Something Better
by Sydney Moon
James Madison University
A senior (class of 2021) English major at James Madison University with a minor in creative writing and a minor in African, African American, and Diaspora Studies (AAAD), Sydney Moon works as a social media intern for AAAD and is an active member of their fundraising for the opening of the AAAD Center at JMU.
When I was thirteen, I remember sitting with my mother at the counter of a pinpoint-sized town near Santa Fe. We were on our way to Albuquerque from just outside of Durango, Colorado. She told me that my brother, Charlie, could go fuck himself. I could see the pancake and coffee being pushed around her mouth by her tongue. Her face hung low with exhaustion and her nose was dripping with snot. She sucked it back into her brain, “Mark”—a burp—“you better not leave me like your brother did, that piece of shit.” Charlie, moved out at sixteen. Up until then he was working afternoons at the bowling alley, but he told my mom that he was at band practice. She was so drugged up on her medicine that she didn’t even notice he never brought home an instrument. She probably wouldn’t have noticed if he stayed home from school every day. He didn’t like the drugs and he knew he could be something if he tried.
Nothing ever came close to making my mother want to quit. She tried one time and she ended up beating my brother for not taking out the trash. Some of those scars are still on his face. She figured she might as well inject. She was such a demon when off the needle.
Ever since I could remember I was always my mom’s ride-along for drug runs. I took my brother’s place. She would tell me that we were going to “get some medicine for mommy.” I watched as the “doctors” that stood in parking lots, wearing oversized clothes, made their way from car to car. The clothes used to fit before their lives were forever changed by one dime bag. Believing they were “doctors” was a way for me to convince myself that my mother was just ill and needed treatment. They would lean into the passenger seat window where I was always sitting. The smell of death and sulfur coming from their mouths. There were bruises on top of their bruises.
The “doctors” would always ask my mom to pay for her medication. And when she couldn’t, they would get in the car and direct us to a dimly lit, lonely parking lot. I would stare straight forward and listen to the sound of mouth on flesh. The groans of these men will never cease to exist in my dreams.
Charlie was home all this time, doing homework into the sad, hopeless hours of the early morning. Red Bulls overflowing in the trash can. The one light in the kitchen wasn’t even bright enough to stretch past the table. I always knew he was going to be something more. Something more than my mother. Something more than my alcoholic father who left us before we were old enough to know who he was. Charlie got into Colorado State University and used the bowling alley money to dig himself out of the quicksand that was my family.
* * *
When I turned fourteen my mother took me on a “prescription” run to Albuquerque. We drove all through the night, stopping every twenty minutes for her to re-dose herself. I kept my eyes closed the whole ride because if I couldn’t see it, it wasn’t happening. Life wasn’t happening. But one time I did catch a glimpse. The lighter provided some light. I watched my mother’s pale, hollowed-out face. Her eyes rolled back into her head like she made it to climax. My mother released a deep, raspy sigh, “Don’t do drugs, muffin. They aren’t for kids.”
We pulled up to a cinder block building with no markings. Like an adult video store that doubled as a brothel. One that even the skeeviest would find to be unnerving. The doors and windows had bars and chains on them. But they weren’t for keeping people out. They were for detaining the demons and horrors inside. The slight glow of a television made the curtains flash colors. The front door was boarded up and displayed a pentagram. Classy.
My mother opened her door. She put her left foot on the ground and then her right foot, making sure she was actually alive, and not an intangible entity created by the drugs. Her torso teetered for a minute before she was stable enough to try to stand. I told her that I was going to wait in the car. She came over to my side and opened my door, grabbed my wrist and pulled me out. The pain was nothing new. She dragged me through the dusty front yard with tumble-weed-like plants and various car parts scattered everywhere. As we got closer and closer to the house I noticed holes in the boarded up front door. They were just the right size to be bullet holes. We made our way to the back of the house. A dog, a four legged bag of bones, was chained to a pole. It’s body was chaffed and scarred, and its eyes were dead. The porch to the back door was covered in garbage and smelled like spoiled fish and eggs even though half of it was beer bottles. We stepped onto the porch. By my right foot was a needle.
