The Cocaine Chronicles Read online

  shame

  by kerry e. west

  Nicole!” Lorna shrieked at her twelve-year-old daughter. “Get in there and feed the babies.” This was actually more about getting the kid out of the room than anything else. Nicole wordlessly tromped into the bedroom knowing quite well what we were up to.

  Lorna whipped out the mirror and razor. Uncle Jeff pulled out the crank. I watched with impatient fervor. The three of us were like slobbering dogs, intent on a single-minded endeavor: a good, harsh toot up our sniffers. And any thoughts of what may have been wandering through the mind of the young girl in the other room were obliterated by this urgent social priority. Hey! Whadda-you-want? We were addicts. We just needed the kid out of the room so we could guiltlessly burn out our nasal canals—as if Lorna really gave a shit anyway.

  “Where’s the key, Mom?” came Nicole’s raised voice from within the bedroom; it was a voice with nuances that often seemed matured years beyond what should have been normal for a twelve-year-old. The voice was unemotional and businesslike; she stolidly had the household routines down. It always impressed me how reserved Nicole remained around her mom, but then in her mom’s absence she would instantly revert to her independent, playful, but far from naïve self.

  “You don’t need the key. Get them food now, and keep it quiet!” Lorna hollered back; she had a scowl on her face with tension lines wrinkling the corners of her eyes. Lorna, with the character natural to a screaming banshee, gave a daunting performance of stern parental control, and Nicole, and her two-year-old and three-year-old sisters, usually obeyed.

  Lorna turned back to the main issue at hand and began to chop. She paused a second to brush back a long, light-reddish lock that had annoyingly fallen forward from behind her ear and into her face. She continued: chopchopchopchopchopchopchop … for a long time. Actually, it was only for about half a minute but, eager as I was, it seemed an eternity. She drew out some lines. I remember looking at her pale-skinned, freckled face, the matching flesh on her big-boned arms, and I remember thinking what a large girl she was. Oh … I don’t mean corpulent; I mean hefty and muscular. She certainly had no beauty to speak of, and I possessed no sexual desire for her. She’d’uv probably kicked my ass if I’d tried anything anyway. Lorna proceeded to nostrilize the glittering powder and passed the mirror to Jeff.

  Now, the family’s Uncle Jeff was a precious find. He was a pleasant guy. He was cultivated. He was the most delightful druggie you could ever hope to know—should you wish or need to know one. His tamed soul made him an incessantly jolly man, content to live out life with a fresh blast every ten minutes. Very unselfish guy, too, and I don’t mean this just because it was his stash we were doing up in the living room. He just liked sharing in good company; this, regardless of the enhancement to supply-and-demand that was bound to result. Jeff was a lofty six-foot-two, plump, and he supported a tarnished-silver, longhaired Genghis Khan moustache that flowed around and down the sides of his mouth. And his nose was large and red with a straw stuck up it.

  He finished and passed the mirror to me. Finally. The line was smaller than I had hoped for.

  “Say, Lorna? Did you get your check yet?” I asked conversationally as I bent over the mirror, inhaling, then releasing a sound wave apposite of relief, “Ahhh.” I was hoping she’d be able to pay her part of the bills, or at least some of her part—I’d been having enough trouble with “unpredictable” utility disconnections. I had been renting my guesthouse to her. It was not really a large enough dwelling for her family, but they managed. Lorna slept on the living room couch, and the girls used the only other available room as a bedroom. What had become a real problem, though, was that Lorna never used any of her welfare check for rent or utilities. Never. She always got over on me somehow. It wasn’t until years later that I was able to understand how she suckered me into accepting them as tenants in the first place.

  She answered with an arrogant grin, “No. But I’ll let you know when I do.”

  As usual, this predictable answer caused my anger to flare up for a second. I thus found it necessary to promptly establish some priorities and said to her, “Cool. Can I have another line?”

  So there it was. It was a situation that was more costly for me than if I’d lived alone on the property, a situation superseded by the delicious incentive that their Uncle Jeff was a darn good connection, one I didn’t want to lose.

