The Forgotten Drug Kid, From the Payne Street Collection
They stand on the front porch with their machetes guarding the house. From the street where we park our Yellow Datsun, I hear the flimsy door screech open and slam shut whenever someone walks in or out. Mom walks a few feet ahead of us up the gravel driveway as the men on the porch glare at us. I feel yucky. It's the middle of summer vacation, broiling hot, and all I want to do is run through a cold sprinkler. By the time we get home, it'll be dark, and we won't be able to go outside. It's super annoying that mom brought us here. I'll be nine next month; I can babysit.
We walk past the guys with the machetes, through the dilapidated screen door, and into the house where mom leaves us in a dark bedroom on the first floor near the kitchen. Everything is sticky. There's a mattress on the bedroom floor and a little boy sitting on it; he's sticky, too. He's wearing only a loose diaper, which seems strange since he's not a baby. As soon as we walk into the dark room with the sticky mattress, the scraggly little boy offers us a Red ball to play with. Since the mattress is too gross to sit on, we kick the ball around instead. At some point, one of us accidentally kicks it out of the dark bedroom, and our hearts sink to the floor as we watch the ball escape and roll down the off-kilter hallway and into the kitchen. I don't know what to do. Mom said not to leave the bedroom until she came to get us, but she'll be missing for hours. I need to get it. I gingerly tip-toe down the grimy hallway to the kitchen, where the grown-ups are shooting up. They look like zombies with their lighters under kitchen spoons turning powder into a liquid — I recognize the slight vinegar smell from our main bathroom at home. I'm mesmerized by how many grown-ups fit into that tiny kitchen. I pick up the ball from the dirty linoleum floor. Nobody notices me.
Day turns to night, and mom's finally ready to go home. By now, I'm tired and don't notice the noisy door or the tall guys with machetes on the way out. We get in the Datsun, mom lights up her Winston, and we begin the drive home. If there's anything good about wasting a summer day at the heroin house, it's that we get about 25 minutes in the car on the way home with nice mom. I love those tender yet fleeting moments with her after a fix — she's calm and engaging and wants to talk to us. This is the perfect time to ask her about the scraggly little kid from the dark bedroom. Nice mom explains that his name is Joey, and he and his parents live in the house. She explains that Joey is old enough to attend elementary school but doesn't think his parents will send him. Mom asks me to consider how hard life must be for that little boy. She reminds me that while I have a brother and a sister, Joey is alone. Also, we have lots of toys to play with; he has only one. And most importantly, his parents are too busy working at the house all day and night to give him anything, and we're lucky to have parents who love us.
Mom believes she's giving us a good life, or at least a better life than Joey's by comparison. In her mind, nine years old is too young to babysit, so she takes us with her to the drug house to ensure we're safe. She knows if we're desperate, she can call Grandma and Grandpa Dauble for money, and they'll give it to us. She knows Dad will always find a way to put food on the table. Her rosy perspective on our traumatic existence is relative.
Growing up, my family lives what feels like two separate lives. Part of our life is spent living in suburbia, on a quiet street named Payne Street, in a cape-cod-style house with a white picket fence and a stream that meanders through the backyard. We even have a couple of apple trees and a Collie named Lassie. But, on the other hand, in that same idyllic house, mom's needles are lying around, and we're paranoid that if we accidentally poke ourselves with one, we'll get AIDS. Sometimes, when mom's desperate for a fix, she steals our chores money from our best hiding places and threatens to beat us if she doesn't get what she wants, and it's not an idle threat. Every surface at home is sticky, even the carpets, just like the ones in the drug house. Dad is around, but his energy goes to working hard to pay for mom's drugs and keep everything afloat.
Most days, it's hell on Payne Street, and I want to die, but there are a few good days too. We have contrast in our lives and witness firsthand the bad, and the good, in all things. Perhaps Mom is right — we are lucky by comparison. Day after day, little Joey experiences filth, the tall scary men with machetes, and a near-constant stream of junkies who traipse past the dark bedroom. Joey is invisible. He is a forgotten drug kid.
It's been 40 years since I met little Joey, and I still think about him often. I wonder if social services ever came to the house and removed him. I fantasize that a loving family with a big yard full of trees, an inground swimming pool with a slide — and maybe even a fluffy puppy — adopts him and gives him a beautiful life. I daydream that he has clean sheets on a dry bed for the first time in his little life. I even fantasize that somehow he's seeing this article, remembers me too, and reaches out to let me know that, like me and against all odds, he made peace with his brokenness and used it to live a life of joy and purpose. It's a Pollyanna thought, I know. But, the reality is, he's probably gone by now. Statistically speaking, he would become an addict like his parents and die young or have his own forgotten drug kids that live in a dark room with a wet mattress as the cycle continues.
This article is dedicated to Joey and all of the forgotten drug kids. You are never invisible to me.
