Wasted Time: The Fictional Memoir of an Addict in Recovery

By Roslyn Paterson

Wasted Time is a fictional depiction of the lives of alcoholics and addicts, from listening to their stories of relapse, recovery, and recidivism. Jemma is a mixed-race woman who struggles to fit inwith anyone or anywhere. She has been running away from her life since she was fifteen. Married by eighteen with two young children, she runs again in order to escape, by using drugs and alcohol, and sex. Jemma is fundamentally unable to see the true path of her life until incarceration abruptly halts that misdirection. A prostitution conviction sentences her to a year in jail, and that is where the chaplain sends Jemmas life onto a collision course with sobriety and a better future. Jemma encounters many conflicts in her recovery, most importantly, in her personal and professional relationships. Wasted Time is a story of relapse and recovery, running away and reunification, and a future she never imagined for herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496960016

Roslyn Paterson

Roslyn Paterson, a native Minnesotan, comes from an immigrant family, with extended family across the globe. Her interests include travel, multicultural sociology and psychology, holistic health, golf, cooking, and swimming. She has a bachelor of science degree in nursing and a master of arts degree in clinical psychology. An entrepreneur, she has created two successful businesses, where she works as both a nurse and as a psychotherapist.

Book preview

Wasted Time

The Fictional Memoir of

an Addict in Recovery

ROSLYN PATERSON

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2015 Roslyn Paterson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   01/01/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-6015-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-6057-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-6001-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922595

Wasted Time

Photographers:

Cover photo: That Way, Bob Larson, Prescott, AZ

Grapes on the Vine, Jenny Gustavson-Dufour, Paso Robles, CA

Muir Woods, Kirke Wrench, National Park Service

Staircase, Wet Leaf, and Roslyn Paterson, author photo, Jenn Cress, Stillwater, MN

The Ranch Campus, drawing by Roslyn Paterson, Shoreview, MN

Muir Woods Trail Map, National Park Service

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Part One

Chapter 1    Wasted

Chapter 2    Freedom

Chapter 3    Rehabilitation

Chapter 4    Work

Chapter 5    Reunification

Chapter 6    Keepsakes

Chapter 7    Improvement

Part Two

Chapter 8    Interviews

Chapter 9    Relocation

Chapter 10    Orientation

Chapter 11    Admissions

Chapter 12    Introductions

Chapter 13    Assignments

Chapter 14    Dining

Chapter 15    Arrivals

Chapter 16    Fireflies

Chapter 17    Techniques

Part Three

Chapter 18    Group

Chapter 19    Laura

Chapter 20    Angus

Chapter 21    Justin

Chapter 22    Oasis

Chapter 23    Markus

Chapter 24    Recollections

Chapter 25    Visitation

Chapter 26    Preparation

Chapter 27    Homework

Chapter 28    Bottom

Chapter 29    Feelings

Part Four

Chapter 30    Therapy

Chapter 31    Reunions

Chapter 32    Lost

Chapter 33    Found

Chapter 34    Relapse

Chapter 35    Recovery

Chapter 36    Acceptance

Chapter 37    Family

Part Five

Chapter 38    Reception

Chapter 39    Revelations

Chapter 40    Lanterns

Chapter 41    Movement

Chapter 42    Retirements

A

Dedication

To the inspiration of nature

For it is all around us

To the fireflies, brown pelicans,

The butterfly, the bumble bees

With us they dare to soar

To the lost and found

We thank you for the inspiration

By sharing your stories with the trees

With us

-Thank you

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As a Registered Nurse and Psychotherapist, I’ve listened to a lot of stories. This book is my answer to those stories.

Thank you to family, friends, colleagues, clients, consultants, and my editor for your support of me in this project.

Listen

Move

Learn

Remember

Repeat

PART ONE

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CHAPTER 1

WASTED

I searched the closet where my family stored our luggage, looking for the bag where I’d hidden my last stash of weed. There was nothing special about the luggage, but the bag contained everything that I coveted. Included with the weed were rolling papers, lighters, pipes, even a water bong. It was everything a light-skinned black girl from south Minneapolis needed.

