Go Ask Alice (8 page)

The plumbing leaks and the toilet gets stopped up and we only have hot water part of the time, but it really doesn’t matter. Kids stop by to watch our TV which we have in the show room or just to sit around and rap. We cut the legs off the. dining room chairs so they are only about a foot from the floor and with the five of them (one was broken beyond repair) we’ve got a nice little conversation area. Today one of the kids suggested we stock our refrigerator with a few cold drinks and then charge 50 cent; for them with TV privileges. I think we’re going to try it. In fact we’ve even considered getting a cheap second-hand stereo in a few weeks if things continue to go well. Our show room is really quite large and we really only need half of it for business.

Most of the kids seem to have plenty of money and they buy enough to surely allow them chair privileges for a while.

December 13

Today one of the boys who’s been in a number of times offered to sell us his stereo for twenty-five dollars because
he’s going to build a new one. We were elated and are staying up tonight to refinish it with red velvet and gold thumb-tacks, Won’t the kids be surprised tomorrow! I’m glad I’m always so tired I fall asleep the minute I touch the bed, because I don’t want time to think, especially about Christmas.

December 15

This morning Chris left early to go to the wholesalers and I was listening to stereo while I cleaned up the showcases. Then “She’s Leaving Home,” began playing, and before I knew what was happening I had tears dripping down my face like two spigots had been turned on inside my head. Oh that song was written about me and all the others of thousands of girls like me trying to escape. Maybe after Christmas I’ll go home, maybe even before Christmas. This whole mess with Richie must surely be cleared up and I can go back and start in school at half year. Chris can have the whole shop and we should be fairly well established by then, or maybe she’ll want to go home with me, but I won’t even mention it for awhile.

December 17

It’s beginning to get a little monotonous for Chris and me. All the kids want to talk about is their hang-ups and how they feel when they’re using. I remember Dad’s father before he died talking on endlessly about his aches and his pains. These kids are beginning to hit at me the same way. They never talk about what they want out of life, or their families or anything, just who’s holding, how much
bread they’ll get next year, and who has the least crumbs, at the moment, and will they cover. And the “crazies” are beginning to get to me too. I wonder if we really are going to have a full scaled revolution in this country. When they’re discussing it, it all seems pretty reasonable and exciting — destroying everything and starting again; a new country, a new love and sharing and peace. But when I’m alone it seems like another insane drugged scene. Oh, I’m so utterly confused. I can’t believe that soon it will have to be mother against daughter and father against son to make the new world. But maybe they’ll wear me down to their way of thinking by the time I’m in college, if I ever get there.

December 18

Today we just closed our doors and took off. It’s the first time we’ve both had out together in weeks and the kids and their hang ups were really beginning to bug us. We took a long leisurely bus ride and then splurged on an expensive many-coursed French dinner. It even felt good to be dressed up again after all the beating around in old pants and work clothes. But all the Christmas things in the windows and the stores make us both a little lonely inside although neither one of us says anything. I was even trying to pretend to myself that I wasn’t affected, but I guess to you dear Diary I can tell the truth. I’m lonely, I’m heartbroken, I hate this whole number and everything it stands for, I feel I’m wasting my life away. I want to go back to my family and my school. I don’t want to just sit listening to other kids who can go home for Christmas and who can write and phone when I can’t and why can’t I? I probably haven’t done anything that these kids haven’t done. All dopers are part-time sewer dwellers, the two go hand in hand together.

December 22

I called Mom. She was so glad to hear me I could hardly understand her through the tears, She offered to wire me money or have Daddy come and get me, but I told her we had enough and that we’d be back tonight on the first plane. Why didn’t we do this weeks, months, centuries ago? Stupid us!

December 23

Last night was like reaching heaven. The plane was late but Mom and Dad and Tim and Alexandria were all there to meet me, and we were all crying unashamedly and like babies. Gran and Gramps are flying in today to see me and to stay for Christmas. I guess it’s the greatest homecoming anyone ever had. I feel like the prodigal son being welcomed back into the fold, and I shall never ever go away again.

Chris’s mother and dad met her and they too were reunited in a downpour of tears. Chris’s leaving had one good result. It brought her mom and dad back together as. they said they hadn’t been in years.

Later

I’m so grateful that Chris and I were successful in our little venture. Mark, one of the boys who hung out at our shop, took colored Polaroid shots which have quite impressed our families. Of course we’ve deleted from our lives our adventures in San Francisco, and Mom was pleased that we never did even get down to Haight-Ashbury, which is nothing now anyway.

This afternoon I called the operator and asked for phone
numbers for both Richie and Ted, but she didn’t have a listing for either one. So I guess they’ve just dropped out of sight and I’m relieved. Now everyone just thinks we ran away because we wanted to be out on our own. I think I’ll check to see if they are still registered in school, just to make sure.

December 24

The house is alive with fragrance. We have baked cakes and pies and cookies and candies. Gran is a wonderful cook and I know I can learn many things from her and I’m really going to try. The tree is up and the house is trimmed and Christmas is going to be even greater this year than it has been before.

I called Chris today and she feels great. Her mom and dad and her crippled Aunt Doris who lives there are really going out of their way to be nice to her. Oh, it’s good to be home! I guess Mom was right, Chris and I used to dwell on the negative things. But not anymore!

December 25

Diary, today is Christmas and I am waiting for my family to wake up so that we can go empty our stockings and unwrap our presents. But first, and all by myself, I wanted to have my own special and sacred little part of this special and sacred day. I wanted to review and repent and recommit myself. No I can sing with the others, “Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,” for I am triumphant, this time I really am!

