I wore a pink dress to Nana’s funeral. Clothes were hard to come by in Coalinga. There was one small store called Beno’s, and they had exactly one funeral-appropriate black dress. Sara wanted that one, so I took the pink one.
There was so much about Nana Pauline that I wanted to know after she was gone. I knew some of the stories. She had a breakdown after losing her one-year-old son. Her husband had her committed to an institution, where she had shock treatments and had to hold other women down for their treatments. She was there four years. Her husband abandoned her, while other women raised her two surviving children. It was her mother who rescued her, brought her back into the world, and helped her to sign up for college. She was determined to get her education and a job, so that she wouldn’t be dependent on a husband again.
She had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley right out of high school and was now attending Mills College in Oakland for her teaching credential. Once she completed that, she found a job in Stratford, California—what she called “the middle of nowhere”—and there she met Granville Smart. They fell in love, and when his employer, Standard Oil, transferred him to Coalinga, she went with him as his wife.
Around the same time Nana was settling into her life, her sister’s husband walked out, throwing her into a tailspin that left her incapable of raising five children, so Nana and Granville adopted two of them—one of them, my mother, was five; her little sister Selene was four.
In her later years, when Nana was diagnosed with cancer, we moved from Lancaster to Coalinga to be closer to her. She’d planted a tree on the side of her yard—I have such clear memories of her tending to it, watering it, making sure it survived through the hot, arid summers. The day she died, she went outside to water it again, and my little brother Jacob came to bring her a glass of water. There was something about her appearance or voice that concerned him; he wasn’t sure just what. “Do you need any help?” he asked. “Do you want me to call Mom?”
“No, honey,” she said. “Thank you for the water.”
Jacob left as Nana sipped the cool water. Moments later, instead of watering her tree, she sat down Indian style and leaned her back against the large trunk. That’s how Steve found her later. “She looked like she was praying,” he told Mom.
While she lived, Nana gave generously to everyone while trying to be prudent, saving enough to pay for her own burial. But her hard-won thousand dollars barely made a dent in the thousands more that the service and funeral home cost, and Mom needed to borrow the money from Emily. They had the viewing in nearby Avenal, because it was cheaper. They had a headstone made, and it had the wrong date of death. They had a second one made and kept the mistake in the garage for years, reluctant to throw out something that had cost so much. Their saving the botched headstone made me distance myself from my parents even more than I already had.
The services took place at Pleasant Valley Cemetery, just outside Coalinga, where Nana would be buried next to Granville. There was a small tent at the graveside and chairs for the family to sit close to one another. As I walked toward the tent, I held my dress down and suddenly realized how out of place I looked and felt in pink. Everyone was sad and sulking—there were tensions between Nana’s biological and adopted children and between Steve and everybody under the age of eighteen. I didn’t want any part of the sadness and didn’t feel like being bullied, either. I chose to sit alone, to smile, and to remember Nana as she was: kind, generous, and loving.
When Emily took the podium to speak, I could barely pay attention. I wished that I’d worn shorts under this silly pink dress. The breeze kept flipping my skirt up. The morning had been chaotic, everybody getting dressed to leave the house, doors slamming, people yelling. I hadn’t had any clean underwear, hadn’t wanted to borrow any, and had decided that instead of making a big deal about it I just wouldn’t wear any.
When everyone stood up, I realized why underwear was important—especially under a dress. I wanted to hide; anywhere would do. I was planning my exit when the ladies came toward me. One by one, slightly bent over in their floral dresses, Nana’s old friends spoke to me in soft, kind voices that made my heart ache for Nana. The first one took my hand in hers. I looked at her nervously.
“I’m so happy to meet you.” Behind “happy to meet you” came the next woman, and then the next. I was stiff and unyielding in their embraces, trying to keep my arms down at my sides, my hands holding my dress down. “We all prayed for you,” said the last one, smiling and looking into my eyes. “We all prayed for you with your grandmother.”
My heart sank. Nana’s friends prayed for me. I struggled to smile back, remembering what Ron had taught me. “Thank you. Thank you for praying for me, and for telling me.” I relaxed and put my arms around her. She hugged me back the same way Nana would have. I could have stayed in her arms another five minutes, but it was time to go, to put on normal clothes, to collect flowers, plants, enchiladas, and doughnuts that had been delivered to my grandmother’s tiny blue house.
