Shooting up

“That’s my son calling again. He is hungry and worried about me. I have his dinner in my bag. He was expecting me home an hour ago.” That son is 10. He had 22 stitches in his leg from falling on a piece of glass the night before while playing in the apartment complex’s yard with the other kids..

Her name is Dawn, 40-something, a mother of two more - 22 and 19 - a man and a woman. Both struggle with daily life. They and their younger brother were addicted to heroin three days after she and her abusive ex made them. The oldest was conceived somewhere between Cincinnati and Puerto Penasco, a city on the north shore of the Gulf of California in the state of Sonora. Sonora borders Route 8, just about a two hour drive to Sonoyta and the tunnels that lead from there into the southern New Mexico desert. The 19-year old was born in Puerto Penasco in the trailer they called home. A year after the birth of the second she convinced her parents to meet her in Vegas so she could have the grandparents raise her kids while the two of them sold dope enough to skim from the top there. Her job was to raise hell, to behave like a prostitute on the job, or some other way to distract the police who might be driving by from the deal across the parking lot.

About 10 years ago I got a call from another friend of mine, Jessica. Her friends and I had not seen her in a few weeks, but that wasn’t unusual. She would come and go. It was Saturday night, I was home alone and feeling every bit of it. It was good to hear from her even though it was from the hospital. She was being discharged after a week of crack cocaine detox. She needed a ride to the treatment center 30 miles up the road. When she got in my car she asked if we could stop at my apartment. It’s not on the way. We had been romantic before so I figured this was turning into a pretty good Saturday night after all. And I could empathize. A few months of treatment is best preceded by some good sex. When we got to my place she went into the bathroom to get ready. Well, three hours later she came out at the insistence of her best friend, Christine, who I called out of desperation. Her friend ended up driving her to the treatment center. Her body was full of the crack that she smuggled in her vagina into and out of the detox and smoked for 3 hours in my bathroom. Not such a good Saturday night after all.

I’m interested in addiction. I’ve been interested in it for a while, but that Saturday night night Jessica made my interest intense. Why would someone who lost all her money - $20,000 - on cocaine in one month, who had to whore herself out for the rest until she couldn’t take any more of looking at the ceiling after being hit by him and him and him, go from detox to the crack pipe in less than an hour?

Natural selection. Addicts can recover. They do recover if they want to and they are honest with themselves. In Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous they say there are three things a person can do if s/he wants to be sober. Go to a meeting, call your sponsor, don’t drink or use. But they’ll take you if you’re using or drunk. They’ll take you if you are the stinkiest bum on the street. And they will help anyone who wants the help. Those who pay lip service to getting sober won’t get sober. Those five or so percent who are serious about it generally do fine.

When Dawn told me she doesn’t do meetings she defined her life. It’s her choice. It’s not the choice of that 10 year-old, nor was it the choice of the older two. They’re all three living her consequences for her. Not that she hasn’t lived a few of her own. In and out of jail. Five years once for skipping a court date. A guilty verdict would have landed her a month or so for possession.

Her living conditions are scary. What the pictures can’t talk about is the stink in the apartment she shares with her sister and her son. I couldn’t figure out what the smell was until I got up off my knees while I was shooting the pictures of her and noticed the stains on the knees of my jeans. Sticky, yellow on the entire floor. In the carpet. The jeans didn’t come clean the first wash. My hands were sticky and stinky for several hand washes. The camera, even though I wiped it down as well as I could, smelled of whatever that stink was two weeks later when I pulled it out the next time. Whatever it was. A syrup the odor of must.

Nor could the pictures capture the 10 year old son’s relief when his dinner finally showed up at 9:15 pm, when his mom showed up safe at 9:15 pm. She was over an hour late. When your mother is that erratic you worry about basic stuff like is she going to be OK and will I eat tonight? Let alone, what should I do with this bandage that is covering 22 painful, itchy stitches? It’s a tough way to grow up. If security is the foundation of childhood, it’s safe to say that kid’s fucked.

March 1, 2022