For any number of reasons, the girls at my high school teased me about my appearance. I had medium blonde wavy hair, cut just below the ear, and I had light skin. They’d say, "You know, for a black chick you sure got us fooled- Princess." I walked away head hanging, chin dragging on the floor. I never understood why they didn’t like me; they didn’t even try to get to know me.

When I got high, I could be indifferent to those who judged me. When I was high, I could chill out, blend in, attract the men I wanted, or I could be no one. I could just be alone. I was living with my parents, and wasn’t always the best at hiding my drug use, but thankfully, Momma and Daddy worked too hard to catch on. They never discovered my hiding place.

I chose to get high or drunk away from home. I didn’t want to use at home; something about it just didn’t seem right. So I used at a friend’s house, in the car, or sitting on a bench at a park, down by the Mississippi River bluffs. I planned it so that by the time I went home I was sobering up. Sometimes, I used at school or after school. I wasn’t out there doing drugs to be found, I was there to hide and chill.

In 1984, I was lost. I was only sixteen when I first fixed eyes on Ty. It was during our sophomore year when this statue of a man walked into my world by way of the bleachers. I’d taken to smoking under them during football games. The cool fall winds helped disseminate the fruity smoke I exhaled.

He approached me with a smile and said, Hey, gotta light?

I fumbled in my jeans pocket and pulled out my lime green bic. Yeah, here. Thanks, he said, lighting a Marlboro cigarette from a red box. My name is Ty, you?

Looking down, I said, My name is Jemma.

Hey, Jemma.

You play football? I asked.

Sometimes, if the coach decides to let me play; otherwise, I just sit on the bench.

What, you play?

Running back, he said.

I looked at him realizing I had asked a question for which I didn’t really understand the answer. So I said, Offense or defense?

He laughed at that and said, You know football, huh?

Yeah, some.

Well, Jemma, running back is offense, he smiled at me and handed over the lighter.

OK, cool. I like to watch the offense, I said.

Yeah. How you see anything from under here? He looked about him, noting that under the bleachers when the seats were full of fans, there was a completely obstructed view.

Yeah, I said, So, got any more smokes?

Nah, that was the last one, didn’t get to the gas station today. I got another joint though, wanna share? After he retrieved the last joint that was hiding in his red Marlboro box, he crumpled the empty box, threw it under the first row of seats, and then sat down on the ground.

I knew I would like this guy; tall, dark skinned, high cheekbones, athletic, and willing to share with an almost complete stranger. Yeah, thanks. I sat down and lit his last joint.

By the end of the tied game, I had learned that he didn’t live far from my neighborhood. He asked to walk me home and I decided to let him. We talked about school and where to score the best drugs. He promised to look for me at school the next day. He kissed me when we were at the last corner before my house. I knew I would like him. Maybe too much.

I always thought Ty blended in with the typical high school students better than I did. He only had to flirt with me once before I took the line. I tried to stop him from flirting with the other girls, not secure enough that he was mine.

I wasn’t comfortable in school. There were too many things to do outside of school that were more interesting—like Ty and me under the bleachers, high on weed, and him pushing up my sweater trying to get to second base.

I liked hanging with Ty, and soon we were a steady couple. Momma and Daddy were too busy working to worry that I wasn’t behavin’. I was behavin’ all right—misbehavin’.

Ty and I never got caught. Lucky, I guess. It’s a perspective one doesn’t dwell on when you’re high or drunk, or both.

I wasn’t too well known in my classes either. To most teachers, I was just another African American girl, but unlike some of the girls, I didn’t have nappy hair or dark skin. My parents were both mixed race.

Howard, that’s my daddy, was a combination of cultures from the southern parts of Mississippi: Choctaw Indian, white, and slave. My daddy had short jet black hair that grew curlier in humid weather, a high-bridged nose and cheekbones, long black eyelashes, and red-bone skin. Outdoor work would seriously darken his complexion.