For Nana, life’s rules were simple: “Love your mother.” “Love God.” “Embrace the Holy Spirit.” She wanted me to love God. Love Mom. As if love and faith would simply make everything better. If Nana knew about Icey, it wasn’t from me. I knew she wouldn’t like what he had said about God. I couldn’t have defined what faith was, I didn’t know anything about a spiritual core, but I knew for sure that Nana held God close.
I told Mom about the ladies, but she didn’t seem to get it. I wrote out my thoughts in a journal entry that night. Those prayers saved me when I was on the streets.
One morning, before a long weekend, Barbara appeared in class with her arm in a sling. She had fallen off a horse the day before and cracked two ribs. Because she couldn’t move around easily, she asked a few of us at Cambridge if we wanted to help her around her house for an hour or two. “Nothing too tough,” she said. “I’ll pay you for your time.” When we heard “pay you,” my friend Cammy and I looked at each other and quickly said that we’d do it.
Cammy and I had shared a babysitting job at her church, so working together was easy. We met up at her house before going to Barbara’s. Cammy looked neat and clean in her ironed shirt, and she let me borrow a brush and a scrunchie to straighten my hair, which still went its own way. I did my best to look as put together as she did.
Barbara lived in one of Coalinga’s best neighborhoods, a far cry from the burned lawns and poorly constructed homes in my neighborhood. Almost every single-story tract home on her street had a tidy cement walkway in front that cut through a green yard. Each looked freshly painted in varied shades of beige, brown, or tan, with coordinating painted shutters. The well-manicured lawns seemed to reflect well-manicured lives, good homes, good families—a message to outsiders that they were doing things right. When Barbara greeted us at the door, I was surprised by how happy she looked, smiling even though her arm was in a sling.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“No. I’m still a little bruised, but it hurts less every day. The toughest thing is not being able to do my routine—but that’s why you’re here.”
We stepped inside, and I looked around, instantly confused. “There’s nothing to clean,” I said to Barbara. No clothes tossed across the couch, no dust on the furniture or crumbs on the floor. The hallway carpet was spotless, and every picture frame was straight. Ninety-degree angles everywhere, and not a single dirty dish.
“That’s very nice of you,” Barbara said, laughing, “but it’s got to be vacuumed, swept, mopped, and dusted.” Mystified but willing, I followed Cammy around, mimicking her moves, dusting dustless cabinets and washing spotless countertops. In less than an hour we were done with Barbara’s list. “This must be how clean houses stay clean,” I said to Cammy.
“That’s right,” Barbara said. “I can’t thank you girls enough. “That was so helpful. Are you thirsty or hungry? Do you have time for a snack?”
We sat at the kitchen counter while Barbara placed tiny individual plates and bowls in front of us. She filled them with celery, apples, chips, and nuts. I would have had a hard time sitting still without the snacks. Reaching for them kept me busy, kept my mouth full, and ultimately kept me anchored. I listened as Cammy and Barbara talked about what seemed like nothing at all. Cammy lived in the same neighborhood; they knew the same people. I didn’t have anything to add.
“Where do you live, Carissa?” Barbara asked, trying to get me into the conversation.
“Over by Olsen Park,” I said, knowing that my neighborhood was a dead giveaway of the way I lived. I wondered what Barbara would think of my house. How do you clean tattered wallpaper or get the black off a moldy shower or vacuum shredded carpets? The better answer would have been “I have no home.” I was fifteen, the age Emily had been when she emancipated herself and the age my mother was when she decided she would marry our dad. “Sometimes I sleep at my sister’s apartment, other times at friends’ houses.”
“That must be hard,” Barbara said with concern, “never knowing where your stuff is.”
I didn’t tell her that I had no stuff to worry about.
I was often late to school, too late, really, but for a while it didn’t stop me from going. Then, one morning, I’d made it about halfway there when I began to think about the night before. I’d done drugs, hard stuff, with a friend’s dad and wasn’t feeling great about it in the cold light of morning. The guilt made it easier to skip class than to go in late. And then, fearing I’d need a legitimate excuse, I skipped the next day, and the one after that, never imagining that anyone would miss me. I wasn’t home when Mom answered a knock on the door to find Barbara outside.