A man of about five foot ten opened the door. His hair was sopping wet with sweat and his figure wasn’t too far from the dog’s. He smiled at my mother. A smile that would send ice through your veins. His eyes dropped to look at me. I stared back and all I could find in his irises was death. I could tell he was used to his “patients” bringing their children because he ushered us inside and put me on a lazy boy in the living room. Something started seeping through my sweatpants but I knew I wasn’t supposed to speak unless spoken to. It smelled like beer, or what I hoped beer smelled like. The man and my mother sat on a loveseat across the way. On the coffee table sat a scale, a Big Gulp cup with needles in it, various empty lighters, dozens of dime bags full of “medicine,” and a spoon. My mother and the man looked over at me. I was sitting in a fetal position, arms wrapped around my legs. She said, “Muffin, this is Robby. He’s mommy’s friend. He’s going to help me feel better.” She smiled a closed-mouth smile because she knew her teeth had been annihilated long ago.
Robby’s face looked like it had lost its youth years before it should have. I watched him take a dime bag and he started pouring the “medicine” out onto the scale. He lifted his head slightly to look at me. “You’re a small kid. I’m sure you’ll get bigger. If you don’t, then call ol’ Robby and he’ll bring his gun. The other kids will never fuck with you again.” The only words I could utter were, “Thank you.” He looked back down at his hands. His hands were shaking like an old man with degenerative Parkinson's. I was shocked he was able to weigh it out, put it in the spoon, ignite it, and then draw the substance into the syringe. He grabbed my mother’s arm, banded it, and she made her hand into a fist. Robby poked around her fragile forearm and found a spot he liked. The needle went in and he depressed the end of it. Slowly, slowly over a matter of sixty seconds. Her eyes rolled back and I knew she felt better.
We started going back to Robby’s place at least four times a week—when her local doctor’s medicine wasn’t strong enough. Robby was always kind to me. He offered me chips and sometimes a soda. I wondered if Robby had a “Robby.” If he had a person that existed for him like he existed for my mother. I wondered why he needed any of it. Every time we would go, I would study my mother. She looked more sick with every trip. One day, when she was injected, she stumbled towards the door in an attempt to stop it from coming up. Fruitless effort—she threw up all over Robby’s wall. He stood to help her. She was squatting down with her head between her knees. Robby placed his hands on her shoulders and rubbed. He helped her back to the couch and she laid down face up. He placed a pillow under her feet and head. Robby brought me a soda that day.
* * *
When I was seventeen my mother was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center near downtown Durango. When I got there, I told the front desk her name. They gave me directions that included two elevators. I hadn’t noticed that I was already at her door. I guess I teleported, my mind blank, my stomach empty of its words. When I opened the door, I saw Robby sitting in front of the window. I was strangely comforted by seeing him there, a familiar face. In the background the Colorado Rockies were more beautiful than I had ever seen them. It was late summer, but snow had crept up on them. My mother was laying on the bed with her torso propped up ever so slightly. The machines beeped a symphony of data. I’d been in a hospital before. Charlie broke his arm—rather my mother broke his arm. She had pushed him down the back porch steps because he threw away one of her dime bags. He knew what he was doing.
I walked over to my mother’s lifeless body. I looked into every crack, ever scab, every scar on her face. I was with her for each one. I traced her collar bones and saw the birthmark that she liked to hide even though the rest of her body was bruised and scabbed. Her gold cross had been removed. Robby knew what I was looking for and stood up. He grabbed my hand and placed the cross in it. It wasn’t just a cross, it had Jesus’s figure on it as well. My mother looked like him—destroyed, dead. Robby went back to his place in front of the window and invited me to join him. “You know bud, I’ve seen a shit load of mothers in hospital beds. I have to visit them. I have to. I helped them; I gave them the one thing they shouldn’t be given.” I had nothing to say. I just stared at my mother’s chest rising and falling with the help of a respirator.
