Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (33 page)

The first time I heard anger in her voice.

Blue continued, “One day the news showed this little white girl who exposed her mother’s drug habit. Everything worked out. The mother entered rehab and the girl was hailed a hero. Next day I took a syringe to school and told the teacher my mother was mainlining smack. Automatic expulsion. Two days later the police kicked the door down and beat Mother and hauled her off to jail. A month after they told me my mother was dead.”

A long pause.

“They told me my mother was in heaven and if I behaved I would see her again. A long time I had a need to believe that. But it’s a lie, John. Eternal life
after
you die? My mother isn’t looking down at me from heaven. She’s dead. That’s all. At peace but dead.”

I hugged her tight and she said, “John, have you ever been tested for HIV?” I told her no. “You should. Substance abuse puts you at a higher risk for HIV.”

“What about you, have you been tested?”

“I don’t need to be tested, John.”

That didn’t make sense, but I didn’t speak on it.

Blue said, “John, you stopped using a month all on your own. One day you’ll quit for good. The last thing you’ll want to hear that you contracted HIV.”

“Blue, baby, we both can quit, like we did before. You want me to get tested, I’ll go get tested.” I kissed her chin, not sure of her lips in the dark. “I’ve hurt too many people, Blue, I got to quit. I was wrong bringing you down with me. I promise I’ll never do that again.”

“John, you use drugs to avoid pain. I use drugs to stop the pain.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’re still in love with your wife, aren’t you?”

“A little bit.”

Blue laughed. “See? John, honesty is the key to recovery. Be truthful with me. You and your wife had a good relationship till you started smoking crack?”

“Sorta. It wasn’t perfect, but it was okay.”

“When she kicked you to the curb, you realized how much you loved her?”

“Yeah. What’s up with this, Blue? You’re a psychiatrist now?”

“Okay. One last question. Who the hell duped you into smoking crack?”

No way could I answer that.

“Somebody turned you on. A woman? She wired you up to keep her high on?”

“What you talking about? That didn’t happen.”

“John, it’s cocaine, not Coca Cola. Somebody give it to you has an ulterior motive for doing so.”

“Go to sleep, Blue.”

“Okay. Final question and I’ll let it go. You see you and your wife getting back together?”

“Ex-wife. Nope.”

“Why not?”

“She’s pregnant by my best friend. Ex best friend.”

“Ouch! That does make reconciliation difficult.”

“Blue, all that’s over now. History.” I found a breast, squeezed it. “You’re all the woman I need.”

“You don’t love me, John.”

I said, “Let me work on that,” and took the breast in my mouth. A perfect fit. The package in a rush to be delivered, I pulled her on top of me, Blue moaning now. I poked around for the opening in the silk, wetter than before, found it, palmed Blue’s buttock and pressed down, the initial going in the sweetest thing I’ve ever felt, Blue getting into it now, taking it all in, rocking slow at first and then picking up speed, grunting, begging me not to stop.

“Blue, baby, I can’t…I can’t hold it!”
Shit!

Her body went stiff, then she started shaking, and fell on me gasping for air. I laid an arm on her back and she jumped, her muscles twitching involuntarily.

Breathing hard, Blue said, “Tomorrow, John, don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me!”

* * * * *

Sunlight illuminated the holey, slime-green curtains. The digital clock on the CD player said a quarter till five. I would have to hurry to catch David. Blue was still asleep, her mouth half opened.

In the bathroom I used wire pliers to turn on the hot water faucet in the shower. Brushed my teeth. Stood over the commode…and froze, got real scared. There was dried blood where it shouldn’t have been.

I hurried back to the bed, threw the sheet back. More dried blood, a lot more.

I shook Blue awake. “Baby, you should’ve told me.”

Blue pulled the sheet back over her. “Told you what?”

“You should’ve told me, baby.”

“I told you. You didn’t believe me.”

A long time I held her, kissing her face, neck, telling her over and over that she should have told me.

“John, aren’t you going to work?”

“Baby, I do yard work. Leaves pile up, leaves blow away. Who cares?”

“Go to work, John.”

God, she was beautiful. Not a blemish on her face. Perfect teeth.
What the hell she see in me?
A sad look in her brown eyes.

“Okay, baby, I’ll go to work.”

