Shards (22 page)

He hadn't told me she was coming, and he'd gotten me so high right before she arrived that I could barely speak.

Seeing my mom was like the shock of jumping into a cold lake. It wasn't pleasant. I didn't want to see her. I was too far gone for that. There was no returning to a life where I'd been somebody's daughter, somebody's little sister. My life—what was left of it—was with the dealer now. That was all I had.

She brought me some shoes and warm clothes because Detective Keopu had told her I looked like I was freezing. The clothes smelled like the detergent my mom used. They smelled like home.

The dealer laid out the bullshit again, telling my mother how much he loved me, how he knew I was an addict, but he was determined to help me get sober. He let her take us out to lunch, and he kept his hand on my kneecap the entire time, squeezing it tighter and tighter as he suspected I would blurt out anything that contradicted his lies.

“Please come with me, Alli,” my mom said when she dropped us back off at the house. “Please come home. We'll get you help. It's going to be all right.”

I wanted to leave so badly. I just wanted my mom to pick me up and carry me out of that house. But I didn't say anything. I didn't say a word.

The dealer said to my mother, “I love your daughter. I love Alli, and whatever troubles she has started a few years before she met me. I'm just trying to take care of her.”

My mom gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I think I can take better care of her at home,” she said.

“That would be fine, but it seems like she wants to stay right here with me. That right, Alli?”

I nodded and said in my small, Minnie Mouse voice, “
YES.
”

I knew it sounded strange and wasn't right, but I just couldn't leave. I was too afraid. In one way all I wanted to do was get out of that house, but in another way I knew it was too late for me. This was who I was now, an addict, a prisoner, a whore. I had destroyed too much of my old life to go back to my family who loved me.

I chose the drug over my mother. Now my life
was
the drug, and I needed to stay where I could get it.

“If you really want to take care of her,” the dealer said, “I could use a little help. Alli can't work, so I'm supporting her. Her groceries, her clothes . . .”

Money. He was asking my mom for money.

My mom had been advised by MPD to do whatever it took to keep the lines of communication open—even if it meant leaving the house without me. Had she known about the abuse and the rapes, she would have fought the dealer then and there. But she didn't know, and she wrote him a check for a hundred dollars and left.

I had made my choice, and as I looked out the window watching her drive away, I thought,
That's it. I'm never going to see my mom again.

I expected to die in that house, but I figured I could get in a few good highs first. What I didn't know was that the survival instinct that had made me a good cop was still buried somewhere inside me, and despite everything, it would find a way to get out.

I remember very clearly the
day I felt I could get out of that house.

Desperate for dope, I was crawling around on the Berber carpet upstairs, looking everywhere. I saw something white sticking out of an air vent, and as an addict, my thought was,
That's where he's hiding the dope
. I pried open the vent and found my ID.

My wallet and driver's license, my badge, my cell phone—they were all there. I knew I hadn't lost them like he said I had. He had kept them hidden from me. I held these things in my hands, reading my birth date on my license, looking at my picture. I was the person in the picture, the owner of the badge. These things were symbols of my freedom, my epiphany: I wasn't as bad as I thought. I hadn't lost them. He had hidden them. Seeing these things now—on my hands and knees, desperate for dope—made me feel as if I was discovering myself all over again.

I was real. I had been this person—somebody's daughter, somebody's
sister, somebody's lover, somebody's friend.
And just like that I knew I could build up the strength to be that person again.

I turned my cell phone on and like some kind of miracle, there was a sliver of battery and a signal. I quickly sent my mom a text telling her to pick me up on Friday at three forty-five, and then switched the phone off and put it back. The dealer had to do a big deal on Friday; I knew he wasn't going to be in the house for a couple of hours and would probably leave me with Tiffany, who I knew I could overpower if I had to. He had gotten lazy lately and taken to leaving me alone sometimes. Since he had started depriving me of dope, any time he left he gave me a good bit to keep me company. He knew I wouldn't get restless if I had enough good dope.

I hid the phone and all the other things back in the vent so he wouldn't suspect anything. I planned to check the phone later in the week to see if my mom had replied, but I never had a chance. When Friday came, I had no idea if she was coming, but I knew I was going.

The dealer left me alone with a bowl of meth and a packet of cocaine. I told him I was going to water the front lawn so he wouldn't get upset if he got a text saying the front door had opened.

I waited. If my mom didn't come, my plan was to head to the airport and find a john wealthy enough to put me up for a couple of nights in a hotel while I figured out what to do from there. Or if I had to, I would walk the eight miles to my sister's house and beg her to let me stay.

I waited until the last second to fill a small duffel bag with my belongings. I didn't have much to pack. I stuffed my pockets with the meth and coke the dealer had left me, put my things by the front door, and waited for three forty-five.

Three forty-five came and my mom wasn't there.

I flipped out. I knew the cameras in the house had seen me
packing, so I couldn't unpack. That was it. I didn't have a choice: I had to go.

I was super high and went to the refrigerator to get a beer to calm me down enough so I wouldn't start sprinting down the street. I chugged a whole beer, picked up my bag, and walked out the door.

As soon as I hit the driveway, I lost my nerve. I had been out of the house so rarely that it all felt terrifying. I would turn back, deal with the punishment. Who was I to think I could leave?

And then, like my hero, my mom came racing down the cul-de-sac in a red rental car. I couldn't believe she was there.

She got out of the car and ran to me, just wanting to hug me and hold me.

I was so scared. I looked up the street to see if his truck was turning in. “Mom,” I said, “we have to go.”

I threw my bag in the car and then we were driving. All I could think was,
He's chasing us.

“I'm so high I can't think right now,” I blurted out.

“It's okay, honey. I know, I understand. We're going to get you some help.”