The door opened and a nurse popped her head in. “We have another visitor!” The fuck was she so happy about? Whatever it was, I wanted what she was having. A tall figure with silky brown hair stepped into the room. Charlie. It was Charlie. I didn’t recognize him, I had no idea when the last time I saw him was. He looked healthy, he looked like a man. He stepped towards my mother, looking at her body, probably cataloging the years of abuse she inflicted on herself and on us. Watching her, he said, “Mark. How are you?” I stood up and walked over to our mother. “I’ve been good. Studying for the ACT. Going to try to go to Colorado State.” He nodded and replied with a Mmmmhm…never taking his eyes off of her. He touched my mother’s arm, “And you, Robby? Long time no see.” Robby cleared his throat, “Yeah, it’s been at least 15 years. Been good man. Been good. Sorry about your mother.” Charlie sighed, “Eh, not your fault, she was too far gone from the start.” We existed in silence for a bit before Charlie said he had to go to a meeting downtown because he was buying an apartment. He left the room. His eyes never graced mine. I ran to the door and stepped into the hallway to try and go after him but he was gone.
Three minutes later the same nurse came in. Her joy had slipped away and her face was stiff. She looked at Robby and I with the deepest pity and regret. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she grabbed cord after cord and started detaching them. A man that I assumed to be a doctor came in and stood at the foot of the bed. My mother’s body was tethered to two final devices: the respirator and the heart monitor. The doctor wrote a few things down on the clipboard and showed them to the nurse. She nodded and then pulled the respirator from my mother’s mouth. The beeps echoed slower and slower. Robby and I watched as my mother’s chest fell flat and the line on the monitor followed suit. Then came a gurgle from her mouth. Was she still alive? Her head jerked with a cough. Robby stood up. The doctor walked over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder, “It’s just the last bit of air from the respirator exiting her body.”
Robby and I walked out of the hospital at the same time. He turned to me, “You are one brave kiddo. You were your mother’s favorite.” I nodded and we walked our separate ways. On my way to the garage I turned my phone on. I had a voicemail from Charlie. “Hey Mark. She’s being cremated. If you want her ashes, they will be ready in a few days.” I found my car and drove back to our family home. I opened the front door and stepped in. The house seemed to sigh and fall quiet. I sat at the kitchen table under that one light that didn’t stretch past the table. I laid my head on my arms and sleep took over.
* * *
Two days later, I got a text from Charlie, They’re ready. I made my way to the crematorium and told the man at the front desk, “Laurie Stevenson.” I walked out with a black box the size of a gallon of milk. I put her in the front seat and sat there staring at her. I tried to remember her face but I was already losing it. I tried to remember her voice but I couldn’t get it quite right. I tried to pull good memories from the cellar but they were battered and torn. All I could see was her sitting in the driver’s seat, pulled over on the side of the highway, banding her arm and lighting her bic—the needle trembling in her teeth.
I drove. I drove for a long time. I drove until the night consumed the mountains and the stars began their dance. I had no plan or destination. At about 2:30 in the morning I parked my car. The familiar sight of that unmarked cinder block building stood in front of me. All these years later that pentagram was still there, a warning. I grabbed my mother and made my way to the back porch. The dog was gone but the trash wasn’t. Robby opened the door and invited me in. I sat on the love seat and placed my mother on the table. It was my first time on that couch. I could feel my mother’s impression. He handed me a Coke and I opened it and placed it next to her. I tapped the powder into the spoon, added water, and lit it up. Robby tied my arm and I pulled the medicine into the syringe. A pinch and a push.
Editors’ Comments
"I could not put this story down. It was something that I read in one sitting and just had to find out what happened. The story takes an expected twist but overall makes sense when you look at the story as a whole. I would definitely read more stories from this author if they all have twists in the most unexpected way. "