Sweet Hell on Fire (20 page)

My oldest daughter and I got into a nasty fight. I don’t remember how it started, but it ended with her saying that she didn’t want to be my daughter. So I told her I didn’t want to be her mother either, and I took her back to my parents’ house and dropped her off. I told them I’d give them the money my husband was giving me for her care—I was done with her.

I know as a mother, I’m supposed to be above that. Kids say shitty things, they’re ungrateful. They’re supposed to be. They’re kids.

But I was still very much a kid too.

Fuck, but I’d failed at everything.

I began to think that I should have given her up for adoption when she was born, not because I really didn’t want to be her mother, but because I was no good at it. She didn’t want me to be her mother.

And with good reason. I was a failure.

Just like I knew I would be. I’d let my mother convince me that I could do this, be a mom. She told me I was a fuck-up enough times that she should have known better too.

When I found out I was pregnant, I’d called a friend of mine and told her my library book was late. She asked if I thought I had a fine and I said I wasn’t sure. So I went to her house where I took six tests. They were all positive.

So I went to the doctor to be sure, and when I got the call, I didn’t know what to do, but my mother was there watching me and she just knew. She said, “You’re pregnant.”

The idea of abortion never entered my mind. I would never tell anyone else not to have one, or what choices to make for their bodies, but I wouldn’t have one. Adoption was an option though. I’m adopted myself and I know that I and my biological mother both had so many more opportunities because of her choice. I wanted to make sure that I made the right choice for this child and for me.

I never wanted children. I didn’t want to get married; I didn’t want any kind of commitment on my time. I didn’t know how to be a mother. I was too selfish.

Yet there I was. I realized I was right not to want those things because I couldn’t do them. A failed marriage, failed motherhood, failed everything.

I was still failing at being a daughter. My mother had just come through cancer and I was dumping my kid on her because I couldn’t handle my responsibilities.

I emailed my friend in Portland after it happened. She said everything would circle back in time. That I’d get through this. My daughter would get through this. That our family would get through this one way or another.

And she was right. She’s always right.

As I’m writing this, my oldest daughter is sitting across from me at the breakfast bar. Just looking at her, I have a profound sense of joy that the universe gave her to me. I almost fucked it up. I’m thankful I didn’t and for how well-adjusted she really is. I have this overwhelming urge to jump up and down and spike a football, screaming, “I didn’t break her!”

I really thought the hospital staff was insane for handing her to me after she was born. They just shoved her in my arms with a diaper and a smile like it would all be okay. They give you a 230-some-page booklet with a Blu-ray player and with a kid, this whole other person, nothing but instructions for how to take care of her bellybutton. What about the rest of it? Sheer madness.

“Momma, what’s wrong?” I love that she’s fourteen now and she still calls me Momma.

“Nothing. Just working on the memoir.”

“Aww. I love you.” She comes and hugs me. She wants to read it, but I won’t let her. There is so much in this book I hope she never has to know. I’m sure when she’s older she’ll snag a copy somewhere.

That was a huge part of the decision about whether I should write this book. I never want her to blame herself for things that happen later. Either of my girls. I made my choices myself. But I decided it was important to share everything that happened to me if I could help someone else make it through.

I hug her back. “If you need me,” she says, “I can listen. You know I get that from you.”

Sometimes, I think her heart is big enough to love the whole world. With all my screw-ups, I wonder what I did to deserve her. Or my other daughter, who is just as wonderful and beautiful and just as loving.

I don’t want to think that maybe I was their trial, their cross to bear, but if I was, and this was the worst they ever had to live through, then maybe I did something right after all.

I can see that now, how lucky I am that all of my selfishness and immaturity didn’t maim them in some way. Back then all I could see was me.

You know the stage of drunk where you feel the need to tell everyone how drunk you are? It’s not cute and everyone just nods in agreement, but really, they just want you to shut up. Unless they’re as drunk as you are and then you can laugh about it and take turns telling each other how drunk you are. “Oh my god, dude. I’m so fucking drunk.” And for some reason, that’s the funniest damn thing you’ve ever heard in your life. So funny, you fall over. But you’re too drunk to sit back up.

Yeah, I’d passed that ten rum and pineapples ago.

I was so drunk it felt like my stomach had said, “Fuck you, I’m out,” and got up and walked away without me. But I wasn’t ready to be done, not yet. The world was a horrible fucking place and I needed some tequila rose-tinted glasses to even look at the motherfucker.

