Jesus Christ & Black Berry Brandy

                                             

Mom says…. “That man needs Jesus.” And I suppose she was right. She thought that Jesus was the only thing that was going to save Bobby from his drunken state.  She agreed to date him only if he sobered up, repented of his sins, asked the Lord Jesus to come into his heart and be “born again” into the Holy Spirit.

Bobby didn’t believe in Jesus. His Savior was a bottle of black berry brandy. He  “quit” drinking more times than I can count. But alcohol had its hold on him, like a demon possessing his soul. The drunker he got the crazier he got. If he was not at the mill working, he was drinking. He would drink from the time he got out of work on Friday until he passed out at night. Then he would wake up Saturday morning and start drinking again. He would drink all day Saturday until he passed out, and on Sunday he would do the same. Then he would get up Monday morning and go to work at the mill, work all week, and when Friday came around, he would do it all over again. He would pass out where ever he happened to be, on the street, in the alley, in the hall way to our apartment. An empty bottle of black berry brandy always near by.

The drunker he got the more he wanted to see Mom. No matter what time it was, he would come barging  in and keep us up for hours with his craziness. If you fight him, there is a price to pay and we found out the night Mom told him to “go away and leave us alone.” This made him crazy and he banged and kicked the door and finally broke the lock. I wake up from a deep sleep to sounds of commotion in the kitchen… and I run in trying to adjust my eyes to the light. There is a chain on the door, which stops him. He forces his hands through the opening to get the chain off and pushes and pushes on the door to try and break the chain. He is yelling crazy stuff and slurring his words. Mom is pushing all of her weight on the door. I am in shock and silently watching…. frozen by what I see. Mom sees me and yells to me to go and get some diaper pins. Confused, I do as she says and run and get the pins. Mom bends them so they are sticking out straight. She hands one to me and then I watch as she  jabs his hands really hard with the pin each time he puts them through the opening. I follow her lead and do the same…. jabbing the best I could with my little hands….  I miss a few times and then with all my might I jab him and the pin sticks in and I see a speckle of blood come out of his hand. I feel sick to my stomach.  Mom is better at this than I am.  She sticks him every time.

There is a bolt and if we can get his hands out and shut the door we can bolt it.  I am terrified and feel like I was in someone else’s body. I hated to do it. It feels awful jabbing those pins in his hands.

Just when the pins seem to not be working…. his hands are gone and we close the door and bolt it. Mom and I sit on the floor for a few minutes, breathing deeply and listening to him in the hallway, banging on the door and yelling. He is so drunk that his words are barely understandable. He yells and bangs and kicks the door as we sit silent. Finally he stumbles down the hall and outside.

Mom tucks me into bed and I lie awake for some time, too afraid to fall back asleep. I am sure that I can still hear him yelling in the distance. I keep thinking that he will come back and get inside this time.  Later that night, I feel Mom getting into bed with me. She whispers “I’m sorry to wake you, but I need to sleep with you.”  When I ask her “why”…. she tells me that “Bobby threw a rock through the bedroom window and it is too cold to sleep there.” I think I hear her crying as she falls asleep. It still feels good to have her next to me.

I have my first nightmare about Bobby that night. I dream that he comes into the house and stomps right through the apartment into my bedroom and stands right next to my bed looking down at me. I wake with a gasp. Terror rips through my body. It is pitch dark and it takes a few moments for me to realize that he is not really there, that it is only a nightmare. I can hear Mom breathing softly and the gentle stirs of my baby sister in her crib. This time it is me who is crying myself to sleep. Mom does not hear me.

Alcoholism takes and takes and takes. It never gives. It takes away loving moments and it steals all of your innocence. It takes away your heart song, your life song…… the essence of who you are.  It forces you to do things that you hate to do…like jab pins into violent hands.

Bobby

The first time Mom saw Bobby, he was passed out drunk in the alleyway, face down in the dirt. She leaned over him and asked, “Are you okay sir?” He barely lifted his head, slurred a few words, and then lay his head back down in the dirt. Mom realized that he was drunk and just went on her way. The second time Mom met Bobby, he was walking up the alley way coming home from the mill.

