Читать книгу Dopefiend - Tim Elhajj - Страница 14
ОглавлениеTwo weeks after arriving in New York City, I watched a dark blue van with side windows pull to the curb and idle in front of the homeless shelter. The woman on duty said I should climb in. I was going to the Bronx for treatment.
I piled into the middle seat of a van fully loaded with people: all of them sullen, quiet, and black. We wound through early afternoon traffic. Wipers slapped cold sleet from the windshield. I watched the gaily decorated downtown cityscape grow more desolate: soon we were passing lone tenement buildings, defiant hulks squatting in the middle of trash-strewn lots. We drove past the ornate splendor of Yankee Stadium and the Grand Concourse, a testament to better times. Soon the streets twisted and looped, making me feel as if I were entering a great labyrinth.
Nestled on the side of a hill, the Rockford facility was an enormous building, its steep walls rising up from the street below like the ramparts of some ancient castle. I could hear traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway and trains rumbling past on the elevated Number Four line. Getting out of the van, I discreetly stretched. I was grateful to be out of the shelter, but wary of my new surroundings, and didn’t want to call undue attention to myself. Waving his thick hands, a large bald man with gold caps on his teeth climbed out from the front passenger seat and directed us inside. From the way he seemed to enjoy flashing both his grin and his authority over us, I assumed he was a counselor—though I came to learn he was a client, like me.
In the lobby, people carrying clipboards directed those of us who had come from the van to sit on a raggedy collection of castaway furniture. Everyone holding a clipboard was black. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Several women, some with hair braided into thick ropes, all with dark and gleaming skin, lingered in one corner of the lobby, quietly murmuring to one another.
Gold Teeth curtly barked orders to his co-workers. To those of us who had just gotten off the van, he showed a benign indifference, walking through our midst like we were pigeons clustered around his feet in the park. But to his peers, those other clipboard-wielding men, he behaved menacingly, demanding answers, calling for paperwork, and looking generally displeased with everyone’s performance. It occurred to me he might be showing off for the women. This insight surprised me. I felt no sexual attraction toward this raw gang of women. If anything, they frightened me. More than one had lumped-up purple razor scars running across the fleshy skin of her arm or back. Some had bruised, ashen faces. But most unsettling was their sturdy and silent indifference, as they stood with chins jutted out or fists curled into plump hips.
That night I lay in the bottom half of a bunk bed in an open dormitory. Someone flashed the overhead lights to signal they would soon be shut off. There were at least two dozen of us packed into the large second-floor room, which had bathroom facilities at one end. Bunk beds were pushed against all the walls and people mostly stood in the center aisle of the room, chatting or milling about as they got ready for bed. Outside I could hear the low hum of traffic from the expressway and the occasional siren wail from somewhere in the city.
Considering where I was, I felt generally pleased and optimistic. The room was crowded but warm, a huge step up from the damp shelter on Saint Mark’s Place. I felt as if it would be okay to remove my street clothes before I went to bed, which I hadn’t done since arriving in the city. Dinner had been a baked chicken leg and thigh, a plop of mashed potatoes, and diced carrots. Because I was new, those in charge let me get seconds. I had bagged the bulk of my clothes and dropped them in a great canvas cart, ready to be laundered. My court appearance in Pennsylvania was scheduled for late February, about ten weeks out. I had done all I could to ensure I wouldn’t end up in jail, and now felt certain the worst of this adventure was behind me.
Just as the lights went out, I heard three or four dull, popping sounds from the street below.
There was a lull in the dormitory conversation, but nobody seemed concerned by this noise. I immediately got off the bed. Gunshots? But the popping noise seemed so innocent, not at all like the crack of gunfire on TV. In a hurry to look out the window, I had to make my way to the room’s center aisle and double back between bunks.
Someone called out, “Where you going?”
“You hear that?” I asked. Arriving at the window, I found my view of the street blocked. I turned and headed across the room; somewhere there had to be an unobstructed view.
“Don’t look out the window,” that same voice said.
Ignoring this advice, I squeezed between two bunks on the other side of the room, much closer to where I imagined the sounds had come from. “I want to see,” I said.
“You’ll get shot.”
The unseen speaker’s tone was somehow both plaintive and blunt. It wasn’t a command, more a simple statement of fact. I pulled up short. Nobody else had made a move to the windows. Coming back to the center aisle, I grinned at the person speaking to me.
“Good point,” I said.
Mike introduced himself. He was the blackest black man I had ever seen. He wore a tight white T-shirt and folded his muscular arms across his chest. His skin was so black, shadow didn’t seem to register on his face or arms, giving him an unsettling two-dimensional appearance, except for the cut of his strong chest, which showed in relief against the cotton of his shirt. Mike grinned, a toothy white smile. “If it was gunshots, you don’t want to see.”