December 26

The day after Christmas is usually a let down, but this year I enjoyed helping Mother and Gran clean up and put away and take out. I feel grown-up. I am no longer in the category with the children, I am one of the adults! And I love it! They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong! I am important! I am somebody!

Adolescents have a very rocky insecure time. Grown-ups treat them like children and yet expect them to act like adults. They give them orders like little animals, then expect them to react like mature, and always rational, self-assured persons of legal stature. It is a difficult, lost, vacillating time. Perhaps I have passed over the worst part. I certainly hope so, because I surely would not have either the strength or the fortitude to get through that number again.

December 27

Christmas is still in the air. That something wonderful, something special time of year, when all things good are reborn upon earth. Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it. It is as though I have never been away.

December 28

I was looking through the Christmas cards and saw one from Roger’s folks. How dreadful that makes me feel. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if their family and ours could have been related? But all possibility for that is now over and I must not torture myself. Besides it was probably only puppy love stuff.

December 29

Mom and Dad are planning a New Year’s party for all the people connected with Dad’s department. It sounds like fun. Gran is making her terrific broccoli and chicken casserole and she is also making her yeast orange rolls. Yum! She has promised to let me help her and Chris is coming over too.

December 30

It’s still holiday time and I’m elated all the livelong day and night!

December 31

Tonight will ring in a wonderful new year for me. How humbly grateful I am to be rid of the old one. It hardly seems real! I wish I could just tear it out of my life like pages from the calendar, at least the last six months. How, oh how, could it ever have happened to me? Me, from this good and fine and upstanding, loving family! But the new year is going to be different, filled with life and promise. I wish there were some way to literally and truly and completely and permanently blot my for real nightmares out, but since there isn’t, I must poke them way back into the darkest and most inaccessible corners and crevices of my brain, where perhaps they will eventually be covered over or become lost. But enough of this chitty-chat and writiewrite, I’ve gotta go downstairs and help Mom and Gran. We’ve got a million things to do before the party. Up, up and away.

January 1

Last night’s party was really fun. I hadn’t thought Dad’s friends could be so interesting, and funny. Some of the men were talking about outrageous cases that have been tried in court and the unbelievable decisions that have been handed down. One old eccentric multi-millionairess left every single cent of her money to two old overgrown alley cats who wore diamond encrusted collars while they scrambled around the house and prowled through the alleys. Part of her will specified that the cats not be controlled in any manner that would be against their natural instincts. So the court hired four full time cat sitters to watch them every minute of the day and night. I suspect the men who were telling the story exaggerated because it was so hilarious, but I’m not sure. Maybe they were just good storytellers.

Some of ‘the parents talked about the cuckoo things their kids have done, and Dad even proudly told some good things about me . . . imagine!

At midnight everyone put on paper hats and rang bells and gongs, etc., then we had our midnight supper, with Gran and Chris and Tim and me all helping.

We didn’t get to bed until almost four o’clock, but that was almost the best part. After all the guests left, the family and Chris and me all put on our pajamas and finished up the dishes and straightened up the house as relaxed and happy as anybody could possibly be. Gramps was washing the dishes with soapsuds up to his armpits and singing at the top of his voice. He insisted that the dishwasher was too slow when we had so many things to do, and Dad was prancing around and bringing in things and licking his fingers. It was really great! I wonder if the real guests had as much fun as Mom and Dad, and Gran and Gramps and Tim and I had had? Would Chris have preferred being with her own family if they hadn’t been out to another
party? I guess those are just a few of the things we’ll never know, which aren’t important anyway.

January 4

Tomorrow I start school again. It seems like I’ve been gone ages, instead of just part of one term. But I will appreciate it now, I can tell you. I’m going to learn to Habla Español like a Spaniard. I used to think foreign languages were dumb, but now I realize that it’s very important to be able to communicate with people, with all people.

January 5

Chris is a senior, but we still had lunch together. It’s kind of a hassle getting resettled.

January 6

What a shock! Today Joe Driggs came up and asked if I was holding. I had really almost forgotten that so short a time ago I was a pusher. Oh, I hope the word doesn’t get any further, and that I can live it down. Actually Joe wouldn’t believe at first that I was clean. He was really in a bad way and begged me for some chalk or anything. I hope George doesn’t get the word.

January 7

Nothing was said today about drugs. I hope Joe gets the word back.

January 8

Chris and I have both been informed about a party this weekend but I’ve asked Mom if Chris can spend that time with me. I’m sure I won’t be tempted, but I just don’t want to take any chances. And I’ve also very truthfully (at least
part
truthfully) told Mom that a bunch of pretty fast kids are pushing us at school and we’d like family support for the next few weeks. Mom was most grateful that I had even confided in her and said she and Dad would try to plan something special for the next couple of weekends and see if Chris’s folks wouldn’t do the same for the two weeks after that. It was a nice warm feeling knowing that we were communicating, and much more than vocally! I really have a great family!

January 11

Our family and Chris spent the weekend in the mountains. It was everything that it possibly could have been! Dad borrowed the cabin from someone he works with and after we’d found out how to turn on the water and the furnace and everything it was really great. It snowed during the night and we all had to take turns shoveling out the car, but it was really lovely. Dad says he’s going to borrow or rent the cabin often. It makes a wonderful weekend retreat. It’s strange how he can always get off when he really feels he has to.

January 13

George asked me out for Friday night. He’s kind of nothing but I guess that’s the safest kind.

January 14

Lane met me during lunch and insisted that I get him a new contact. His connection has been busted and he’s really hurting. He twisted my arm until it is black and blue and made me promise I’d get him at least a lid for tonight. I don’t have any idea how to go about it. Chris suggested I get it from Joe, but I don’t want anything to do with any of that bunch. I’m so scared I’m almost sick, in fact I really am sick.