Shards (23 page)

I was acting like a teenager and my mom was acting mom-like. Except that when I was an actual teenager, she had been nothing like this. I couldn't remember her ever telling me what to wear or when to get ready. She had always been off in her own world, equal parts artsiness, wine coolers, and anger.

“Where are we even going?” I asked her.

“I've found a place that has agreed to take you,” she said. “But we have to go today or they'll give the bed to someone else.”

Turns out she had spent the morning calling rehab places all over Albuquerque, but every single one was full. The only facility
that could take me was a fancy spa rehab called Vista in Taos, three and a half hours away.

I dove back into bed, covering myself with pillows. My mom sat next to me and patted my leg, not saying a word.

After a while I said, “Okay, I'll go. But if I'm going to make it to Taos, I'll need something to calm me down. I'll only go if you get me some Valium.” I figured I could slip outside and smoke the last little bit of meth I had while she was at the pharmacy.

“Get dressed first,” my mom said. I grabbed the clothes and went into the bathroom. I took off my pajama top and stood naked from the waist up. My eyes inched slowly toward the mirror. I had fresh bruises under my rib cage and long thin welts at the tops of my thighs. He had been so careful where he pounded me.

As I bent over to shimmy off my pajama bottoms, I felt his hot, sour breath on my neck. I smelled his skin, his hair. Fists clenched, I whipped around to face him.

“No!” I shouted at him.

“What is it, honey?” Seeing the doorknob turn, I lunged at the door. “Don't come in,” I yelled savagely. “Don't come in.”

I pushed against the door with all the strength I had left, then pushed the lock shut. I couldn't let my mom see the bruises. If she didn't know about them, they weren't there.

“I'm okay,” I told her. Needing a hit, I crouched on the floor to look for the meth I had hidden under the bathroom sink. Or thought I had. Maybe I had smoked it all, because there was nothing to find but a baggie of coke wedged behind the toilet. I shoved it in the pocket of the jeans.

Afraid I was going to cut and run, my mom sent Mimi, my eighty-two-year-old grandmother, to the pharmacy and put me in the car. My mom paced up and down the driveway, talking on the
phone with the director of Vista Taos, clicking the door locks every time I tried to get out.

Soon my little Mimi came speeding down the driveway and got out of her car with a brown paper bag. She and my mom started passing the bag back and forth, looking into it and talking. It seemed like they were arguing, but finally my mom hugged Mimi, took the bag, and got in the car with me.

“Here you are, my dear,” she said, handing two tablets to me and putting the car into reverse. She was already on the main road before I opened my eyes and saw that she had given me vitamins. Vitamins! As a cop, I could ID drugs right away. I had all the imprint numbers memorized.

“You amateurs,” I said. I was so angry I started laughing. Mimi hadn't been able to get the Valium prescription, so they thought I could be tricked into going to rehab with goddamned
valerian root
?

Didn't matter. The cocaine in my pocket would get me through the next couple of days, and I didn't intend to stay any longer than that.

I fought to remain in my seat on the way to Taos. I squirmed, called Keawe at work three or four times just to hear his voice, listened to my mom chatter about how proud she was of what I was doing, how great things would be when I was “better.” Understand, she still had no idea of the extent of what had happened to me in Seattle, and as far as I was concerned, she would never know. I planned never to tell a soul about the horrors of that house.

Halfway to Taos we stopped at a Circle K so my mom could get some caffeine. I could tell she was itching for a drink. Willpower wasn't her strong point, but she was driving and would settle for a coffee.

I got out of the car and looked around. She had deliberately
chosen to stop somewhere off the highway, nowhere near a town. If I tried to run, there was nothing but desert all around. I would have to sprint all the way back up to the highway and see if I could hitch a ride before she got to me.

“I have to pee,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. She followed me to the bathroom, and I half expected her to come inside with me, just like when I was a little girl. She opened her mouth to say something, then waved me in by myself.