  Anyway, good … we did another round. When my turn came, I snorted hard so as to lay down a thick and speedy blanket over those vast reaches of my nasal canals that may have yet remained untainted—this time, Wow! Satisfaction guaranteed, let-me-tell-you. Graciously, I then excused myself to go out into the yard to give my van one of its meticulously scheduled oil changes.

  Minutes later—lying out there under my van—the shit really kicked in. My teeth clenched and ground against themselves. My periphery narrowed; my concentration pinpointed heavily on the task at hand. And then my heightened ambition sensed all the cruddy grease clods encrusting the van’s underside. Sidetracked now, I grabbed the first purposeful utensil within reach—a screwdriver—and began arduously scraping away all the caked-on deposits from the bottom of the engine. This single-minded contagion spread and I started on the frame. Next would be the transmission. So there I was an hour and a half later, still frenziedly preparing for an oil change, when Nicole and her baby sisters came barreling out through the side door of their bedroom. Uh-oh! They looked to be on a mission.

  The girls, all blondes looking nothing alike, were pretty much a riotous bunch. Whenever those three erupted into the yard, the three-year-old, little curly haired Autumn, would break into a full and flashing smile the moment she’d see me, gleefully calling, “Kee-ee. Hi, Kee-ee.” That seemed to be the extent of her vocabulary, to which I’d be required to reply, “Hi, Autumn.” She’d return with, “Hi, Kee-ee.” To which I’d again reply, and so on and so on, until I was the one to give in to this contest.

  Then, in her usual waddling fashion, followed the youngest: scraggly haired Jessica. Jessica, always with a variety of purplish sores on her face and arms, never uttered a word. Two years old and she still wasn’t able to talk at all. Well, she’d come stumbling out the door with her giant, wide-open eyes, taking in the whole yard, giggling frantically, and acting like a million Christmas gifts were now hers to ransack. She always seemed infatuated with the world, always tagging along behind Autumn, emulating her every move.

  And finally, of course, there was the preordained babysitter, Nicole. Nicole could be a handful of monkey business if she wanted to be. But during “business” hours she had an absolute yet incredibly compassionate ability to keep her sisters in check. When Nicole spoke, the little ones would listen acutely, earnestly falling in before her like her own private little army, an integrated machine tuned to her every command. It always seemed to me that the two younger ones might have thought she was their mother, as well.

  Now Nicole, despite all the responsibility that her mother would lay upon her, naturally needed her own diversions and wouldn’t hesitate to seize any opportunity that allowed her to sway from everyday procedure. Such it is that she would offer to assist in my chores whether I needed help or not. I think this finagling may have been a perfect excuse for legitimately disobeying her mother: “But he needed help, Mom,” she’d always plead, all the time knowing I was too soft to favor a contradiction.

  Anyway, the three girls inevitably found my prone body hiding under the van. And Nicole leaned over to offer her assistance but I turned her down. I mean, after all, an oil change is a one-man job, isn’t it? So Nicole let her sisters help instead. And boy, did they help. Autumn came over to one side to distract me, “Kee-ee. Hi, Kee-ee.” Jessica stole a socket wrench from behind me and ran. Shoot! Now I had to get out from under and chase down the tool. Meanwhile, Autumn was left wide open to take off with the filter wrench. Here things got tricky. Since Autumn had a head start before I’d returned from tracking Jessica—and you can bet s
he went in the opposite direction—this gave Jessica all the time in the world to take her pick of the rest of my tools while I was off stalking Autumn. Apparently, all this was quite entertaining for Nicole, for she simply sat quietly on a bench giving me sweet, wide grins as I darted hither and thither.

  You know? I’d almost swear under oath that since the two younger ones were so verbally limited, they all used telepathy to gang up on me. Can you not help but love such shenanigans? The ultimate joy of this world should be nothing larger than kids having a real ball.

  Later that night there came an aggravated banging on my door. I answered in irritation, becoming delighted as soon as I saw whom it was. “Hi, Jeff! Come in. Come in.”

  He entered looking more than a little concerned and told me straight out, “Lorna just got popped after she came over to cop some shit.”

  “Oh, man! What a hassle. How she gonna get out?”