“I’m a teacher’s assistant at Cambridge,” she told my mother. “I’m concerned because we haven’t seen Carissa at school for a few days.” Barbara expected to find out that I was sick or maybe, knowing my history, that I had disappeared again. She accepted Mom’s invitation to come inside. Only ten days earlier I had been sitting in her kitchen, and now she was standing in mine.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but…Carissa. Will she be returning to school?”
Mom responded in her customary soft voice, with an impassive expression on her face. “I’m not sure where she is. Maybe at her sister’s?” When Barbara realized that my mother had no idea where I was, and seemingly no interest in finding out, she set out to find another way to bring me back to Cambridge—through my friends.
A day or two later, after hearing from classmates at Cambridge that Barbara was asking where I was, I decided to go back, thinking, If she’s mad at me, if she’s mean to me, I’ll split. Barbara was grading work sheets at the desk and looked up at me as calmly as though I’d been there all along.
“How are your college classes going?” she asked.
“Pretty good.” A lie. “I still like math the best.” The truth.
I finished the greeting fast, avoiding any chance for a lecture. Barbara smiled and left me alone until I got comfortable. About an hour into class, she approached me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I followed her back to her desk, worried about what she’d say. “I’m happy to hear that you’re doing well, but I was wondering…Would you like to come over to my house to do homework some afternoons?” Before I could answer, she went on. “It will be quiet there, so you can study.”
I only had to think about it for a second. “Sure.” I said it, even though I was anything but.
“Wonderful!” she said. “How about this week? You can ride home with me from here on one of the days you don’t go to West Hills.”
And like that, it was settled. On the appointed day I pled with Cammy to join me, but she had to babysit. “I’m so glad you’re here!” Barbara said, after she’d pulled her spotless Cadillac into her garage. We made our way into the house. “The kitchen table should be comfortable for you to get set up.” She handed me a brand-new, sharpened pencil.
I hadn’t said more than two words to Barbara on the drive from school, and with no one to mimic or take cues from, I felt completely out of place. I anchored myself to the table and opened a book, wishing that I could literally jump into it. Barbara did her best to make me comfortable, providing a steady stream of water and snacks, but we didn’t say much. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.” I wanted to keep it short and polite. I wanted to be invited back.
Only once did she peer over my shoulder. “You’re amazing with those math problems,” she said.
I came back the following week on Tuesday and Thursday. The week after that was the same. We established a rhythm—I’d ride home with her or arrive on my own and put my books on the dining room table.
I had set paths in the house—table to stool, table to guest restroom, guest restroom to table. I knew where I belonged, and the rest of the house was in the background. At the counter we had our best talks. We mostly talked about big things as Barbara prepared dinner for herself and her husband, Doug.
Barbara’s house, always quiet and orderly, with everything in exactly the same place, made me feel like I needed to be clean. I’d ask to use the guest bathroom to wash up. Soft, clean towels hung over the towel bar, and a designer bottle of liquid hand soap sat next to the sink. I held my hands under the warm water, slipping the soft suds gently through my fingers. After I dried my hands, I squirted a dollop of lotion into my palms, then another. I rubbed the cream all the way up my arms, over my elbows, and right to the edge of my shirt. Before leaving, I checked myself in the mirror a few times, pushing my hair behind my ears to look more presentable. I smiled back at my image; I was ready for more.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” Barbara asked one night.
“Sure.” I wasn’t hungry, but I had nowhere else to be. I watched her as she went to the phone that hung on the wall. She picked up the receiver and held it out to me. “What’s your home number?” she said, fingers waiting to dial.
“Why?” I asked.
“You need to call your mom, so she’ll know where you are.”
I almost laughed. “She doesn’t care.” I hadn’t been home in several days. Mom would probably be more worried that something was wrong if I called than if I didn’t.
“Well, let’s just make sure,” she said, still holding the receiver. I gave her the number.
“Grand Central Station,” my stepbrother answered the phone.
“Hey, can you get Mom?”
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Carissa.”
“This phone never stops ringing, and half the time it’s your friends. Will you tell them to stop calling? You don’t even live here.”
“Just get Mom, please.” Normally I would have screamed at him, but I tried to be nice in front of Barbara.
