Crystal Clean (6 page)

Someone in a truck finally noticed my car and pulled over. I plowed through the snow up the embankment and a man opened the passenger door for me. “Thank you so much!” I said, climbing up into the cab.

“You must be freezing,” he said, turning up the heat. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I think I caught a patch of ice and slid off the road.” My teeth wouldn’t stop rattling.

He used his C.B. to call the state police and give them our location.

“Thanks so much for stopping. I can’t get a signal on my phone.”

“They’ll be here in a minute. They’re coming from Mountain Home. You can wait in here for them.” He seemed so nice – and straight. Sitting there in the cab of that truck, I felt dirty. Not from the wreck but from the chemicals in my body. I couldn’t look at the man who had possibly saved my life because I didn’t want him to see me. I felt ashamed
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as if my presence would somehow taint him.

A single police car came and I thanked my rescuer as the lone cop escorted me to the front seat of his cruiser. I was scared shitless. This was it: The beginning of the big investigation leading to my arrest and incarceration in a small town jail on the first day of the new year.

He asked me what happened and I told him I had fallen asleep while driving, rolling my car. “That happens a lot out here. This stretch of road is so long and there aren’t many rest stops. Hell,” he said, “I’ve fallen asleep at the wheel dozens of times. Best thing to do is pull over to the side and take a nap if you need to.”

I was stunned. He was acting as if this was no big deal – like he was going to help me because he understood that, hey, shit happens. Bummer way to start out the new year. He called for a tow truck and asked me where I wanted the car towed.

“I guess back to Mountain Home. I’ll figure out what to do from there.”

“Alright. As soon as we get your car on its way, I’ll drive you back into town. You have someone to come get you?”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. Not only would there be no investigation and no sobriety tests but he wasn’t even going to cite me. And he was going to chauffer me back to town in the front of his cop car. What the hell was going on here?

“I can drop you off at the all night diner for you to wait for someone, but I can’t take you all the way to Boise. Sorry.”

Sorry
? He was sorry he couldn’t be of more service to me. This was crazy.

“I’m sure I can find someone to come get me. This is so nice of you. Thank you.”

“Sure. It’s my job. It’s just sad how many people die on this stretch of road every year. We get reports of probably thirty or forty
people a month falling asleep at the wheel out here. I’m just glad you’re not hurt – or worse. You ever notice all those markers on the both sides of the freeway? Those are memorials put there by families of people who have died in accidents out here.”

I knew what he was talking about. Little makeshift crosses, sometimes covered with flowers, dotted both side of the freeway. I saw them all the time, but never realized, until he said that, how many there actually were. I wondered how many had died from road fatigue and how many had died from being too wasted to drive.

The edges of the sky were just starting to turn from black to purplish-blue when the officer dropped me off at the all-night diner.

“You gonna be okay? You sure you got someone coming?”

“I’m sure, and thank you so much for all your help.”

Garnett came and drove me back to Boise. A few days later, I went back to Mountain Home to sign the totaled car over to the wrecking yard, and I found the pipe
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still loaded and intact on the floor beneath the back passenger seat.

If I hadn’t been so loaded, I might have seen the whole incident as a giant red light. Then again, if I weren’t loaded, the whole thing never would have happened. It scared me, but more than that, it added to my sense of invulnerability. I earned a kind of folk hero status for having gone through such an incredible ordeal. By all rights, I should have been dead or at least in jail, but I wasn’t. I remember praying, to some unidentified something, that if I could just get out of this, I wouldn’t drive when I knew I was too tired ever again. Every addict I know has been there. You’re in a bad situation or a close call so you pray to whatever or whoever you pray to, saying, “If you’ll just get me out of (fill in the blank), I’ll never (fill in the blank) again.” Then, when you get through whatever it was, you think, “We didn’t shake on that, did we?”

