Chapter 22
Jack
Twenty One Weeks
“Jack, dear, come help your poor old Granny out, this turkey is too heavy for me.”
“No it’s not,” I scoff. “You’re stronger than most people twenty years younger than you.”
“Twenty years younger than me is still old,” she says, stepping aside so I can lift the aluminium pan where the turkey rests on a bed of mirepoix and chicken broth.
“Well, you’re aging like fine wine, Granny,” I grunt, carefully sliding the bird into the oven. “But I’m always happy to help you.”
“Good boy,” she says, patting my cheek. “What time is Abby coming over?”
“Five, I think. She had brunch and watched the parade with her dad and brother this morning. I’m pretty sure she’s over at the Thompson’s house now.”
“Those poor people,” she says, shaking her head. “Nothing in the world can prepare you for losing a son.”
Her face dims, eyes sliding out of focus the way they always do when my dad gets brought up. When I was younger, Grannytried to talk about him more, sharing stories from a time before the drugs took over his life. As the years went on, she brought him up less and less, until I finally told her she didn’t need to do that–he’s not worth the pain it causes her to talk about him.
It’s an unfortunately common tale. In spite of a perfectly normal childhood, my dad squandered every good opportunity, partying his way through college, not slowing down when he entered the real world. After one too many times showing up to the office violently hungover (or still drunk), he lost his job. He never was able to get back on his feet after that, and somewhere along the way his drug of choice shifted from alcohol to heroin.
Granny exhausted every possible means of helping him, and then did it all over again. For years it was a vicious cycle of sobering up and relapsing, and then my mom came into the picture. They met at an NA meeting, and despite warnings from both their sponsors and family, they decided to get together anyway.
Apparently one of the worst things a recovering addict can do is date another recovering addict–especially in the early stages of recovery. At only thirty days sober each, it didn’t take long for them to fall off the wagon, isolating themselves from their entire support system until they disappeared entirely for ten months.
I can’t imagine how Granny felt during those months. Losing Aaron must have been, and still be, horrific for Alan and Andrea. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s a little easier knowing exactly what happened, instead of sitting there for months not knowing whether he was dead or alive.
When he finally showed back up on Granny’s doorstep, he brought with him a very pregnant girlfriend and a promise to get his shit together for real this time. To my parents' credit, I think they really did try. My mom stayed sober the entire pregnancy, and for the first two years of my life.
But addiction is a gnarly disease, and the stress of caring for a small child got to them. When they relapsed, instead of asking for help, they disappeared again. For the next five years, we lived in a tiny trailer park just east of San Antonio, where the majority of my early childhood consisted of regular utility shutoffs, nights going hungry when they were too high to feed me, and empty promises that things would get better soon.
Things started changing when I reached school age–their neglect couldn’t go undetected anymore. They were never violent, never angry, but when a six year old shows up in the same clothes every day for an entire week, someone is bound to notice.
At first, I couldn’t understand why my teacher asked me so many questions about things at home. I assumed that everyone’s homes looked like mine. I learned very quickly that they didn’t.
The final straw came when I arrived at school one day two hours late and freezing cold, having walked myself the four miles to school in a threadbare jacket two sizes too small for me when my parents hadn't come home the night before.
I can vividly remember every second of the day CPS removed me from my home. I stayed silent as I packed my things in my roller bag, trying to block out the sound of my parents sobbing and screaming at the people who’d come to take me away. I remember wondering even then why they were so upset, when they clearly didn’t care very much about me. If they did, they would have worked harder to be better, right?
I don’t think my parents are bad people–at least they weren’t back then. I believe they loved me, that they never went into parenthood expecting things to end up the way they did. I do think they wanted to do better, and really believed that they could. But simply wanting it wasn’t enough for them, and addiction reared its ugly head until they lost everything.
I remember sitting on a chair in CPS custody, kicking my feet absentmindedly and rolling my bag back and forth to pass the time. After a few hours, a woman named Virginia showed up. That’s the first time I remember meeting my grandmother. I learned later that before coming to get me, she went to my dad’s house and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to set foot in her house, or our lives, again until he decided he was serious about getting sober. That if losing custody of his son wasn’t rock bottom, nothing ever would be.
I never saw my parents again.
It took some time for me to warm up to Granny–after the first few wellness checks, my parents taught me to be wary of other adults. “They want to take you away from us,” my mom would say. “They think they’re better than us. But they’re not. Don’t ever let them tell you they are.”
Objectively, theywerebetter than us. Better equipped to provide stability, better at keeping their word and keeping me safe. But I didn’t know that. I just knew that I loved my parents, and I didn’t want to say anything that might get them in trouble. For a long time, I just didn’t say anything at all.
After nearly a year of keeping my distance, of waiting for the other shoe to drop, of waiting for my parents to come back, I began to accept my new reality. Granny wasn’t my dad, but she also never let me go cold or hungry. I was never late to school, I always had clean clothes, I had my own room–things I didn’t realize I was missing until I finally had them.
I stayed guarded with the rest of the world, but slowly began to let Granny into the world I’d built for myself in my head. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just surviving, always worried about the next hardship. I felt like a real kid. I had toys, I had a yard to play in, I learned to ride a bike. One of my favorite memories was the time Granny bought me light-up Spiderman sneakers. I think I talked to more kids in my class that day than I had in mywhole life. I realized for the first time that it wasn’t just Granny who was safe–maybe other people could be kind and safe, too.
We ended up in Larkspur the summer between fifth and sixth grade after Granny’s uncle passed away and left his house to her in his will. The decrepit Victorian style home was one strong gust of wind away from collapsing, but she used the proceeds from the sale of that house to buy our little home in a neighborhood full of kids my age.
I was scared of the change–the last time I had moved houses, my entire world was in disarray. But after a few weeks, I realized just how different things were compared to five years ago. This change wasn’t a necessary escape from something bad, but a willing step into something exciting and good.