“Sharol!” he yelled. “Your daughter is on the phone!”
“Which one?” Mom said as I heard her getting closer to the receiver.
“The bad one,” he replied.
“Carissa,” Mom said.
“Hi, I’m at Barbara’s,” I said.
“Who’s Barbara?”
“You know, I told you—the teacher’s assistant from Cambridge. I do my homework here sometimes? Anyway, I’m staying here for dinner. I told her you wouldn’t mind, but she wanted me to call you so you knew where I was.”
“Oh, that was nice of her. We’re just having pizza tonight, and the boys can always eat more. Are you coming home tonight?”
“I’m not sure, Mom.” I wanted to hang up the phone before I lost it with her.
“Well, it would be nice if you could let us know, because your cousin is here and was going to sleep in your bed.”
“Okay, bye, then,” I said. With my heart racing, I placed the receiver gently back in its cradle, fighting the urge to slam it.
“Everything okay?” Barbara asked.
“Yes. Do you want me to help with anything?” I needed a quick distraction from what just happened.
Barbara had a place for everything. “The place mats are in this drawer here, and silverware and napkins.” She pointed everything out. I tried to remember—was it fork-knife-spoon or fork-spoon-knife? Did we even need spoons? Where did I put the napkins, and what about the glasses?
“Thanks for joining us for dinner,” Barbara said as she placed a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. Next, a plate of veggies and a platter of chicken breasts, each on special heat-resistant pads to protect the table’s finish. I watched as though she were painting a picture.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I said.
“Oh, you’re welcome here anytime.” I believed her. “Later, I’ll give you a ride home,” Barbara said. “It will be dark, and it’s getting cold.” Her concern surprised me. Walking through Coalinga at all hours in any kind of weather was nothing unusual for me. Besides, I didn’t even know for sure where I’d be sleeping, though my sister’s house seemed most likely.
Over dinner, Barbara asked Doug questions about his day at work, and Doug asked me a little more about my college courses. After we finished eating, I did my best to help Barbara clean up and put away the leftovers, but she was happier with me just watching and talking to her.
“Do you stay in touch with your counselor, the one from juvenile hall?” she asked.
“Ron? Not really anymore. He’s moved to LA and he’s married. The last time he wrote, it was about his son being born.” Ron would’ve liked to read a letter about my time with Barbara, I thought, about dinner with her and Doug.
“It’s great that he cares about you so much,” Barbara said, “and he’s right about your potential. You’ve just got to stick with your education. It’s something that no one can ever take away from you.”
I wanted to believe her, but I’d never managed to hold on to anything—how could an education be any different?
When Barbara was done drying the last dish, she grabbed her keys and I followed her through the garage out to where her car was parked. We climbed in, and I told her where my sister lived.
“I’ll always be here if you need a ride,” she said. “I’d rather come get you in the middle of the night than think of you walking around out here by yourself.”
For the rest of the semester, Barbara’s ordered, deliberate life became mine for a few hours a week. She fed me physically, while giving me the calm to settle down emotionally. Across her kitchen counter, as comfortable as though I’d been sitting there since childhood, I heard Barbara tell her own story. “I was only ten credits short of graduating from college,” she said. “If I had continued my education, I would’ve become a school counselor, maybe even a police officer.” It was easy to imagine Barbara as an officer, in charge.
Finally one night I got up the courage to ask why she had never returned to school to get her degree. “It’s not my time anymore,” she said. “That time has passed.”
“What do you mean, ‘not your time’?” I asked. “You want it.”
“When Doug got out of the service, he got this great job working for PG&E, so we came to Coalinga.” She lowered her voice to a whisper so he wouldn’t hear her. “I’ve always been happy in my marriage, but not so happy in Coalinga. It’s flat, and I was raised in the foothills. I always thought that someday he’d be transferred, but now it’s been thirty years. I raised my daughters here.”
“Are you going to move away?” I was concerned that I’d lose her.
“To tell you the truth, I never felt at home here until I started working at Cambridge. That’s where I found my place. I feel at home now, and I have no plans to leave.”
She’d found her place at Cambridge—maybe I could too.