My stripper friend who kept buying me drinks on some guy’s credit card was crying in her beer, but with good reason. She’d just found out that a good friend of hers had been the previously unidentified, charred body they’d found outside some ghetto club in the city. She’d been having trouble with a stalker and he’d caught her after work, opened up her veins, and lit her on fire.

This woman died screaming in an alleyway next to a dumpster and was discarded like so much trash.

She was someone’s child. Someone had rocked her to sleep, made sure her cake had chocolate frosting on her birthday, and firmly closed her closet door to keep the monsters inside.

And for every story like hers, there were hundreds more. For every horror that we hear about, as soon as we turn the page there’s another victim, another life, another river of blood on the pavement, and we look and nod and say that’s really fucking sad, but we go on about our business, ever thankful that it didn’t happen to us.

Some guy slid in the seat next to me at our table. I looked at him. He obviously wanted something. He pushed a beer at me, but it was already opened. Even drunk off my ass I know better than to take an open consumable from someone I don’t know.

He shrugged, as if to say: your loss. “Hey, so my bro over there?” He pointed across the bar. “That big, badass-looking motherfucker? Yeah. He thinks you’re hot.”

I looked around the bar, and I was sure that maybe I was drunker than I originally thought because the only big guy on that side of the room was a guy who’d just gotten out of prison. He was huge, about six-foot-five, which was normally my type if he hadn’t been an inmate, but badass? I almost snorted my beer. He’d been in Pussy Control. Better known as PC, or Protective Custody. There are no badasses in PC. Take your lumps and stop sucking down eight balls you can’t pay for. Someone’s threatened to hurt you? It’s prison. Man the fuck up. Or cry like a little girl who lost her ice cream and go to Pussy Control.

“I’m not his type.” I tried to go back to what I was doing—which was consoling my friend and pickling my own liver the hard way.

“A big bitch like you? You’re just his type.” He looked me up and down. “And he just got out of prison.”

“First, I said no. End of fucking story. Like you’re slick enough to talk me into fucking him, and the fact he just got out of prison—a place crawling with MRSA, HIV, and hepatitis—that’s supposed to make him attractive to me? Really? And second, can you not see my friend is upset? So, even if I were so inclined, which I’m not, I’m kind of busy.”

“Fucking cunt,” he growled and slapped over a bowl of peanuts as he stood.

“Is that what your boyfriend calls you when you’re sucking his dick?” I stood up as I spoke.

He stepped closer to me and for one second, I thought he was going to hit me. And I wanted him to. I wanted him to hit me because all the rage I had—layer after layer built up inside of me—it was like a dam, and that crash of his knuckles into my face was all I needed to let that wall crumble. In those seconds, time stopped. I had exactly four things within my immediate reach I could use as weapons to defend myself: a pool stick, my drink glass, the chair, or the table. My buzz was gone; I didn’t feel drunk anymore, just ready to fight. He was a male. (I won’t say a man.) So what? I was bigger and I knew I hit harder. Plus he was an asshole. In my mind, the perfect target for me to vent all of my pent-up rage. I was fairly giddy with the idea of that kind of release.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at me and took another step closer. As if that would intimidate me. We were only inches apart, and all he had to do was lay one little finger on me, and I’d break it and shove it up his ass. I was spoiling to fight.

“I asked you a question, cocksucker.” I wasn’t going to be the one to throw the first punch because I had my job to worry about, but neither would I take his shit or back down.

Everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing and looked at us. Or at least that’s what it felt like. The bouncers were watching, but they hadn’t acted. I think they wanted to see what would happen.

Suddenly, the big guy was there too with his hand between his friend and me. “Hey, I’m sorry, he just—” And he broke off mid-sentence when he saw my face up close. “Oh, fuck. Sarge, I didn’t know it was you. You look different out of uniform.”

He looked at me, and there was a certain plea on his face. He nodded for his friend to leave. I’m sure he didn’t want to get in trouble. He hadn’t maxed out his time and he was out on parole. So he probably shouldn’t have been in the bar to start with, but I wasn’t there to bust his balls. He had a parole officer for that.

“Fuck that fat bitch,” his friend said and shoved his way over to the door.

“He’s not doing you any favors, man,” I said to the former inmate.

“Yeah, I know.” He looked at his feet. “But you do look pretty tonight, Lunsford.”

