Dosed

Chapter 3: The Damage is Done

****Details of domestic a***e discussed***

Now I had to turn the light on, I waited a few minutes and listened. I heard movement and Rodrigo cussing at him like a stinking dog that won’t go outside. I knew he would be gone, I knew the future was what I had to look at now and the light switch was the first step.

My hand fumbled along the wall and found the switch. I flicked it and kept my eye shut as the bathroom brightness kicked in. I couldn’t immediately look in the mirror and instead my eyes fell on the mosaic tile Jason had made at school last year, I could hardly make out the shape but I knew what it was by the raging red that jumped off the white wall. It was a heart that had the word LOVE in red tiles. I thought back to the day he brought it home. It was Valentine’s Day and he was so excited to show me. I was working on my Mac when he came bursting through the door calling out to me and dropping his school bag all at once. I got up to go and meet him at the door but found Brody in the hallway, dishevelled and looking pist.

“Why did you wake me up you little s**t?! Why are you always screaming in this house? I worked all night and this is the thanks I get!” He is snarling as he looks down at his quivering little boy.

I quickly moved in front of Brody and scooped up Jason in my arms while we walked away and back outside. We sat on the porch and his little frame was almost totally enveloped in my lap. He was silent and his excitement seemed to have been extinguished.

Trying to change tactics and use distraction, I cheerfully asked him, “What’s got you so excited little man? Did you have a good day? How was your bus ride?”

He looked up at me with big crocodile tears in his eyes and stuck his bottom lip out.

“Don’t cry baby, Daddy just had a long night at work, he doesn’t mean it. What have you got there then?” He unfolded himself slightly but was still clutching a little package against his chest.

He looked hesitant but still excited and he took the package in both hands and told me “I made this at school, it is really just for you Ma. I don’t want Daddy to have it or even see it. I made it just for you because it is Valentine’s Day today.”

I took the package he offered up and unwrapped the little LOVE tile. It was so beautiful and I knew he had worked hard to get it right. He never was good and the crafty stuff but this was so unique and so beautiful to me I welled up.

“Don’t cry Ma, I made it because I love you!”

“I know baby, I just think it is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen and I want to keep it forever. Thank you.”

Just then Brody walked out on the porch scratching his head and wincing at the sunlight. “Hey you two, how’s it going? Whatcha got there Sol?” he asked me groggily.

“Just something Jason made at school, you ok?” I looked up at him, he had clearly just had a joint to take the edge off his need for a fix but as usual I ignored it and pretended all was well for the sake of the children.

“Ya babe, really good, hey little man that’s great. Did you make that at school? We need to hang that up Sol.”

So I did, in the bathroom, so every time I hid away in there to get some peace I could remind myself of the love I had, not the love I was losing.

With the light on and the clock ticking I knew I needed to turn around and look at what damage had been done. I could feel the sting on my back and I was sure two of my ribs were broken. Go to the hospital, ha, no way. All those people judging what my life had led me to and threatening to take my kids into care. Nah, I would call Chelsea in the morning and she would check me over. She may have left the neighborhood but she never forgot her friends. She was the pride of the street the day she graduated from med school. No one could believe that the pint sized brazen beauty who would turn her head to the books instead of boys had achieved her dream of being a doctor. She told us all the day she moved that she would only ever come back in a professional capacity and we all knew she had to leave and start fresh somewhere. Growing up here breeds a different sort of person and can crush your soul till you wake up one day and find yourself stumped by the reflection in the mirror. Ya, Chelsea would come back and check me over, she wouldn’t judge, she never did. She knew the situation was never black and white. She used to clean up her mom after her dad would get a bit too friendly in a not so nice a way.

I gingerly turned around and looked at the mirror. I lost my breath and gasped. One of my eyes was swollen shut and the other one was caked in dry blood. My hair was a matted rat’s nest and my forehead had blood crusted onto it. I had a welt across the left side of my neck and my shirt was ripped in six different places. I grabbed one of the holes and tugged. The material came away in my hands as I pulled the shirt down to my naval. Looking at the trail of marks, scratches and bruising I was disgusted, disgusted I didn’t do anything to stop this and grateful it had been me not one of the children that had opened the door to him tonight. I am looking at this body, this lump of flesh that he tormented and took pleasure in destroying. And for what?! I looked at myself in disgust, already trying to figure out what to tell Lily when she sees me. She heard our argument for sure but at what point did she leave with Jason?

I decided that I will never let this happen again. I took out my phone, which was still in my jeans pocket and automatically started taking pictures. This was my back up plan, if he came back I would turn this over to the police and they can take over trying to manage that wretched thing that he has become. He always has gear of some kind on him so that will add to the charges and with California’s three strike rule that would be his third damning strike and that’s it; Done, peace at last and him destined to a lifetime of butt banditry and delusion. Why not do it anyway, why not call them now and have him put away? That was the nice part of me, the part that knew that at one point we were a unit, the other half of each other and the only person that mattered to each other. We were like a rainbow and never found the end, never hid from sight and were full of magic and light. We had nothing, but had it all, we stayed out all day and made the world our home. We were kids when we met, kids with broken homes but not broken spirits. We saw everything together and lived so many dreams I guess it was inevitable that it would turn into a nightmare at some point. But I had woken up from the nightmare now and I knew I was not alone; but not the other half of a soulful union either.

