctantly agreed, though they couldn’t take me until after Christmas.
One wrong move and I would be sent home.
For the next month, I was between the hospital and Grandma’s flat, doing any shopping or laundry that she needed.
I stayed sober. I stayed away from pubs and clubs.
I was by Grandma’s side when she moved into the nursing home.
Her eyes showed fear, but I held on to her good hand.
Her room was large and sunny, and the Filipino women who staffed the home were kind.
After a few days, Grandma was more relaxed.
Her eyes, when they settled on me, glared, until I told her I was going back to rehab.
She made a moaning sound, which I took to mean she approved.
My uncle returned to Australia after tearful goodbyes to his mother and well wishes to me.
Dennis said, ‘Everything is better, you know, when you’re sober.
When your head is right, come out and visit us, eh?
I can find a job for you.’ He ran a mining company.
I was grateful but couldn’t see myself doing anything like moving to Australia.
I wondered if I could go back to college.
I was notorious there and for all the wrong reasons.
I still had that acting itch, but my future was uncertain.
For those next four weeks, it was a constant struggle not to drink.
I felt exhausted, I had a permanent knot in my stomach from fear of the unknown and the emotional work ahead of me.
Christmas came and went. I stayed home, watched a lot of TV and read a lot of books.
But I did not drink. Nobody congratulated me.
My sister called. I could tell by her tone that she was wary. She knew all about me and my errant ways. But she was comforting too. ‘You shouldn’t be hard on yourself, you know. You did nothing wrong, you were a child.’ Poor Erin, the fool.
I went back to Longhurst in January 2006 with those words ringing in my ears.
I was a child when it happened but did that excuse perpetuating the lie that had sentenced Milo to thirteen years in prison?
I thought it was petty revenge for his rejection.
I hadn’t been old enough to think of the consequences for everyone.
I could have spoken out at any time leading up to the court case, but I held fast to my lies.
And more than six years had passed. Now I was twenty-three years old, and I still hadn’t told the truth.
I had to learn to live with the lie and somehow remain sober.
This time in rehab, I listened to all the lectures, took an active part in the group sessions and the AA meetings, got up early and made my bed, and helped with prep for meals like a model prisoner, perhaps like Milo.
Amber still treated me like a rape victim.
This time I told her about Kenny Carter.
She was horrified. She didn’t say it was rape but she said it was an abuse of trust and an abuse of status, and when I told her about the twenty dollars, she asked if she could hug me, and I let her and wept.
She said he had taken advantage of my immaturity.
And then he’d paid me twenty bucks for my virginity to make me feel like a whore and implied that this was a trick I used to pretend I was a virgin.
I’d never really felt clean since then. I’d buried thoughts of him for years.
But I had never said no. I had allowed him to teach me.
Over the next few sessions, we talked a lot about that encounter.
She remarked at one stage that I seemed to be more upset about him than about Milo, and she was right.
I couldn’t come clean about Milo, though I worked some things out for myself.
I had never had sober sex, except for that one time with Kenny.
I don’t like to think about any of them but particularly him.
Some of the men, from what I remembered, were rough and used me like a rag doll.
Had I consented to any of that? Had I allowed myself to be raped?
Why had I never yelled no? I had gone back to an old man’s house in pursuit of drink one night, and he had removed his belt and whipped my naked body.
I never told anybody. In the morning, I thanked him for the vodka and left.
This brutality was no more than I deserved.
I was a rape victim, but Milo had never raped anyone; he didn’t even try to pressure Erin.
I allowed myself to think of him in that prison and what horrors he might be facing on a regular basis, a quiet, good-looking man who, as far as I knew, had never even been in a fight.
I had lost my faith in God, and that was the hardest part for me, trying to visualize this Higher Power to whom I was to hand over all my problems. Amber was quick to point out that this was another control issue.
By declaring myself powerless in the face of drugs and alcohol, I had to cede control to something greater than me.
‘You don’t have to believe in God in the traditional sense.
I had a client in here last month who decided that his Higher Power was Elvis.
And I have no problem with that.’ I could not think what my Higher Power might be.
When I had packed my bags for my second stay in Longhurst, I had, as a matter of course, packed tampons.
On my third week in there, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach while brushing my teeth.
The tampons caught my eye in the bathroom cabinet.
When was my last period? I hadn’t had one since the previous time I had been admitted and that was seven weeks ago, plus the three-week waiting period before they accepted me the first time.
Prior to that, there was the suicide attempt and before that there was chaos and blackouts.
For one sleepless night, I tried to convince myself that my periods had stopped because of the booze and my erratic appetite.
I had been absolutely exhausted for months.
The strange feelings in my stomach were alcohol withdrawal.
I had veered between starving myself and binge eating.
Right now, I knew I was carrying weight, but when I’d stopped drinking, I’d discovered an appetite.
Don’t they say that women are always hungry and tired in the first trimester?
I put my hands on my stomach. It was firmer than it used to be and filled out from hip to hip.
There was a significant bump. And I’d been throwing up at random times, with nausea a constant companion.
I’d thought it was withdrawal, and then nerves about Grandma.
I should have lost weight since I’d stopped drinking ten weeks and six days ago, but my jeans, which were low-waisted, were now a squeeze to get into.
By dawn, I knew I was pregnant. Exhausted, miserable, terrified, possibly homeless and pregnant.