helped bubble clean the remaining particles.
Once the solution was safely sucked up into the syringe, I carried my homework to the living room. My father would either be sitting on the floor with his guitar or stretched across the couch gazing blankly at the television.
Sometimes he’d say, 'Good morning,” while taking the syringe from my hand. But usually he said nothing.
He just targeted the large vein running the length of his inner arm, injecting himself, then -- in the brief moments before the rush seized him -- brought the remaining amount to my mother in their bedroom.
After the morning ritual, I was pretty much done until evening. My recess lasted hours. I was free to watch TV, and -- by organizing the dining table chairs, collecting the dirty clothes and sheets strewn around the apartment -- I erected an elaborate tent home in the living room. There I ate quiet meals in the company of my Barbie heads.
For breakfast it was two Eskimo Pies from the freezer. For lunch I alternated between Pop Tarts and Nutter Butters. Dinner consisted of Dr. Pepper, a Milky Way, cinnamon toast.
But, if all the Milky Ways were gone, I’d substitute one of my mother’s Crunch bars, which were supposed to be off limits. And even though she spent weeks in the bedroom, somehow she sensed when I’d been at her candy; while rubbing her feet at night, I always paid for the transgression by receiving an abrupt kick on the chin.
'What have I told you before?” she’d say again and again. 'You miserable creep, you never learn! I can’t teach you anything about what’s mine!”
But I had learned something: heroin gave my father neutrality, serving as an antidote for a mind too difficult to manage. For my mother, having lived a short life lacking much meaning at all, heroin offered nothing. The drug had run away with her as a teenager, and the experience was ultimately a mediocre one. Her warm, dreamy, carefree bubble had become a void. So, when going to her bedside, I knew who the real miserable creep was. And I knew she would eventually kick out, or throw the wet rag she used to wipe the sweat from her puffy face. Still, she never struck hard enough to make me cry. Mostly, she just ranted. Sometimes making sense, often not.
While massaging the fatness of her pale legs, pushing my fingertips along the lumpy skin, my mother’s mouth seemed to function independently of her brain. 'Lip-smacking junkie baby,” she called me, and I understood a verbal barrage was about to follow. It seemed scripted, differing slightly with each performance: 'Withdrawal is what I went through -- that way you wouldn’t get born hooked. Irritable and hyperactive baby too, nothing but a high-pitched cry and twitching and spasms and convulsions. Your daddy blew smoke in your mouth to keep you quiet, you know that? Think you got damaged by that, but don’t blame me. Because I breast-fed you forever -- and they’re all wrong, dear, because drugs don’t mess with breast milk in a major way. It’s your daddy’s fault you’re like you are. Not mine. I loved you.”
Taking a labored breath, she dabbed the rag to her forehead and then propped up on her elbows, the bedsprings squeaking as she did. Her voice suddenly changed, becoming softer.
'Jeliza-Rose, do you know I love you? Honey, I’m sorry. If you'd just fix me a hit and something to eat, I'll do something nice for you soon. I promise, baby.”
I always played my part too, nodding, fully aware of the lie -- she would never do anything nice for me soon. But leaving her bedside, I’d manage a smile anyway, tormented by the thought of ever entering that bedroom again, or of touching her swollen calves.
So on the afternoon she turned blue and died of respiratory failure, I skipped around the living room whistling the theme from
'The methadone killed her,” my father said, looking haggard and confused on the couch. 'I should’ve kept her on junk -- just cut her daily dose and kept her on it.”
Junky logic: with the hope of finally getting clean, he had traded the Buick for pills -- though he understood that methadone was more addictive, more dangerous, and more deadly than heroin.
Bringing his hands to his face, he said, 'Now she's dead, and I don’t have a car.”
A week earlier, he and my mother had decided to quit mainlining. The tough decision came after our apartment was robbed late one night. I remember waking to the sounds of the front door splintering and breaking open, my father shouting, 'Get the fuck out of here! I said I’d get the dough Thursday! Talk to Leo, that’s what I told him!” There were other voices, men with calm and threatening tones, saying, 'Listen, Noah, we’ve been through this,” and, 'No more screwing around, all right?'
But in my bed, I pretended it was all a spooky dream.
When I stirred the next morning, I found my father in the kitchen. He was pouring the contents of the sugar tin into the sink. His hands were shaking, and his teeth chattered, even as he said, 'Howdy, sweetheart.'
The microwave was missing. So was the toaster.
In the living room, the TV and VCR and stereo were gone.
'Bog men paid us visit,” he told me. 'But now we’re okay. I’ve talked with your mother. It’s all good. You’ll see.”
And I started crying -- not because I was glad or relieved, but because the very idea of bog men dragging themselves into the apartment filled me with horror.
My father set the tin aside. 'Oh, no,” he said, 'everything’s fine.' Then he tried lifting me, but couldn’t gather the strength. So he hugged me instead, patting my neck, saying, 'See, when was the last time Daddy did this? It’s getting better already.” I felt his fingers trembling, the sweat on his palms. 'Not a thing to worry about, my little girl.' And I almost believed him.
But on the day my mother’s corpse rested in their bedroom, it was my turn to be the comforter. Her overdose had taken about twelve hours to run its course. What began as irregular breathing, concluded with blue skin and pupils reduced to a pinpoint, but all the while my father expected her to pull through. In a last effort to revive her, he poured cold water on her face, but it didn’t help.
'Please don’t be sad,' I told him in the living room, putting my head against his shoulder. 'We can go to Jutland if you want.”
For a moment he grinned. 'Wouldn’t that be wonderful.”
'Yes,' I said, 'and we can eat her Crunch bars too.”
Then he held me close, saying, 'No one’s taking you from me. That’s not happening here. We’re leaving, okay?”
'Okay.”
While I quickly packed, my father swaddled my mother from head to toe in the bedding. Then he called me to join him in their bedroom.
'If she was a Viking ship,” he announced, 'we’d have to bury her with horses and food and gold plates.”
He wore his backpack and seemed anxious to get going. I stood beside him with my suitcase, staring at the shrouded corpse. Even in death, her body odor was potent. 'Anything you want to say?”
I shrugged. 'I don’t know. She’s like a mummy.”
He sighed.
'Well, I’ve pretty much said what I wanted when she was alive, so no point wasting time.”
He dug his Bic lighter from a pocket, clicked on the flame, and attempted to ignite the mattress. But it wouldn’t catch, so eventually he gave up, saying, 'Bad idea anyways. It might burn the whole building and everyone else.'
And as we hurried from the bedroom, I paused to take a final glance at my mother, imagining her congested breathing while dying. Her pulmonary arteries had become clogged with blood, forcing the fluid through the capillaries and into the lungs. In the violent throes near the end, she kicked her chubby legs wildly, shaking the bedsprings to the limit.
'Come on,” my father said. He was waiting at the end of the hallway. 'Don’t stare, it’s bad luck.”
'Mom’s dead all right,” I said, turning to face him.
Gripping my suitcase, I thought, Poor Queen Gunhild -- drowning in a bog like that.
5