My daddy moved up North to Minnesota from the Deep South. He’d been working as a dishwasher and a porter for the railroad. All the black folks were movin’ north. He worked the Chicago line as a porter after a few months of dishwashing on the Memphis route.

Daddy was never able to pass for white. Sometimes when I was really young, and we were visiting Mississippi, he’d pretend to be the houseman and we’d walk the streets of Hattiesburg—black man minding a white girl. No one thought differently. My light complexion often allowed me to pass for white among whites, but I wasn’t black enough among blacks.

The colored girls at school picked fights with me or made me do nasty things, like drink out of the toilet. I received my fair share of trouble for my skin color no matter where I was, north, south, east, or west. The whites didn’t trust me because I wasn’t all white, the blacks didn’t trust me because I wasn’t dark enough. No culture accepted a mixed race girl wholeheartedly; each made me feel less than whole.

During one of these city walks in Hattiesburg, my daddy told me, Jemma, if you could pass for white when I was in school, you know, back in the ’50’s during the civil rights movement in Mississippi, that was a good thing. You know, I wasn’t trying to fool nobody, it was about surviving. That’s the real deal, you knows its importan’ like.

Yeah, I replied, unappreciative of the message and his lesson about race.

He stopped walking and stood there looking at me, expecting his point to be made.

I said, Yes, I remember, Daddy.

Before I met Mamie, your momma, I would keep my head down and just mutter along looking for work, not wanting to look any white folk in the eye, oh no. I’m so glad I moved up north and met yo’ Momma.

Yeah, I said.

I looked for work along the Mississippi gulf shore, but they didn’t want more coloreds. You know southern whites didn’t really trust any coloreds, light skinned or not. You’d think it be different with me being a mix and no one sure what to do with me. So instead of waiting to find out what could happen I decided it was better to leave and never know.

So that’s how my daddy ended up in Minnesota looking for work, and for folk to accept him, mixed race and all. Unlike Daddy, Momma wasn’t so lucky. She lived in south Minneapolis where gangs, guns, and drugs ran the streets. She was raised by a single mother; my grand-daddy was killed in a car accident when Momma was a little girl.

Momma flunked out of Minneapolis Southwest High School for truancy. By 10th grade, she had to work to help feed the family, and my grandmomma, Jante, didn’t know how to get her excused from school. Jante was from Chicago and moved to Minneapolis for a housekeeper job at the Curtis Hotel. Over the summer, Momma would try to take classes because jobs were harder to find when all the black girls were out of school.

Momma got caught up in her classes, and Jante persuaded the principal at St. Paul Central High School to let her attend school the next year. I remember Jante telling me the story about how she got Momma back in school, a lesson I think she wanted me to learn.

Jante said to me, If your mother worked hard in her lessons, and was willing to stay after to help clean classrooms, the principal would allow her to be a student at the school.

The principal warned my momma saying, If it ain’t clean, you might as well not come back.

When Momma wasn’t in school or working, she ran with kids from her neighborhood. She could share a piece of the money they got from selling drugs or from stuff they stole.

Momma always told me, I knew when I needed to be workin’ at the school cuz sometimes I knew the small stuff the gang had their eyes on was a one way ticket to prison. I didn’t want that. I just wanted to go to school.

Momma wasn’t the popular girl in the gang, but she didn’t care. Her time filled up with work at the school and completing her assignments. There was a sense of safety at school that Jante had worked out with the principal. By remaining in school to do her work, Jante and the principal ensured her a few more hours of safety from the streets.

My daddy was working at the Curtis Hotel when he met my momma, she was vacuuming the lobby carpet.

Daddy always said to me, Yo Momma’s been my best friend ever since I met her at the Curtis Hotel. Her high yella skin made my insides quiver like they was a churnin’ butta. T’would melt like butta too, in this here Minneapolis summer sun.