After I peed, I figured I had enough time to do a line of coke. I pulled the packet out of my pocket and looked around the filthy bathroom for a flat surface. Still high from all the meth I had snorted that morning, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. It was one of those gas station mirrors that isn't even really a mirror, just some unbreakable acrylic silver thing in which you can barely see the shape of your own face. Plus it was spattered with dried soap and some scummy orange stuff. Looking at myself in that mirror—trying to see myself at all—I can't say I had a moment of clarity, but I did make a decision.

“Alli,” my mom called, pounding angrily on the door. “Come out of there right now. We've got to get going.”

“Just a minute,” I said, and then I did something I still find hard to believe.

I threw that packet of cocaine away.

I buried it deep in the trash can, under a pile of brown paper towels.

That's it
, I thought.
I'm done.
I didn't finish the coke. I didn't try to sneak it into rehab. I just threw it away. I hadn't chosen rehab, but I did choose sobriety for myself on that day.

I would do it. I would throw myself into it full-force. I suppose for someone like me, even sobriety can become a kind of addiction.

•  •  •

Very few addicts experience the kind of rehab I was given. Brand-new adobe-style buildings, gorgeous landscaping, king-size beds, fluffy towels. As we pulled up to Vista in the car, I thought my mom had been joking with me and wasn't really taking me to rehab after all. It looked like a resort for rich people, not a place for drug addicts. Turns out it was costing my mom twenty thousand dollars for thirty days. I was still so focused on myself that I couldn't appreciate that my family had gotten that much money together in a single morning for my treatment.

Bill, the head of Vista, came out to greet me, acting as if he had been waiting for me the entire day.

“We're so glad you're choosing sobriety, Alli,” he said, and took us into his office. He rattled off a bunch of other rehab bullshit about group sessions, primary treatment, complementary therapies, and other stuff I didn't listen to. I stared at the painting above his desk. A peaceful river painted in thick brushstrokes. A hint of blue sky in the distance. Sun.

Bill asked me for the names and addresses of people I wanted to invite to Family Week, the last week of treatment. My mom gave him her address and my sister Carol's. It didn't occur to us to give him my father's. I gave Bill Keawe's address, sure that he would want to come.

Suddenly Bill said, “Say good-bye to your mother, Alli.”

I turned to my mom with panicked eyes. “What? Already?”

She hugged me and started to cry. “This is how they do things, sweetie,” she said.

“I need you, Mom,” I said. “I just got back to you.”

“It's important to find your own journey through sobriety,” Bill said. “After three days you can call your family.”

“Don't leave me,” I said, clinging to my mom, burrowing my thin, bony frame into the soft roundness of her body. I felt panic rise through my chest, my throat. I was twenty-eight years old but felt about seven. Suddenly I was convinced that my mother, who I had done nothing but lie to and avoid for two solid years, was the only one who could keep me safe.

Bill gently pulled me away and led me down a long, tiled hallway to the huge room with four beds where I would be staying all by myself. I felt like the smallest little person in the world.

He left me alone in my room. It was a beautiful room—fourteen-foot ceilings, a fireplace—but I didn't care. I was worried about the door out to my own little porch. I checked the door four or five times to make sure the dead bolt was locked. I was sure my dealer would track me to Taos and kill anyone at the rehab in order to get to me.

I was so tired. I felt like I hadn't really slept in years. Two years, at least. Going to bed at a normal time felt strange, but an orderly came in and started me on some drugs—trazadone to help me sleep; clonidine for anxiety and panic attacks (I wasn't given preferential treatment after I was diagnosed with PTSD); and the antidepressant Paxil, thought to help with meth cravings.

I woke up around midnight to go to the bathroom. As I walked across the room my heart started to beat so fast I thought I was having a heart attack. Dropping to my knees and then my stomach, I lay on the cold bathroom floor and prayed for my heart to slow down, begging God for it not to stop altogether. I knew if I could get a hit I would be all right. I decided my body couldn't survive without dope, and I was probably going to die.

Tears washed down the bridge of my nose and onto the tile floor. I wanted to call out to my mom to take care of me. Or Keawe. But
I couldn't even make a sound. All I could hear was my heartbeat. I had no idea what was happening to me.

Slowly, my heartbeat returned to normal. My body became responsive, and I felt better. I knew I would live. I crawled back to bed, but first I checked the lock on the door to the porch again. I should have gone to the night orderly and told him what had happened, but I was determined to keep it to myself.