“I didn’t even think of that,” I said. He had a magazine folded in three and tucked under his arm. He looked about twenty-two years old, which would make him five years younger than me. There were a few other young men standing nearby him.
“Where you from, Country?” Mike asked.
“Pennsylvania,” I said. Feeling a little put off by the nickname, I added: “It’s only four hours out of the city.”
“Is Pennsylvania south?” he asked.
I nodded, amused by what I took for his lack of geographic awareness.
“Then that’s the country,” he said. All his friends laughed. “You from the country, Country.” Mike grinned.
His smile lit up his face, emphasizing his boyish good looks. I found it hard to stay annoyed at him.
“What you got there,” I asked, nodding to the magazine under his arm, just to change the subject.
“Porn,” he said, tugging the magazine out and handing it to me.
“Oh. . .” My voice rose unintentionally. Pornographic magazines were most likely contraband. A small infraction to be sure, but I hadn’t intended to break any rules. My job was to stay out of trouble until after my court date. With all the guys looking at me, I felt as if it would have been rude to refuse the magazine, so I took it and held it in front of me. “Is having porn against the rules?” I asked.
“Yup,” Mike said. There was an awkward silence. “You going to tell?” He cocked his head and I could hear mild disbelief.
“No, no, no,” I said. Breaking the rules was bad, but being labeled a snitch was certainly much worse. “I just wondered,” I said.
“A’ight.” Mike looked at me evenly. “Go take care of that thing,” he nodded toward the bathroom. “Then bring me back my magazine.”
“Oh, right,” I laughed nervously.
I felt a sudden and jarring shock at the way the conversation had turned. The small group that had formed around us scrutinized me. “Right,” I repeated.
Feeling self-conscious, I wasn’t sure how to gracefully exit the little group. I started to walk backwards toward the bathroom, waving the magazine around in front of me, like some circus buffoon. I tripped over something in the aisle and then laughed nervously again at my own awkwardness.
Mike and each of his friends looked at one another and shook their heads. Someone clucked his teeth. I felt grateful for the darkness in the room, for I could feel my face getting hot.
One week into treatment, I was making my way back to the dormitory after Evening Focus. Focus meetings were held twice daily, morning and evening, in a large auditorium on the first floor. One of the counselors, a short man named Angel, was standing in the hallway, urging anyone who was a parent to go to the north wing of the first floor where the administrative offices were. The hallways on the first floor were always packed after focus meetings and meals, but especially during the workday morning and evening rush.
“You got a kid.” Angel said to me. “Over there,” he pointed. It wasn’t a question and he didn’t wait for an answer. He gave my shoulder a little shove.
Jostling my way through the crowd, I made my way to the north wing and found a line of people that stretched the length of the building. I went to the end of the line and stood, wondering why I was there.
I asked the person in front of me, but he had no idea. Five minutes later the line had not budged, but another person or two had come to stand behind me. None of us understood why we were here. Growing impatient, I made my way to the front of the line.
As I asked further up, someone said, “Toys.”
Craning my neck, I could see a counselor listlessly sitting in an office with a great pile of packages behind him. Inside the office, a person from the line stood rubbing his chin as he surveyed the stack of packages.
“Donations,” I heard someone else say.
Donated toys. We were standing in line to select a donated Christmas toy for our kids. I could feel something terrible rising in my chest. As I walked back to my place at the end of the line, I felt myself growing agitated and irritable.
I wasn’t sure where my son lived. It had been months since I’d seen him. He would be four years old the month after Christmas. I knew his mother had recently moved, from Shamokin back to Steelton, but I wasn’t sure if she was staying with her mother now, or on her own. Last I heard she was seeing Jack Driscoll, who owned a house across the street from my mother’s house.
Standing in line, I began to feel distressed. I sighed heavily and ran my fingers through my hair. I wasn’t particularly concerned with getting a toy, but I complained aloud about the length of the line and fidgeted.
“This is so stupid,” I said to no one in particular.
“You too good for our toys?” Rick, a lanky counselor with a bald head, had come out of one of the nearby offices. His presence surprised me; his sharp tone put me on guard. I hadn’t meant to draw attention to myself.
“No,” I stammered. “No. . .”
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I just feel. . .” I had to think for a minute.
Groping for the right word, I finally said: “Bad.” I winced at my inability to convey what I was feeling. Suddenly I felt my eyes well with tears. The intensity and speed of my emotions shocked me. “Really bad,” I added.
He looked me directly in the eye. He didn’t smile, but something in his manner softened. “You feel bad because you’re in treatment and have to get your kid a donated toy for Christmas,” he said.
I shrugged. “I don’t even know where to send it,” I admitted.
With these words, my irritability disappeared and despair took its place. I felt limp and useless, like a wet towel on a clothesline in the middle of a downpour.