My parents were married in early 1967—only 14 months after meeting—and soon momma was pregnant with me. By their wedding day, she was 19 years old, and had just finished high school. Daddy was 23. They lived in reduced rent housing furnished by the hotel for essential workers.

When I was old enough for kindergarten, Momma took a job in housekeeping, where she was responsible for cleaning patient rooms at General Hospital in Minneapolis. Howard stayed with the railroad and worked the Chicago run most of my childhood. As he gained seniority, and the attention of regular patrons, he was tapped for other jobs that paid better and were less work than being a porter.

So here I am a light-skinned, mixed race, black girl with medium blonde curly hair, not especially athletic, not especially smart, but not dumb neither; running with the gangs to keep myself from getting hurt, raped, or worse on my way to school. Ty was the first boy who said he liked me for more than just drugs or sex.

Back beneath the bleachers we’d meet, or in the hall between classes, or he’d come to hang out on my stoop. I thought we were best when we were together. Ty’s dark complexion made me feel less white, and more accepted in our culture. Even Daddy liked him. I knew I liked him when he shared his last joint with me; sharing drugs with me always opened the door.

Ty was a lot taller and heavier than Daddy, which was very attractive to me because I knew next to him I’d be safe. If I couldn’t be safe with the next man in my life after my Daddy, I was in trouble.

We started using and drinking together too. Our relationship grew in intensity with the ebbs and flows of our drug use or drinking. Cocaine and marijuana were practically on every street corner in Minneapolis.

Ty would come over in his beat-up 1973 Lincoln Continental. In the day, it had been a sweet ride. Now, it was just a dark chocolate brown car with a black vinyl top. It had graying white wall tires, and a loud engine. I could hear him coming from down the block. We’d go hang out at Lake Calhoun, and walk around the lake; concealing our joints as if they were cigarettes, and no one was the wiser that our Coke cans were filled with rum.

Sometimes we’d have a picnic lunch, eating homemade brownies, with cocaine sprinkled over them like powdered sugar. As long as we were quietly respectful of everyone else around the lake, the cops, and the gangs, wouldn’t bother us. No one would have suspected what we were really doing. We were like chameleons, blending into the environment. We were never really paid much never mind.

It was the mid 1980’s, a time when adults dressed in warm-up suits, and wearing hats or scarves that concealed their gender, walked baby carriages at midnight along the sidewalks of Chicago Avenue near Lake St. The funny thing was, there were no babies in those carriages. Maybe the police knew about this charade, but to us it was an effective way to know who and where the drugs were.

Sometimes, when Ty was playing football, I would wait for him under the bleachers, and other times, he would skip football practice altogether so we could drink or smoke more weed. Now and again when money was tight we got a lid of pot. We’d smoke it all. Usually I could make it home. A light-skinned girl in the neighborhood, walking with a nice groove didn’t draw attention like a drunken white girl would. I got good at walking drunk. Walking high and drunk didn’t always work for me; sometimes I’d stop and check out someone’s back yard lawn furniture. You know, take a nap. When I was drunk, I’d be asleep in no time. If I was still with Ty when the booze kicked in, that’s when he knew we needed a place to chill, or a car, or both.

We’d been together a month or so when I finally agreed to have sex with him. We parked his Lincoln by the boathouse below the Lake St. Bridge. Joggers would keep to the trails up by River Road so down by the boathouse was usually private.

Like most teenagers, we got used to having quick sex. The art of making love wouldn’t come until much later. After hitting it by the boathouse, we’d go see where the parties were that night. Sometimes, we’d hang at Lake Harriet after dark, but the cops patrolled differently then, so we mostly stuck to the lakes during the day. The drive-in theatre in Cottage Grove, or hanging out at Southdale, were more interesting anyways. Kids our age were everywhere, and we all smoked weed or drank in public. The cops seemed to leave us alone there.

