Some names have been changed.
I got a call last night from my best friend, Grace. Grace and I have known each other our whole lives. Our families toted us to the same church when we were infants. We’ve been best friends since we were six and we endured the slings and arrows of elementary school together.
In many ways, Grace is like a sister. When I got thrown out of my home at 14, I moved into Grace’s house. In a very real way, although we’re not blood relations, we’re family. Last night, Grace had some family news to share. Another of our “sisters,” Cindy, had a baby. His name is Elijah.
Elijah is already a person, a precious individual. I don’t know him, but he’s been named and I know he’s a fighter. He’s bound to me not through genetics, but through all the inextricable ties of time and place. I suppose I’m his aunt. I suppose Grace is his aunt, too.
Elijah deserves to be happy. He deserves to be welcomed into the world with joy and laughter. He deserves to start his new life in the arms of people who love him and to be surrounded by care and kindness. Elijah will not be getting the life he deserves.
Elijah is 5 days old now. Grace did not call me sooner because Elijah’s arrival in this world was not greeted with joy, but some other emotion we cannot describe. The news of this new life brought me and Grace, his aunts, feelings of profound sadness, grief, and something akin to horror as well. Except there is love mixed in. I don’t know what to call love and caring absent the joy and hope. Perhaps this is despair.
Through no fault of his own, Elijah is a drug addict. He started his new life in intensive care on life-support. He was not expected to live, but he’s off the machines now and doing miraculously better. As I said, he’s a fighter.
It would be easy to hate his mother. While Elijah lies in the hospital fighting for his life, Cindy is already gone, out on the streets somewhere. Elijah is in one of the best hospitals in the world, getting the most modern and expensive medical care available. No one except social workers has gone to see him yet. Cindy is probably out somewhere right now, ingesting the drugs that Elijah is crying for.
It would be easy to hate his mother, except that I can’t and I won’t. I was 14 when Cindy was born. She came into this world in much the same way as Elijah. Because I was the other outsider in the house, I was beholden to fill the tasks no one wanted. I took care of Cindy.
Through no fault of her own, Cindy was a drug addict when she was born. Cindy’s mother was a prostitute, her father a junkie. It was tough when she was a baby, she cried so much, but she made up for it quickly. Cindy was one of those happy, sweet spirits.
She had a personality that was bigger than her. She made everyone smile. Cindy, too, deserved to be happy. She deserved to be greeted with joy and surrounded by love, just like Elijah does now. I really hated her mother.
Cindy is in some ways the same, sweet spirit now that she was then. Only now, it’s Elijah in the hospital and Cindy on the street. It would be so easy to hate her — Elijah’s her third. But I remember that sweet spirit. I think of her now and see that spirit still. But it’s stuck in an addicted body.
She sells her body to strangers so she can pay for the drugs it wants. That soft, warm little body I held in my arms all those years ago. It’s been through so much since then. It’s been sick, it’s been imprisoned, it’s been beaten.
She’s been so addicted, so used, you can barely look at her now. She’s lost all her teeth. The men who pay for her now are not buying her sweetness. The men who buy her now are attracted to her pain, to her damage. They usually hurt her some more.
No, I can’t hate Elijah’s mother when her pain is so real, so all-consuming, so heartbreaking. Even when I was 14, a selfish age, I was helpless in the face of Cindy’s pain. I’d gladly give up my sleep, my grades, going out with friends, to rock her in my arms and sing songs to her all night.
I wish I could fix it now, or at least make it better. If it was a matter of gathering her in my arms, holding her ravaged body, and singing her the songs from our past I would do it. I would fly there on the next plane. I’d clutch her to my breast. I’d sing all the songs I know.
But that won’t help so I stay put. She needs something I can’t give. She’s sick and she’s suffering, as surely as Elijah. When Elijah is released from the hospital, he’ll be released to the family and live in the house where I lived, his Aunt Grace lived, his other aunts and his mom, Cindy, lived. He will be the seventh drug-addicted “grandchild” born to two of the sweet girls from that house.
Elijah will have food, he’ll have clothes, he will not be physically abused at home, but I worry. Perhaps this fighting boy will be different. Perhaps he will have some extraordinary gift that will allow him to escape his circumstances and rise above his fate, but the odds are he’ll be normal, he’ll be average. The odds are he’ll be a regular human, perhaps even a sweet one, and not exceptional.
In that case, what will become of him? I’m too afraid to have hopes for Elijah. Hope is too painful, so I have prayers. It is my prayer for him that he gets some of the happiness and love that everyone in life deserves, that in this life, he will be shown the mercy his mother never had and cannot give.
It is my prayer for Elijah that if he’s a sweet boy and makes people smile, that the sweetness is never crushed out of him. I pray our society somehow becomes sane and will start taking care of the people who are here. That it will realize that drug treatment and contraception and compassion are the wiser, or at least the more cost-effective, course.
It is my most fervent prayer for Elijah that the little body the hospital is trying so hard to save will not one day have to be sold. I pray that if he ever triggers his addiction, he will be treated compassionately and not be turned into a criminal. I pray for his safety, his health, his mother. I pray he doesn’t learn to hate her.
And I pray that if one day Elijah ever has a baby, that our tears will all be of joy.
Cross-posted from Unbossed.