My first thought was that only a guy who just got out of prison would think I looked good by that point in the night. Or a guy who was still trying to get his dick wet. I was drunk, my hair was wrecked from dancing, I was sweaty, and I was sure my eyeliner had run down my face, making me look like a raccoon on meth. But he picked up the bowl his friend had knocked over and put it back up on the table and turned to leave.

Sometimes, when they get out, those guys just wanted to be acknowledged as men instead of numbers. Especially by us, the officers. It’s a little thing, just a nod or a word, but it goes a long way to how they see themselves. It’s not thug-hugging, it’s just human decency. And I guess I had a little of that left.

“Hey,” I called out and he turned. “Thanks.” I took another drink. “And good luck. I don’t want to see your face in my house anymore, okay?”

“No, ma’am. I won’t be coming back.”

“Good to hear.”

“Take care of yourself, Lunsford.”

“Yeah, you too.”

He left and I dunked my face back into the sweet oblivion of my rum and pineapple. It didn’t take long for the buzz to come back or my stomach to revolt again. By two o’clock, my vision wasn’t just blurry, I almost couldn’t see. My head felt like it was spinning around on my shoulders like Regan from
The
Exorcist
, and thoughts were coming to me half-formed. All I wanted was to be home so I could close my eyes.

By this point in the night, I’d had two pitchers of Coors and seventeen rum and pineapples.

I don’t think I told my friend I was leaving. I just wandered out of the bar and walked home. I’m lucky I made it. There was a small bridge I had to cross over and a spindly little creek below. I’m sure if I’d passed out and fallen, or just tripped and fell over the edge, I would have split my head open on the rocks below. I probably would have looked a lot like that guy I saw on the yard who’d had a lock in a sock taken to his head—rotten watermelon and sausage spread out all over the little creek.

After staggering in the front door, I finally caught up with my gut. Remember, it had walked away from me earlier. It slammed back into me with the force of a wrecking ball and up out of my throat. I barely made it to the bathtub.

It flew in a liquid projectile missile out of my mouth, and even having a solid count of the drinks, I didn’t realize how much alcohol I’d actually ingested until the bottom of the tub was coated with orange vomit. I choked and it shot out of my nose. I couldn’t breathe, my eyes were watering, and there was snot and liquor running down my face. My stomach heaved and convulsed, propelling everything that was inside out. I puked so hard the force of it burst a blood vessel in my eye and hot piss running down my leg, pooling on the tile beneath me.

In that moment, I was suddenly outside my body looking down at my own head bent over the bathtub, puke in my hair, and piss on the floor—the absolute fucking train wreck I’d made of myself.

There was a song that had become my anthem for a while. It was called “Thrash Unreal” by Against Me! and it played in my head over and over. That’s when I realized it wasn’t an anthem; it was an excuse. It was a crutch—it was a big tampon because I was being a giant pussy. (Sorry, Against Me! You rock. It’s not your fault I used your song to plug it up like a tampon.)

Disgust bloomed bright and hot in my head and some of the lyrics came to me then too: “
No mother ever thinks that their daughter will grow up to be a junkie, no mother ever dreams that her daughter will grow up to sleep alone.
” No one ever dreams they’ll grow up to be a boozed-out, bar-whore corrections officer with no future and no dreams either. And that’s exactly what I was. If I saw someone else doing this to themselves, I would have had no pity, no sympathy. Fuck you, you’re doing it yourself. You have nothing to complain about. Pull up your fucking pants and do what has to be done. This is
your
fault, you sloppy bitch.

And
it
was
. Yes, cue the music and the light from above as the epiphany hit me with a brick. This was all my own doing. Yes, the world was in fact a horrible place, but I was making it worse all on my own.

My kids deserved better.

I deserved better.

I’d had dreams once. That was the whole point in leaving my husband. We didn’t make each other happy. More than that, we were toxic to each other. But this wasn’t any better. I still despised myself.

I hadn’t been any warrior woman. I wasn’t worthy of the Morrigan’s mark I’d put on my body. In prison gangs, if you mark yourself with one of their tattoos that you haven’t earned, they give you the option of removing it yourself any way you can, or they remove it for you. Usually by removing the skin with the offending tat. I didn’t deserve the raven watching my back. I hadn’t managed my hearth or my war. I hadn’t found me; I was even more lost than I had been before.

And not that I thought that some avenging Irish raven goddess was going to swoop down out of the sky and peck her mark off my skin, but it was the embodiment of the strengths I’d thought I possessed and the ones I wanted to call my own.

I decided in that moment I would make my life what I wanted.

And I passed out on my bathroom floor.