  Jeff, already motioning for a mirror, replied, “Not a problem, I bet. They’re probably going to let her out on O.R. in the morning. Right now, man, I need to check on the kids.” His mind spaced for a second, then he began crushing the small rock he’d pulled out and asked, “Know how to change a diaper?”

  I looked at him dumbfounded. I didn’t even want to touch that one. And I think neither did he, judging from his expression. So, with that startling revelation in mind, we both saw the highly fitting rationale in reinforcing the stamina of our polluted bloodstreams. We did so and dispatched the mirror.

  As we walked over to the guesthouse, we consoled each other with the fact that we could always ask Nicole to do the diaper thing if need be. When we neared the door, Jeff called to Nicole to open it. She did; she had a cheery grin and let us in. An Olsen twins video was on the television.

  Jeff spoke despondently to his niece: “Nikki … your mom’s in jail.”

  “I know,” she said brightly. “She called and told me.” Nicole was definitely not upset. She almost seemed exuberant. Perhaps the evening was running more smoothly for her without her mother’s interventions. Either that or Nicole had simply lit up to the fact that her Uncle Jeff had arrived. She utterly adored her Uncle Jeff. He was much like a father figure for her, yet she never gave him reason to reprimand her. He was stern but kindly, and perhaps devoted more time to Nicole than did anyone else. Lorna, on the other hand, couldn’t, for she was a very busy woman; busy tweakin’ around the clock just as most the rest of us were.

  “Nikki, did you eat dinner? Did your sisters get fed yet?”

  “Yes, Uncle Jeff.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They’re in their beds.”

  Then Jeff turned to me, an unsure gaze in his eyes, and said, “I’d better check on them,” and I followed him while Nicole indifferently went back to sit in front of the television.

  We passed through a doorway draped over with a heavy woolen blanket, and I realized I hadn’t been in this room for quite some time. As we drew back the blanket, an appalling odor woofed out to slap us startlingly in the face. It was very dark in there, too dark to see. Jeff felt around for a light switch, found one, and snapped it on. The two of us, blinking vacantly as our eyes adjusted, froze for an instant, horrified as the sight before us materialized. We both quickly glanced to check each other’s reaction, reactions that were meaningless in light of what we were looking at. We again peered back into a room neither of us had seen since the day Lorna moved the kids into it.

  The room was a shambles of microbe-ridden rubbish heaps. Stuffed animals and rumpled clothes were strewn everywhere, with the majority of them heaped in a pile on the floor of the doorless closet. Under this bedlam lay a mishmash of kitchen knives, a hammer, a shower head, waterlogged toilet paper, paper clips, the closet door, you name it. The room’s only decoration was another heavy, brown blanket nailed over the solitary window and feces-smeared walls. In one corner on the floor was a rancid pile of loaded diaper bundles. Out of the corner of my eye those bundles appeared to spasm when we first turned on the light, but it was just the cockroaches trying to take cover. There were only two pieces of furniture: a playpen and a small crib. I saw no bed for Nicole.

  Autumn sat on her rump in the playpen, grinning and staring at us but saying not a word, not even a single “Kee-ee.” With her were a couple of mangled toys, a pillow, and a dirtied dinner plate. Her hands, mouth, and blouse were mottled with food. There was no way for her to stand erect—covering the top of the playpen, secured in place with padlocked motorcycle chains, was a section of wrought-iron fence.

  Jessica was asleep in the crib, which had a thick-corded fishnet draped over its top; it was pulled taut down the sides and tied off underneath. Movement was limited. For Jessica, sleep was likely a blessing. Her restriction didn’t seem as severe as the playpen situation until Jeff pointed to the soiled colorings of the sheetless mattress; it seethed with soggy patches of some weird dark and moldlike growth. I only then began to relate the sores Jessica always bore to the meaning of “crib rot.”

  Suddenly, Jeff directed a blaring roar at the other room, which startled me and woke up Jessica: “Nicole!” He paused to swallow for control and then continued angrily, “What have you done here? Unlock this playpen now.”

  And I heard the meek reply from the other room, “I can’t. Mom has the key.”

  We stood there a moment … bewildered, to say the least.

