 "I had two kids, and the courts took them away from me… I was on the streets, sleeping under bridges. I won't ever forget how much it hurt. I won't ever forget how much pain it was." —Beatrice |
Alano Club:
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When you push open the wood screen-door of the Alano Club in South Park it feels as if you are entering the dimly lit, casually cluttered rooms of a private lodge or run-down fraternal clubhouse from the 1960s. The front rooms are filled with battered but welcoming sofas and mismatched chairs. In a corner, a cheap but accurate grandfather clock chimes softly. On a smooth wood counter there are 3 decks of worn playing cards and a cribbage board, ready for use.
The wood paneled walls are covered with faded black and white photographs of men from an era of thin ties, oiled hair and heavy wool suits. Inside a glass case there is a ceremonial Celtic Bodhran drum, a gift from a sister Alano Club in Ireland. Above the huge stone and brick fireplace is a small brass plaque engraved with one sentence, "Thank you to the Alano Club for helping my son, and also to my son Raymond for accepting that help."
Moving down the hallway that leads to the large back room where the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous take place, there is a small bulletin board. Partly covered by notices of Sunday night Bingo and monthly pancake breakfast fund-raisers, is a carefully handwritten, block-printed letter from an inmate at Gunnison State Prison in Utah. He writes to ask for help in finding his mother, an alcoholic, who went to meetings at the Alano Club when he was growing up. The writer describes his mother and asks if anyone still attending meetings there remembers her, knows where she may be. His letter closes, "My mother ought to know that she has 5 grandchildren that would also love to meet her, 1 boy and 4 girls, ages 15 boy, 11, 9, 6 and 3 are the girls."
The large back room of the Alano Club in South Park is crowded with more than 60 people. A man stands up and reads from a printed page. He reads with a full voice and emphatic gestures, as if he were on stage. Soon he is reciting long passages from memory. He sounds like Moses reading the Ten Commandments, but he is reading The 12 Steps of Recovery. Around the room, people shout or mumble in response, "I am sick but getting better!" "Grant me the wisdom!" "I surrender to a higher power!"
But even the shouting voices, while loud and defiant, are hoarse, broken, exhausted.
They are men and women, teenagers and young-adults, middle-aged and elderly people. They sit in metal folding chairs around bare tables inside the large, dingy room. Their shoulders are slumped, their gazes dislocated. Sometimes they glance at another person, make brief eye contact, offer a tired smile. But mostly they stare into the space around them, stare into the tops of the bare tables, stare into the walls of peeling paint, or stare into their tormented hands, folded on the tables or restless in their laps.
After the readings of the fundamental guidelines, the 12 Steps, and the reminder that no weapons or drugs are permitted in the room, those who have been clean and sober for 30 days come to the front of the room. While the congregation applauds and shouts encouragement, each is given a commemorative token and a long hug from the meeting's leader. Next, the people clean and sober for 60 days go up front. Then the people clean and sober for 90 days.
Soon the meeting is opened to anyone who wants to speak aloud. Each person is free to say anything they want to say—anything they need to say.
And the stories begin.
"My name is Don, I'm an addict. And a liar."
His statement causes understanding laughter, and the man, in his mid-thirties, continues. He speaks well, with the eagerness to entertain that the best storytellers—and the best liars—all possess. But soon, his rambling monologue takes him unexpectedly to mention the boy he once was, and his voice shakes. He speaks slowly, as if hearing the meaning of his own words for the first time. "I started drinking when I was nine years old. I'm addicted to lying. Just as much as to alcohol and drugs. Maybe being a liar is my real addiction. I wonder if it's why I would drink, and use. In a way, it was all just me, lying to myself, lying to everyone."
"My name is Chris. I'm an addict." Thin, with a long, handsome face and straight brown hair, Chris could be Kurt Cobain's younger brother. The women in the room, young and old, nod as Chris speaks, and smile in answer to his shy smile.
"I call my higher power 'my chauffeur'," Chris says, and shrugs. "I don't know, I think maybe I got that from reading Calvin and Hobbes when I was a kid. Anyhow, when I let my chauffeur drive, things go okay. But I have this problem. I keep trying to grab the wheel from him. I want to drive. That's how I wound up in Phoenix two years ago. I had to drive. I wouldn't listen to my chauffeur telling me it was a bad move. And I hate Phoenix. Phoenix sucks ass. I came to San Diego two weeks ago thinking I might move here. I had a pocket-full of money, and I started using again, and here I am now, broke and sleeping on the street. But this morning, I went to the grocery store real early when they were throwing out all the cardboard and boxes—"
Chris pulls a large sheet of cardboard out from under his chair. On the big square the word Phoenix is printed in block letters with black paint. Everyone in the room laughs. Someone sings out, "On the road again!"