Immediately after the holiday lull, Rockford went into an uproar. The entire community filed into the auditorium for Morning Focus, a meeting typically only attended by the facility’s newest members. Vans had been halted, the laundry shuttered, and the administrative wing locked down. The kitchen remained open for breakfast, but only a skeleton crew remained to clean up and prepare a simple lunch. Something was going on.
As the auditorium filled, I took a seat in the right wing, close to the stage. There were at least five hundred people seated and still more passing through the double doors. The quiet roar of confusion filled the great space. I could hear senior members complain about the vans being stopped: They were missing work, trade programs, or appointments at clinics or social service offices. The gang of women I had seen in the lobby on my first day was led into the great hall in a group. A wiry woman, evidently in authority, fluttered about them, chirping directions in a Hispanic accent and watching carefully as they made their way toward the rows of seats reserved for them. A hush seemed to fall across the crowd in the vicinity of the women as they passed, as if the wiry woman’s scrutiny alone were enough to suppress noise.
A group of counselors took the stage. Juan, a short Latino, pleaded for quiet over the microphone. Ramon, stocky and balding, used his hands like a traffic cop. But the noise kept rising. Then, Terrance Tyson, a counselor from East New York, one of the toughest, most desperate crack-torn neighborhoods in all of Brooklyn, took the microphone from Juan and barked, “Shut the fuck up!”
The sudden silence was followed almost immediately by a ripple of laughter. All of the counselors reacted quickly to the laughter, swearing and berating the entire community until there was utter stillness. This was meant to be a somber occasion.
Taking the stage next was James, the director of the program, an athleticlooking man whose youthful countenance was belied by his gray temples. As the director paced, the auditorium grew tense. He spoke in a low tone that felt menacing. Gold Teeth and two of his peers were led onstage. The three of them stood, stoop-shouldered, staring at their shoes, like sinners in church. Of all the client jobs, these men’s had been the highest positions of authority. I was shocked to see them singled out like this.
James went on about clients breaking the rules. He was coy about specifics. It became clear he wanted the specifics from us. Looking across the seats, I saw mostly teenagers and young men, crackheads from some of the worst neighborhoods in New York City.
Good luck, I thought.
Next James called a young man in baggy jeans and hooded jacket on stage. This boy had been remanded to treatment by the courts with a significant amount of jail time hanging in the balance. He seemed oddly pleased by this fact, as if it lent him a stature he might not otherwise have been able to attain. In group, he liked to refer to himself—proudly and with no irony— as a predicate felon. “Yo, I’m a predicate felon.”
I found him arrogant and disagreeable but could see the fear in his eyes and felt bad for him now. He was shaking his head, denying any wrongdoing.
“Get your shit,” James told him, “and get the fuck out.”
“What that mean?” Predicate Felon’s voice filled with emotion. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand?” James snorted. “Well, okay. Let’s break it down. ‘Get your shit’ mean, go upstairs and get your stuff.” James paused. Speaking directly into the microphone, he said: “‘Get the fuck out,’ mean ‘Get the fuck out.’”
His amplified voice echoed from the walls.
Predicate Felon’s shoulders slumped.
Turning his attention from the boy, James addressed the crowd. He wanted us to tell on ourselves, tell on our friends, and tell on one another. James wanted this information now.
For the rest of the day a parade of counselors appeared on stage, alone or sometimes in pairs. They alternated between cursing and berating us, or making impassioned pleas for us to discuss any rule infractions we might know of. I didn’t mind the cursing, but by the time evening came, the pleas were taking their toll. Something about the soothing promise of redemption and the measured cadence of the counselor’s arguments put me on edge.
People were beginning to crack.
One by one they raised their hands, like churchgoers making an altar call, and were led out by counselors to the administrative wing. I saw Mike briefly at dinner, but we weren’t allowed to talk.
Gold Teeth split, storming off the stage late evening on day two. Others slipped out during the night. A quiet desperation seemed to settle over everyone, even the counselors whose curses and taunts now rang softly in our ears. Sometimes they let us sit in the auditorium for hours in silence.
After dinner the third day, Ramon led me and half a dozen other new people to the administrative wing. Ramon started in on his plea for information. Halfway through his spiel, Ramon began pacing the hall in front of us as he spoke. He seemed exasperated. I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I would tell about the porn magazine.
I raised my hand.
“You fucking guys are all brand new—,” Ramon said.
I waved my hand.
“You haven’t been here long enough to know shit.” He ran his hand over the shiny skin of his head.
Ramon looked at me with bloodshot eyes. He chuckled with a derisive snort. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
I lowered my hand.
“What the fuck?” He hiked his pants. “What do you want?”
Tongue-tied, I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing. Rockford was a madhouse—of this much I was certain. In my desperation to avoid jail and get into treatment, I had signed on at an asylum.
