Here we go

One day I was minding my own business…

Ahhh life is sweet. I’m all warm and cozy, floatin’ around in my little habitat, chillin. Sigh, man. Kind of feels a little warm in here, are the walls closing in on me? Shh, wait! What was that? What was that? Whoa!! What the fuck?! What the hell’s going on? Help! Help! I t’s cold! My eyes!! Where am I going? WHERE AM I GOING?!!

“It’s a girl!”

Part One: Life Happened to Me

I was born at Riverside General, April 2, 1983 at 1:52 in the morning by cesarean section. My mother a 19 and a half year old drug addict, my father a young, illegal Mexican immigrant. According to my grandparents, my mother had heart problems from using dirty needles and went into cardiac distress while trying to give birth to me. We both survived, but she had to stay in the hospital longer than I did. I went home with my grandparents, and that’s where I would stay until I was 18. Some people think it’s amazing I didn’t have developmental issues. I came out a normal weight, completely formed, not addicted to any substances.

I remember seeing pictures of my first birthday at my Great-grandmother’s house. Apparently I stayed with Ma for a month around that time, although I’m not sure why. I suspect it was so that my grandparents could try to help my mom detox for my sake. They failed, through no fault of their own. There are a lot of blanks I still need to fill in about my biological mom, but that is another story. This one’s about me and what I remember, as vague as it may seem sometimes.

By the time I was two years old, I had been taught how to write my name, address and phone number because my mom (Tina), was involved with some pretty unsavory characters and my grandparents were doing everything they could to protect me. Tina hardly came around, but when she did she was usually strung out or jonesing and begging for money. I heard her and my (grand)parents fighting a lot. When I was little, I didn’t understand what it was about. I just thought all kids fought with their parents so it was normal.

If I had to go through what my parents went through with Tina, it would break me. She would steal from them, lie to them, threaten to take me away if they didn’t give her money for a fix. She would scream “Do you want me to fucking die?!” She would manipulate my parents as if they were too stupid to know what she was going to do with the money. Sometimes she would bring random people home with her and not understand why my parents freaked out at having some drug addicted stranger in their house. It’s a miracle we were never robbed; by anyone but my mother, that is.

There were a few times Tina stayed home for an extended period… I remember having her around for Christmas more than once. A couple times she tried to “kick” her habit, and it was awful. It was like watching a slow exorcism. She would cry and scream and moan. She would sweat and have chills so bad you could hear her teeth gnashing in the next room. She vomited uncontrollably and prayed aloud for death. Even at my age, not even in school yet, I knew exactly what was going on. Mama was quitting drugs, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But it never got better.

My mother was gone a lot, so my grandparents were simply my parents. They raised me, they should get the credit. I didn’t have hard feelings toward my mom. Remember, my whole life was like this. I didn’t know any other “normal” until I started school. One night, I was sitting on my parents’ bed, and my grandma was on the phone with Tina and she said “I think you should tell Shalene where you are. She will understand.” I was 3.
“Hi Mama.”
“Hi Shalena. Do you know where I am?”
“In the hospital?”
“No, I’m in jail, do you know what that means?”
“Yes.”
Did I know what that meant? I think so. It didn’t bother me, I was used to never seeing her anyway. It’s not that I didn’t miss her, but she was kind of like all the other people I didn’t see everyday, aunts, uncles, family friends…it was all the same in my young mind.

Months would go by without me seeing her. If she was in jail, she sent me letters and call collect every once in a while. When she was close to home, we’d go visit her. I loved the little microwavable pizzas they had at the jail. I still buy them every once in a while and it makes my husband laugh when I say “Mmm. Just like the ones in jail.” Most of the time when we visited, I got to hug her and hang out with her for a while, play with other kids whose moms were druggies and prostitutes and felons. It wasn’t a lot different from being at the city park. You know, accept for the armed guards and razor wire. The last few times I visited her behind glass. Apparently she accosted a fellow inmate with a Daisy Razor and lost her “trustee” status.

As the years went by, my parents started trusting my mom to take me on day trips and even over night a couple times. She had her moments of clarity after jail where she would go to NA meetings and hang out with a better class of people. She had friends who weren’t addicts, or had maybe a slight drinking problem, and these people were her true friends. They were the ones who called my parents to inform them of Tina’s whereabouts and the ones that rescued her from sticky situations that my parents couldn’t have handled themselves. They were actually welcomed by my family. But all the help in the world doesn’t do any good if the addict won’t help themselves.

