I said something real. Susan should put a gold star in my folder. I never know what to follow it up with, though. I say something that is true but is a bummer and then it just hangs there and I am supposed to offer a solution but there isn't one. “Anyway, glad to be here. Grateful to be sober today.”
Susan Schmidt looks at me pointedly from her perch on a hard-backed chair she brought in from the kitchen. God, I loathe her.
“Oh, yeah, and I've been feeling kind of lonely lately. Thanks for letting me share.”
“Thanks, Bebe,” choruses the room.
Violet goes next. She sits cross-legged on a floor cushion. A deep purple, handmade velvet skirt pools around her legs. She hangs her head and her black hair falls like drapes on either side of her pale, sharp-featured face.
“Hi, I'm Violet and I'm an alcoholic.” I can always count on Violet's share to make me feel like I am positively bubbly. I am a cheerleader compared to Violet.
“I just feel sad and I can't get rid of it. I'm grateful not to be smoking speed today and making decoupage lamp shades for ten days on end, but I feel so heavy from the minute I open my eyes.
“When I was tweaking I was so motivated,” she goes on. “I never actually finished anything but at least I started. I started all kinds of artwork and I was so thin and I had so many ideas. I guess that's what I miss the most. That feeling like I had something to say.” Violet sniffles back that first drip of teary snot, but she pushes the lid down. “Now all I can do is smoke and watch TV. And I want to kill myself. I'm sorry but I do. I think about it all day long, about how I would do it and who would find me and that I wouldn't want to do that to any of you and, y'know, ruin your life from having to see something like that.
“I know I was a disgusting mess before and that it's better now. But before at least I felt some relief, and this.” She puts her hands out to indicate everything. It's her only gesture; other than that she's been a statue. “This is just relentless.”
Violet folds her hands back into her lap and drops her head even further so her hair almost entirely covers her face. “Yesterday I was looking at my sewing needles and I felt an overwhelming compulsion to stick one directly up inside my vein and let the ugliness flow out. I know that's totally gross. I want some relief, y'know? Just for a minute. I want to figure out a way that I can live sober like this and it won't break my heart. But I didn't hurt myself. Instead I used the sewing needle to sew up a tear at the seam of my mom's old costume so I could go and make those little girls happy. And I remembered my mom and how she used to dress up for my birthday parties, you know? All the other girls thought I was so lucky that I had a princess for a mom. I think she would have been proud of me yesterday. I think she would have loved to see me dressed up like that. I miss her.”
The tears boil over. We all sit back and breathe and let her cry. No one holds her hand or jumps for the tissue box because it's not the way we do it in this group. In our group therapy they tell us not to interfere with anyone's expression of emotion; that if you hand her a tissue it's like asking her to stop because you're uncomfortable with her sorrow. If she wants a tissue she's capable of getting one herself, is what Susan would say. Which is pretty cool, actually.
Sometimes there are these Zion phrases that come back to me and reinsert themselves into my life. Like the one I think of here is “bear witness.” We're here to bear witness to each other's sorrow. Because no one else cares about our poor-prognosis, likely-recidivist asses except us. To most people outside of places like Serenity, lives like ours are a statistic and the statistic doesn't tell a very hopeful story. So why listen? So why care? But we who are thrown here together by court order or probation requirements or various diagnostic criteria, we're here to bear witness to each other's lives, each other's stories, to make sure we don't disappear unheard, unseen. So it sometimes makes me ashamed, how Violet tells the truth and I'm so full of shit.
Violet adds, “Oh, and also I finished my third step and I guess it was okay. Oh, yeah, and someone's eating all my food and it's really pissing me off, but I'll bring that up after as a house issue. Thanks for letting me share.”
“Thank you, Violet.”
It is me, by the way, who eats all of Violet's food. Late-night compulsive binges where I sit on the floor with someone else's labeled jar of peanut butter and a spoon until there is no thought and no me anymore, there is nothing but eating. Every night I vow to stop and every next night there I am again. I don't confess.
