Dying to Survive (19 page)

Dubrilla handed me a pile of old clothes. ‘I know it’s not easy when you’re stripped of all your material goods,’ she said. This was unbearable. It was one thing going through my sickness, but expecting me to wear long flowing skirts with Jesus sandals and no make-up was just torture. ‘Just trust me,’ she said.

When the other girls returned from their walk, Dubrilla introduced me to them all. Most of them were either Italian or Croatian and they couldn’t speak a word of English. Thank God, I thought, at least they won’t be able to preach to me about the Bible or anything. And there was no way these girls were addicts: they all looked so healthy and happy. But as weak as I was, I was struck by their simplicity. I was curious about the glow that they had in their eyes.

I tried my best to be friendly, but my sickness was getting worse. My insides felt as though they were about to empty out of me and my joints were drying up and needed to be oiled. Dubrilla stayed by my side until six o’clock came. She told me that it was ‘junkie talk time’ in the chapel. I had visions of people levitating and collapsing mid-prayer. I was intrigued and I didn’t want to miss out on anything, so I went along with them. Everyone sat in a circle and spoke about how her day had gone. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but in Italian it sounded good. Then the girls knelt down and said a rosary. I had come directly from prison to this. I was way out of my comfort zone. But I joined them out of respect.

After the chapel it was dinner time. The smell of the food was making me heave. I couldn’t leave Dubrilla’s side until it was time to go to bed. I knew that I wouldn’t sleep, but when the time came I was relieved to get away from everyone. I lay in my bed staring into the darkness, frozen with fear. I really wanted to get clean, but I didn’t want to become a holy Joe. Nobody would want to know me then, I thought, but then, no-one wants to know me anyway. Sure I don’t even deserve to be on this planet after all the bad things I’ve done. And my family had seen that a long time ago. ‘You’re nothing but a scum-bag,’ I told myself. ‘You’re better off dead.’ I remembered myself as that little girl in Temple Street hospital, every Sunday in the chapel with the nuns, singing away to my heart’s content, oblivious to what lay ahead. I pushed back the tears. If God loved me that much, why did he fuck off on me like that? Why hadn’t he helped me a long time ago? ‘Because you don’t deserve God’s love, that’s why?’ I answered myself.

My head wouldn’t stop racing and I felt as though I were being suffocated by a cloak of negativity. Eventually I got some sleep, but when I woke up it was still dark outside. I was lying in a pool of sweat and my hands were swollen from clenching my fists so tightly. It was time to get up. I was told to get washed and dressed in my work clothes and to be in the chapel as quickly as possible. We started the day with the Joyful Mysteries. But I was far from joyful and in no humour to go to work. The day dragged on as myself and some other girls worked in an assembly line. I desperately tried to distract myself from how shit I felt by talking to Dubrilla. She told me the story of Sister Elvira, who had founded the community, and of the revelation that had come to her to help hopeless drug-addicts and how she had transformed people’s lives the world over.

Still I couldn’t stop thinking of drugs. I kept making excuses to go to the toilet, just to get away from Dubrilla, but she trailed behind me everywhere I went. I was craving everything: drugs, a cigarette, my clothes and my make-up—anything to make me feel a bit better. However, I had no choice but to persevere. By the time I got to bed that night I was physically and mentally exhausted, but my mind still wouldn’t slow down. I wonder if blind people dream? And if they do can they see in their dreams? My mind rambled around and around. ‘Oh, shut up!’ I argued with myself. I wanted to chop my head and my legs off so that I wouldn’t feel the pain.

Before I knew it, it was morning time again. Dubrilla came to my bed, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and I just wanted to hit her. ‘Don’t even ask me to get up, ’cos I can’t move,’ I growled at her, my hair stuck to my head.

‘You can stay in bed for two more hours, but you’re being put in the garden today,’ she replied.

Before I knew it I was sitting in a field with a pair of scissors in my hand. ‘What are the scissors for, Dubrilla?’

‘For cutting the grass.’

‘Ha, ha, very funny.’

‘No, really, I’m telling you the truth.’

‘Why can’t I use the lawn-mower over there?’ I said.

‘Because this will help you to grow in patience,’ she replied, smiling.

I was being pushed to my limits and I felt like stabbing myself or Dubrilla with the scissors. The hours passed by with me cutting the grass, trapped in my head. It was scorching outside but I was shivering with the cold. My nose was running, I couldn’t stop yawning and my back was aching, all symptoms of withdrawal.

‘You’re not allowed to kneel down,’ said Dubrilla, as I tried to get comfortable on the grass. ‘You have to kneel up.’

Oh will you just get out of my face; you probably don’t even know what drugs look like, I told her in my head. I couldn’t see Dubrilla, or even the grass that I was cutting. All I could see were my thoughts, whizzing past me like a movie on fast-forward. ‘Ah, I can’t do this, Dubrilla. I want to go home,’ I wailed.

She didn’t look surprised. ‘Umm, why do you want to go home?’

‘Because I miss my family.’ She looked like she was going to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I suppose you have a really good relationship with your family, do you?’

‘I do, yeah,’ I lied.

‘So why did your family leave you here then?’ she probed.

‘Because I have a drug problem,’ I told her, feeling irritated.

‘And you don’t have a drug problem any more, do you not? You don’t miss your family, Rachael, you miss the drugs.’

Fuckin’ bitch, I said to myself, as I started to cut the grass again. The last thing I wanted to hear was the truth.

‘You are on your third day now, Rachael. Two more days and the worst will be over.’

‘Yeah! thanks.’