By now I knew some of Barbara’s history, and her life had not been as easy as I’d thought. That perfect home had not been preordained. As a girl, she and her sister shared a small wood house with their parents and grandmother. The nearest neighbor was a mile away. Barbara’s father worked as a bulldozer operator on logging roads between the forest and the mill, and her mother stayed home, taking care of the girls. Barbara inherited her mother’s affection for horses; by the sixth grade, she felt more at home on a horse than anyplace else. “Horses saved me,” she said. “Taking care of them gave me a purpose.” Barbara learned that all she had to do was give horses love. She didn’t apply pressure to get her horse to do something she wanted her to do. “A horse will run away if she doesn’t understand what you expect from her.”
Barbara approached all students the same way she approached her horses, with respect and generosity of spirit. She knew her students partly through academic files, but she didn’t judge us by our past or use it to justify our behavior. She understood that most of us weren’t at Cambridge because we were stupid or lazy. We’d ended up in that trailer because of stuff going on that was out of our control, stuff she could not even fathom. She knew she couldn’t take away the reasons we were there, but by sitting with us, being patient, being accepting, she was confident that she could help us find another way to be.
The day Barbara announced that Cambridge was replacing her, there was not a dry eye in the trailer. “Why?” It was the question we repeated all day. The reason—that someone more senior in the school system wanted the job—didn’t make sense to any of us. Barbara was ours, and we were hers. How could that end because of seniority?
Finally Barbara came up with another answer. “Everyone needs a place to be, when everything else goes bad. I was at Cambridge when both my parents died. Being here helped me through that. Maybe this new teacher needs help through something herself. She needs this experience, and I’ve already had it.”
I loved Barbara’s attitude, but the thought of her being replaced, of someone else at her desk, made me angry. Why was someone making this choice? Why didn’t her students have any say in it?
That night, I went to her house, not to do homework but to talk about finding another way. “I think we should write a letter to the superintendent or somebody,” I said. “We’d all sign it. I’m sure that Mr. Doty would too.”
Barbara took her time to reply. “That’s so sweet, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s the rules. She has a choice and she made it.”
Transfering to another position in the district was not B’s choice. She wanted to stay with us.
My second year at Cambridge, I loaded my schedule with eighteen college units’ worth of courses. I knew it was a lot, but if I passed them, no matter the grade, it would equate to completing almost a full year of high school, putting me an entire semester ahead of the sixth-grade class I had left behind. That fall was my junior year; in addition to the three hours I spent at Cambridge, I was taking Spanish, English, trigonometry, health, piano, and interpersonal communications. I’d signed up for more West Hills courses than anyone else at our school and, I was told, more than any student in the school’s history. In the trailer and at West Hills, I was surprising everyone, leaving the label of “failure” behind. I was not even seventeen and I’d completed more college courses than 90 percent of the people in Coalinga.
As the number of credits increased, the time I spent at Barbara and Doug’s decreased. I missed them—their calmness was a life raft I could cling to when everything else moved too fast. “It’s been a while since you’ve had dinner here,” Barbara said late one afternoon when I dropped in unannounced and planted myself at the counter. “Doug and I have something we’d like to talk to you about.”
After dinner we settled into the living room, Doug and Barbara on two oversized leather chairs, me directly across from them on the gigantic and pristine matching couch. Were they sitting me down to tell me some kind of news? Was one of them sick?
“Carissa,” Barbara began, “Doug and I realize that you don’t have a regular place to stay.” She looked at him, then back at me. “We’ve discussed your situation and how much we enjoy having you over. We’d like you to consider living with us. We have the space, and you can have your own room.”
Her offer caught me by surprise. I’d stayed at other people’s houses as a guest, I’d even stayed here before, but no one had ever officially asked me to move in. Barbara and Doug wanted to give me a room of my own, with a dresser and a closet where I could put my things. I could see how serious they were, and I suspected I wouldn’t get another chance at what they were offering. But instead of being overjoyed, all I felt was fear and pressure. If I lived with them, I’d have to follow their rules. They’d want to know where I was going and when I’d be home. Like the group homes, they’d expect me to be good all the time, and I knew I wasn’t. There was a part of my life—the side where I was still testing my limits, with boys, with drugs and alcohol—that I didn’t want them to know about.
