Cigarettes and Sordid Affairs

I sat with Phoenix on the front porch two days after she had come back from her N.A. meeting. She had left around 6:30 to go to the meeting and she had come home two days later. We sat smoking cigarettes and each drag released heat on my face, as the fiery smoke scratched down my throat.

            The first 24 hours that she was missing, I always feared the worst. She's been mugged. She's been raped and thrown into a ditch somewhere. She's gone back to drugs, used too much and overdosed.

            These vivid images always ran through my mind until about a day into her disappearing act. It was almost as though 25 hours gave me enough time to realize that it was just Phoenix being Phoenix.

            Somewhere at that point I would start to imagine what it would be like if she didn't come back. How was I supposed to explain to work, her children, coworkers and friends? Most importantly her children.

            Sean would ask where she was and why she was lost. I'd constantly change the subject or downright ignore his inquiries altogether. It wasn't fair really; the position she put us in. Then the anger would set in. Not just for doing it to her children but for doing it to us as well. My whole life seemed to revolve around hers and my mother's escapades.

            That night on the porch, though, she had finished cowering in her room like a scorned puppy who had messed on the rug. We sat on the porch smoking cigarettes and talking. She would often share with me information that I had no desire to obtain.

            She had told me about the first time she ever indulged in her drug of choice; her mistress in her sordid relationship with reality. She told me about the images it conjured in her mind and how hard it was to escape it. She spoke like a young child describing a wrapped present on Christmas Eve that they so desperately desire to reveal yet know they can't, yet.

            She told me that she did it because she was stressed and knew it would bring her solace. She told me that it made her not think about the kids or work or Mom or anything for that matter. She said when she was high she would think of her babies and want to come home but knew she couldn't. She'd say she had already fucked up and she knew it. She'd tell me that she didn't know what to do and that it always set her free, yet restrained her at the same time. She spoke of such yearning and need and dependency.

            I told her I knew that she had driven past the drug house everyday. I told her I knew she yearned for it and craved the way it made her feel. I told her that I knew it could pry her away from even the greatest love affair.

            We sat on the porch for hours discussing her twisted vision of the truth. She had created a separate life in her mind. A life that wasn't lived… or may have been. I had never known the truth about her childhood and I probably never will.

            She had lied to me about so much in the past; I felt I couldn't believe a word she said. She told me that she had been miserable when Sean had been taken away. She told me how happy she was to have him back. I listened to the words she said but I didn't hear them. I was staring at the stars. I thought about her children and the potential they yielded if only they could get out from under her thumb.

            I thought about Sean and how much I had missed him when he was away. I thought about how selfish I had been to have wanted her to get him back. I thought about how unethical it was to not have called Department of Children and Families when she had fallen off the wagon a few months ago. I thought about how scared I had been when we were tracking her down through her debit card transactions in the ghettos of Baltimore City. I thought about how scarred her children were by her existence.

            I wondered how a woman who had smoked drugs while carrying child could be walking the streets free. I wondered how a woman who had done those same things with her two year old in a crib in the same room could ever get her child back. I wondered how a woman with three children could just walk off and leave them with her family, yet they didn't feel compelled to do anything about it.

            "You know what I mean?" I finally heard her say in the distance.

            I had no idea what she meant. I hadn't even known what we were discussing. Yet I found myself saying, "Yea, Phoenix, unfortunately I do," while I leaned in to hug her. The only thing I was certain of was that our society was fucked. If you screw a multi-billion dollar company out of a million dollars detectives will follow you across the country for justice. However, if you screw your children out of any chance of a happy and stable life, there is no justice.