Playground (29 page)

Paulina’s path, one that once seemed so foreign, seems more

real to me than ever. I can’t help but wonder if I am a few days, a

few months, a few introductions away from becoming her: a lost

young girl searching for escape in a world of scavengers. The way

she was so ruthlessly disposed of will remain with me forever.

Through the window, I watch Paulina’s father get into his car

and drive slowly down the street.

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Dad returns home from Hawaii and everything starts to change.

The summer ends. Everyone has disappointed me. There are not

enough pills to medicate me anymore. The skinny models are

thrown out and Vicki, a nineteen-year-old coke fiend, moves in.

Vicki walks around with a huge attitude, bragging about her ex-

boyfriend, Marco Santiago, an infamous Colombian drug lord, an

invisible Godfather who watches over her.

She left home as a teenager and has been running ever since.

Vicki is a natural brunette with dyed blond hair, bony, shaking

limbs, and a sunken face with a perfect complexion.

She makes my skin crawl. I don’t know what Dad sees in her.

They are suddenly sleeping at the house every night and I never see

him at the Mansion anymore.

On one occasion, not long after Vicki moved in, I go into Dad’s

bathroom to restock my pill supply. In the back drawer, I come

across a vial of coke. I pull it out and stare at it until Carmela

sneaks up on me and yanks it out of my hand.

“Jennifer!” she screeches. “Give me that!”

We each fight for the vial in a tug-of-war.

“What are you doing?”

“This is your father’s!” she hollers in her high-pitched

accent.

“So, why are you taking it?” I yell back, grabbing it.

“Your father says he doesn’t want anything moved from here!”

Carmela grabs the vial forcefully from my hand and I fall back-

ward. My arms flail wildly, accidentally knocking a towel holder

that pops open. An enormous pound-size Baggie filled with white

powder falls to the floor from a secret compartment in the wall.

Carmela and I stare at each other utterly stunned.

“What the hell? What is going on?” I ask.

“I know nothing. Your father no tell me nothing! I just work

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here! He says no touch, I no touch. He tell me no look, I no look,”

she chants like a crazy person.

“You no look! You no look!” I too now chant, sounding equally

insane.

Carmela’s facial muscles are twitching. Our eyes meet and un-

controllable smiles creep over our faces. Next thing you know,

we’re rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically. My stom-

ach muscles ache. We regain our breath and agree not to tell any-

one about the bag.

That night, I lie in bed awake. Things have turned so shady

around here. Three Xanaxes later, I hear voices coming from

downstairs. There’s a lot of commotion and people are walking

in and out. Things seem to be more hectic than usual. I recognize

Eric Jacobs’ and Don Michaels’ voices, and a few others as well.

The clock r

a.m.

eads 3:45

as I pop a Halcyon, pull my pillow over

my head, and try to fall asleep. After what seems like hours of toss-

ing and turning, I hear loud noises coming from my father’s bed-

room. Lots of furniture is moved around. Banging and screaming

echoes down the hallway. Then all is silent. I lie in bed frozen, like

a scared little girl.

I’ve learned not to knock on Dad’s bedroom door until at least

two or three in the afternoon. Up all night, in bed all day, Dad and

Vicki don’t eat and barely leave his room. I’ve stopped asking why

he’s never at work anymore.

One night his door is slightly ajar, so I burst in to load up on

more Xanax but stop because the shades are drawn and I realize

they are home. Everything is dark and there’s the grotesque odor

of syringes dripping with heroin residue. There are two figures

passed out on Dad’s king-size bed. I try to back up quietly, but they

sit up, groggy, eyes completely bloodshot.

“Sorry,” I stutter, unsure of what I see.

“It’s okay,” Dad says, scratching his head, and I immediately

forget why I came in. Dad gets out of bed and slips on his under-

wear. I turn my head, trying not to look at his penis.

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“I need to give her another shot,” he utters in a muffled tone,

walking to his dresser.

Vicki is clearly drugged up on something and I can’t imagine

what else she needs. He rummages through his drawers as Vicki

props her head up, reaching for a compact mirror and vial on the

dresser. Her hair is messy and she has black circles underneath her

heavy eyes.

Dad unwraps a needle in a plastic package and grabs a small

bottle out of the refrigerator in his bathroom as Vicki snorts a

quick line of coke off her compact. I doubt she sees me. Dad opens

the bottle and inserts the needle and the syringe slowly fills with

liquid. I want to somehow disappear, slide underneath the crack of

the door, but fear keeps me still. There is something sinister and

corrupt about watching him prepare her injection.

