I never did heroin. My older sister did, but I was too little to understand, and by the time I felt ready to join her, she had stopped, found her footing, went to therapy to understand the crimes our parents committed, and was full of her own brilliance and future. “Mouse,” she said; she called me Mouse, “Don’t.” So, I didn’t.
Read MoreI was a terrible waitress. Starting the evening with a bank to use to provide change to customers I often ended up losing money because of my total lack of ability to count. Luckily, the bartenders found my ineptitude endearing and usually remedied the situation by tipping me from their earnings. As long as I stayed numbed by drugs and alcohol, I remained immune to the human sadness found...
Read MoreIt started early. I thought the painting of George Washington that hung in my elementary school classroom, clouds all around his big head, was God. Then I thought it was the lady with the torch at the end of the movie, but when I asked my oldest sister how they got God to agree to hold that torch, she looked at me like, who are you? I asked my parents, and they said that God doesn’t exist. This was, at least, an answer, but I wondered what the hell my Catholic grandmother was going on about when she told me that since I was the youngest and free of mortal sin, I was six, I should pray every night because the rest of my family was going straight to hell. So, I piled all my stuffed animals into my bed and in the unheated attic where we slept, I got on my knees and said, over and over, “God, don’t send my family to hell,” because I didn’t know any prayers. When I demonstrated this to my grandmother, she said nothing counted unless my bare knees were on the floor, I had knelt on my nightie. She had been raised in a Catholic convent. I quit the nightly pleas.
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