Candy tells an inappropriate compulsive lie, as usual. This week she insists she caught a guy looking up her skirt with a shoe mirror at the library and had him arrested. She says that she plans to keep up a correspondence with him while he's in prison because she felt a mystical bond with him as the police were hauling him off. Last week she shared about having sex with a strange woman on the Zipper at the carnival. She tries to corner me at beauty school and tell the same kinds of stories. When I have nothing else to do, I listen.
Buck and I have started to bet whether Althea will mention Joseph Campbell or pre-Christian goddess worship in her share. Tonight she goes for Joseph Campbell. I win. Buck owes me a chore.
Missy, our doe-eyed, fragile blonde, shares about her brother in the Air Force and her boyfriend who is in his twelfth treatment center. Missy has Tourette's on top of about fifteen other diagnoses, so her sentences are peppered with a sound that is kind of like a hiccup mixed with a bark. She weeps into her hands. I can't stop looking at her. She's so cracked and beautiful, all crumpled like that.
Missy has worse problems than her tweaker boyfriend. She's a lifer in these kinds of places. I have caught her many times frozen in the middle of the upstairs hallway, her pupils dilated with terror. With a little prodding she admits that voices drive her out of her room. They speak to her through the heating vents. There are no vents in the hallway, so that's where she goes to escape them. The demons chase Missy wherever she goes, but she doesn't talk about it too much on a group level because she knows how it sounds. That's the difference between her being here and being in a lockdown facility.
Chandra is our equivalent of the captain of the cheer-leading squad. Her being a black girl, ex-hooker cosmetologist is enough to make her the coolest person here, but on top of that she is our resident AA expert, with the most time sober (two years) and the most steps completed (all twelve). So Chandra is the one who settles disputes and doles out late-night tough love. She's the one you want on your side.
“Hi, I'm Chandra and I'm an alcoholic. I suffer from the disease of alcoholism and I am feeling it today. I am feeling the cunning, baffling nature of this disease like a worm in my brain. Because my disease is telling me that it's okay to be with Robbie, because he's supposedly clean and he supposedly loves me and I have been waiting all this time for him. But he tells me yesterday that he is dealing some weed on the side, just to help him transition into going straight, right? And my disease is telling me, what's so wrong with a little weed? He's just selling it, not smoking it. We all need to get by, okay? But I know that I got to be more vigilant than that. By God's grace and by the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I have a daily reprieve from my obsession to drink and to smoke crack cocaine. And I'm not going to be fucking with that. I know I can't be fucking with no weed dealer.”
I wait for Chandra's shares. I count on her. I count on her to believe in this.
“I love him,” she goes on. “I do. But I love myself more. I love God more. And God will put another man in my life who isn't a drug dealer. I have faith. I am grateful to be sober and to be here with all of you beautiful, strong women today. Thank you for letting me share.”
“Thanks, Chandra.”
I think about how I saw Chandra crying in Robbie's car the other night. She pulls it together quick.
Everyone's always sharing about love in group. It's the golden ring and it's the suicide mission. Me, I'm not on the prowl for love like everyone else here. I've done my time with wild love and I used it all up, I think. I tried with Aaron but never could figure out how to live with love pressing in around me all the time. I was shot through with poisonous jealousy every moment. Now he's dead and I wish it were me.
Living with a bunch of mental patients on parole is its own kind of safe wavelength. But love is treachery. Love is Aaron and my pop and everything already lost before I figured out what to do with it. First few months after Aaron was gone, I rolled out of bed onto my knees every morning with my fists pressed into my belly, unable to stand. All my support beams tumbled. Nothing held me up anymore. I was like one of those babies born with no bones.
Now I get up every morning and stand on my feet. No, I am definitely not hunting for love. But when the phone vibrates in my back pocket, I have this feeling that it's probably Jake and my chest gets a little tight and my big toe starts twitching and I know it's foolish, but there it is.