“The things that I've done, Mom, the person that I've been—”

“Shhhh, sweetheart. You're safe now.”

My mom's phone rang and it was Keawe.

“I have her!” my mom said, and handed the phone to me.

“You did the right thing, Alli,” Keawe said. “You're going to be okay.”

He kept talking to me, but I couldn't pay attention to what he was saying. I was grateful to be hearing his voice, but I was too busy checking the back window to see if the dealer was behind us.

We drove straight to the airport, but there weren't any flights left to Albuquerque that evening. We would have to wait until morning.

I started to tremble. I wasn't going to be able to get out of Washington
alive. He was already hunting me, and the airport was the first place he would go. It was over.

“Honey, you're shaking so bad,” my mom said. “We'll get you help. You're safe now.”

I nodded. I couldn't bear to tell her the truth: we were both dead. He was going to kill me, and he was going to kill her too.

My mom decided we would stay at a hotel near the airport. I wanted to tell her that the dealer was coming after us, but I didn't want to scare her. In my heart I knew he was coming. My eyes darted everywhere, looking for him.

When we got to the hotel, my mom, still in the midst of her alcoholism, wanted to go downstairs and have dinner. I was high out of my mind. And terrified. I could hardly speak to her yet I was trying to act normal. I wanted to please her, so I said, “Sure, let's go to dinner.”

She had a lot of wine at dinner. She was so excited that we were reunited and kept chatting away. “We'll get through this,” she kept saying. “We'll put this all behind you. You're coming home.” At this point, she was talking only about the drugs, which as far as I was concerned wasn't my problem. She knew nothing about the monster she thought was a man.

I couldn't eat or drink because I knew what was coming. Afterward, we went back to the room, my mom passed out, and I lay down, waiting for him. I ran through all the scenarios in my mind:

He won't make it through that door before security comes.

If he gets to the door, I can call 911 before he breaks down the door.

If he gets in the room, I can use the lamp to kill him.

All night long.

Morning came, and he still hadn't found us. We went to the airport and checked in. We had two hours until the plane left, so
to keep my mom safe, I decided I would go find the dealer before he found us.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. Instead, I started jogging all over the airport, looking for the dealer.

If you're going to kill me, just do it now, but don't kill my mom.

I couldn't find him. I knew he was there, somewhere, watching me, ready to kill me, but I couldn't find him.

I returned to my mom after twenty minutes, just as the plane was about to board.

“Alli!” she shrieked at me.

“What?” I asked. I couldn't figure out why she was so angry at me. Then I saw that she was pale and in tears. She thought that I had run, that I wasn't going to go with her, that she had lost me again.

“Alli,” she said, “don't ever leave me like that again. Stay with me, honey. Stay with me.” She held my hand, and we walked onto the plane together.

Within the half hour, the dealer still hadn't come.

The plane took off.

We were going to be all right.

Two days rescued, I was
at home in bed hugging Bella, my mom's dog, when my mom came in and said, “You're going to rehab.”

“Like hell I am,” I said. No way was I going to rehab. The house was the problem, the dealer was the problem, not the drug. I loved meth and had no plan to stop using.

Lurching from bed, I backed into a corner, my eyes darting from door to windows to my mom. I was about to run and she knew it.

“Talk to Keawe,” she said, handing me her cell phone. “Talk to him.”

Crying, I called Keawe. It was only 6 a.m. in Maui, but he answered right away. My mom had obviously prepped him for my call.

“You can do this,” he told me. “You need to do this. I know you're strong enough.”

“I'm not,” I said. “I'm not stopping.”

“You have to,” he said. “You have to get sober. If you can't do it for yourself, do it for me. Please.”

I was squatting on the floor at this point, shaking and edgy from the meth I had just snorted.

“Get sober and we'll start over,” Keawe said. “In California.”

Our dream. We had been talking about California for a long time.

There was a silence and then he said, “I told Colleen.”

“I don't believe you.” I started to rock back and forth. Aware that my mom was watching my every move, I tried to stay still. I tried to keep myself from turning into a ball and rolling on the floor, rolling away. I knew I looked crazy. What must she think of me?

Keawe kept talking. “I told her about us, Alli. I told her everything.”

“Everything what?”

“That I don't love her anymore. That I love you. That I'm moving out.”

I couldn't even hold the phone anymore. I jammed it between my ear and shoulder and tucked my hands under my armpits. Rolling, rolling away.

“Do you hear what I'm saying, girl?” he asked, and suddenly I could picture his face as he said this, the tender, twitching corners of his smile, his warm brown eyes, his lovely, smooth skin. I hadn't seen him in . . . weeks? Months? I had no idea how long. Time had lost all meaning for me.

I smiled and nodded at him.

“Alli?”

I remembered that he couldn't see me. I had to say something. “Yes.”

“I need you to do this,” Keawe said. “I need you to get strong
and healthy. I need
you
.” I heard his voice break, and for a moment I actually did feel like the strong one.

Keawe's were probably the only words that would have gotten me to go to rehab that morning. I was pissed that this was being chosen for me, that I didn't have a say in what was happening. I wasn't about to admit I had any problem. I had left the dealer's house with my pockets stuffed with dope, for God's sake. I knew everything would be all right if I could only have one more hit. One more slam.

But for Keawe, I would go to rehab. For Keawe, I would try.

“You need to get dressed, sweetie,” my mom said, handing me a T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

“These aren't mine!” I yelled, throwing them back at her. I hadn't brought anything with me from Seattle but a few dirty tank tops, flip-flops, and one pair of jeans.

“They'll be a little big, but they're the best we've got. I think your sister left them the last time she visited.”

My mom shepherded me into the bathroom and pressed the clothes into my hands. “Splash some water on your face, sweetie,” she said. “And give your hair a good brush.”