“Here, take this,” she said.
I took it. Within minutes (I think) I was in a heavy, scary darkness, pushed down into a place beneath sleep, and I couldn’t pull myself out. I don’t know how long I was knocked out. I felt like I’d been absorbed into the couch (the only reason I remember the color). It was harrowing.
At twelve, I probably weighed eighty pounds soaking wet, and Alison gave me a whole Valium. I don’t know why my sister drugged me. I don’t know why my mother let me go with her and this man. Perhaps they both wanted me out of their hair for the evening, but my life was in jeopardy in her hands. This may have been the first time that year she could have seriously hurt me, but it certainly wasn’t the last.
Even though by her twenties Alison had already gotten married, given birth, gotten divorced, traveled thousands of miles away, and done dreadful things, she could still be zany and spontaneous. The worst had not yet happened between us, so I was genuinely happy for the wild stray visits she made to my mother’s house. On her good days she was a bright burst of energy in our often-bleak little dwelling. She seemed mature and had a hollow kind of glamour. She took a new interest in me as a preteen now rather than a little girl. She paid attention to the obviously neglected outside of me, swooping in and correcting my disastrous attempts to make myself pretty, which to a twelve-year-old means everything. After I accidentally made my hair all kinds of shades of ugly orange, she took me to get a toner for my hair and made it one color. She took me to a place that made my eyebrows beautiful. She took me shopping for my first bra. She and I would make earnest attempts at being normal. We were trying to be sisters—or so I thought.
Even though I was young, I knew my sister was doing things that were not good. I mean, she had a beeper, and only drug dealers, rappers, and doctors had beepers back then. She wore a nice manicure—bright-pink nail polish, sometimes decorated with rhinestones. Once, as she was dropping me off in front of my mother’s house, she dipped a sharp pink nail tip into some white crystal powder and held it up to my face, saying, “Just try it, just try a little bit; who cares?”
I knew it was cocaine, and it scared me to death. Thank God, I didn’t take the sniff. I played it off and calmly replied, “No thanks! Bye; see you later.” I shudder to think what could’ve happened if I’d walked into her trap and then that house. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d snorted cocaine right before seeing my mother, or ever in my life.
It was all such a setup. Alison began bringing me around her friends, and I started looking forward to our secret outings—though for all the initial glamour and excitement, it was a very scary time in my life. Even though it was a long time ago, I still have nightmares about it. Alison did not choose how her life began, and I know she went through trauma too. It seemed as though she’d turned completely away from the light.
One day, she explained that it was time for me to meet her fabulous boyfriend, John, and the other girls she hung around, who she’d been telling stories to me about. John was tall, with green eyes, a large, fluffy Afro, and a strong charisma. Christine, a seventeen-year-old runaway white girl, an older woman named Denise—“older” meaning she was maybe twenty-eight—and my sister, then in her early twenties, all lived in a house together with John. I looked up to Christine; she had a worldly air about her, yet she also seemed like a little girl. Her pale skin was sprinkled with tan freckles, and she had medium-blond hair that fell softly to her shoulders, which were long and thin like the rest of her body. She could’ve been in a teen movie, but instead she was there, in that house. She was damaged.
John’s house was nicer, brighter, and cleaner than where I lived. They had a brand-new couch. There was a television, and I could watch whatever shows I wanted. They had all the snacks I could want. They had Juicy Juice. We couldn’t afford any of that at home. A couple of times my sister came to where I lived and filled the refrigerator with the stuff I liked. This was part of the confusion I felt about our relationship. It sometimes felt and looked like she cared, but her motives were always unclear. Was she being a nice big sister, or was she creating an appetite in me for what I knew I could have all the time at John’s house? It was manipulation masquerading as love.
My sister told me not to tell anyone I was going to the house where she lived with John, especially not my brother. She told me that my brother didn’t like him because John had beat him at backgammon. Being so young and naïve at the time, I believed their animosity was about a board game, not a prostitution and drug operation. So there was no one who knew, no one to protect me. Dysfunctional families are ideal prey for abusers, the exposed little ones vulnerable to being picked off. Now, of course, it’s clear to me that the fun house was a whorehouse. I think my sister was kind of like the hustler, the talent scout. But at the time, I had no idea; after all, I was only a