“John, hug me before you go.” Tears brimming in her eyes.

I hugged her and said, “Baby, soon as I get off I’ll be right back. Next week we’ll get a phone so I can call you from work.”

“Good-bye, John.” A tear rolled down her face.

* * * * *

David was waiting in his truck when I walked up. I hopped up front and he said, “Next time I’m not waiting on you.”

It was cold, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A beautiful day, a very beautiful day. David drove to a Spanish-style mansion in Olathe, Kansas, where he and I raked leaves and cleaned out a large pool shaped like a piano.

Around noon we went to a bar and grill across from a Target Superstore. David said lunch was on him and I ordered a barbecue sandwich, fries, and a coke. He ordered ribs and a Michelob.

The dining area and the lunch crowd were small, pictures of the Chiefs on the walls, miniature NFL helmets lining the top shelf behind the bar. No music.

David said, “What you on today?”

“Huh?”

“Man, you’re working so fast you making me tired looking at you. What you been smoking?”

“I ain’t smoked nothing, man. I was out there dragging ass, you’d complain about that. I’m just working, man.”

David stared at me. “A woman, ain’t it? It’s all over your face.”

You could work for a black man a hundred years and not once would he ask of your personal life. A white man thought history and minimum wage went hand-in-hand.

David took out his wallet and showed me a picture of his scrawny, cockeyed wife. “Married fifteen years. Your girl looks better than my Amy?”

See, what I tell you?

“No, David,” I lied. “Very few women can match your Amy.”

David was still smiling when the waiter returned with the food. The barbecue was fatty, hard to chew.

I spit a piece of gristle into a napkin. “I thought Kansas City was famous for its barbecue.”

“You ain’t in Kansas City.”

After the meal David ordered another beer. Not ten minutes later, another.

“David, you think we should get back to work now?”

He laughed, a beer glow in his eyes. “We’re done for today. You ran through the work so fast. I got another house lined up for tomorrow. Order a beer, I’m buying.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m ready to go home.”

“You got it bad, don’t you?”

Driving back, David talked about his wife, his three-year-old son, Junior, and his cat, Tabby, who had recently scratched Junior, prompting his wife to call Animal Control. The man came to relocate Tabby and David threw a fit.

“I told him he touch my cat I’d kick his ass
and
call the police.”

I wondered if David had ever kicked somebody’s ass without calling the police.

He continued rambling and I tuned him out, thinking of Blue, a warm feeling spreading throughout my body, exciting the package. Twenty-two years old and no man had ever touched her. Except me. She’d had a hard life. Mama and daddy both dead. An asshole stepbrother. Whatever it took I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again.

Hell, we could get married. Why not? I was divorced. We could have kids. I’d work and she’d stay home and watch the kids. Two jobs if I had to.

“Blue, honey, from now on I’m taking care of you.”
I couldn’t wait to see her face when I told her that.

David stopped the truck in front of the lobby and told me he’d see me in the morning.

I said, “Yeah,” and hopped out, started running to the room. The door was unlocked. Blue was still in bed, in a fetal position, the sheet over her head to toe. I’d worn her out. Got behind her, kissed her head through the sheet.

“Baby, I got off early today. David told me I was working too fast. I was thinking about you, working my ass off. You hear me?” She didn’t respond. I patted her butt. “Blue, baby, I’m going to take care of you. I promise I’ll never hurt you. Yes, I still love my wife. Might as well be honest about that. But it’s over. It was over when she caught me with the pipe and I hit her. I’ll never hit you, Blue, I swear before God I won’t. You hear me?”

Nothing.

“Baby, at some point we need to start thinking about marriage. Not right away, but, you know, it’s something we need to think about. I’m a one-woman man. Honest. You’re all the woman I need. All the woman I want. You’ll never have to worry about me cheating on you because I won’t. Promise. Baby, do you hear me?”

No response, I reached under the sheet and found a breast. “Blue?” Her skin felt cool to the touch, clammy, breast like liquid putty in my hand. “Blue?” And just then I smelled the sickly sweet scent, close, coming from…“Blue!”

I threw the sheet back and almost fainted.

Her eyes were wide open, the pupils cloudy and fixed. Her skin was a dark purple, the same color of her tongue, split in two, sticking out of clenched teeth. Dried blood filled her nostrils. A pool of reddish-pink vomit emanated from her mouth, spilling onto the sheet to the side of the bed.