I suppose you could say that he was okay looking in those days. He had brown hair that he let grow a bit long on the sides. He would grease it like they did in the fifties and comb the front back so it would have a flip on the top, sort of like Elvis. Bobby loved Elvis, John Wayne, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. He was not a tall man but he was stocky and strong. His legs were short, he was bowlegged, and he walked very fast. You rarely saw him without his blue mill uniform on. He would come walking up the alley after work and he usually had a smile on his face and a filter-less Lucky Strike cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. He would always flick the tobacco off of his tongue and, if it were summer, he would roll his pack of cigarettes in the cuff of his sleeve. He had a scar on his bicep where it looked like someone had sliced him with a knife. I never really knew the truth about that scar but I heard that Bobby’s father was a violent, mean drunk and that he had sliced Bobby with a broken bottle.

Bobby had one of those half-smile smirks. And he looked cute when he smirked, even though his teeth were beginning to rot and most of his bottom teeth were gone. He was smitten with my mother the moment he saw her. How could he not be? She was beautiful with her slender figure, large plump breasts, pretty dark hair and eyes, and she was so very kind. He would see that in her: that kindness, that vulnerability, that desperation that comes from fear, abandonment and poverty.

Bobby didn’t have a license or a car. He was a broke drunk who had nothing but a job at the mill and a shitty apartment in Gill’s Alley. He was caught drunk driving so many times that they finally took away his license. The last time, he went off the road, crashed his car, and was hanging out of the door passed out drunk when the police came. After that, he walked everywhere that he needed to go, which was only to the bar, the package store, the mill, and to visit his sweet Polish mother. The town knew him as a drunk. He drank until he passed out. He stumbled out of the bars, up the alleyway, and into our lives.

 

Debbie

Another person from “the alley” who I will never forget is Debbie. She lived in the building across the alleyway. She was a teenager and that alone made her special in my eyes. When I first saw her, I was frightened until she smiled at me. It is amazing how just a smile can change everything. She was very tall and very thin. The skinniest person I ever saw. She was so pale that it looked like all of the life had been drained out of her. Even though she smiled at me, she looked like the saddest person in the whole world. She walked with confidence. Not the kind of confidence that comes from self-worth, but the kind that comes from enduring a lifetime of pain, the kind that says “fuck you” to the world because you’re still standing despite it all. I thought she was pretty with her big dark eyes and her long, shiny dark hair. She put an effort into looking nice: her clothes were clean and they fit well and she always tucked her pants into high boots. No one else dressed like that in “the alley.”

When I saw Debbie, I would experience the same kind of feeling that I had when Mom cried. I now know that it is compassion and empathy. I did not know her story yet but even at my young age, I knew she was hurting. Later, I would learn from one of the neighborhood kids that she had some rare blood disease and that she was going to die. I couldn’t believe it. I never knew anyone who was dying before. I felt such sadness for her. Many days would go by and I would not see her and I would wonder if she had died. Then she would come walking out and we would all stare at her from those front steps like she was a living ghost. She would smile and walk on by, looking weak and sad…. but holding her head high. Then one night as if we all expected it, the ambulance was in the alley and they were taking her away.  We all watched from our windows.

I never saw Debbie again. Mom told me a few days later that she died in the hospital.  I cried so hard my head hurt. Even though I barely said a word to her… I felt like she was my friend..  that we were connected somehow. Connected in a way that I did not understand. For many years my heart would ache when I thought of her. And I can still see her in my mind today. She had so much courage. I thought she was the bravest person I had ever known.

Poverty binds you together through the suffering and the pain of it, through the hope of getting out and bettering your lives. When you see other kids in line picking up the USDA food boxes, you know they are in it too. You look down at their shoes and see how worn they are and you know that they too know what it is like to pick the bugs out of their cereal in the morning and to see the sadness in their mother’s eyes. They also know what it feels like to be picked on because of their clothes and the lice in their hair. But mostly, living in poverty shows you that some never make it out. Like Debbie, they die there in poverty, in the wretchedness of it all.