Because I didn’t fit in with any of the girls, no matter what their color, I was in a clique of one; well, one plus Ty. Besides hanging with Momma, I didn’t have much use for women anyway. So far, they were just the competition. I didn’t always get what I wanted from the women in my life, but I did get some things. I learned from the women I encountered how to get what I wanted: men, sex, drugs, or booze.

But what I coveted, what I chased after was the power I had over men. They were easy targets, easy to outwit, easy to outplay, and easy to enjoy. Sometimes, my relationship with Ty was like that of a hooker and her john. He paid me with the things I wanted, got high or drunk with me, and pretty much did what he was told or I’d walk out. He often said I had the power in our relationship. If I said yes to his requests, I got what I wanted. If I said no, no one got anything.

About mid-way through my freshman year, Daddy caught me coming home still pretty high and mostly incoherent. I’d gotten pretty good at navigating in auto-pilot when I was drunk, but that’s not how I was this time. No, I rushed home to make it before curfew. I should have just been late. But this time, I got home before I sobered up. Daddy caught me stumbling in.

When I didn’t react, or care too much, about getting a beating or being yelled at, he decided to send me to the first of many residential treatment centers. When Daddy told my high school I’d be gone three to four weeks, for you know, an extended illness, the guidance counselor helped him find a treatment center for me, and helped him fill out the appropriate paperwork.

I didn’t care. So far, for me, except for spending time with Ty getting high or smokin’, high school was just a waste of time. I knew that when I came back, Ty would be waiting. He always was.

More than once, I was sent to La Casa Esperanza. It was a Spanish themed board and care residential treatment facility about two hours southwest of Minneapolis. One of the specialties of this facility was working with drug and alcohol addicted teenage girls. I didn’t like La Casa; there were too many people with too many problems.

As far as I saw it, I didn’t have any problems. All the girls just seemed to talk about hating school or their boyfriends. The counselors focused on educating me about drugs and alcohol. So, I got educated, and wasted, with the new friends I’d made at La Casa.

One night, I was bored with the assignment my counselor gave me for homework. I crept out of my room and down the main hall of the girl’s residence. I could see lights on in the boys’ residence, but the building across the oversized courtyard was mostly dark. I walked right out the front door, no one questioned me, and no one stopped me. No one paid me any mind. Typical.

But this time, I loved it. I was into the little town down by the river within ten minutes. I was practically alone on those quaint city streets. But soon, I would discover where all the action was, just outside the local bar and pool hall.

I never really wanted to do drugs or drink by myself. Now I had a whole house full of girls willing to break the rules at the first chance they got. Inside the pool hall was the place where I could easily score some pot. When I approached the bartender, he made a fist, and with his thumb, pointed toward the restrooms saying, Scram or can.

There was a girl in the can selling marijuana, and I had enough cash for a few joints. I got back into my room undetected. The next day after breakfast, I got a few of the girls together and we headed out to the back woods of the property and smoked all that I’d scored. I felt alive and empowered, and oddly, I fit in.

No one asked me why I was using. I still didn’t trust that I was making friends. I wasted more time there, but I completed the program and was discharged. Once I returned home, I didn’t see what the big deal was with treatment and went back to my old ways with the gang, back to Ty, and back to alcohol and drugs.

I mainly liked weed. It settled my thoughts. Sometimes though, I drank vodka or whiskey, especially when I was thinking too much. Booze helped me get to sleep. I was a typical teenager, I suppose; wanting approval, wanting to make friends.

Sometimes before bed, I’d think about Ty, but, you know, sometimes I thought about how I looked different from the other girls. And then other times, I wondered why Ty would waste time with me. If I could just turn off my thinking, I’d sleep better, and then I could be better tomorrow. Gang life wasn’t easy for a girl. If I wasn’t willing to have sex with some of the guys, I was sent on dangerous errands, like picking up our monthly supply from the Mexicans. I’d been with the gang now for two years. It wasn’t long after my 17th birthday that I’d worked long enough to bank the money to buy a crappy car of my own. It was a lime green Chevy Impala, born to run.