Izzy, thank you for this beautiful and heartbreaking tale. Sadly, I can relate as many of my childhood friends have gone by the wayside thanks to their companions of meth, cocaine and other destructive forces. While Elijah will have a tough road ahead of him, your words tell me that he will not have to face them alone. Paz
Thanks ManE. I appreciate the kind words. And it does somehow help to know we’re not alone in these matters.
If we spent even a quarter of what we do for useless military programs, we could help kids like Elijah and his mom too.
I will continue to fight for these people. Everyone deserves to come into this world loved and wanted.
I echo what Manny has so eloquently stated. I’m sending best wishes that Elijah can pull through these first days, and my thoughts too go to Cindy. It’s such a sad story Izzy. I’m thinking of you. {{{Izzy}}}
Beautifully and honestly written, Izzy. Thank you for reminding us all that a more just, more caring world isn’t just some hazy, philosophical goal but a real, breathing, demanding need.
And our answer to drug addiction? If you are poor we lock you up. Rich, we let you skate into rehab.
In other words we have a morally bankrupt society.
Thanks for the diary. Once upon a time I was dependent on drugs in my life. I was fortunate to have enough people who cared about me and were willing to provide the support I needed to eliminate them from my life. Far to many people in our society lack that support, both emotional and financial, to deal with their addiction. And we, as a society, have chosen to condemn those who lack the necessary means to escape this hell on earth, even as to many of the same people quick to condemn the poorfor their addicitons, are equally willing to sympathize with those, like Rush Limbaugh or Kate Moss, who, being rich and white and famous, manage to avoid the terrible fate that poverty imposes upon many of their fellow drug addicts.
The picture below is me holding my husband’s grandson on the day he was born. Now a month short of his first birthday, I wonder every day if he’ll reach it. His 21 year old mother has cut off contact with us because we called the police when her boyfriend threatened us several months ago when they got in a big fight and she crashed here for a couple of nights. There was a big screaming fight in front of our house with her pulling the baby out of the car just as he was speeding away. The baby was filthy. I gave him a bath and at 5 mos. old he still would not make eye contact with me. My hope for him is some stability but there is little chance of that. Just as with Elijah there are drugs and alcohol involved, and at the core a dependent relationship with a boyfriend who keeps her supplied and in return exacts control over her and isolates her from the only people (my husband and me) who can help.
Dear, dear second nature,
I hope you get more chances with that beautiful grandson. You are right to worry, and if you see him in danger again I strongly encourage you to call protective services in your city or state. The people at the other end of the phone line can be very helpful, and they are familiar with the kind of situation you are in.
Called and they promised to investigate but they are swamped and we haven’t heard back. Called again to check on status and was told that when they visited the child looked healthy and all 3 were living with maternal grandma so they didn’t find anything. They so helpfully said to call again if anything else happens.
I don’t know what to say Izzy, other than thank for telling us about Elijah. Even though its hard to hear, we need to know that all of our cheap talk about “children are valued as our future” is really just that – cheap talk.
To put some political context to this – our county here in St. Paul is trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that the federal budget reconciliation act just passed in January decimates the medicaid funding that was used to provide child protection services. Our state legislature just finished their session Monday and did not provide any supplemental funds to make up for the loss. So, we will wait to see what the damage is to those programs. All so the millionaires can keep their tax cuts – too much to bear.
Wow. That is a sad story. I hope Elijah doesn’t follow the same trajectory as his mother. It’d be nice to break that cycle.
No words can ever express how crushed my soul is to know that this country doesn’t care about tax cuts for the rich, record breaking profits for gas giants, or how many in America will die while Bush sits (shits) on his throne.
((((Izzy & Elijah))))
I’ve seen too many of these cases in Family Court. Yep, Elijah will need lots of love and support, and he deserves it. I wish the best for him. And now, if he wasn’t in school, I’d go and give my son a big hug.
I pray with you. God Bless Elijah and strengthen him and heal him. Surround him in warmth and love. Please help our addicted children and heal our people of all their blindness and combined social illness.
Dang you, Izzy, you know I hate crying, and now the women at work are gonna ask why, and soon, we’ll all be crying.
You’ve written the story beautifully, btw. Hugs to you, and Grace and hopes for Elijah.
What a sad story.
I call it compassion.
and is able to get over his physical addiction. Being born addicted is not necessarily a thing that will affect him forever. The key is how good his environment is as he grows up. He needs caring people, predictability, a stable person or two (or more) that he can depend on, and adults in the household with awareness that with young kids around, things can’t be run for the fun and pleasure of adults only.
The single thing that makes the biggest difference between kids who “make it” to adulthood relatively unharmed by how they begin, or by bad life circumstances, is have one good relationship over time with an adult who is not crazy. Doesn’t have to be a parent or grandparent. Doesn’t even have to be a family member, but obviously, the younger the child, the more important lot of contact is.
He is already blessed with this right now – in YOU. That’s the best part of this prayer of yours, that someone is actually doing this care for him now. I thank you for that; there are too many Elijahs who don’t have anyone.
You are doing the right thing.
though I am teary eyed and heartbroken to hear about this situation. I can’t begin to imagine the family history you described, but with your caring and compassion and love, I foresee a brighter future for Elijah. He’s lucky to have such a wonderful “Aunt Izzy!”