I knew I was tired. I knew I shouldn’t have been driving. That was my mistake. Addiction is a disease of denial, though, and it honestly didn’t occur to me that I had a problem with drugs. I didn’t see it for the hazard sign it was. I viewed it as a driving problem. I drove when I lacked sleep. Simple as that. The only drug related thoughts were the fear of getting caught with drugs or paraphernalia and, more importantly, being scared that I’d lost my pipe. It was my best pipe and it was loaded with really good shit.
That was how my mind worked at the time, if you can call that working.

Coming through the accident unscathed, other than losing my car, confirmed my belief that I didn’t have a problem. A little sleepy, but as the cop said, it happens to lots of people on that stretch of road. It really had nothing to do with me. It’s that kind of denial that kept me trapped for so long.

Chapter 7

In a town with a population of less than 2,000, a person who doesn’t work may as well be wearing a sign that says, “Shady character. Please investigate further.” Since I no longer had transportation anyway, it was time for us to leave. I rented a storage unit for my belongings, and Andy and I moved back to Boise and in with my parents. I enrolled Andy in school and set about the task of pretending to find a job.

I did half-heartedly look. I sent out resumes on the Internet and circled help wanted ads in the classified section of the newspaper every morning. I went through the motions, but I couldn’t picture myself working a nine to five. I told myself it was because I didn’t work well with people, that I’d lost faith in humanity. That was a favorite saying of mine. I saw myself as a victim. I was fired from the last two jobs I’d had for being chronic lateness. In my drug-addled mind, though, I was convinced that people just didn’t understand my special circumstances. I was, after all, a single mother of a child with a disability. Shouldn’t that afford me extra privileges? No one understood me and of course, this provided the perfect excuse for my drug use, as well.

I honestly don’t know what I thought I was going to do, but I was in no hurry to find a job. All I cared about was spending time with Andy when he was home, and getting high the rest of the time. As generous as they were about taking us in, I resented my parents. I felt stifled by their sterile home and rigid routine, which was much different from when I was growing up.

When I was younger, my parents drank. Canadian Mist and 7-Up was the beverage of choice, especially when we were with Mom’s side of the family. My family and I would sometimes spend the weekend with my two uncles
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Mom’s brothers
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and their wives, at my grandparents’ house in Hailey or Fairfield
, little rural towns in southern Idaho
. They would play cards, or watch a football game on TV, but drinking was always the backdrop for family get-togethers.

At home, Mom and Dad would have an occasional cocktail after work, but there was less restraint on the weekends, especially when my grandparents would visit. The four of them would drink all evening and if they went to dinner or a football game, they drank
there too. Drinking was part of spending time with family. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was common to bring a half gallon of booze to the celebration. That being the custom and with the size of our family, it was normal to have three or four half-gallon bottles and plenty of beer.

My parents both drank back then, but with Dad it was different. Sometimes he would get falling-down drunk. He wasn’t a mean drunk, at least not around the extended family; he was a happy, silly drunk. To me, it seemed that he was the clown, the buffoon that everyone laughed at. I hated him for letting himself be treated that way. Once, when my parents and grandparents came home from a ball game, Dad attempted to take the babysitter home, but he passed out behind the wheel in our driveway. We never saw that babysitter again.

When I was in junior high, my father’s drinking got worse, or at least that’s when I started to notice what was happening. Sometimes he would go for a drink with a friend after work on a Friday afternoon and we wouldn’t see or hear from him for two or three days. Mom was very quiet on those weekends, sitting at the dining room table by the phone, chain smoking. To this day, I have no idea where my father was during his AWOLs. I do remember one weekend he called on a Sunday and my mother spoke with him briefly. She told us he woke up three hundred miles away in Winnemucca, Nevada alone and had no idea how he got there. That was all we were told. Other than that, all I knew is that he sometimes just didn’t come home.

Children of alcoholics tend to abuse alcohol, just as children raised in violent households tend to become abusers themselves. You would think that seeing the effects of alcohol on my father would prevent me from ever touching a drop, but aside from the outrageous, I learned something else about alcohol. It relieves stress and it’s required for socializing. Those are two reasons I drank and did drugs, at least in the beginning.