If Ty was working when my gang was working a job, and I wasn’t included, I’d go hangout with my friends from La Casa. I drove my green Impala over there and got high with them. I never liked treatment, but I did make a few friends each time. I wasn’t in an exclusive, monogamous relationship with Ty. Our personal and sexual boundaries were very blurred. I met lots of new boyfriends at La Casa. You know, friends to hook up with for more than a joint. I never put up much of a fuss about going to treatment once I learned who I could meet there. I got ahead going in.

To be honest, I didn’t really care who I hung out with, as long as when I put out I could get paid or high in the exchange. I didn’t talk about that group of friends with Ty. We each had our own hookups when we were apart, and I was smart enough to know a sex-machine like Ty wouldn’t go without sex while I was gone for a month. We never asked what went on when we were apart.

One day during the summer before our junior year in high school, Ty and I decided that I should try to get caught up with my classes enough to graduate with him and the rest of our class. It would be something my parents wanted and something Ty wanted for us.

My popularity and ability to work the sex scene in the gang made me a lot of money. It was money that I could share with the older members to buy my alcohol. I wasn’t old enough to buy from the local liquor stores. My age didn’t matter when it came time to buy drugs. Soon I became the go to girl for sex, the male members of the gang or their friends would request me more than any of the other girls in the gang. I excelled at quick sexual acts—not really a novice, but not into the sex—more into the end product: drugs. It was easy to make money. It was easy to do drugs. I was easy.

All that changed after I got busted. I was sent to juvenile detention and forced to go to school and take drug tests. I was supposed to complete treatment while I was detained, but instead, I just made new friends. I did like the teacher though. Mr. Mike was super sexy. He never kissed me or let me hook up with him, but under different circumstances I knew he would. They all did eventually.

I knew I had to catch up in classes so I took a summer school class or two to get caught up from all my time in and out of treatment. Mr. Mike helped too. He was good motivation, if you know what I mean.

I was allowed back to high school, pulled it together enough for better grades. Ty pressured me to graduate. I hid my drinking even from my best friend. I managed being drunk pretty well. I wasn’t expected to do much with my life; you know, be a wife, or a mother, or maybe both. I surprised myself when my last report card had enough passing grades to graduate.

Ty and I moved out to an apartment near Chicago Avenue and 25th St., above a restaurant: A Good Egg. We both got jobs working at the restaurant for the breakfast and lunch rush from the hospitals across the street. I also got a job as a housekeeper at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital.

Initially, Daddy didn’t want me to move in with Ty, but when I explained it was a good idea because in six months I’d need help with the baby, Daddy said OK. Bennie, my oldest, was born just after my 18th birthday, and only a few months after our high school graduation. No one paid much attention to me. Who was I? Well, you know, I was that downward-looking, light-skinned black girl. No one wanted me, but a loser football jock with only a little brainpower.

My life with Ty wasn’t picture perfect. I wasn’t present in our relationship, and not always because I was in treatment, either. I had always been very sexually attracted to Ty. He showed me all kinds of things, and later, after my experiences in the gang, I showed him a trick or two, too.

Ty and I talked about me going on to junior college, and he agreed. We asked my parents for a meeting. Ty and I reasoned, as only teenagers with an infant can, that one of us could get a good paying job with more education. One of us, namely me, seemed to have turned a page and begun to like school.

We sat down with Mommy and Daddy and asked for their help. What we needed was a responsible adult to watch Bennie while Ty was working or sleeping, and I was working or schooling. I didn’t get much sleep those first few years.

We set out a plan, and Mommy and Daddy agreed. It worked for all of us for a while. When Bennie was a few months old, either Momma or Ty would watch him so I could go to college.

After another visit to a treatment center, this one on the range where teenagers got a come to Jesus lecture. I took some classes at Lakewood College. I’d hoped to go to the University of Minnesota, like most of the kids in the Cities, but even after Lakewood, I didn’t have the grades to get into the U. So like my Daddy always said, You best be fixin’ to be a mother.