“There would be only two rules.” Barbara spoke very carefully. “You’d have to be in every night by eight P.M., and ten on the weekends. And you could not have friends over, girls or boys, until Doug and I got to know them.” I was relieved—she’d just given me the out I needed.
I took a deep breath, knowing I was about to disappoint both of them. “Thank you so much, but I have to think about it. I don’t know that I’d be able to follow the rules.” I already knew I wouldn’t move in. It wasn’t worth ruining everything we’d built. The risk was too much for me.
“Well,” Barbara asked, “where are you sleeping tonight?”
“At Tara’s.” A friend Barbara knew from Cambridge.
“You could stay here instead, sleep on it before you decide.”
I agreed, as a form of compromise. At least I would not have to say no to them in person. I slept comfortably, as I always did at Barbara’s, but the next morning I made my way out before she or Doug woke up. Consciously, I was choosing a life that made sense only to me, instead of choosing something that would give me refuge. Freedom versus safety—there seemed no way to have both.
After that night, I avoided Barbara and her house. Ashamed, I didn’t even call to say hi. How could I when I had refused her offer to take me in? All she had wanted was for me to stay.
But I couldn’t, and during the next month I lived the life that I was afraid to let her see, which is how I ended up with my cousin Joey at a party at his boss’s house. Joey was a few years older, and we’d been partying since I was twelve, when he’d given me my first hit of marijuana and laughed when I choked on it. The best thing about being with Joey was that he didn’t expect anything from me, no money, no sex; he just handed me the pipe. Only now he was handing me a straw. I watched carefully as he tilted his head back and wiped his nose. “It’s strong stuff,” Joey warned me. “Uncut.”
Leaning over, I wiped the straw’s end and put it into my nose; the other end went over a line of methamphetamine. I sucked the substance up through my right nostril, and I tilted my head back just as he had. I thought I must look like a pro. The drip down the back of my throat tasted awful, then the numbness set in. First in my mouth, then all over my body. For the next couple of hours, we did line after line, trying to pace our high and stay up all night. As the sun came up, he and his boss had to leave for work. “Can she stay here?” Joey asked his boss.
“Yeah, no problem. She can sleep on the couch,” the guy said, and then he laughed. “If she sleeps at all.”
Meth goes by many names, but in Coalinga we called it crank, and I was convinced I could handle it. I told myself I only “dabbled” in drugs and only did it in groups when we were partying. Addicts smoked crack every day, and on their own. Addicts drank all alone. Addicts stopped eating and couldn’t function in daily life. But that wasn’t me. I wasn’t alone. Sitting on my right was the drug dealer’s wife.
I’d been up all night before, but this was something else. My mind was racing fast. I was losing weight just sitting still. In an effort to focus, I went for my schoolbooks, which I’d brought with me. I was in no shape to go to a lecture, but the books were an anchor. As long as I had them, I wasn’t lost. West Hills was only a block away, but the time for my classes came and went. Before I knew it, another day slipped by. I had not slept or eaten.
At some point the phone rang, startling us, but we let it go for two more rings before the dealer’s wife picked up. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. She hung up. “Oh, shit!”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“He was arrested. He’s in jail.” After being pulled over by the cops for speeding, her husband, our dealer, was off to jail on an outstanding warrant.
Within minutes, we were lining up more crank. “Maybe we should smoke it. Like my brother does, to get a better high,” she said. Using a hollowed-out pen, I breathed in the white curls that rose from the yellow rocks we’d heated with a lighter. Inside my lungs the chemicals unleashed euphoria unlike any high I’d experienced. Amped up, my heart rate soared. All I wanted to do was talk and move. I had forgotten about my books. There was no place to work here anyway. The small kitchen table was full of old food wrappers, mirrors, and aluminum foil, and there was a wet diaper on the chair.
Speeding and delusional, I thought that this woman and I were becoming friends. She let me borrow a shirt when I sweat through my clothes. How many days have I been up? How many days have I been in these clothes? Then the drugs ran out.
“I’m going to the store,” she announced. Before I could ask any questions, she was out the door with her three-year-old daughter, leaving the baby boy behind. He was just starting to take his first steps and cried when his mother left. Oh, shit! I thought. A wave of paranoia washed over me, and I started making sure there was nothing bad he could get into. I took all the cleaning products from under the counter and put them where he couldn’t reach. With the boy in my arms, it took me about ten minutes to make the house baby safe. An hour passed, then two, then more.