I screamed, “Blue!” and started shaking her. “Blue, wake up! Get up!” An empty pill bottle rolled onto the floor. “Dammit, Blue, wake up!” I pulled her to me and she came up in the same position she was lying in, her hands in prayer under her head. “No, Blue, no! Snap out of it!”

Seconds later I was in the lobby, running to the pay phone, a man on it. “I need to use the phone, man!” He couldn’t have cared less. I pushed him off the stool and snatched the receiver in one motion. “Now, dammit!” He got up and came toward me as I was dialing 911. “You don’t want to fuck with me now, man!” He did the right thing.

The paramedics came in as I was carrying Blue to the bathroom, to put her into the tub filled with warm water.

“Dammit, just don’t stand there, help her! Please!”

The short one said, “Put her on the bed, sir.”

I laid Blue on the bed, but the paramedics didn’t attend to her, just kept looking at me as if I was crazy. “Man, what you doing? Help her! Do something! Dammit, do something!”

“Sir, she’s in rigor mortis. There’s nothing we can do for her.”

I fell to my knees. “Please! Help her! God, please help her!”

The sign said Little Rock was ninety-three miles away. I’d been on the road seven weeks. Friday, March 13. It was five in the evening. Already dark. Light traffic. Deer grazing alongside the road.

This stretch of Interstate 40, between Fort Smith and Clarksville, was under construction, bumpy, hard on the kidneys.

I hoped Mama wouldn’t faint again when she saw me. That gave me an idea.

“Yo, Danny?” A grunt came from the sleeper. I called him again.

The curtain slid open and Danny Ross worked his way to the passenger seat. He grabbed a pack of Marlboros on the dash and said, “Where we at?”
Each time he got up, day or night, he always asked the same thing, even when he was the last one driving. The Marlboro had a funky smell, like manure burning.

The safety director asked me did I prefer a non-smoking trainer. I said no, it didn’t matter to me. Danny smoked three packs a day. When he wasn’t smoking, he was coughing, his face turning crimson red, doubled over, sounding awful.

I said, “We’re almost to Little Rock. I haven’t--”

He started coughing and beating his chest with a fist. I stopped eating with him at truckstops and he had the nerve to ask why.

Thirty-five-years-old, Danny looked like an old man, deep wrinkles crisscrossing his face and neck, gray hairs streaking black hair he never combed, and, like Dokes, he was fond of wearing the company uniform, black shirt and pants, every day.

When he caught his breath I said, “I haven’t seen my mama in five months. She’s not going to believe I’m driving a truck. I was wondering if I could drive the truck to her house in the morning. Surprise her.”

Danny, in his raspy voice, said, “I don’t see why not.” He rolled the window down, let the cold air in. “You’re the best student-driver I’ve trained. Honest. You’re not gonna have any problems when you get your own truck. Tell you what, drop the trailer at the yard and then drop me off at the house, bring it back Monday morning.”

Though Danny probably gave me emphysema, I liked him. The truck driving school was a waste of time and student loan money. Danny taught me the ins and outs of commercial truck driving: how to fudge a log book; how to bypass DOT scales; where to find a parking spot when the truckstops were full; how to spot black ice.

Danny said, “Wake me up when we get to Little Rock,” and got back in the sleeper.

Next week I would be on my own, no Danny to wake up and ask what to do when I got in a bind. I couldn’t wait. My pay would increase from three-fifty-a-week training salary to twenty-five cents a mile, empty or loaded. Hell, I could easily drive four thousand miles a week--though not legally. A thousand dollars. Benefits would kick in too. Medical. Dental. 401K. Stock options.

An Arkansas state cruiser zipped by, misery lights on. Bright red lights in the distant. Stopped traffic. Twenty minutes later I crawled by a wreck illuminated by emergency vehicles, a small car upside down in the median, flares blocking off the passing lane, a state trooper waving traffic through, a sheet-covered body on a gurney parked in the rear of a coroner’s van.

A moment I was back in Kansas City, being escorted out of Blue’s room by a detective, the van pulling away with Blue in a body bag, me stopping at the door to take one last look at the room and noticing for the first time that Phyllis Hyman’s picture was no longer on the wall.