Days after the lockdown ended, I piled into a van with Mike and a few others to go downtown to a public clinic for physicals and blood tests, a standard procedure for all new clients.
We drove into Manhattan and were dropped off in a public park nearby the clinic to wait for it to open. Homeless people wandered the park in the early morning light: some rooted through trash, while others pushed carts, or rested on sodden sheets of cardboard laid on the bare, wet ground.
“What’s up with all these hobos?” I asked. “They’re all over the place.”
Mike cut his eyes at me and scowled.
“No seriously,” I asked. “Why does New York have so many hobos?”
“Stop saying hobo, motherfucker,” Mike said. He was sitting on the back of a park bench, with his feet on the seat. He blew into his cupped hands for warmth and then looked at me pointedly. “Wasn’t you in the homeless shelter?”
“Yep,” I grinned. “I was a hobo my damn self.”
Mike snorted and shook his head.
“They ain’t hobos, man. They homeless people,” he said. He sounded irritated. He looked wistfully at the locked door of the clinic. “They got homeless people in Pennsylvania, too,” he added. “They all over.”
A pigeon fluttered down, landing on the concrete sidewalk. I watched it peck for crumbs as I shifted my weight from foot to foot. Hugging my crossed arms to my chest, I watched my breath turn to steam.
For a while, no one said anything. The pigeons cooed.
“If I got thrown out of the house,” I said, almost in a whisper. “I just slept on the couch over at Bud’s, or sometimes up at Mary and Frank’s. . .”
In late February, I took the train back to Pennsylvania alone, to appear in court. Arriving in Harrisburg on Sunday afternoon, I phoned my motherin-law from the train station. She listened as I asked to speak to her daughter, and then without saying a word to me, she cupped the receiver with her hand. I heard muffled voices and seconds later Maryanne answered.
“Can I see Joey?” I asked. “I’m only in town for the night.”
She told me she was staying with Jack now, and that I was welcome to come and see Joey, but that there could be no trouble. She stressed the word trouble.
I took the bus to Jack’s. The sky had gone dark purple, bringing the street lights up. The moon shone. To avoid walking past my mother’s house, I climbed the concrete steps on Fourth and Swatara. Bethlehem Steel’s dark stacks loomed even darker in silhouette against the night sky—straight and hard, like the cold iron bars of a prison cell. From Jack’s front porch, I could see my mother’s house and her car parked in the vacant lot up the street.
I wasn’t welcome there.
At the door, Jack smiled and waved me inside. Joey came storming out of the dining room, screaming in delight. I had only enough time to drop my bag and make some hurried hellos, before he dragged me into the dining room to show me his birthday toys. Jack came into the dining room. He was about thirty-two, five years older than me, with a deep voice, workingman hands, and blonde hair in a crew cut.
Joey’s blue eyes sparkled. The dining room floor was littered with toy cars and trucks. He sat across the room from Jack and me, and waved vaguely in our direction. “Dad! Dad! Hand me that car.”
I held up a little blue ‘69 Camaro. “This?” I asked.
“No!” Joey happily shook his shorn head. “My other Dad.” Jack rolled a Ford wagon over to Joey, who grinned ear-to-ear, and sent it roaring down the plastic track. With his light coloration, I noted ruefully that Joey looked more like Jack’s son than he did mine.
Maryanne came down from upstairs, asked if I were hungry, and then darted into the kitchen. Jack wandered into the living room to watch TV. I followed Maryanne into the kitchen. She stood at the countertop, deftly assembling a sandwich. Thin, blonde, determined. Sandwich made, she turned from her task, shoved the plate into my hands and immediately headed for the other room.
“Wait, Mary—” I said. I was whispering and not even sure why.
“What?” Maryanne asked impatiently, her voice flat. She looked up at me with one eyebrow raised. There was an awkward pause, which I didn’t know how to fill.
“He calls him Dad?” I asked.
“Tim,” Maryanne said. “I do not want to hear the shit.”
She tilted her head sweetly, and then left me standing in Jack’s kitchen with a bologna sandwich and some potato chips.
I went into the dining room and raced cars with Joey. Later on, he showed me his room, with which he seemed delighted. Too soon, it was time for me to go. Maryanne asked if I were going across the street to visit my mother.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “No.”
“You should go,” Maryanne said. “She wants to see you.”
“Doubtful,” I mumbled.
“No. I called her,” Maryanne said. “She definitely wants to see you.”
“You called her?” My voice rose. Having someone else make the call for me hadn’t even occurred to me, but knowing Maryanne had called seemed somehow unimaginable—Maryanne and my mom had never been close.
“What did she say?” I asked, alarmed.
Maryanne slowly enunciated: “She said . . . she wants . . . to see you.”