Eventually though, I returned to my normal ways. Soon I was taking Ty for granted and our relationship suffered. Again, I was more interested in drinking and smoking weed. We had a close call with a late period. I thought I was pregnant, but had just miscalculated.

Daddy said, If you is goin’ to birth mo’ babies, you best be hitched to their daddy, or you’ll find yourself back with the gangs.

Little did Daddy know that I hadn’t ever left the gang. With Ty, I had maybe strayed here and there, but the gang was my other home, my family. I could never bring myself to explain that to Daddy.

I wasn’t trapping Ty into marriage, but I asked him if he agreed that we should be married. I don’t know if he ever really agreed with my Daddy’s advice, but he wanted to keep us together, and if that meant we should be married, then we should get married.

Bennie was just two years old when we married. I was always meticulous in mothering my children and caring for my growing family. You’d think I was clairvoyant or something, planning ahead to be married to the father of my children. I gave birth to Zarah before our first wedding anniversary. I let up on my partying, and started hiding my drinking at home.

After Zarah was born, things didn’t go so well for me. I grew increasingly depressed. I was drinking again, and sometimes I was smoking too. The lactation consultant at the hospital gave me handouts about drinking and breastfeeding. Even though I was depressed, I still had some positive regard for Zarah. If I pumped before I drank, I could feed her breast milk from a bottle. Finally, though, I claimed that it was too painful to breastfeed or pump and convinced Ty to switch to formula. I didn’t pass the alcohol along to her.

If Momma, Daddy, or Ty were home with the kids, I’d go for a long walk around the lake. That was when I smoked a joint. I preferred smoking freshly rolled joints to bongs or pipes, since rolling papers and a lighter were easier to hide, or camouflage with loose tobacco. I never wanted to get caught with drug paraphernalia.

I was sick off and on, more often than either of the kids or Ty, but my kind of sick wasn’t due to a virus. It ran more along the lines of withdrawal than with what grows in a Petri dish.

Even after two children, I tried to focus on my school work. I wanted to complete my degree, any degree. The children hadn’t changed the real me. I was still running with the gangs, and trying to get the attention of my male classmates or professors. I never felt like I belonged in college. It was more that I was there to play; to toy with the men over sex, play games around getting drunk or high, and seeing who could party with me.

I struggled through my life this way until Zarah was three years old. I attended classes, got high, got drunk, and got pregnant again. Alex arrived with a roar. I couldn’t handle three kids in six years, and off to the adult version of La Casa I went. This time I wasn’t making friends. The men didn’t pay the same level of attention to me now, and everyone else seemed to want to get better. All I wanted was for things to go back to the way they used to be, when no one cared if a light-skinned black girl was high, drunk, or having sex with anyone with the right equipment.

I just wanted to drink. I just wanted to sleep; to get away. I liked it better when no one cared about me, no one saw me, no one bothered me, and I had no one to answer to but myself. When I went back to using full time, I wanted friends to use with me, but unlike family or real friends, these friends didn’t really care about you, they just wanted to score. I quickly learned that being a part of the background, when no one cared about you was the easier route to a using lifestyle. I relished invisibility and thrived on the power of persuasion.

The last time I was in treatment was in Colorado. As soon as I was discharged with a POOR status, I ran. I didn’t want to stop using. The other times I stopped using for the sake of family peace. But now, I wanted to use. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to be questioned about why I was using. Why didn’t anyone understand that?

The next time I went, Ty and my parents sent me west, thinking the further I was away from home, the further I was away from the things I knew, like how to score drugs, the better I’d do in the program. This time, however, I made a different bunch of friends. These friends were from all over the country, not from all four corners of the state of Minnesota.

I met a dude from San Diego who talked about the drug scene there. He said it was a bit dangerous being so close to the Mexican border. The more I talked with him, the more I considered running to California.

Then this blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman from Tucson, Arizona explained the drug scene with Peyote and Native Americans. While I appreciated the trippin’ she described, I didn’t like the idea of being out of control, hallucinating. I wanted the chillin’ effect of pot, not the visions.