I hadn’t slept in days. I was scared. How can I care for a baby in this condition? I had washed his bottles. Given him fresh milk, changed his diaper…Where was she? Was she ever coming back? Had she been arrested? I was lost. The baby slept soundly, but every minute I’d walk toward him to make sure his tummy was moving up and down with gentle breaths.
I knew I needed to crash. After the crank was gone, I popped vitamins like they were M&M’s, hoping to come down a little easier. The high was over, but the drug wouldn’t let me rest. When the baby woke up and began crying, I couldn’t take much more.
Finally the front door opened. His mom was back. “Where the fuck have you been!” I screamed.
“I had to get more shit!” she screamed back at me.
I marched toward the door. “You’re a fucking bitch for leaving me here alone with your baby,” I said. “I’m out of here!”
“Give me back my T-shirt, you whore!” she demanded.
I whipped off the oversized green V-neck and threw it at her. Storming out, I was shirtless, braless, and, for that moment, fearless. Arms crossed over my bare chest, I walked across the Coaling Station B apartment complex, looking for a place to go. I remembered that some boys from my West Hills classes lived in one of the units nearby. I rushed to their place and knocked on the door with the side of my fist. A big guy from the basketball team opened the door, and I darted past him, arms still covering my chest. In the living room, a few guys from West Hills were sitting on a couch watching a basketball game. They barely glanced back at me as I ducked into the narrow kitchen.
And then I came to rest, curled up on the linoleum floor, against the sink and facing the refrigerator. I hadn’t showered for days, and as awkward as I felt, I couldn’t find the will or energy to move from that spot. After a few moments I heard whispers as the television went silent. One of the guys tossed me a large T-shirt and I slipped it over my head, letting it fall loose around my body. Someone else handed me the phone. “Is there someone you can call?”
When my friend Melisa answered her phone, I blurted what little I knew to be true: I’d been up at least a few days, on crank for the last five. I’d been smoking it but didn’t know how much. I was at a Coaling Station B apartment but didn’t know which one. I was weak and sick, wearing someone else’s shirt and needing a bra.
She didn’t have a car. “Who can I call to come and get you?”
Of the list of names that passed through my mind in that moment, only one made sense. “Barbara.” She’d said she would always be there to give me a ride, anytime, anyplace, no matter what. I’d never wanted her to see this part of me, but I was sick and helpless, and I knew it. Covering my eyes with one hand, I handed the phone to my classmate so he could explain to Melisa where the apartment was.
By the time I heard Barbara’s voice, she was already kneeling in front of me on the boys’ tiny kitchen floor. She smelled like floral soap, sweet and clean. She put her arm around me with just enough pressure that I knew she wasn’t angry but taking control. I wanted her to wrap her arms around me and hold me tight. I buried my head in her sweater as she stroked my matted hair.
“Everything’s going to be okay.” I believed her, but I couldn’t bring myself to look up at her as she led me out of the apartment to the parking lot where she had parked her truck. I crawled into the passenger seat and we drove away. She was quiet and so was I, drifting slightly in the warmth of the cab.
Back in her living room, Barbara turned her couch into a cozy bed and covered me with sheets and a blanket. She placed a warm washcloth on my forehead, sat down on the rug, and held my hand as my body twitched until my limbs relaxed, my heartbeat slowed, and I fell into something resembling deep sleep. Later she told me she had debated whether to call for help but feared I would be arrested. “That’s the last thing she needs,” she whispered to herself, and in her mind she wondered if I would make it through the night.
The next day, washing the sleep from my eyes and the sweat of drugs off my body in her shower, I knew I’d lost too much ground too fast. I tried to reassure Barbara that I’d learned my lesson, but she wouldn’t hear it. “Your mother needs to know what’s going on,” she insisted. “I need your permission to call her and tell her, to meet with her in person and talk to her about this.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I don’t know what she can do.” Barbara had done her own research while I slept. She’d found a rehab center in Fresno, but she couldn’t take me there on her own; I was still a minor and needed to have a parent sign me in.