Her consideration felt good, but her confidence that my mother wanted to see me left me feeling awkward, uncomfortable. At a loss for words, I hugged Joey, grabbed my bag, and made for the door.
“Thanks,” I said.
Maryanne waved her hand, dismissing her kindness.
Joey howled with disappointment.
Across the street, I tapped on my mother’s front door. After a few minutes, the curtain was pulled back. Mom; small, worn. A tight little knot of worry. Opening the door, she looked me up and down. Her hair was different now, short.
“Leave that there,” she said, indicating my bag. “No one will mess with it.”
I dropped the bag and followed her inside. One of my younger brothers was on the floor of the living room watching TV. Someone else was in the kitchen, but I couldn’t tell who. I was about to sit on the couch, but Mom indicated a kitchen chair she had dragged into the middle of the living room.
I felt uncomfortable and started to talk. Yammer, really. I told her about the weather in New York, how big Joey was, the furniture in Jack’s living room. Once I started, I didn’t dare stop. As I went on, I realized Mom was clutching her purse to her chest. This astonished me. I had never seen her act with such undisguised caution. One time when I still lived here, I had overheard her tell my younger brother that she thought I might be Satan. Not that I was possessed, but that I was actually Satan. “He goes through locked doors,” she’d said, her voice desperate, edgy.
“Okay,” Mom was saying, glancing at her watch. “You better go.”
My throat was dry from talking. About fifteen minutes had passed. More than anything, I felt relieved it was over. On the front porch, she wished me luck and gave me a quick hug, which surprised me.
“Write,” she said.
I was staying in a room over the Alva Restaurant, right next door to the train station, within walking distance of the court house. The kind of room prostitutes and their johns used by the hour. After my guilty plea was entered, I was duly remanded to treatment. I vaguely considered not going back to New York City, but the idea of staying near home gave me a bad feeling.
On the train ride back to Manhattan, I wondered about the unexpected visit with my mother. She’d asked me to write. Me. Write her.
I resolved I would.
Spring rolled in hot.
One afternoon at the rehab facility, I was sitting in the Vehicles Office with Aaron, one of the drivers. Aaron had a broad forehead, a quick wit, and thin brown hair that he wore pushed straight back. We had the morning shuttle route, which left at 7:00 a.m., and was usually done by noon, having us both back at the facility by 2:00 p.m. Vehicles was a cushy job.
Reading the New York Times, Aaron tipped his thick glasses up onto his nose. I sipped coffee from a paper cup. Another driver, Keith, poked his head into the office and shook the shaggy mop of blonde hair from his eyes. Keith tapped his fist to his chest, and then held up three fingers.
Looking up from his paper, Aaron grinned and made the same gesture.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Wehicles,” Aaron said, tipping his glasses higher on his nose. He held up three splayed fingers to make a W.
Keith grinned.
Creasing my brow, I shrugged. “Wehicles?”
Aaron looked surreptitiously out the door and then whispered: “Wehicles is for white people.”
I laughed. All the drivers were white. During the morning shuttles, the radio was a flashpoint for tension. Black people wanted Soul on one end of the FM dial, while the white people liked Rock down the other end. I tuned to Soul going downtown, and then Rock after the van had emptied. I hushed the occasional impertinent request for Rock on the downtown leg with a soft, “Oh, I want to hear this one,” regardless of what was playing, and then conveniently forgot the request soon after. Sometimes I patiently dialed in a baseball game on the AM band. Baseball was like a balm for the tension caused by the radio.
“That’s true,” I said. “Why are all the drivers white?”
“Brothers don’t need a license,” Keith said. He cut his eyes toward the hallway outside the office and kept his voice low.
I nodded as if this made sense. But I couldn’t imagine anyone not having a driver’s license, much less an entire race without a license. Aaron explained that public transportation in New York City was so good, you didn’t need a license unless you lived in a suburb. The few white people at Rockford other than me were from Staten Island, The Rockaways, or Throggs Neck. Mostly the white people were older, had lost their jobs, lost their health insurance, and then succumbed to some sort of addiction, typically crack. Rockford was the end of the line—free drug treatment.
Summertime—hotter. I got an official letter from the New York City Office of Child Support. I had a hearing in a few weeks.
Showing up on the appointed day, I found the courthouse crowded and loud. Mothers held crying infants to their breasts. Tile floors, crowded wooden benches, impossibly high ceilings, and dusty light fixtures. I met a thin lawyer with a soulful expression and an armful of manila file folders. He asked my name, and then shuffled through his paperwork.
“Welfare?” He studied my file.
I nodded. As we waited outside the courtroom, the heavy wooden doors suddenly burst open. A young man exploded into the lobby, swearing loudly, his face red, wet, and swollen.