“She’s been like this all day. It’s some kind of bad flu,” he insists,

heading back over to the bed. I can tell he is lying to me.

I freak out because I’ve never seen needles around the house.

His shadow towers over her. Vicki makes groggy noises as he

flips her over with one swoop and pumps the needle into her ass.

Within seconds, Vicki is more looped than ever. She gazes over in

my direction, mumbles something, and lays her head back down.

My father laughs, a weakening sound that penetrates my bones.

His eyes, which were once warm and friendly, now emit a look

of distrust. He is haggard and withdrawn. I barely recognize him.

It’s around ten on a school night as Grampy and I sit at his dining

room table working on my term paper. My eyelids are heavy from

lack of sleep.

Though I am not interested in school, classes, or homework, I

gravitate toward my grandfather more these days because I love

him and he is the closest thing I have to a parent. He reminds me

that I am only a teenager by frequently asking questions about

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schoolwork and my friends. I can tell he is concerned about my

state of high anxiety, but his deep devotion to his son keeps him

silent. Instead, he tells me to focus on reality and my future. He

forces me to use my mind. Though I may not be ready to hear him

or change, I know he is the only person who can lead me in the

right direction.

I never want to disappoint him and therefore never admit to

not attending classes. I turn my ear the other way when he talks

about how to make a living or survive on my own because my fa-

ther always tells me that I will never have to worry about money or

anything as long as he is in my life. Therefore, I couldn’t give two

shits about my studies, college, or anything outside of my own se-

cluded world.

“I don’t understand why we need to know about all these

World Wars,” I complain while flipping through my American his-

tory book.

“If we don’t learn from our past, ignorance repeats itself in the

future,” he informs me.

“Is that why people get so out of control? They don’t resolve

problems from their past and their past shapes their future?” I ask.

“It is how we interpret experiences from the past that tells us

how to act in the future,” he explains.

“Maybe we’re all just running from times we don’t want to

remember?”

“Yes, but make no mistake. The past is the past. You are re-

sponsible for today,” he clarifies, lowering his glasses so I can see

his eyes.

At home, my father’s house has turned ugly. I never know when I’ll

find my father and Vicki passed out on his bed. His mind is filled

with scrambled, irrational thoughts, leaving him overly suspicious

of everyone.

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“They’re after me, but I can outsmart them!” Dad repeats

wildly over the next few months.

His paranoia scares me. He and Vicki become more out of con-

trol and I become more perplexed and terrified. I detach from my

sister and everyone else who is close to me. I isolate more at school

as things at home become strange and unpredictable. Things are

unraveling.

It’s late in the evening when I open my bedroom door and

quietly peer down the hallway to see if anyone is coming. I ap-

proach the staircase and head downstairs to the kitchen. I open

the refrigerator door, pull out a wine cooler, and jump, startled to

find my father standing behind me in his underwear clutching an

Uzi. I have developed such a high tolerance for his inappropriate

behavior that I actually stand there and don’t even think twice

about it.

“What are you doing?” I ask, opening the wine cooler.

“Get down!” he screams, pointing the gun out the window.

I duck, losing my breath as anxiety takes hold. I hide under -

neath the counter as he aims the Uzi toward the backyard.

“Games!” he screams out loud as beads of sweat form on his

forehead. “I’ll give them games!”

“Who?” I ask, trembling.

“The men out there.”

“What men?”

“The men who are after me!” Dad screams, lost in his delusions.

He must be mixing. Life has become one big emergency as I

stand witness to my father’s paranoid hallucinations.

“Follow me! Stay low!” he orders.

We walk low to the ground as I follow him past the window

above the kitchen counter. I am scared to death.

“Who’s after you?” I ask again.

“The Mafia!”

“Why would the . . .”

“Shush! The house is bugged!”

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His stare alone is an implied threat, an inner hardness that

didn’t used to be there.

“What do they want?” I say, shaking.

“I’m a doctor. What do you think they want? Drugs!”

I find myself on my knees following my father in utter dismay.

I wonder whether or not there really are men with guns outside.

Dad checks out the back door and slowly opens it, instructing

me to follow him along the side of the house.

“Stay low and behind me!” he commands, whispering as we

walk with arched backs down a side pathway through the back-