From the Other Side of My Bed

27. Daddy Dearest

I walk into the afternoon sun with a bag full of carts and blunts inside.
I'm weighting half my weight, but I hide this with my usual oversized black sweater. My leggings which used to fit me tight now fit me loose. I've been losing my hair in chunks and so I opt to wear it in a high messy bun just so I ignore the loss.
I haven't dyed my hair either, I look washed off, dull and ugly.
I walk over to my car and throw the bag on the passenger side and with relief and anguish which is weird, I sit for a moment there, staring at the logo of Bloom's dispensary.
Relief because I will get mighty high soon.
Anguished because I overspent this time. I guess my addictions are taking higher highs now.
I shook my head and tugged away my flyways and started the engine and off I go.
Before I go home, I go to the back of Circle K to get two baggies of meth and some oxxys.
I haven't told anyone that I am also doing those. I'm ashamed about it.
When I get home, take an oxxy and start rolling my blunts tighter and make two out of one. I like oxxys because they don't do me shit but relax and energize me. It's a weird combination and when you mix it with weed, fuck dude.
Its like you cannot fucking feel a thing.
I would cut myself and not feel it, it was great.
Once I have my blunts ready, I make myself a coffee and walk over to the balcony.
I sat down and began smoking as usual, I checked the date on my phone and realized it's been two weeks since I have talked to Socorro. Gosh, I miss that lady.
I wish she lived here still. I wish she was hugging me right now.
She would have coffee with me. I don't think you understand the meaning of drinking coffee with someone, dear reader.
That moment is fucking intimate.
You two stayed there sitting in the quiet or dropping some hot gossip while laughing and almost choking from drinking the coffee and with pan dulce next to you and... you're just happy. And no one wants that with me.
They find it too boring or too quiet.
No one loves me for my quietness.
They like me for my messiness.

I finish my blunts and go inside, the oxxys and weed hit me while I'm entering the apartment and I drop to the floor, as this is normal when mixing the two.
I like this type of high.
I close the door with my foot and crawl to my bedroom and into my bed as I take large breaths. Once in bed, I enjoyed my high for a couple minutes and then I dialed in her number.
"Hola, nina."
"Hola, senora. How are you doing?" I say, slurring my words.
"Here, like always, bored and sick."
"The usual, huh?"
"Yeah... yeah... and you? What are you up to?"

"I just finished-"I forgot that she doesn't know of my drug addiction. "Eating lunch."
"What did you make?"
"Chicken salad sandwiches." I lied.
I know she doesn't believe me because I don't know how to cook.
"Oh yeah? How you make them?"
"Boiled the chicken, shredded it, add mayonnaise and celery and onion, spice it up and boom! Gourmet lunch."
"You're silly. I like that you're eating."
"Yeah, I try to. People tell me I look so skinny now. I don't know if to be happy or not about it."
"well, a women need some meat on her bones. Too skinny could lead to illnesses." I laugh without energy. "What else has happened to you? Did that man ever talked to you?"
"You know Dad doesn't talk to me."
"Look at that leech. Who does he think he is?"
"My father,"
"That man will never change. He had never cared for anyone but himself. What if something would have had happened to you?"
I sighed. I know.
"Yeah, sounds about right." And she goes off about my dad. How much of a leech, of an asshole, of a bastard he is for not talking to me. She feels deeply what I'm telling her. She hates to see me sad. She has good reasons to hate him beside me anyways. I have reasons too, to hate him.
Like right now, yet I guess with the years, the hate goes away, and the only thing left is deception.
"I guess he has committed mistakes, "I say. "But aren't mistakes he cannot redeem himself from."
And then she laughed and laughed, and suddenly I knew I had awakened her worst.
"Ay mija! Don't be a fool! That mean has not only committed mistakes but also horrendous, heinous crimes."
"Yeah..." I know what's coming next.