My mother never picked her feet up when she walked, so I knew she was home when I heard a shuffling of flip-flops on the porch. My grandmother once told me “When your mama is skinny, that’s bad. We want her to be fat, okay?” This time she was skinny. Her face was drawn and her eyes were sunken in. She had a distinctive wheezy cough like a 70 year old smoker. She went to take a bath and locked the door. It was a huge deal in my house when she locked the door. That meant she had a needle with her. I can’t tell you how many syringes, burnt up spoons, balloons, baggies and bottle caps I handled before I was even 10 years old. I knew if my parents found it, they’d kick my mom out and I wanted her to stay and get better. So after she passed out in the tub, I’d go in, find her needle, wrap it so carefully in toilet paper and take it to the trash. I knew about AIDS, I knew about all the horrible things IV drugs can do. I was a narcotics expert before I hit 5th grade. My parents thought that by educating me and being honest about everything, I stood the best chance of not following in my mother’s footsteps. This all sounds horrible for a young child to go through, but kids are resilient. I am not traumatized by my childhood. I had it rough, but I’m luckier than most people on this planet.

Like I said before, things seemed normal to me until I got into school. When I started making friends and realized that everyone I knew lived with a mom, a dad, and maybe a sibling or two, I knew I was ‘different’. I lived with my grandparents, and people would as me why. I didn’t know what to say. My grandparents told me not to tell people my mom did drugs, and not to tell them she was in jail because then they would assume we’re bad people and would not let their kids interact with me. So naturally, as children do, I told stories of my mom being away on a trip, or away on business…. A lot of people may have thought my mom was in the military, who knows?

We did have some bad nights. There were times when my grandmother would get me out of bed at 2:30 in the morning to go driving around the worst part of town looking for my mother. To make sure she was alive and had money for food and whatever else. I remember finding her an random corners (you know what she was doing) and picking her up, driving around the block while her and my grandmother went back and forth and then her getting out at a motel with whatever money my grandma had on her. I don’t remember her ever coming home with us. Then my grandmother would cry, silently on the way home. I would pretend to be asleep.

There were times where I’d be laying in bed and I’d cry and ask my grandma why I didn’t have a normal family, why my mother didn’t love me and why she wasn’t there. I feel bad my parents had to see and hear that. What do you tell a little child who asks those things? One time my mom came home in pretty bad shape, and I had a trip to Knott’s Berry Farm the next day with the Girl Scouts. It had been a long time and I wanted to spend as much time with my mom as possible, so I asked if I could sleep with her. My grandmother was adamant that I sleep in my own bed. I begged and cried, I couldn’t understand why she would keep me away from my mom knowing how little I see her. She told me if I slept with my mom, that I wouldn’t not be allowed to go to Knott’s the next day. I went to my own bed, defeated and confused, feeling like my grandmother was just being cruel to punish me. I know now, she was worried I might wake up to a corpse.

I was getting a little older, almost 10 and I think I was pretty jaded by then. I was old enough to really understand what was going on with my mom, and how despite the many chances my parents gave her to clean up her act, she carried on with her destructive lifestyle. I would get to spend time with her every so often and then I wouldn’t see her for weeks. I started asking my parents “Is my mother dead?” regularly. I mean, without batting an eye! And I always expected the answer to be yes. It pissed my mom off and when she would talk to me on the phone she’d say “Quit asking grandma and grandpa if I’m dead! I’m not going to die!” so I’d say “You can.” And she’d get upset and I wouldn’t hear from her for several more weeks.

One day, my best friend Nancy and I were playing in my yard. We were going to visit Ma in Arizona for the weekend, and her mom and my mom were getting things ready inside the house. I kept asking my grandma when we were going to leave and she told me when my grandpa came home. That was weird, we never waited on him all the other times we went to Ma’s. So I went back outside and rode bikes with Nancy.
“I think my mom is dead.”
“You always say that.”
“I know, but this time I think it’s true.”
We kept riding around, my uncle Steven showed up. He was 25 at the time and had his own agenda, we never saw him so that was kind of odd too. Then my grandpa came home. My grandma came outside and said she needed to talk to me. Steven took Nancy and her mom to the front yard and my parents sat me down on the couch.
“We have something kind of hard to tell you.”
“I already know, my mom is dead.”
“Yes, she is sweetheart, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s probably better this way, right?”
I was 11 years old. My grandmother had received a call from a friend of my mom’s shortly before we were going to leave for Arizona.
“Hi is this Tina’s mom?”
“Yes it is, who is this?”
“This is _____. I just wanted to call and offer my condolences. I’m really sorry.”
“What? Condolences?”
“Oh my god. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Tina?”
“yes. I’m sorry.”
She was dead for over a week before word had even made it to us. She had been legally married to one of her drug dealer boyfriends, and since he was there when she OD’d, they counted that as notifying her next of kin. My grandpa had to go identify her body. I’m sure it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his life, and he’s not had it easy. I think he said he went crazy on the cops, how could they let his daughter’s body rot in the morgue. She has an extensive criminal record, there is no reason they could not have contacted her family. I got to pick out her casket and headstone. I read a poem at her funeral. I didn’t cry. She finally did something good for me.