Finally, I got a roommate I liked. The people from other parts of the states were just friends from treatment, but not Tamela. On her way from Chicago to Seattle, she hitchhiked to Las Vegas. She told me about her working life there as an escort, and I immediately knew I liked what she was saying. Every free moment of the two weeks in treatment that we shared together was spent talking about the people, the johns, the casinos, and the cops.

Tamela explained the process of hooking up with a manager and gave me a few names. I knew that going to Las Vegas was in my future. She gave me her number, but explained that she was going home to Virginia Beach, going back east, she said.

I thought about the weather in all those places. It was warm. There were a lot of transients and tourists, so who would notice a light-skinned black girl?

It sounded like the right place for me. I wanted to be where people had fun, where I could drink all I wanted, where I could blend in, and no one would see me or miss me. I wanted to be where no one would tell me what to do.

I went to Las Vegas.

It was 1993.

CHAPTER 2

FREEDOM

Driving to Vegas, I scored as many drugs as I could. I wanted to stay high, and to stop thinking. But, I kept thinking about the big blow up Ty and I had before I left. He claimed he had put away the laundry one night after a late feeding with Alex while I was still at school, and in my side of our dresser, he found two glass pipes, a small rock of cocaine, a few blunts, and more rolling papers for the moderate sized baggy of marijuana buds that, to him, no longer smelled so sweet.

My return to using had been discovered. Ty met me at the door of our tiny apartment waiting with a do-it-yourself-drug test. He was furious.

For all the long hours I put in that no good job, Jemma, he started, and I find this shit in our house!

We’d known each other now for nine years. In that time, I’d lied to him, cheated on him, used without him, and called him every nasty name in the book. In all that time, and after all I’d done, he still stood by me.

Yeah, so? I said, dodging his anger.

So, Babe, I thought you were done with that shit, moving on with your life, having my babies, goin’ to college!

I wasn’t sure how to answer him. I thought everything between us was going well. I never pictured it from his angle. I thought he was happy. I thought I made him happy.

Don’t I make you happy, Baby? I asked.

This ain’t about bein’ happy. Damn it, Jemma, this is about more than just YOU!

I hated it when he yelled at me. I didn’t like being the one to be blamed for everything. It couldn’t all be my fault. I’d gotten used to running my own show, you know, calling the shots with the leaders of the gang, sleeping with whomever I wanted, how I wanted, and for as long as I wanted. If you pleased me, then I returned the favor.

I thought you were happy, I said.

Ty looked at me, the blood boiling beneath his dark chocolate skin, small beads of sweat were accumulating above his upper lip and upon his brow. Jemma, he yelled, You gotta stop this shit. I ain’t goin’ to do this family shit alone. Call up La Casa. See if they can take you. Tonight! Call them now!

I moved away from him as he drew back his hand to hit me. It was instinct. He’d never laid a hand on me before. This was different. Maybe this I deserved. It was just a little weed. What’s the big deal?

From the looks of the stuff in that drawer, it is a lot more than just a little weed. How long have you been usin’ this time? Jemma, answer me! Do I need to call your father? The police? Tell me what I gotta do!

I went to the closet and looked at the floor where our miscellaneous travel bags were kept. I knew I had another stash hiding in one of these bags. Just then I remembered which bag it was, grabbed it from the floor and started packing enough underwear and bras for a week.

Next I grabbed a few shirts, jeans, socks, everything I’d need for a week. Toiletries were provided, but I did grab my toothbrush.

What are you doing? he asked.

I’m packing.

I can see that. Where are you going at this hour? he looked at his watch knowing it was after ten p.m.

I’m leaving. It is obvious to me you don’t want me here. The kids’ schedule is on the fridge. I’m outta here. I grabbed the overflowing bag and ran out of our apartment faster than Ty on his way to a touchdown.

Ty didn’t follow. He let me go. It was the only way; someone had to stay, someone had to