I later found out I was experiencing the side effects of trazadone. If you try to get up too quickly, the drug can cause a rapid heartbeat and light-headedness. I was lucky I hadn't passed out.

•  •  •

In the morning, I awoke to find a man bending over me.

“Get the fuck away from me, you fucker,” I screamed. I lunged at him, getting my hands around his throat within seconds.

He was strong, able to shove his hands under my grasp.

“Whoa there, Miss Allison,” he said. “I'm not trying to hurt you.” His voice was surprisingly gentle.

Thrashing around in the bed, I freed my legs from the sheets and started kicking him. He backed away, and I could see him clearly for the first time. A white guy, middle-aged. My worst nightmare.

“I'm Arnie,” he said, again in that gentle voice. “Your orderly. I just came to wake you up.”

“Oh God,” I said, embarrassed. “I'm sorry. I thought you were—”

“Next time I won't get so close,” he said, and he was true to his word. It became a standing joke between us: every morning after that, he woke me by standing in the doorway and poking me with a stick.

For three solid days it seemed I did nothing but sleep, take my medication, and go to the bathroom. I don't think I ate anything.
When I woke up that third morning, I was in the pink cloud of sobriety. I looked out the window at the roses on my porch and was sure I had never seen that color pink before. I stared at the beautiful little stream running through the grounds and absolutely could not believe what I was seeing. It was as beautiful as the painting in Bill's office.

Everything felt wonderful. I was going to be sober for the rest of my life.

When my counselor Greg came by that morning to give me my schedule, I said, “I got the shit out of my system, I'm good to go.” He started laughing and couldn't stop.

Greg was there to start me on the “Vista routine.” He had a clipboard, a schedule, and brochures, and he went over the things I had to do in the morning: up at seven, make your bed, brush your teeth, shower, go to breakfast, go to group. Every day, no exceptions. Starting now.

“Fine,” I said. “Now. Okay.”

Greg nodded, but he and his clipboard didn't leave.

“We find that new guests are sometimes resistant to our schedule,” he said. “They see it as a bit of a regime. We find it's best to accompany our guests through each step of the routine the first day or two.” He glanced at the clipboard. “First up, make your bed.”

He lowered himself into the plum-colored suede easy chair in the corner of my room and watched me make my bed. I started to feel a little queasy by the end. What the fuck was the difference between rehab and Seattle? A middle-aged man telling me what to do every minute, then watching me do it.

“Good, Alli,” Greg said once I had finished. “We want our guests to go through the motions of daily life, to meet the expectations that will be there when they move back into the world. Now it's time to brush your teeth, then a shower.”

“You're going to come in the shower with me?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “I'll wait here.”

I got out a change of clothes and went into the bathroom. I hadn't taken a shower in at least a week. I laid out one of Vista's luxurious white towels and even turned on the water, but there was no way I could make myself go in the shower. Not after Seattle, not after the men. I was terrified, but I didn't want Greg to know what was going on. I let the shower run while I washed my hair in the sink.

“Feel refreshed?” Greg asked when I came out of the bathroom.

I nodded, and he “accompanied” me to the dining room for breakfast, where the Mexican wood table was set with cloth place mats and beautiful stone-colored pottery in all different bright shades. Orange, turquoise, purple, yellow. A vase was filled with purple and yellow desert wildflowers. Platters of fresh pineapple and papaya sat in the middle of the table.

I took one look at the faces around the table and said a little prayer to Keawe—
Get me out of here
. That's all I wanted. To be with Keawe, headed for California.

Greg sat next to me and tried to get me to contribute to the conversation, but I was silent while I tried to choke down some tea and a piece of dry toast.
This fucking shit is for the birds
, I thought.
I'm sober now, can I just leave?
Some woman was talking about how she didn't want to go outside because of all the spiders at Vista. Another woman was complaining about the chipped nail polish on her toenails. Apparently they felt they were slumming it. What did a vice cop meth addict have in common with a woman who was more concerned with going thirty days without a pedicure than getting sober?