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. 

Gills Alley

Poverty is the worst form of violence  ~Gandhi

I do not remember moving but we live in a different apartment and Mom is crying again. My father is gone and so is the money. He stopped all financial support.

He moved out and poverty took his place.

Gill’s Alley is a dreadful and beautiful place to live. While living there, I learned how to be human, how to be compassionate, how to be tough, how to survive, how to accept diversity, and mostly, how to love in the presence of fear, sadness and despair.

Our new home was stark with dark brown shingles that were torn and worn from years of storms and no repairs. And the people who lived there looked the same: worn from years of storms with no repair. The front steps were wooden and worn by the weight they have carried over the years and more importantly they were a gathering place for the alley children. From those steps, we watched the unraveling of life in Gill’s Alley. I watched and listened and learned so much about humanness. From those front steps, I could see the world.

We live on the first floor on the right side. When you open the door to the front entryway that leads to all of the apartments, the first thing you smell is kerosene. The kerosene tank is in the cellar beneath us and the kerosene stove sits at the far end of our living room. This is the heat for the entire apartment. It is big and brown and Mom cannot figure out why it has not blown us up yet.  The kitchen is the brightest room in the apartment. It seems like the sun never shines in the other rooms. The rusty tin shower stall, with its yellow plastic shower curtain, stands in the kitchen next to the kitchen sink. A small toilet and sink are crammed into a tiny space behind a closed door on the other side of the shower. The floors are tattered and torn and the fixtures are corroding. The wallpaper is frayed and shabby and there is sadness in my mother’s eyes.

The place reeks of poverty….. It is oozing out of the walls and up through the floors. It drips from the ceiling and when the door opens, it blows in with the wind and it swirls around our bodies and tears at our hearts. The stench of poverty soaks into the clothes we are wearing and the food we are eating, and when I lay my head on my pillow at night, the stench is there too. I am surrounded by it and there is no way out.

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Mom

Mom does not leave. She will never leave. We will stay together through it all – through the abandonment of my father, the poverty, the angry and violent alcoholic, the death of Polly, the drug dealer who cuts me, my teenage pregnancy, the drugs, the loneliness, the triumph. She never leaves. She needs me as much as I need her.

We are on this journey together, she and I. Woven together by our blood and our gloom. I will hate her and I will love her. I will need her and I will abandon her. I will protect her and I will hurt her. I will defend her and I will shame her. Together we will bury one and birth another. She will pray to her God through it all.

And when I am just fifteen, it is she that holds my hand while I lay for hours screaming the screams that only a young girl giving birth can scream. She does not leave. She does not turn away. She holds my hand. She does not leave.

Often, sometimes for days, she will disappear into the darkness of her mind. But she always comes back and tries again. It is always so good to see her come back.

Even later, when the pain finally becomes too much for her to bear and she so desperately tries to end it all……. she comes back.

She always comes back. It is so good to see her come back………

Went Missing

If you asked me the exact moment, hour, or day that my father went missing, I could not tell you. He just faded away slowly and then one day, he was totally gone. No long, drawn out goodbyes. Not even a whisper. Just gone. He walked out the door one day, as if it were any other day, yet he failed to mention that he was leaving forever. It was the year that I turned five and I wished with all my might that he would walk back in the door just as simply as he had vanished. And I waited. There are still times that I catch myself waiting . . .

     We went looking for him once…. It was  the day my mother borrowed my grandparent’s big, brown Pontiac. My two brothers and I are sitting in the back seat. I know we are going to find Dad and I try to be happy… but Mom is so sad and I am hushed by my own confusion.

     It is silent and I feel her sadness as we wait in a hallway. I sit on a bench in between my two brothers. I look at my shoes and swing my legs. I am wearing a dress and knee socks and I look pretty for him. A door opens and there stands my father. He looks like he is ten feet tall. I do not move. I do not say a word. I am just looking at him, knowing that as soon as he sees me, he will come to me and hug me and I will hear his voice again and feel the warmth of him, the smell of him, feel his cheek up against mine.

     I cannot hear what they are saying. I cannot see my mother’s face but I can see my father’s and he looks mad or sad, I am not sure which. I hope that she is begging him to come back. I know there is desperation in her voice but I cannot hear what she is saying to him. She is crying and he is shaking his head back and forth. I am praying to the heavens for him to please, please look at me . . .and I stare right at him waiting. Then in an instant, he glances at us ever so slightly. My heart stops and I hold my breath….. then seemingly in slow motion, he turns away from us and walks through the door and is gone. The door closes behind him and on all of my hopes and dreams. He is gone again and all the breath and life is sucked out of me in that single instant. My stomach and heart ache deeply. My head goes down and I look at my shoes. I see the scuffmarks on the toe and then I cannot feel. The pain I feel is too deep and too damaging to take in and my little body just goes numb. A piece of my soul is stolen in this moment—poof, gone. I want to scream, “Daddy!” I want to run through that door, run through the halls, fly around the corners, break through the walls and find him and jump in his arms and just stay there forever. Inside I am screaming and thrashing and sobbing for him. Outside I am silent and numb.

