I began plotting new strategies to eliminate the monster in our midst. The more authority he exerted, the more rebellious I became. Without much effort, our battle of wits turned into a full-contact sport, and some days I was winning. Point and counterpoint, check and checkmate. When he went to the country club for his five-martini lunches, I skipped school and charged lunch to his bill at the club, making sure to waltz past the bar in my bathing suit smiling sweetly into his drunken face. When he threatened me with another lock-up, I threatened him with what I knew about his drinking before going into the courtroom to try a case. I knew where every liquor bottle was hidden in his office. I was completely capable of exposing him, of ruining him; he could feel my palpable hatred and I his.
I became a page at the Georgia State Capitol, ingratiating myself to every senator and congressman I could get near. I created my own power structure that would shield me if the time came.
My father knew I no longer cared about myself, only about taking him down. His hatred for me ominously overshadowed every aspect of my psyche. My previous hypervigilance to keep myself safe in the ever-present volatility of my alcoholic home rose to epic proportions; my mind, my body, my spirit were always on guard. I ceased to sleep except in small snatches, afraid of what he might do. My fervor to no longer be controlled by his abusive ways drove me to do things that no sane person would do. Like father, like daughter, self-destruction lead the way.
Daniel, my first husband and Joshua’s father, taught me the delicate art of transforming fine powder the color of light brown sugar into an injectable substance that blotted out the trauma of my everyday reality. It was the early Seventies, and every one and I do mean everyone (okay, not my oldest sister), was immersed in the drug culture. We copped our dope on the west side of Atlanta. It was a dangerous world of dealers and junkies, of sawed-off shotguns and hot-tempered addicts.
As Jeff had properly accessed back in juve, I was a zero-to-60 girl. I leaped from pot to hash to MDA to barbiturates to mainlining heroin with the agility and speed of a cheetah; it was effortless. Drugs made the isolation and torture of my family and high school years more tolerable. I graduated with honors. Either heroin is very good for brain development or our high school was subpar.
My stint with drugs came to a screeching halt one summer’s night in June of 1973. We had been shooting up at our dealer’s house. The couple that we copped from had long since passed out upstairs in a heroin haze. This night my partner could find no limit. My attempts to disarm him resulted in the first physical violence I had experienced outside of my father’s. Self-preservation took over, perhaps for the first time in my life.
Relinquishing the bags of dope back into his hands, I became a bystander of his impending death. I could smell sulfur from the other room and then the distinctive odor of heroin boiling in a spoon. After he’d drawn his needle and tied off, the brown liquid moved quickly from his arm to his head. I heard the thump of his body as it slid out of the kitchen chair onto the linoleum floor. No amount of prodding returned him to consciousness. His breathing was slow and shallow. With great effort, I dragged his limp body to the couch and sat in a chair across the room, my knees pulled up against my chest, monitoring him until daybreak.
By dawn the worst had past. The sky, the color of hot pink lip stick and lavender eye shadow, was ablaze as I stood alone in the breaking morning light, awaiting my ride out of hell. Dressed in my low-rider elephant-legged bellbottoms and pale blue halter top that read BABY across the front, I made my way through the apartment complex to the street. When the yellow cab I had called slowed at the drive, I opened the door and slid into the back seat, stepping out of my heroin life forever.