There was another side to my dad, a thing that lived inside him. It was never directed at anyone but Chuck and me. He never did it to Mom and he’s never been that way with his grandchildren. I saw it a lot growing up. Maybe it had something to do with his drinking, although he didn’t have to be drunk for us to see it. I haven’t seen it for five years now, but I remember it vividly and the recollection provokes intense memories.

I hated the thing and I hated my father when it consumed him. His face would change and he would almost snarl. His eyes would flood with hatred. He was threatening and gruesome when he was like that and to this day, even thinking about it
-
that thing
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causes rage to boil up in my throat and makes me want to scream and rip out my hair. When he would get that way, I hated the fucking prick. I hated my father with everything I was. He wasn’t my dad when he was that way. My brother and I refer to it as The Thing That Lives Inside of Dad. I wonder sometimes if that Thing was his internal rage. The sum total of his own demons from his life that he tried so hard to suppress and only came out when, for whatever reason, he felt rage toward Chuck or me.

It’s difficult to explain how something as simple as a look could make me feel so hated...so small...like some slimy bug he would just as soon squash as look at. I can’t fathom looking at Andy like that, just as I can’t imagine slapping him in the face or whipping him with a belt for not falling asleep on time. Those are things you do to people you hate. Those are the kinds of things that vicious, evil people do to dogs. I’ve never asked him why he was like that. I’ve never asked my mother how she could stand by and watch. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t want to know.

I was still using and dealing meth after the car accident, which caused terrific tension between my parents and me even though they didn’t know what was going on. One night, I was using Mom’s computer and felt a presence behind me. When I turned, I saw The Thing That Lives Inside of Dad for the first time since he’d stopped drinking. It not only scared me, it infuriated me. I felt rage build inside me and I remember thinking, “
He can’t do this. I’m an adult. He can’t do this to me
.”

I didn’t say anything and neither did he. Maybe he was pissed off because I was in his office and he didn’t want me there. Maybe it was because I was using my mother’s computer. Maybe he was mad because I didn’t have a job. I don’t know. All I know is that I saw that Thing and I had to get away from it.

With limited options
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I had no real job, so I couldn’t get an apartment and I didn’t want to stay with my well-meaning friends (who were usually only well-meaning if they thought they coul
d get free drugs)
- I packed my things in the middle of the night and moved into my VW van. I left Andy behind. It killed me to leave him, but it was February and the temperature at night was in the
teens. I couldn’t make him live like that and I couldn’t disrupt his routine: school, developmental therapy and a home. A home without me.

I didn’t say anything to anyone. I packed my bags in the middle of the night while they were sleeping, and left a note for Andy.

Dear Andy,

Momma’s going away for a little while. You stay with Grandma and Pappa. I’m going to get a job and find us a place to live. I love you, bug. Be a good boy.

That was it.

I knew Dad would never show the Thing to Andy. I still don’t know what
it
is, or what I ever did to deserve it, but my parents were different with Andy then they’d ever been with me. Mom and Dad did the best they could with what they had when raising Chuck and me. Despite any flaws, I will tell you they are stellar grandparents. As shitty as I felt about leaving Andy, I never had a second thought about leaving him with them.

I thought about him every day and being away from him tore me apart. I had abandoned my son
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the worst thing a mother can do
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and I told myself I didn’t deserve him. I fell into a depression matched only by guilt in its depth. It carved a canyon through my soul and I filled it with self-loathing.
Smoke it away. Smoke it away
. I thought that with enough meth, I could make myself numb. With enough distractions
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buying meth, selling meth, looking at it, cleaning the pipe, loading the pipe, lighting it, hitting it, cooling it off, finding a place to stash everything and starting all over again
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I could avoid looking at the mess I was making of my life.