     In the back seat of the brown Pontiac, I hear the low roar and feel the stirring of the engine as it lurches forward, breaking through the air, the wind, the storm of our life. My mom is crying so hard I think she may never stop. I am silent. We are all silent and motionless in the backseat of the brown Pontiac, except for my little brother, who reaches for my hand. I want so badly to scream, but as hard as I try to scream, the words will not come out of my mouth. Now he has gone missing again and he only exists in the lining of my heart and in the visions of my mind.

    I have often wondered if there is an apology big enough, words or actions strong enough, to ever make up for the absence of a father? No one ever told me how much it would hurt. That the hurt and longing would never really go away. That I would never stop missing him. That forgetting him would be impossible. That forgetting him would be like forgetting my own existence….forgetting him would be like forgetting the framework of my life, the stuff that stitches me together, the foundation of me.

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The Round Bellied Man

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in late fall. A dear man in his eighties walks up to the podium and begins to speak. He has a warm way about him that is intriguing and extraordinary. He is not tall. He has a round belly, a round, beautiful face, and his blue eyes look joyful and sorrowful at the same time. He begins by saying, “Beautiful Things. I am going to speak about Beautiful Things.” His voice is strong and comforting and I am thinking that he is going to talk about babies and nature and that sort of thing. I begin to settle into the comforting thoughts of Beautiful Things….  and how pleasant it will be. To my complete and utter surprise, he launches into a speech about human suffering. “What???”” I am shocked and intrigued and disappointed. My brain is trying to connect the two subjects: Human Suffering and Beautiful Things. “Hmmmmmm?… ‘No Way…Not possible!”

He begins by telling a story—as only he can do with his simple, kind eyes and his round, loving way. He talks of a man who is dying of AIDS and of the man’s nurse. This man was suffering and dying in all the horrifying ways that you can imagine a man dying of AIDS. He was weak, thin, frail, and scared, with a lifetime of emotional and physical wounds. He was dying alone.  He was gay and his own family shunned him with disapproval and shame. The mans nurse was an extraordinary woman… and she cared for him in the most compassionate, loving, tender way: feeding him, reading to him, and staying way past her shift to be by his side. She would comb his hair, rub his back, sing to him, and sit quietly next to him. When she looked at him, the look in her eyes was of pure love and when she spoke to him, her voice was tender and soft. She would sit next to him while he slept and her kind face would be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. How tremendous the love was between them, that she would care for him in such a way. “That is Beautiful!” the round-bellied gentleman says with exuberance and a bit of a rise in his voice.

Then he begins again with another story about a woman dying of cancer. He tells about the way her family cared for her, how they never left her side in her dying days: brushing her hair, washing her face, rubbing lotion on her frail back….. surrounding her with loving kindness.  He said that her family and friends would circle her bed and hold hands and sing to her. “That is Beautiful,” he says again with a rise in his voice. As the stories roll on—each told with such tender love—I find myself shifting my attention from the suffering of the person to the incredible love that was present.

This touched me to my core… this idea of human suffering and beautiful things… how could I have not heard this before..?  I had just left a job where I was working with deeply emotionally wounded children at a therapeutic residential program.  I had never witnessed such suffering and it changed me into a person who no longer believed in the goodness of humanity.  I was angry… so angry that these children suffered so deeply. There was nothing that I could grab onto that made me feel any better.  I felt a heaviness of despair through my body most of the time. I had become less spiritual and less loving and I was searching desperately for an understanding of human suffering.

As the stories rolled on… I felt my heart begin to soften.  I felt my chest opening… and then the tears began to roll down my cheeks.  I could not stop crying.  It was as if  all the powers of the universe came together that day to make sure that I found my way to this little chapel in the middle of no where to here this pudgy, jolly man speak…. and to free me of my despair and open my heart again.  This was the beginning for me.  The beginning of the healing of my own suffering and the beginning of my journey to peace.

Right there in that room that very after noon… there was an opening to this brilliant, hopeful  idea that there is this absolutely unexpected thing that happens when suffering is present….. but only if I am open to seeing it and feeling it….will I find that with suffering also comes deep, deep love. Perhaps it is the purest kind of love. It is almost as if you are actually touching the essence of love itself. When there is suffering, there is also love and tenderness and the opportunity to tap into something that you never thought was possible. The deep darkness of suffering connects us all, providing a window into the interconnected-ness of all human beings. It is where all the essence of love rests. And when we heal and burst out of the suffering, we are fuller, more loving beings, able to connect with our sisters and brothers in a much purer way. Suffering and Love connect us. They remind us that pain and love are universal, that we are not alone. And that is why Human Suffering and Beautiful Things meld together in the most perfect melody. When suffering is present we have the opportunity to express love.  The “Beautiful Things” come in the form of human kindness. Love is a healer. It is that simple. Where there is love, there are also beautiful things—no matter what the circumstances may be.

I have come to believe that this life that I have been given is a test and it is the ultimate test because it is the only thing that truly matters. It is the test of LOVE. How much love do I give to myself and to others and to those who are suffering? I have been given the awesome opportunity to choose love every day, several times a day. Am I failing miserably? I have been given this amazing opportunity to love and be loved and give and receive the deepest expression of love possible. Do I pass it by for other things that really do not matter much?

Somehow in that old chapel that day I knew that another chance was being given to me… a chance to unlock myself from my own deep suffering. That somehow this connection between suffering and love was my way to peace.

Caroline Wheeler

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