He always smoked pot, you grow up in Cali, you smoke pot, you enjoy life, you go watch the sunset and cook your dinner on the beach. We had no one at home cooking us a meal or waiting up for us, we just had life and the desire to live it to the ultimate. It’s just part of who we are, what makes Cali the best place to be from, the best place to live and the place half the world want to get to! I guess for him the pot wasn’t enough after a while, he wanted to journey, he got caught up with all the great rock bands who came out of here in the 80’s and used to be a junior roadie for whoever was hiring. He would lie that he was eighteen and finished school, pack up a backpack and set of on these great adventures. I would tag along claiming to be an aspiring photographer and videographer. The bands ate it up and loved having young, dynamic people around them so we were an ideal pair. Les Affairs gave him his first hit of brown when he worked for their California Expulsion tour. He came back from that two week torrent of self-a***e and I was surprised how different he was. I had been with them the night he first tried it taking video footage of their show and pictures for my latest project. Brody on H was not a nice thing to see and the next day he swore to me he would never try it again because he said it felt like his bones were rattling and the back of his head had been blown out. He promised me, he told me it would just be w**d and not even alcohol. I believed him and left the tour as I knew five days away from home was enough and someone would notice I was missing by now but when he came back I noticed he was quiet and sullen. The diamonds in his eyes had gone back to standard coal and he was tired. He told me he had tried it a few more times but that he didn’t like it and he had left the tour early as he didn’t trust himself to stay off it and knew if he came back to me he wouldn’t need it. I doted on him, put my life to the side and just stayed with him every minute. I cuddled him and cooked for him and made sure he knew that we were the best thing that existed and we had no need for hard core s**t like that in our lives. He never had any more for about 10 years and I thought the plague of H would never come back to fiddle with our perfection. In those ten years we set up in a mobile home by the beach, made movies, took pictures and lived like the most carefree children of the world. We grew up together and accepted the realities of the world. We understood that it was just us, no one would miss us or need us so we were free to grow, learn and love as we liked. Alas, another tour and an added 10 years of life and he felt he needed to turn back the clock, feel young and stupid again. This time it was the group Tourage Dam, a bunch of wannabe gangsters that sagged their trousers and rapped over their hard core rock. I was asked to cover their Santa Monica gig as they wanted a video montage of their California tour so I took Brody with me as he was between jobs and he always got itchy when he had no money of his own. We watched the show and I personally thought their style was just fake, just about ‘living the life’ of a rock star but having no idea what integrity and self-respect were. Filming them back stage was almost sickening as they drank champagne from the bottle and fondled girls like they were petting cats. They played up for the camera and made life look good, time of their lives and stuff. Brody bought into that s**t but I knew better, I’d seen it before, and I knew the band would be finished within a year. They asked Brody to come and smoke with them and then the drummer pulled out the brown and through pure peer pressure and lack of a backbone I watched Brody shoot up. I packed my camera and lights and left before he even took out the needle. When he came home two days later I was packed and ready to go. I handed him the keys to our little place near the beach and told him he could go f**k himself. He told me he was sorry and all the rest but that he had worked last night with the band on their Palm Springs gig and pulled out $500 cash. He said he did the brown just the once and the rest of the time he was just working with their head roadie trying to find an opening somewhere on the circuit so he could work again. I bought it and swallowed it just because deep down I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to give up on my other half.

You can’t explain what it feels like to realise you have been an i***t, you have deceived yourself and convinced yourself your life is as it should be. Looking in the mirror it seemed like every mark was screaming at me, condemning me and painting a picture of the hell I had been living for the last 5 years. The welts on my back represented the mountains I had constantly been battling whilst the bruises started to emerge like stains that could not be washed away. The blood painted a portrait of a silly girl, a stupid and scared child that held on to whatever happiness she could only to realise that no one actually cared about her and no one ever wanted to be her protector and guard. Looking at this tragic gallery I realised that from tonight onwards I would walk alone again, I would brace myself against the world, accept that soulfulness was genuinely adverse to joining me on my journey and accept that my happiness now lie in myself and the forging of an existence with my children. They had suffered enough and paid dearly for my self-deception and now it was going to be different. Instead of pacifying a beast I would cater to the blessings.

I ran the sink till it was warm and began to wash off the blood from my face. I wanted to see clearly and see what was left of me. I heard shouting outside the door and a new voice clearly shouting down the hallway. I knew Rodrigo would make sure what I said was done, he had wanted to kill Brody for the last five years and now he would be relishing the power he held and I felt safe now. He probably called a few of the boys in to make sure he left. The blood was easy to get off my head but to get it off my back was too painful for me. Every time I reached behind me my ribs screamed out for leniency and begged for attention. I gingerly got into the shower and let the hot water scorch me in a vain attempt to cleanse my body of its shame. I looked over at my jeans on the floor and my bloodstained rag of a shirt realising how lucky I was to be alive. I shut my eyes against the water and went back to the crystal waters of Mexico, I felt warmth and bliss and saw the colors of the sea once again, I smiled thinking of the calm I always know would wash over me when I go out to sea. The sea is where I always feel safe, I feel my inner restlessness disappear and I feel as though I will sprout gills at any moment and swim away like a fish cut from its hook; free to explore unknown places and never stop moving.

Looking down at the blood in the shower basin I realised that something else is bleeding and when I look at my back in the mirror I see six open welts seeping out blood like they are hiding a dirty secret. I groan and pray that it will soon stop as I can’t bandage them and I needed to get over to Nana’s to make sure the kids are ok. The bruises have come out to deepen my despair and I feel like my whole body will look like a pot of blue and black paint got thrown over me in the next hour. I turn off the shower and step out, I take one more long look at the wreckage the shower has salvaged, wrap a towel around it and sit on the toilet. I heard knocking softly on the door so I opened it a c***k.