Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Do you want me to tell him to call them?” There was a long pause. “Or not?”
I didn’t know what to tell him.
That evening after work I volunteered to stay back with Dr. Nock for the Nar-Anon family group.
Instead of slipping out the back and hiding out of sight until they were done, I took a seat in the circle of chairs.
I saw Dr. Nock giving me a sideways look, but I kept my gaze on the floor.
The day Flo had come to sit with me in the snowy garden, I’d decided it was time to get some help. I owed her that. I owed me that.
I had seen my mother stoned, high, tweaking, overdosing, dying. When I thought of her, there was a wild cry inside of me. But there was also a deep exhaustion. I couldn’t manage her. And I didn’t want to. Not just because I didn’t want her in Flo’s life, but because I didn’t want her in mine.
I was so tired of carrying it all around inside of me, a freak show no one knew about. The weight of it was too much. I wanted to put it down.
I didn’t intend to speak in that first meeting.
But when it came time to introduce myself, I started talking and couldn’t stop.
The entire hot mess of my childhood came pouring out of me.
The circle was silent and attentive, everyone still as stone, and their quiet presence made me spill secrets I’d never told anyone.
“The last time they took me away from her, it wasn’t just because she’d overdosed.
” Numbly, I was aware that I was crying.
“It was because I’d written a composition for class.
We had to write something about our vacation, so I did.
I told them all about my vacation, with Tina passed out and me trying to stretch a packet of macaroni and cheese so it could feed me for three days. ”
They stayed quiet, their watchful, gentle gazes on me.
“I guess it was maybe a cry for help…” I cleared my throat.
“Or maybe I wanted to punish her. I wasn’t thinking…
I mean, I didn’t think. I didn’t realize they’d report her and then it would be my fault she was back in prison.
” The guilt was overwhelming. It was a sick, sweaty, crawling feeling. A nastiness I’d carried for years.
I used to lie awake at night, knowing it was my fault Tina was in a cell. I knew how lonely she was in prison, how much she suffered through withdrawal, how much pain she was in. And it was because of me.
“You feel it was your fault?” Dr. Nock asked in his measured way.
I was shivering. “It was my fault.” And something Flo had said in the garden had thrown a light on subterranean thoughts I hadn’t realized I was even having.
“All of it was my fault. She didn’t know how to look after me.
She was drowning. Because of me she had to work the streets.
Because of me she had to escape with the drugs. Because of me…” My voice cracked.
“Why do you feel you need to take responsibility for her choices?” Iris, the elegant woman to my left, asked.
“She didn’t mean to get pregnant,” I said, feeling desperate. “I was an accident. I derailed her life.”
“That’s not your fault,” Iris told me gently. “And she chose to keep you.”
“I turned her in,” I reminded her. “I sent her to prison. That wasn’t her choice.”
“But if you didn’t turn her in, what choice would you have been making?” It was the teenage boy I’d heard at the first meeting. “You would have been helping her slowly destroy her life and yours.”
Dr. Nock passed me a box of tissues.
“You didn’t deserve to be in that position,” the tired guy across the circle told me. “It was a bad hand. And how is a kid supposed to make those decisions?”
“How would you feel if it was your daughter forced into making that decision?” Iris asked. “What would you tell her to do?”
The thought of Flo trapped in a cold walk-up apartment with Tina made me dissolve. Smart, funny, vulnerable Flo. She would be so scared and so alone. And I would tell her to do whatever she had to do to survive, no matter what it took. I couldn’t breathe or see through the tears.
“Sometimes it’s hard to give ourselves the understanding and compassion we give so readily to others,” Dr. Nock told me softly.
At the end of the meeting, Dr. Nock gave me the literature.
And then he passed me Sweet Serenity Bear.
I held the Care Bear close, oddly comforted by its stuffed weight in my arms. He was reassuringly himself, not looking at me any differently than he had before I’d sat in that circle.
“The steps aren’t just for addicts, Zoe.
Children of addicts often have addiction behaviors of their own, just without the substance abuse.
Or,” he added wryly, “sometimes with the substance abuse.” He walked me to my car.
“I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to join the circle.
” Dr. Nock held the door for me as I got in, still shivering.
“I hope you decide to come again. You don’t have to be alone.
” As I drove off, he patted the side of the door, as he always did.
