I came home from school to see the door of our small apartment open. My heart raced in panic as I feared what I would find on the other side of the door. The lock had been snapped off and I closed my eyes. The landlord would come calling again, demanding for it to be fixed. My mom was on her last chance with him. It wouldn’t be long until we were back on the streets.
I turned my head to the right, desperately trying to hear if anyone was in our apartment. I couldn’t hear anything, so I pushed the door open and stepped inside. My stomach immediately plummeted. Our studio apartment was trashed, our one chair and side stool overturned, all smashed up.
My eyes tracked across the room to the bed that Mom and I shared. I sighed both in relief and pain as I saw my mom lying on the bed, alive and breathing but passed out, her empty syringes strewn beside her. My mom’s arm was stretched out, the track marks from where she’d shot up were still prominent against the paleness of her skin.
Running to the kitchen, I rushed to the far cabinet. I needed to check the tin was still there. It was rent money that I kept hidden. If I didn’t keep it hidden, my mom would use it to buy drugs.
I jumped up onto the counter top and stretched my hand up to the highest shelf. Panic rushed through me when I couldn’t feel a thing. My hand picked up speed, swiping along every inch of the old cabinet, but nothing was there.
I jumped off the counter and searched the floor, only to see the upturned tin hidden behind the bust door. I knew I’d find it empty. I knew that my mom’s supplier had come for the money she owed.
Feeling as though my feet weighed a thousand pounds, I walked to the tin, feeling no surprise when not even a dime spilled out to the floor.
A flash of anger came and went. I only ever managed to feel frustration towards my mom for a few seconds, before intense sympathy for her horrible life took root.
Sighing in defeat, I closed the door as tightly as I could and began picking the broken furniture off the floor. It didn’t take me long to clean up the mess. When all the debris was cleared, I packed the few clothes we owned into our small bag. It wouldn’t be long until the landlord came to evict us. The money that I’d managed to save from my mom’s welfare and disability checks was running with her bloodstream, and sitting in her supplier’s wallet.
Making the apartment as clean as I could, I walked to my mom who was lying on the bed. A lump clogged my throat as I saw her blue eyes open, watching me. Her pupils were dilated, but I knew she could see me. It was rare that my mom wasn’t high. These moments were constant.
Carefully moving the needle and foiled up heroin from the bed, I placed them on the floor. I sat on the mattress and stroked the damp strands of blond hair from my mom’s forehead. She smiled when I ran my finger down her face.
“Hi mom,” I said. I watched as her eyes read my lips.
My mom lifted her hand and struggled to sign. “Hi, baby girl.”
I smiled back, but tears built in my eyes when I wondered what would come next for us. My mom, even in her drugged up state, must have realized this as she placed her hand on my cheek and said aloud, “No crying… baby girl.”
I closed my eyes at the sound of my mom’s voice. She hated speaking aloud, as did I, because people only ever made fun of us. But we could talk to each other, free and without fear of mocking. And to me, her voice was beautiful. It was home.
“Come,” my mom said, weakly tapping the bed beside her. Doing as she said, I laid on the pillow-less bed, facing her direction.
Mom smiled at me as she stroked through my hair. Her eyes began to close, her body forcing her to sleep to cope with the drugs. But as with every night before she slept, she placed her hand on my cheek, as I did on hers, and she drew our foreheads together. My mom rarely spoke, instead she struggled by using her messy and mostly incorrect sign language, or through actions that were simply between her and I. Just like this.
I love you.
Our hands on each other’s cheek, and our forehead’s joined, was our ‘I love you’. Needing my mother’s comfort right now, I kept my hand on her face as she fell asleep.
But I never slept. I never slept knowing the landlord would be coming to kick us out.
Which he did two hours later, when we returned to the streets, to the cold and wet and rain, back begging for money, until they took me away.
Took me away and ruined my life…
My eyes rolled open and I lifted my hand to my cheek. For a moment I thought everything had been a dream and I was still on my bed with my mom’s hand holding my cheek. But my palm met my skin and I blinked and blinked as my fuzzy sight cleared.
A white ceiling came into view, and it took me a few seconds for the panic to set in.