St. John’s. Seeing’s how this is where my son was stolen away to, you might guess I have some mixed feelings about this place, and if you did you’d be wrong: I fucking hate that he’s here and I hate coming here and my feeling about it all is firm and fixed. My body gets tenser and tenser the closer I get, and the buildings loom like thugs waiting to pounce and the lights are all laser beams aimed at my brain’s deepest pain centers. I have a couple friends here, but I never see them. I never see anyone anymore. Point being I’m sat at the bar at O’Reilley’s pub by myself, receiving no attention from anyone other than the bartender who’s paid to give it, and I’m trying to not get so drunk that I’m hung over tomorrow. You might also guess I’d be excited, desperate for the minutes to fly by as fast as physics allows for, but again, fucking wrongo. And it would be obvious that either you have no kids or you’ve at least never had said kids stolen from you and then had to visit them. I’m always scared shitless, which you probably now realise you would be too.
One visit every four months, and if it’s no good, that’s my kid’s memory of me for his next four months, which to a three-year-old is the equivalent of like four years. Four fucking months, one-twelfth of his entire life in between visits, equivalent to two and a half years if he were my age. He spends .003% of his days with me, his mother. Yes, I’m good at math, maybe my only natural talent. Point being, it’s a lot of fucking pressure, and it’s only going to get worse as he gets older. And the whole fucking day I’m fighting back tears as I think of how much I love the little guy and can’t believe I don’t get to do this every day like normal parents and how fucked is that and god how fucking sad can anything be? How can anyone have the authority to take your child from you? And I think about whether these foster parents are actually child molesters raping my sweet child every night because you never fucking know, it happens, and that’s two people I’m going to have to figure out how to murder someday. Oh, and on top of all that, imagine what it feels like to have your own kid make strange with you when he sees you. Bet you can’t even imagine what that would feel like if your dog did it, never even mind your kid! And then there’s the fact of every day of the four months between visits you’re thinking about how that very day your kid is falling helplessly in love with a fucking stranger named fucking Francine and you’re fading even fucking farther from his mind and heart. And just wait till he hits his teen years and starts fucking hating you for having him because he’s so fucked up.
“Sir. Another, please!” I yell at the tender and he acknowledges me with a nod. I’m drinking rum. Yep. And straight too. Gotta keep the calories down! I’m down three pounds this past month! Not fucking bad, eh?!
At least it’s not as bad as when I had supervised visits at Protection Services. Not that they watched me too closely, it’s not like I ever abused Alex, just supposedly neglected him, put him at risk of harm through my drug use, and put him at risk of further emotional and physical harm when I was being beaten up by his fuck of a father. Seeing’s how it’s all true I admit it, but they didn’t need to take him away from me! And if I were as rich as I’m going to be and could afford a kick-ass lawyer I’m sure he’d be living with me right now. Course if I was rich I’m sure none of the other shit would have happened either. But, whatever, here I am. And on fucking Durdle Street is he, and tomorrow we’ll meet for a brief time, and then we’ll part again, and I’ll deal with it by knowing that I’m not going to be doing this forever. No way, no fucking how. And to that end, I need to get out of this place and get fucking to my hotel room and do some work on Paul.
I’m right the fuck early as always—you never know when you’re going to get a flat or a blown carburetor-or-whatever or t-boned by a texting truckdriver, so I always give myself lots of time because even though I know he’s too young to have any idea of actual clock time, other than high the last thing I’m going to be is late. So I pull into the parking lot of his school, Goulds Elementary, which he started in September. He’s not even four yet, as his birthday is December 30 (yep, that makes this visit a Christmas and birthday visit with him—no pressure, right?), but he has started school. I park in a spot across from a window to a classroom—not his, given the work I can see on the walls, obviously of kids older than him. The work is sheets of paper with a kid’s drawing of his mother and his favourite things about her. Well, I can’t tell what this work is exactly, but you know somewhere in this school there’s a damn display with something like that on it. Some dip-shit know-nothing sees-her-ma-’n-pa every fucking weekend skinny blonde chickie teacher so happy with her so happy and satisfying life… Maybe he visits this classroom, for a reading mentor or something, I don’t know. Why would I know, I’m only his mother, right? Either way, it’s surreal to be sitting outside the school that my son attends. I never even had the chance to take him to school on his first day. Fuck, I never even had him long enough to get used to the idea that I had a son or was a mother.
All right, fine. I have to stop saying that, don’t I? I need to start taking some fucking responsibility for this. It’s true, I fucked him over. He may be doing wellish now, but there are seeds in that little brain, poisonous little seeds that hopefully, by the good grace of his foster parents and my awakening will never be further watered and so will eventually die and decompose and be gone completely. But they’re there, planted by me. Good ole fucking me. Good parents never plant any poison seeds in their kids’ brains. Would never dream of it. Would do anything in their power to not do it. But the only dreams I was having at that time were nightmares and I swear I didn’t know what I was doing. And I promise that’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation. And I do, I accept responsibility. I do. This is me, mea culpa. I will never again say he got taken from me, I will rub my nose in my own shit and I’ll call it like it is—he got rescued. I couldn’t protect him so someone else did. My Alex got rescued from his fucked mother and useless cunt father (until that asshole accepts some responsibility he gets no mercy and no reprieve). And if he ever actually does come forward claiming to want to play some role in Alex’s life I’ll fight that fucker like a pissed off cat who’s just completed master-class training with an industrial paper shredder.