This wasn’t me. I wasn’t meant to be this person. But I’d gotten myself into the situation, and I was going to get myself out. My main priority was getting an apartment for Andy and me. And still, with all this going on, I didn’t think of meth as my problem. I never considered quitting. What I needed to do, I decided, was get my shit together, get back on my anti-depressants and everything would be all right. My depression was the cause of my problems, and meth was merely a means to an end. It helped with my illness and I loved the high. I needed the high. It didn’t occur to me to live without it.

I did actually find a job, but when I found out that not only did they drug test urine but also hair, I never showed up. I might
have been able to fake a urine analysis, but I had no clue how to get around a hair test. Especially one scheduled for the following day. Hair can show drug use for up to ninety days prior to the date tested.

All I did was drive from place to place, park the van and sit inside with the curtains drawn, getting high and sobbing about the disgusting person I was. Aside from that and selling or buying drugs, I would curl up in a dirty down comforter Garnett had given me and sleep on the foldout bed in the van. Sleep offered me escape from the empty existence I had chosen. I tried to pretend it was a big adventure, living in my van. How lucky I was, I thought, that I had a van and not just a car. I told myself it wasn’t so bad, living the way I did, but I knew it was disgusting. I used a big insulated mug
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the kind you can buy at convenience stores and refill with soda
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to urinate in, discreetly emptying it into gutters when it became full. Since I ate very little, I rarely had bowel movements. When I needed to, I would find a Wal-Mart or Fred Myer and use the facilities. I used baby wipes for spit baths. I brushed my teeth using bottled water or occasionally accepted an offer to shower at a friend’s house. I lived that way for two months:  cold, lonely, depressed and despising the person I had become. Without my son, I was nothing, but I felt I had no options. There was no way I was going back to my parents. I needed to find a place for Andy and me to live. I fantasized about killing myself. My meth soaked brain made rational thinking nearly impossible.

Most days I would sit in my van at some random park. In the early months of the year, Boise is nothing but gray days where the sun only shines high above the ever present inversion that covers the valley like a damp wool blanket. I would watch parents with their children, pushing them on swings and playing catch. I would think about Andy, my heart and guts twisted with the guilt. I would imagine it was us out there with me pushing him on the swing and him yelling, “Oh no! Oh no!” and laughing so hard his trachea would collapse and make that weird honking sound that was so familiar. (He still has low muscle tone
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hypotomia
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around the trachea and esophagus, and has always been a big hit with kids his age because of his mastery of the vulgar burping noises little boys love to make.) I took comfort in knowing he was safe, warm and well taken care of, but I felt like the worst mother in the world. I
abandoned him and I wasn’t worthy of motherhood. Andy deserved so much more than me. He should have had a daddy who adored him as much as I did, and maybe a sister or brother to look out for him when he got older. He deserved a house with a swing set, and a puppy to grow up with and all the things the Beaver had, because that was what I thought a perfect life looked like: white picket fence, paper route, June in the kitchen making cookies for Wally and the Beav. Instead, all he had was me, and I was broken, shattered, living in a van, and while not quite down by the river, only a stone’s throw away.

I still sometimes wish for all these things for Andy, wish I could give him the picture perfect life that seems so ideal from the outside. I used to regret that he doesn’t have a father or siblings, but, “it is what it is,” as they say in recovery. And the thing is, Andy doesn’t know there’s something he’s supposed to be missing. He doesn’t understand the concept of “Dad.” Sort of like I, as a woman, don’t miss having a penis. Never had one. Fine without it. Don’t need it, and I don’t miss it. I wasn’t castrated, it was just never there. The same way there was never a father for Andy. I suppose you don’t miss what you’ve never had.

Now, you can long for something you’ve never had. You can covet. Although I’ve never had a penis, I’ve heard (and seen) good things. It might be interesting. I may discover that it’s something I’ve been searching for my whole life. (It would be such a relief if I could blame all my problems on penis envy.)