“Bitch, fucking bitch!” he screamed. “Goddamn fucking bitch!” A large vein throbbed on the young man’s forehead, and his eyes bulged from his face. Were he not in such obvious distress, it would have been comic.
He continued to curse loudly even as a small man in a suit helped him toward the courtroom exit. The man in the suit spoke slowly and evenly, trying his best to defuse the situation. A number of uniformed men looked sternly in the young man’s direction. The small man in the suit waved the police off and herded his man out of the court.
“We’re up,” my lawyer said.
As I entered the courtroom, I saw the judge sitting theatrically high on the other side of the room. She was visibly upset—her brows knitted together, and speaking sharply and with much irritation to the clerks in the room— but she still showed much better composure than her last case. One of the clerks read my name. Turning her attention to my case, the judge scowled at the paperwork before her for a long time. My lawyer hesitantly spoke into the microphone on our side of the room, “He’s below the line, Your Honor.”
“I can read,” she sniped. She asked me to explain myself and I did the best I could. She grunted and set the monthly support to a nominal cost.
Although the amount was low, I reflected uncomfortably that I couldn’t pay it. And the thought of it accruing, perhaps accumulating penalties, as I languished in treatment stepped up my discomfort. I whispered as much to my lawyer. He looked surprised. But before he could say anything, the judge asked if I had something to add. I edged up to the microphone to tell her my concern.
Out of the side of his mouth, my lawyer whispered, “Shut up.” I could hear the urgency in his voice.
The judge stared down at me over her glasses. My lawyer kept his eyes straight ahead.
“No ma’am,” I said.
She rapped her gavel and put the matter to rest. Outside the courtroom, I asked my lawyer again how I was going to pay for the child support. He laughed at me with what seemed like genuine amusement. “You’ll think of something,” he said.
During the humid summer that followed, I liked to hang out with Aaron, especially on weekends. Each week at Rockford, there was a Sunday celebration: families brought home-cooked meals, girlfriends appeared in tight jeans and teased hair, and sons mended family ties.
Aaron and I never participated.
He had a girlfriend in Manhattan, but she was ignoring him while he was in treatment. I occasionally wrote my mother carefully composed letters that never asked for anything, or even posed any questions she might feel compelled to answer. I didn’t want to pressure her. In prior treatment experiences, I had pushed for the organized reconciliation, the weekend visits. I couldn’t imagine going through all that again.
As the summer wore on, counselors began to disappear, with little explanation for their absence. Juan was gone. Rick was gone. A few others were gone. Aaron pointed out that they had actually relapsed and then had to be let go. When I suggested they might have gotten better jobs, Aaron laughed. He was shrewd.
“They’re junkies,” he said. “You can tell they’re in trouble, if their caseload suddenly gets cut.” This appeared to be true.
Miguel, who had pale yellow where the whites of his eyes should have been, had his caseload cut to a third of what it once had been. A few days later, he took his remaining charges into the courtyard, and then nodded off in his folding chair during group. One-by-one his clients stood, folded their chairs and then wandered off, until only Miguel was left in the courtyard, his chin upon his chest. News of the counselors’ relapses terrified me. It was exactly the kind of thing I could see myself doing.
One Sunday evening in the cafeteria, Aaron mentioned his girlfriend had been to visit him. “Here?” I asked, surprised. I was eagerly forking my way through a pile of rice and beans. Last I had heard about Aaron’s girlfriend, she had folded up his diploma from NYU and sent it to him in a No. 10 envelope. I asked him about the creased diploma.
“Bitch,” he said, grinning. “But it looks like we’re back together.”
“Back together?” I asked.
I laid my fork down.
“I’m going to split after dinner,” he said. I nodded, my disappointment quickly consuming me. I toyed with my fork. Aaron kept eating. Trying to rally, I encouraged him to stay, to finish his treatment, to address his addiction.
He lowered his fork and grinned at me. “Here?” he laughed. He gave me his new address and phone number, and then he was gone.
Trains shrieked through Grand Concourse station at 149th Street. Mike and a few others stood in a small group on the platform, waiting for the train. We were on our way to sign up for a job training program in the South Bronx.
I leaned against one of the platform stanchions, lost in thought. As summer came to a close, we had to get jobs, find apartments, and make concrete plans to move out of the facility. This was my chief dilemma.
I was determined to move back to Pennsylvania, even though the mere thought of doing so gave me a knot in my stomach. I wanted to go home. To get out of New York City. But to make that kind of transition, I’d need support. I’d need somewhere to live while I looked for a job. And I’d need food and shelter as I saved up for an apartment. And that’s not even considering the intangibles of recovery, like depression, coping with the lack of companionship, and the requirement for constant encouragement that only the truly needy can hope to understand. Most guys would turn to their family for this kind of support. Only problem was, I’d burned those bridges, rebuilt them, then burned them all down again. More than once. My family would be crazy to take a big risk with me. I snorted bitterly at my own intractable predicament. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I just wanted to go home. But more and more, home was looking like a mirage, an unreachable dream.