And if I have to, I’ll sic my geezer former and wanna-once-again-be killer on him.
Fuck, I don’t know if I can do this anymore. Jesus H. Paul!
The only mistake to regret is the one you don’t learn from.
I can’t believe you’re fucking quoting my mother! And fuck, man, I fucking used hard fucking drugs, while he was a defenseless fetus completely dependent on me, prisoner in my body! And then to still use even after he was taken from me and told I had to stop to get him back! To still even be using now! What kind of useless piece of shit!
You had your reasons. You were depressed and physically and emotionally abused. You said yourself you weren’t going to let anyone judge you for how you responded to that shit, and now here you are judging yourself again. You’re through with that, remember? You did what you had to to survive, to cope. And you did. And you’re making up for it now. If you hadn’t done that then, you might be dead for all you know. And Alex too.
You buy that shit? You think that’s fair? Fine, I was being beaten up. I was alone. I had no one, but to use while pregnant. It’s the lowest of the fucking low!
Only good people feel guilt. And no one knows what it’s like. Not the judge, not the foster parents, not anyone but you. Rock bottom has become the solid foundation upon which you are rebuilding your new life. Remember that one? Rowling? Without going through this you wouldn’t be the person you are now. You couldn’t be the perfect mother you are soon to be. Hardships prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
Nice try. The proper quote throws ‘often’ in there. Sometimes hardships just destroy people. And destiny? As fucking if.
Just look how changed you are already!
But have I, that much? Look at me. Still using sometimes. Almost casually, with James!
Well, you never will again. That was the last time. The fact that it was casual is super meaningful. You’re not addicted at all. You’re just using for something to do now. That’s huge.
But is it true?
Make it true.
Yeah, sure. Can just imagine what the judge would have to say to me if he knew.
To hell with the judge. He won’t know, and it doesn’t matter. The next time you’re in front of him it will have been years since you used. And you’re going to be before him all fit and trim and beautiful with a bank account full of money, and he’s going to have no choice.
Yeah, sure, unless I fuck up this visit. And the next one. And Alex keeps growing further and further apart from me, and then I probably won’t even believe that he’s best off being returned to me.
Okay, now you’re just getting ridiculous. Come on, stop thinking like this. Fucking hell.
...
So I guess we’ll just leave it there, eh? Christ, Paul, I better hurry up and get the real you working, because this only-me version of you really sucks.
I’ll try not to take that personally.
Any fucking way, it’s time to go. So here I go.
Here I go.
Pulling out of the parking lot of his school.
Careful careful careful check both ways and check again. Turning left on Doyle’s Road, then right on Main, past the Mary Browns, the Pharmacy Solutions, then the very first right on Durdle. Durdle.
So careful. Brain surgery. Not as careful even as I’ll drive when he’s in the car because I will never hurt him again.
Up fucking Durdle with all its slightly varied but ultimately identical vinyl-sided shoebox-shaped detached houses. But they’re not are they? Every one of them houses a selection of people as unique and different from one another as things can be. How different each of their stories. How varied the mistakes they’ve made, and continue to make, and the ways in which they try and fail to make up for them. I stop in front of the vomit green one, the only one that matters, with the circa seventies camper in the driveway that makes me so sad every time as I think of getting behind the wheel with Alex in the passenger seat and a whole whack of time and space stretched out before me to do whatever I wish in and I shut ‘er down right there. I will not do this anymore. I will earn it back and more. You might want to fucking just wait and see (and you have, haven’t you!).
I look at the living room window, hoping as always to see her standing there holding him and making him wave to me, but there’s no one there.
These little things. Tell me you wouldn’t, if you were a foster mother with any heart at all, if you actually wanted to make the mother feel fucking special or even just welcome, anticipated, considered, involved, not insignificant, you’d be fucking standing at the window with her son and jumping up and down enthusiastically and saying mom’s here mom’s here yay!!! or some such encouraging shit??! But nope, just an empty fucking window.
But I deserve all this. This is to be endured and gotten through. If you’re going through hell, keep going, right?
I ring the bell and Francine comes, looking harried, and I ignore the part of my brain that tells me she does it on purpose, that she’s trying to tell me my son’s a right fucking brain-damaged handful and that’s why she won’t adopt him and if I had any decency at all she would never have had to have been in this position.
That I should at least have the decency to just leave him be after all I’ve done to him.