"you've known and heard the stories about him, I'm still surprised that you still had the fold on." She remarks bluntly. "you've know what he's capable of."
"I know.."
"you known that he used to rape your mother, on how he would force himself on her and that how he had you and probably your other siblings. He's a nymphomaniac. He's uncapable of controlling his impulses."
"yeah..."
"not only that, all the female clients he had were victims of his. He would confess to it to me as if it was okay. And yeah, he had many woman under his belt, but does that mean all women fell under his spell? No, so they became victims."
The more she opens up, the more I fell uneasy. I feel doom sinking in.
I try to smoke but somehow I start getting zaps on my brain. The circuits on my brain are malcunctioning the more she talks and it hurts. I start to feel tears bubbling up.
"all the lawyer's reunions where your mom would go to, he would take advantage of her. and back then we wouldn't call it spousal rape since a man was entitled to his wife but now its recognize as a crime and how it affects us women. He never cared that your mom was left all bloody and in pain."
Hearing her mentioning those reunions hurt, because how is it possible that all those small times that mom got to dress up so beautifully, wearing a fancy dress and doing her makeup and going in arms with her prince charming that was my dad.... Meant she would only go to get raped. How could mom still go through the whole thing and the other times knowing this? The horror and fear she must have had felt...
It broke my hear knowing this and I start to hyperventilate so I cover my mouth and sit up.
Nothing that I ever thought was real.
I thought she was, well, not happy, but left alone to raise us while he went to work. But no, it meant she had me as a result of a rape. No wonder all those mistreatments I suffer... no wonder why she never smiled at me... no wonder why she feared leaving me alone with dad...

"and I never wanted to tell you about this but you're old enough to know."
I would have had gone a lifetime without needing to know what was next.

"when I told you how I met him, I never told you the full story. I was looking for a lawyer to get my son out of jail and I found your dad. All smiles and charismatic. He said he would help me and then told me to get in his car to go to the capital to get the papers needed for the case and so I went in his car. Only to be driven to a motel."
I close my eyes and I start sobbing. I put her on mute so she cannot hear me and she goes on to tell me what happen next, which there's no need to tell you what happen next, as you can figure it out. I keep getting zaps on my brain and so I keep crying and I keep getting memories. The times I would innocently go to his office, the times he would sit me on his desk while he worked and to only imagine probably he raped girls and women my age against the desk or his sofa made me cry even more. I screamed, asking my brain to stop but it kept hurting me. Both physicsally and mentally and I keep getting the memories of the lawyer's reunions and how for me it was the best mysterious times where mom would get so pretty and go off into the night like Cinderella and dance all night and when they came home, they would sleep in chairs so they wouldn't wake us kids up as he slept on their beds for the night. The times mom would make a sibling go with us to the store or the grocery store because she didn't want me to be raped by him and I never understood why she mistrusted him but yet I guess its my fault for wanting to be blind from this. Socorro is right. I know about the stories, I heard the stories straight from mom and my aunt.
How could he be this evil, yet he was the safest place I've known.
I used to think he was a safe haven, yet in reality he was a danger zone.
"I know what he is." I say. "but I guess I had wish to defer."
"wishing gets you nowhere when the truth always comes out strong."
"I know.." I say. "I believe you."
Silence.
"anyways," I say, trying my hardest not to sound like I'm crying. "I need to go to work, I will talk to you soon."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
And I hang up, eventually throwing my phone against the wall in fury.
I begin to scream, to punch the pillows, to rip off my blankets. Anything that would make these zaps go away and this sadness away. I try smoking.
Doesn't help.
I walk over to the kitchen and grab my bailey's bottle and chug on to it.
Doesn't help after half bottle is gone.
I'm almost tempted to take all my oxxys but I fear to get an overdose again without dying to instead I call Jerome. I beg him to come.

After half an hour, with the door unlock and with a backpack on hand, Jerome enters my apartment, only to find me laying on the floor, paralyzed.
He immediately throws away his backpack and kneels to pick me up from the floor. He is devastated as seeing this sight of me. He pulls me to his chest as I'm unable to move or talk. Just having my eyes open and tears running from them. We don't understand why I fell on this weird state. He shakes me, he almost does cpr on me, he kisses my forehead and tells me everything is going to be okay.
"he's a monster."
"who's a monster? Madeline, who hurt you?"
"he's a monster." I lament, and I keep forcing the words out because somehow I feel like shutting down. But as instinct within me tells me to stay awake.
"I need to talk you to your therapist. She'll know what to do." He says, beginning to stand up and picking me up in the process. He has me in his arms and takes me downstairs and into the car.

The whole time in the car, I could see how worried he was, yet I could have had cared less. Not because I don't love Jerome, but because I hate men.
I hate every single one of them.
They are all danger zones.
What if he is one too?