“Timmy,” Mike shouted. He was right in my face, but I hadn’t noticed until he raised his voice. “What’s wrong with you?”
“S’up?” I asked.
“You can’t stand on the platform like that,” Mike said.
“Like what,” I asked, confused. I looked down at myself: zipper up, sneakers tied. I seemed okay.
“All lost,” Mike said. The others circled around me, nodding their heads. “Someone see you standing like that,” Mike said. “You going to get robbed. Or punched.”
I laughed. “I got stuff on my mind, man.”
“Look, you always got to be scanning, scanning.” Mike looked to the left, then to the right. Taking his time, he folded his arms across his chest. “You got to be on guard.” He looked completely at ease, the lord of all he surveyed. “You try,” he said.
“What are we looking for,” I asked.
Everyone chuckled. Mike shook his head in mock disgust. “You looking for trouble, girls, anything.” Mike laughed.
I looked to the left, then to the right. I felt awkward, uncomfortable.
“Good, good. That’s it,” Mike said. “Now check the package.”
“The package?” I asked.
More chuckling.
“The package,” Mike said. He took a step back and scanned the platform to his left. As he turned his head to the right, he reached down and briefly touched his groin. “Check the package.”
I laughed. I had seen others do that gesture a thousand times but had never done it myself. “Why you doing that?” I asked.
“Why?” Mike rolled his eyes. “You got to make sure the package intact,” Mike said. “Everything solid.”
Trying to duplicate the gesture, I made everyone groan with disappointment. “No, no, no,” Mike said. “You adjusting yourself. If you need an adjustment, go to the bathroom.”
I laughed, embarrassed.
“Just a quick check,” Mike said. He narrowed his eyes and touched his groin. I laughed at how easily he slipped in and out of his hard veneer.
Mike insisted I try a dozen more times. Everyone critiqued my stance, offered suggestions, and little signature moves of their own. I started getting into it. We were all getting into it, styling on the platform: sniffing, looking hard, and touching our groins. When the crowded train pulled up, we filed into the car in a good mood, dispersing to the few vacant spots.
The train doors slid closed and the car pulled out of the station. As the movement of the train jostled my body, I gripped the handrail tighter. Soon my mind wandered back to how I could get myself back to Pennsylvania. Back home.
Looking across the car, I found Mike staring at me. When our eyes met, he soundlessly mouthed the word, “Package.”
“If you go back to Pennsylvania,” Carter was saying, “you won’t have any support.” A murmur of assent rose up from our little group; a small ring gathered in the empty cafeteria. Tonight was my night.
I nodded.
“You won’t be able to attend outpatient aftercare at Rockford.”
I inhaled deeply.
“You won’t have your peer group to rely upon.”
Sweat beading on his forehead, Carter leaned forward in his chair. As he spoke, he used his fingers to tick off all the reasons he felt my return to Pennsylvania was a bad idea. He was on his thumb.
We had been in group for an hour, most of the time focused on me. I knew the trick to getting through a group like this was to look each man in the eye. Listen. Never cross your arms or legs. Appear open, attentive, receptive.
As Carter leaned back in his seat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, I nodded my head. He appeared to be finished. Clearing my throat, I briefly summarized what Carter, and then each man before him, had said over the past hour. I spoke clearly. Looked each man in the eye. I acknowledged particularly perceptive points. When I was finished, I paused.
Leaning forward, I addressed the entire group.
“Never-” I said, pausing, looking around the room, “the-less.”
There was silence for a beat. As the group put together what I had just said, groans rose up from our little ring of chairs.
“I am not staying in New York City after treatment,” I continued. “That would be foolish.”
Mild cursing started. Someone said, “Fuck him. Send his hillbilly ass back to Pennsylvania.” I felt amused, but I did not grin, for I did not want to risk being misunderstood on this matter.
Terrance Tyson sighed. I thought he was going to curse me out, or rally one last argument to change my mind, but instead he chuckled. “You one stubborn motherfucker,” he said. Somehow he made it sound endearing.
I shrugged.
Looking at his watch, Terrance closed the group.
At the front of the classroom, Mr. Parker looked uncomfortable in his collar and tie. He wore his hair in a short, irregular afro, speckled with grey. He stammered when he spoke.
Mike sat to my left, his long legs folded under the desk. Mr. Parker had wobbly hands, which he tried to hide by stuffing them in his pants pockets. New to teaching, he admitted being unfamiliar with the course he was presenting.
Pointing to a small pile of lumber in the corner of the room, Mr. Parker asked us to build the framework for a wall with a window and then excused himself. We pushed all the chairs and desks to the walls.