  It was then that a large assortment of envelopes partially covered by a ragged jacket and several tiny socks strangely summoned my attention. I moved sulkily over to them and apathetically brushed aside the jacket with my foot. The items seemed vaguely familiar. I stooped down for a closer look. Behold! What did I find but … my mail? Here were the unopened phone and power bills that I had sworn to the utility companies—after several disconnections—I never received. And I began to see the logic: If I didn’t get the bills, Lorna couldn’t be held for what she owed. I cursed out loud, already raging beyond forethought for the younger presence in the room.

  I looked to Jeff for support but he looked both nauseated and in a struggle to control his rage. The little ones thought we were there to play; they were thrilled. From the other room I heard Nicole stifle a sob.

  How do you reckon a course of action when you are so caught up in your own concerns—and your own habits—that you are unable to perceive the full weight of a very serious problem? And open confrontation of this very problem could certainly threaten the frequent drug trafficking so conveniently wrought through my tenant’s door. In that moment, it seemed there were only two available options: Avoid making waves with a charade of ignorance, or take all-out aggressive action despite the consequences.

  I am ashamed to say I chose inaction.

  After I had taken a bolt cutter to Autumn’s chains, I retired to the main house and Jeff remained with the kids for the night. I really, really needed something to lift my spirits, yet there was to be no consolation in subsequent toots. Nor did I have the high and faithful expectations I usually did at the sight of Jeff, when, around midnight, he snuck over to use the phone. Strangely, he too did not feel reassured that supplemental blasts would fortify our moods. Fortunately, he had his glass pipe handy so we could smoke some hits instead; smoking crank gives a completely different, more brain-deadening effect.

  “The fuckin’ phone’s been turned off again,” I complained in response to his request—in those days neither of us had cell phones.

  “Listen. I gotta go make a call. Can you keep an ear out till I get back?” And he left, trailing a ribbon of bluish smoke behind him. At the time, I merely figured he had personal business to tend to. All the same, the chore was no big deal for me as long as it didn’t entail reentering the guesthouse again. Even should one of the girls have awakened, I trusted that Nicole would be far more qualified than myself at handling any quandaries. Fortunately, all remained peaceful.

  Jeff returned, bid me goodnight, and I passed out. And I never saw the girls again.

  Late the ne
xt morning I awoke to deadening silence. Something seemed wrong, for silence is not natural where children do dwell. Kinda freaky! A sense of dread spread over me along with a terrible urge to run out there and see what was going on—I immediately broke into my own stash so I could load in a waker-upper. Ouch! … Nothing burns like that first thing in the morning.

  As I stepped through my back door, I could already see the guesthouse door was slightly ajar. I advanced and rapped on it. There was no answer. “Hello … hello!” I called. No answer. I slowly pushed the door open the rest of the way and was not surprised to find no one there. Circumstances being what they were, I did not think it tactless to proceed. The girls’ door to the yard was also fully open. It felt strange; it was strange. All seemed the same as I last saw it except that the bathroom lacked amenities. No toothpaste, no hairbrushes, no girls, no Jeff, no note. Silence.

  I tried phoning Jeff several times that day, got tired of running out to phone booths, and finally drove by his house, only to harvest the same result. Damn! I realized I should have stocked up while he was around. It meant I’d just have to go over to Pacoima and settle for some lower-grade shit.

  Four days later there came a banging at my door. I answered in a downcast temperament, becoming delighted as soon as I saw whom it was. “Hi, Jeff! Come in. Come in.” Needless to say, we went through our traditional formality before commencing with the idle chatter.

  That done, I chattered, “What happened?”

  Turns out that the phone call Jeff had gone to make was directed to some cousins of the girls’ father—Daddy himself being in prison—who’d leapt into action, swooping down from the mountains where they lived to scoop up the girls and spirit them away. As their uncle explained, they’d secretly had this in the works a long time. They’d already pulled the legal papers and were just waiting for their chance. It had all been expected. Meanwhile, it was not Lorna’s first drug offense, which hung her up a week before they rescinded the bail and let her out on O.R. The courts, though, quickly made provisions that, until she proved herself under a year of random drug testing, Lorna was banned from all communication with her kids and from the welfare benefits connected to them. Matter of fact, the only person not banned from visiting the girls was Uncle Jeff.