“Come on in,” she says without a hello never mind a hug, because after all why would she hug me, why would she want Alex to see her hugging me? “Sorry, we’re a little behind schedule. Bruce is supposed to be home by now. Just wait here a sec and I’ll get him,” she says, and heads off around the corner and out of sight, because why would Alex’s real mother have any interest in coming to see his room, the things he chooses to have on the walls, the toys he opts to play with, the space in which he fucking exists. Make sure there are no bars and chains and whips and blood stains and video cameras andfuck!
I listen out for any sound and hear nothing and so I close my eyes and try to devote every neuron usually engaged in seeing to hearing, any sound of him… and then, there! Him! Sound waves called into being by his sweet vocal cords, travelling through the ether and lapping up on the shores of my ear drums, so beautiful and so sweet and so perfect. And I bask in the sound that gets louder and louder, no words, just mumbling, not actually perfect at all, and then I open my eyes and there he is, holding Francine’s hand, standing up almost to her hips now, so big and small at the same time. His gigantic-little hand in hers, and he’s looking up at me and his gigantic-little feet are hesitating and he’s pulling back.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s long, but he cries and cries when we try to cut it,” she says, about his hair I guess.
“Has he got any words yet?” I say, keeping it together, trying to understand that it’s completely normal and even a ‘good’ sign that he’s not rushing to greet me with arms open wide and yelling mommy!!
“No, not really. He’s got mama, but it’s probably not even related to me, just the sound that’s easiest to make.”
Of course I cringe at that, but I don’t buckle, because she’s right. My son’s got a problem with speech and we’ll see what happens with it. Whatever happens with it while he’s here, what’s going to happen with it when he’s with me is it’s going to be fucking fixed even if I have to fund my own lab and team of scientists to work on it.
She’s not offering him up and tell me cause I want to know wouldn’t you want to fucking wrap your hands around her throat and squeeze until she’s done breathing because is she even fucking human and if the state has seen fit to place your child in the care of a non-human what the hell else are you going to do but solve that particular problem and just deal with whichever one the fucking shit-ass state deals you next. But seeing’s how doing that’s obviously not going to get me any fucking closer to actually having my child back, I ignore her and get down on my knees and open my arms wide and try to banish all the fucking hurt and pain and worry from my face and replace it all with excitement and happiness and warmth, and start engraving my Academy award because it fucking works! He comes to me, smile on his perfectly perfectly perfectly flawlessly perfect face and he puts his arms stiffly around my head and I hug him so tight and breathe in so deeply of his scent and try my best to make the moment stop and stop and stop and stop and stop.
He’s in the car seat to the rear and right of me and I make sure I keep my eyes on the road, but of course I’m watching the rear-view mirror and noticing his swiveling beautiful head and darting beautiful eyes and the way he reaches for things out of reach and points and grabs… and makes no intelligible sounds. And finally far enough away to feel safely alone I stop the car and pull to the side of the road and take him out of his car seat and hold him tight and open the front passenger side door and slide into the seat and hug him so hard and he wrestles with me and he starts crying and I want to cry too but I don’t, and I don’t let him go.
The aquarium was great, he loved it. I mean loved it. And I got such great pictures of us. A shark of course, and the lava-lamp-like jellyfish, and all the rest. Hundreds. Enough to last the next four months. No, he didn’t choose any of these moments to break through his dam of silence and speak for the first time because he so desperately needs to tell me he loves me and misses me so much and wants to come home to me and to bring his matter back to court and tell the judge all this so that he can finally be happy.
Maybe fucking next time.
And then we went to the mall and I pushed him around in a mall stroller and let him walk when he wanted to and in the Disney store his favourite thing was the Star Wars stuff which was highly disappointing while also being highly reassuring—such is the way of this world we’ve made for our children, I guess—and then we went for dinner at the Jack Astor’s. And that’s where it all went downhill, fast of course. Which is to obviously say you better not expect a play-by-play account of it here, because I’m not about to torture myself. Point being he had a tantrum for no apparent reason and I did everything I could think of to contain it—which basically consisted of trying to reassure him and then offer him the toys I had with me and then offering every piece of food I’d ordered, but nothing calmed him. And forget not being able to talk, in his whines and moans and screams he expounded eloquently on every fucking shit aspect of my existence and character.
Until… yep, you guessed it. I gave in and called Francine. And listened to her as she reassured me that ‘this’ ‘happens’ ‘sometimes’ – though ‘she’ ‘can’t’ ‘remember’ ‘the’ ‘last’ ‘time’ ‘it’ ‘did’. And she asked me to put the phone by his ear and I did and I closed my eyes and imagined I was in a different time and place and body and reality and body and his crying and writhing stopped and I put the phone back to my ears and imagined I was James vocalizing his writing but was actually just silent listening to Francine tell me he’ll be fine and I should probably think about, if I had nothing else ‘important’ (I kid you not!) planned with him, bringing him home now. And god damn how I didn’t want to. Fucking fucking fucking didn’t want to and I shouldn’t shouldn’t shouldn’t have.
And you might want to think about not saying a fucking thing. Especially seeing’s how when I got home I realised I hadn’t even given him his Christmas slash birthday present. And she never reminded or even asked about it. As if she never expected me to even bring him one.