AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I looked at the old man and saw my pain reflected in his eyes. I clutched the note—it felt like ash in my hands, impossibly fragile. I stumbled out of his house and walked until it got dark, and even then I kept walking.
The next day, when I went to the protest rally that had brought me to Los Angeles, I was still crying. My tears mixed with the dust and the dirt and turned into a war paint of loss. I stood in the middle of that huge crowd—mostly kids like me, there had to be a thousand of us—and I heard their chanting and protesting about the war, and it hit me. People were dying over there. And the anger that was always inside of me found a place to go.
That day was the first time I was arrested.
* * *
That was the start of me losing time again. Days, weeks, even a month one time. Now I know it was because I was doing so many drugs. Pot and quaaludes and LSD. Everything seemed safe back then, and I was desperate to turn on and tune out.
You haunted me, Tully; you and your daddy. I began to see you both in the hot air rising up from the desert floor at the Mojave commune where I lived. I heard you crying when I washed dishes or got water from the cistern. Sometimes I felt your little hand touch mine and I would scream out in fear and jump. My friends just laughed and warned me about bad trips and thought LSD would help.
When I looked back—finally, when I got sober—I thought, Of course. It was the sixties, I was barely an adult; I’d been molested and abused and I thought it was my fault. No wonder I lost myself so completely to drugs. I became like a piece of string on some cold-water river, just bobbing along. High all the time.
Then one night, when it was so hot I couldn’t get comfortable in my sleeping bag, I dreamed about my father. In my nightmare he was alive and coming for you. Once the nightmare descended into my life, nothing could get rid of it. No drugs or sex or meditation. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told this guy—Pooh Bear, we called him—that I would blow him all the way to Seattle if he’d take me home. I gave him the address. The next thing I knew, there were five of us in an old VW bus, banging our way north, singing along to the Doors in a cloud of smoke. We camped out along the way, made pot brownies in a cast-iron skillet over an open fire, and dropped acid.
My nightmares turned uglier and more intense. I started seeing Rafe in the daylight, too, started thinking his ghost was following me. I heard his voice calling me a tramp and a terrible mother. I cried in my sleep all the time.
And then one day I woke up, still high, and found that we were parked in front of my mother’s house. The bus was half on the street and half on the sidewalk. I don’t think any of us remember parking. I climbed over the carpeted floor and jumped out of the van and onto the street. I knew I looked bad and smelled bad, but what could I do?
I stumbled across the street and went into the house.
You were right there at the kitchen table, playing with a spoon, when I opened the screen door and went inside. Somewhere upstairs, a bell tinkled.
That’s Grandpa, you said, and I felt rage explode inside of me. How could he be alive? And what had he done to you?
I went up the stairs, banging into the walls, screaming for my mother. She was in her bedroom, with my father, who looked like a cadaver in a twin bed. His face was slack, gray; drool slid down his chin.
He’s alive? I screamed.
Paralyzed, she said, getting to her feet.
I wanted to tell my mother I was taking you; I wanted to see the pain in her eyes. But I was so crazy, I couldn’t think straight. I ran downstairs and I scooped you into my arms.
My mother ran down behind me. He’s paralyzed, Dorothy Jean. I told the police he had a stroke. I swear. You’re safe. No one knows you pushed him. You can stay.
Can your grandpa move? I asked you.
You shook your head and popped your thumb in your mouth.
Still. I had you in my arms and I couldn’t let you go. I imagined redemption for myself, a new beginning for us. I imagined a life with picket fences and bikes with training wheels and Campfire Girl meetings.
So I took you.
And nearly killed you by letting you eat a brownie filled with marijuana.
It wasn’t even my idea to take you to the hospital when you started flipping out. It was Pooh Bear’s.
I don’t know, Dot. That’s, like, way too much weed for a kid. She looks … green.
I carried you into the emergency room and said you’d gotten into the neighbor’s stash. No one believed me.
It wasn’t until later, when you were asleep, that I sneaked back in and pinned your name on your shirt with my mother’s phone number. It was all I could think of to do. I got it finally: I didn’t deserve you.
I kissed you before I left.
I bet you don’t remember any of this. I hope you don’t.
* * *