I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t go home. I was too raw, too exposed. I messaged Suni and she told me to stay out as long as I needed.
Call us if you need us, she messaged.
She knew I was going to see Tina.
We’re always here for you.
I loved Suni fiercely in that moment. She’d been there for me in ways my mother never had. She’d even been a grandmother to my kid. She was a grandmother to my kid.
Why had I taught Flo to call them by their names and not Gran and Pop, or something that reflected their actual relationship? Why had I kept Suni and Wayne at a distance?
Because I was scared it was temporary, I thought feverishly as I pulled into the motel parking lot. Snow was falling in thick white curtains and I sat there in the flashing light of the motel VACANCY sign, my hands gripped tight on the wheel. I shivered, but not from the cold.
You don’t have to be alone, Dr. Nock’s calm voice sounded in my head.
I wasn’t alone. I had Flo. And Suni and Wayne and Ali and Lance and Tash. And Jake…
I didn’t know what I was going to say to Tina, but I knew I had to see her. Because whether I spoke to her or not, I was making a choice. Shakily, I made my way to her door. I knocked. My hands were sweating as I waited for her to answer. I knocked again.
“Mom?” I called.
There was no answer. I tried calling her.
It went to voicemail. But Tate’s car was in the parking lot, so I knew they were here.
I had a familiar poisonous feeling in my belly.
I was just about to head to the front office to ask for a key when I heard mumbling from inside and the door swung open.
The smell of cooked meth rolled over me.
“Angel!” Tina was vibrating with energy, her pupils enormous. She started talking a mile a minute when she saw me. “You caught me off guard. I haven’t cleaned up—”
“Where’s Tate?” I interrupted nervously, peering over her shoulder.
“Out,” she said, rubbing her face. “He’s out.”
“Out where? The car’s here.”
“He went in Dave’s car.”
“Dave? Who’s Dave?” But I knew. Dave would be some random dealer. How did they find these guys? Tina seemed to be able to score anywhere, anytime, even in a town where she knew no one.
She was so pepped up on meth she didn’t even notice the icy December cold. She was bare-armed in a tank top but she wasn’t even shivering. As I watched her, grinning, high as a kite, I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
“You can’t see my kid,” I blurted. “Not unless you’re clean.” I straightened my shoulders. “And you can’t see me either.”
“Jesus, Angel, it’s just a little holiday hit. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”
She wasn’t the mom I wanted. She wasn’t the mom I deserved. And she wasn’t the mom she deserved to be.
“I loved you,” I said, my voice cracking. Distantly, I was aware I was using past tense. “I missed you so much.” She blinked but didn’t seem to be listening to me. “But I’ve got my own life now and I’ve got responsibilities. I can’t do this.” I took a breath. “I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?” She rubbed her face again. “Honestly, Zoe, you’re always so dramatic.”
“I need you to go.”
She gave me a sharp, feral look at that. “You need me to go?”
My stomach clenched but I stood my ground.
“You’ve got some nerve, asking your own mother—who you haven’t seen for years, who you haven’t once visited, who you kept a whole kid from—to go.
” She was bitter, even through her high.
“You didn’t send me so much as a goddamn postcard from this backwater hole,” she said, her voice picking up pace until she was talking so fast the words all blurred together.
“Who do you think you are cutting me out of your life? After all I went through for you!”
“I’m not discussing it,” I said numbly. Each word she spoke was a direct hit to my heart. But if there was one thing I knew, it was that I didn’t want Flo to go through a repeat of my childhood. I didn’t want her knowing what meth smelled like, or how to recognize signs of using.
“We’re not done talking.” Tina followed me to my car, oblivious to the icy snow on the soles of her bare feet.
“You know what, Mom?” I said as I climbed into my car. “We are.” I looked up at her. “We can talk if you ever get clean.”
Even if she got clean, Tina would still be an addict. And for the rest of my life, I’d be the child of an addict. That was my issue to deal with, and it was time to deal with it. “I needed you to stop using a long time ago,” I told her, my hand white-knuckled on the door of the car.
“Yeah, well, I needed you to stop judging me a long time ago.” She scowled at me. The neon lights of the motel sign formed a corona around her in the sheeting snow. “Tate and I will come by for a visit with my grandkid tomorrow,” she told me sharply. “You can’t get between us like this.”
But I could. And I would. A part of me would always want my mom, but I didn’t want her near my daughter.