"Yeah. I made this big-ass sign because I'm going to hitch-hike back to Phoenix. Today. Right after this meeting, in fact. I'm going to take care of some things back in Phoenix because I want to come back here to San Diego. It's not like I have a lot back there in Phoenix, but I've got some unfinished business I have to take care of before I can leave. I think my chauffeur is telling me this is what I should do and where I should be. I am definitely trying to keep my hands off the wheel this time."
"My name is Wendy and I'm an alcoholic and crack head. I'm coming up on 90 days sober and I'm really a little shaky." Wendy is a plump, dyed-blonde woman. She could be twenty, or forty. She is wearing a sleeveless summer dress and sandals and the tanned, soft skin of her arms is at odds with the dry, bleached and red-blotched skin of her face. She wears heavy black eyeliner that makes her watery blue eyes appear small and wary. There is a pleading, whining quality to her high-pitched voice.
"I've been sober once for two years but I don't know, just every time I come up on 90 days it's the toughest part for me."
A few people around the room shout, "Keep going! " "It works!"
"It's a really bad time right now because I have twin girls and it's their birthday this week. They're in New York, with my mom, and I can't afford to fly there to be with them. And my mom, she just told the girls that I'm their mother. See, they've always thought I was their older sister. But the girls are thrilled. They say, Now we have two moms!"
Wendy pauses to stare at her fidgeting hands. Soon, the hands become
still, and she speaks again, but her voice is different. The whine
of complaint is gone, replaced by a tired, disjointed questioning.
"My mother won't let me visit them. I know she's worried. I don't
blame her for that. I miss my girls. I think back how I started
life. I was the least likely to succeed. You know? I don't even
know how, but I turned that around. For a while I was in law school.
But then I lost a baby. I turned to drugging and drinking and just
went right back to least likely to succeed. I don't know why. All
my life I was always the one able to take care of other people.
I never took care of myself."
When Wendy is done, a woman speaks in a strong voice. "Wendy, I want to tell you something. My name is Beatrice. I'm an addict. I've been sober fifteen years. Yeah, that's right, fifteen years. And you first timers pay attention, because here I am, still coming to meetings."
Beatrice is a lean, light brown woman in her fifties. Her well-cut black hair has bold streaks of gray. She is wearing a black skirt, a cream silk shirt and a gray cashmere sweater. She is the only speaker to look directly into the faces of the people around her.
"Wendy." Beatrice says the name and then confidently waits until Wendy meets her gaze.
"Fifteen years ago, I had two kids, and the courts took them away from me. And I was, at one point, I was on the streets, sleeping under bridges. I won't ever forget how much it hurt. I won't ever forget how much pain it was."
Beatrice does not look away from Wendy, but the younger woman drops her head, stares into her restless hands.
"This year I lost my mother," Beatrice continues, looking around the room. "And then a week later, I lost my big brother." The fifty-year old woman's voice falters on the words "big brother." She stops herself. The bracelets on her wrists make a dull metallic sound as she adjusts her sweater.
"Listen to me," Beatrice says, her voice strong again. "I been through recovery with a lot of people over the years. Some of them, a lot of them, are dead. And I don't want to sound hard, I don't want to sound mean, but I really think, in my heart, better them than me. You know why? Because I got a life. I have got a life. We all in here have lives. Sometimes we have to let go of people. We have to let go so we can keep moving forward."
In the bright October sun just two blocks away from the Alano Club small children are playing in the courtyard of their school. There is a dark skinned boy with a new crew cut riding past on a tricycle, happy, but waiting for a smile in response to his wave. A girl laughs as she easily dodges the ball two boys clumsily throw at her. A girl with pigtails hangs upside down from the monkey bars. Two girls stand near the building, and lean so far forward that their foreheads touch as they excitedly whisper their secrets.
Which of these blithe children are already sailing into killing storms building around them? Which of these barely begun lives will be battered, shipwrecked, and lost? Which of them will become castaways, with nothing but a first name and a long story, on the island, perhaps decades ahead, but just two blocks away, that is the large back room of the Alano Club?