Nine
I
536 hours down.
64 hours left to go.
I remove the rollers I left overnight in Kitty Hawk's hair: wet set number one hundred and eighty-six of the two hundred required. I tease and spray, tease and spray, one section at a time, attempting to sculpt a peak of record height at the crown of her head. As I tease and spray, tease and spray, I meditate on Jake and our date tonight, which he may or may not remember to show up for. Things he said blindside me at unguarded moments and I think about him more than I mean to.
My boobs seem to be in the way of my arms as I style Kitty's hair. They're sore and swollen. The new meds are probably the reason I feel all tilted: ringing in my ears, occasional tunnel vision, shaky hands, fucked-up hormones. The list of possible side effects is about ten pages of microscopic print, so nobody really reads it, but you can safely assume that any disturbing physical development is a side effect.
Next to me Javier also teases and sprays, teases and sprays, until we are enveloped in a haze of Grand Finale. At least once a week Javi comes to school wildly hair inspired by late-night TV. Last week he convinced us to style our dolls like
Charlie's Angels
. Today we're doing
Valley of the Dolls
.
His doll is Sharon Tate; mine is Patty Duke; Violet's is that other girl what's-her-name. Javier fusses at his station and makes frustrated little snorts as he tries to create realistic-looking mascara tear streaks down Sharon's face. He is a true perfectionist. When he is satisfied he removes the glamorous yet trashed doll head from her stand and holds her up.
“They love me,” Javier slurs like Sharon after swallowing thirty Valium. “They
all
love me, Goddammit.”
Violet and I scramble to finish our far inferior attempts.
“Fine,” says Javier. “I don't need you. I don't need any of you. I'm going to make art house films. Now give me some damn quaaludes.”
“You don't do art house films.
I
do art house films. You get breast cancer and kill yourself, remember?” I say.
I've spent my share of sleepless nights in front of the TV. I know my
Valley of the Dolls
.
“Oh, what do you know, you lezzy lush? I want to do the dirty movies.”
“Was she a lezzy?”
“Patty Duke? Oh, honey, please.”
“What is my doll's name?” Violet asks, spraying a liberal coat of shellac on her sagging bouffant. Violet has little natural talent in the hair department, but she has resolve, she has determination.
“No one knows that other actress's name except for obsessed queens hiding under a rock of crystal somewhere in West Hollywood. Reasonable people only know the name of the actress who was gruesomely murdered by sociopathic hippies on bad acid.”
“And the one who played Helen Keller.”
Miss Mary-Jo surprises us, sneaking up on us from behind. “What is it that you are doing back here? You are supposed to be doing the work. Not as much the talking for playtime. One point each for the wet sets, now we are moving on. Why don't we open our books for the studying?”
She's good-natured about it, though. She looks at our doll heads before marking the points on our cards, her head tilted quizzically.
“What is wrong with her face?” she asks Javier.
“She's been ravaged by fame. Plus, she's a drug addict with breast cancer,” he says gravely.
“You are the very naughty one,” Miss Mary-Jo says, pinching Javier's cheek and then giving him one of her hugs.
Sharon and Patty and what's-her-name go on the shelf and we sit with our books open in front of us and talk about
Sex and the City
. Violet prefers true-crime specials. Javier is adamant that Carrie's new love interest isn't worthy. I am adamant that a writer could never afford that apartment, much less that shoe collection. Javier is genuinely disgusted with me.
“You're missing the whole point.”
When Miss Mary-Jo comes by, we act like we're quizzing each other from the questions at the back of the chapters.
“How many processes are involved in double-process hair coloring?” Violet reads from the book. I think she's making that one up, actually.
“Uh. Wait. I've got it. Two,” says Javi.
“What is the difference between off-the-scalp lighteners and on-the-scalp lighteners?”
“Uh. One is applied on the scalp and one is applied off the scalp?” I offer.
“What is the role of ammonia in hair color formula?”