That evening, after calling my mom to let her know we were coming, Barbara and I walked into my house together. As we sat with my mother around the kitchen table, still wet from being wiped clean, Barbara explained what had happened. Mom seemed confused about the whole thing. “She looks fine to me,” she said.
But Barbara would not stand down. “She wasn’t okay last night. She was in serious trouble. And I believe Carissa needs serious help.” She handed over a piece of paper with the telephone number and address for the rehab center in Fresno. “Please check this out,” she told my mother. “They’re waiting to hear from you.”
Barbara had not made a request. She was giving Mom only one option. Sitting at the rehab with Mom was reminiscent of my suicide attempt; there was the same surreal sense of an emergency that had passed and all we were doing was waiting for someone to render a verdict. Once again we waited for my name to be called; once again we walked back into an office. It wasn’t a doctor’s office, more of a professional office with a desk separating the admissions counselor from Mom and me.
This was a white guy, with white clothes and a white job. He was comfortable behind his desk, about to make a big decision about my life based only on a sheet of questions in front of him. He didn’t know me. He asked about drugs as though he were consulting a shopping list, but he didn’t ask about my life or anything that might have put my behavior in some kind of context. I wanted to tell him about what I’d been trying to achieve, about who I wanted to be, but his body language and tight facial expression told me he wasn’t interested in any of that. He wanted to know about the drugs, and he wanted me to be specific. I was tired, and I trusted Barbara that there were not going to be police involved. We flew through his questions. I didn’t calculate. I didn’t care what the outcome was. I told him everything.
“What’s the hardest drug you’ve ever used?” he asked.
“I guess acid,” I replied. “I did a lot of acid in Florida.”
The interview took about twenty minutes, then he asked if I’d return to the waiting room. He needed to speak to my mother about the details.
Within ten minutes, Mom emerged from the office down the hall. “Let’s go,” she said, her mouth set in a firm line.
“I don’t have a drug problem?” I asked.
“We’ll talk about it in the car,” Mom responded.
Once she was behind the wheel, she looked at me. “They were going to lock you up, and I said no. They think you do have a problem, and they didn’t think you’d stay there without being locked up.” He’d given her the option of tricking me into staying—we would go on a tour of the facility, then he would have me locked in a room to detox. Mom had refused. She shook her head, a haunted look on her face. “I didn’t want you locked up like Nana was,” she said. “No more locking up. Plus, it’s five thousand dollars. Even if you had the chance to agree to it, we can’t afford it.”
I think now that if she’d had the money, she might have pressed me to stay. And I think I might have said yes. Wakefield had been safe and productive for me; this would have been more of the same.
When I told Barbara the outcome, she wasn’t angry or disappointed; instead, she seemed calm and satisfied. She had done what she could do. Attention had been paid, she’d told both me and Mom what she thought, we’d followed through on the intake visit, and that was as far as it would go for now. Without money, without insurance, it could not go any further. And so the conversation went no further as well.
I continued to use when the occasion presented itself, but I made some rules. Only on weekends. Never when little kids were around. Only with people my own age. Never with adults who used more or were dealers or were prone to violence. It was for fun, I thought. It was also a way to keep from facing the truth: I could not manage my life. Even success was impossible under the pressure of my past. Drugs and alcohol were a way to manage the stress, loneliness, and unpredictability of my life—a drug, a beer, a boy, a fast car ride, a lost weekend, a lost week. It was a fight between the girl who knew what was right and good and the girl who often just couldn’t give a shit.
I recovered physically quite quickly; school was another matter. I had missed whole days, assignments, exams. I still had a small window of time remaining to drop classes without having to take failing grades, which I did. I saved my textbooks for the following semester, determined to go back and finish.
Less than a year later, with a mix of excitement and disbelief, I put on my first cap and gown. Cambridge graduation was held in the elementary school auditorium, on the same stage I had walked on—hobbled on, with crutches—in fifth grade when I received my math award and a letter signed by President Ronald Reagan. This time there was no acknowledgment from the president, but the accomplishment was greater. I had completed high school on time.
Barbara had said she wanted her students to know how it felt to be “safe” and to “belong.” “No child should ever feel unsafe or unwanted,” she often said. This was the belief that had carried her into my life with no hesitation, no fear. At graduation I asked her why she kept giving to me, even when I messed up. “Because you let me,” she said. “It was always up to you.”