_____

Even though Dubrilla drove me mad, I dreaded night-time and being left alone with my demons. My mind would spin, a dizzy mixture of self-analysis and random rubbish: What’s it all about? Why are we really here? Why is bread called bread? And who thought of that word? Bread, bread, bread... I couldn’t shut the thoughts off. The taste of heroin in the back of my throat was taking my breath away, and no matter what way I lay I couldn’t get comfortable. It would have been better if somebody had skinned me alive and poured vinegar all over me. At least that way it would be over and done with. The muscle spasms and agitation dragged on and on, getting worse by the hour. I was endlessly heaving, but nothing would come out of my stomach except green bile.

It was still the middle of the night but I could hear commotion coming from the other dormitories. Dubrilla entered my room. ‘Rachael, you have to get up. It’s adoration time.’

I had no energy to get up, but I was glad of the distraction. My legs felt like a ton of bricks, but I dragged them down to the chapel along with the other girls. The chapel was small and simple, with oak wooden floors, an altar and an open eucharist. The candles created an ambience and I could barely see the other girls as they knelt down in front of me. ‘Oh blood and water, which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in you,’ they chanted over and over again.

I don’t trust in you. I’m glad you died on the cross, I thought bitterly, before correcting myself. Oh my God, how could I think such a thing? That just proves that I’m evil. Only evil people could think such things. No, I didn’t mean it. God, please forgive me. I began to join the girls in their chant. I tried to visualise Jesus sitting before me, just as he was in the picture that my grandmother had of him at home. He was smiling at me, with rays of blue and red light coming from his heart, shining directly into mine. My head was beginning to slow down. I could feel the chanting break through my walls of fear and anger, until I felt raw inside. Then adoration was over, but I couldn’t get up. I told Dubrilla that I needed to be left alone. I waited until everyone was gone and in the silence I cried my heart out, crumbling to pieces before the eucharist.

_____

The next morning, after getting a couple of hours sleep, it was as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I got dressed and headed downstairs to the kitchen. I passed the conservatory and suddenly I came to a halt. It was the first time in years that I had seen a sunrise. I hurried outside to get a proper look. The sky was cerise pink with swirls of lavender, and as I felt the warmth of the sun on my face my spirit seemed to come alive. I was still very weak, but I hadn’t felt this good since I was a child. Something was shifting within me, I could feel it. I wasn’t sure if it was down to the adoration or the good cry that I’d had that morning, but whatever it was, I was holding onto it. I made a decision there and then to give Community Cenacolo my best shot.

From then on, life got easier for me in the community. Adjusting to the monotony of routine was the hardest and at times I missed the excitement of my old life. But my old life still haunted me in my dreams. At times I would wake up in a panic, convinced that I had used heroin and relapsed. Or I would be left feeling disturbed by dreams of having sex with monsters, spending the rest of the day riddled with guilt and repeatedly questioning my morality. My body and my mind felt distorted and sensitive and the smallest of things would trigger off a craving for drugs.

I was eventually given back my clothes and I now understood why they were taken from me in the first place. They reminded me of my drug use. They brought me back to the person that I was on the streets of Ballymun. I couldn’t stand that person inside of me. I wanted her to go away, so I decided to change my image by cutting my hair into a short shaggy bob and I was ready to embrace the holy Joe look with open arms.

Working in the garden was making me stronger in all senses. My mind was clearer from the good weather and the fresh air. My appetite was slowly coming back and I was beginning to gain some weight. The prayer and meditation seemed to stabilise me emotionally, restoring my faith in God. And for the first time in my life, I felt as though I belonged somewhere.

My tolerance of the community was put to the test during Lent: forty days and forty nights of adoration at all hours of the night. Renunciation of chocolate, coffee and anything of pleasure. I was eating, breathing and sleeping the mysteries of the rosary. And after three months I had had enough. I had found the solution to my addiction. It was God. Once I prayed every day and practised everything that I had learned from the community, then I would be sorted. I wanted out of the community.

Dubrilla and the other girls didn’t agree with me. ‘You need at least a year or two before you can even think of going home,’ they said. They gathered around me in the office, saying everything that they could think of to try and persuade me to stay. They even rang Father Adrian and asked him to talk me out of it.

‘Rachael, you can’t come home. As soon as you set foot in Dublin, you will be arrested,’ he said.

‘Not if I stay clean,’ I told him.

‘Rachael, yourself and Derek were on
CrimeCall
recently. You were both seen robbing a jeweller’s. The gardaí are just waiting for you to mess up.’ I knew Father Adrian was telling the truth. If I was on television, I would definitely be arrested, but I convinced myself that once I stayed clean, no judge in their right mind would lock me up. I made my decision to go home.

But my mother wasn’t making things easy for me. She refused to send me over a flight ticket. If I wanted to come home I would have to find my own way back, she said. I wasn’t going to let her get the better of me. So without letting the girls know, I took my English-Italian pocket translator and my set of rosary beads and off I headed to the nearest Irish Embassy.

I got half-way through the cornfields when I realised what I had just done. ‘Fuckin’ hell, what am I at?’ It was the type of thing that I would have done when I was using drugs. Acting on impulse and never thinking of the consequences. I was in a strange country with no money, no passport and nowhere to turn. But I couldn’t go back now. My pride wouldn’t allow me to. I would have to keep going and just hope for the best.

It was beginning to get dark and I was becoming more and more fearful that something awful might happen to me. I could see a town in the near distance and I decided to knock into the first house that I came to. The front door opened and I was shocked to be met by the local priest who took confessions from us every Sunday. I had no choice but to tell him the truth. He wasn’t one bit impressed and without any delay he drove me straight back to the community. I felt humiliated when I saw the girls waiting for me in the yard. ‘Don’t worry. You made your point. You’re going home,’ said Dubrilla. She was disappointed in me and that was the last time we spoke.

Chapter
12