Pablo had a quick smile and curly dark hair. He wasn’t a client at Rockford, but had signed up for this Bronx County training program. Pablo and Mike were natural leaders, taking charge of our little group as everyone started sorting the wood in the lumber pile. The studs were already cut, so assembling the wall was more puzzle then building project. The ring of our hammers broke the early morning quiet.
When Mr. Parker came back into the room, we were raising the wall. He leaned over my shoulder to get a look at what we were doing, and I could smell the pungent odor of whiskey.
“Jesus,” I said, waving my hand in front of my face.
Mr. Parker grinned and moved to the center of our group. He extolled our building prowess. Mike and Pablo stood by the little pile of lumber. Everyone stopped building and looked at the unfinished wall we had just raised. Mr. Parker continued to praise our work. Mike offered Mr. Parker a piece of gum and suggested it was time for morning break. Mr. Parker agreed.
Pablo and I followed Mike to a playground across the street from the school. As we entered the yard, Mike wheeled around and said: “We have to help Mr. Parker.”
“He’s an alcoholic,” I groaned. “A loser.”
“What the fuck are you?” Mike’s tone was sharp.
I rolled my eyes.
The only alcoholic I had ever known had been Maryanne’s father, who had died a nasty death from his own out-of-control drinking. I had never been much of a drinker myself and had a hard time seeing my own limitations reflected in the cravings of an alcoholic.
After morning break, we finished building the framework for the wall and then attached sheets of drywall. Mr. Parker said he didn’t know how to do the drywall seams, but I told Mike I knew how to tape. I spread the joint compound over the seams, laid down the tape, and then wiped it clean. Everyone cheered.
When we broke for lunch, Mike poked his head into the administrator’s office. I went to the swing to eat, and Pablo sat on the merry-go-round. Mike came over in high spirits. He said he had put in a good word for Mr. Parker with the program administrators. Adjusting his utility belt and hammer, he said he felt like a superhero.
Mike said all his friends in Brooklyn called him Black. “But in the Bronx,” he said, “I’m Blackman.” Pablo laughed and said he was Blackman’s trusty sidekick, Puerto Rican Bird.
I chuckled. Mike looked at me expectantly, but I couldn’t come up with my own nickname. It wouldn’t be right.
“You be Rem Ram,” Mike said.
“Rem Ram?” I asked.
“You’re an artist,” Mike said. “Look what you did with that tape.”
“You mean like Rembrandt?” I asked.
“You can go old school, if you want. . .” Mike chuckled.
I was a sucker for a nickname and it felt good to get one from Mike. He might have been five years younger than me, but Mike felt like an older brother. Once, a few months earlier, when we were riding the Lexington Avenue line back to Rockford, Mike had asked me to follow him between the cars. I did, and we stood on the short lip outside the cabin as the train raced north, me looking expectantly at Mike and him motioning for me to be patient. I perched next to him on the precarious ledge of the rocketing car, looking down at the tracks speeding past in a blur beneath my feet, letting the damp tunnel air rush over my face, feeling the car pitch to-andfro, and listening to the clickety-clack of the tracks. The car thundered from the tunnel and we were suddenly bathed in warm sunshine and fresh air. Mike grinned at me and craned to put his whole head into the sunshine beaming down between the cars. A few minutes later, he pointed to the left, and we saw the sudden emerald green of Yankee Stadium’s outfield, glimmering like some hidden verdant treasure as we rushed to the Mount Eden Avenue station.
Mike showed me things in a way I wasn’t used to seeing.
I really liked Mike.
When we got back to class, Mike learned that Mr. Parker had been reprimanded over lunch for using the wrong type of drywall for our class project. We had used the green drywall, but we were supposed to have used the white. Mike grew sullen.
During afternoon break, we hung out in the stairwell together, smoking cigarettes. “Once again,” I said, “a good man may lose his job over color.”
Mike looked sternly at me. “Don’t even joke like that,” he said. “You have no idea. That’s not funny.”
Mike went on about Mr. Parker, but I didn’t catch much of what he said. I felt ashamed. Mike had never scolded me for saying stupid things before. I wanted to say something to make up for it, but I had no idea what to say. My mouth started moving and, like an idiot, I found myself repeating the exact same thing I had just said, the thing Mike had warned me not to say again.
“Once again,” I said, “a good man may lose his job because of color.”
“I just told you about that,” Mike said. “The fuck . . .” Shaking his head, he exhaled noisily. He narrowed his eyes and scowled at me.
The atmosphere in the stairwell grew tense.
Looking down at my shoes, I thought he might hit me. I half-hoped he would. I didn’t deserve a friend like Mike.
Finally, Mike stood up and shook his head. “Shit,” he sighed. “You’re deep.”
