You can't go home again. (Thomas Wolfe)

She invited us into the house. What a gem that was. I don’t mean to be stuck-up. I know this house marks the humble beginnings from which my mother pulled herself up from and I can appreciate that. I respect her more for having seen it. It’s not like I think money and nice things are everything but, come on, would it have hurt for my mother to send them a cheque or two? The orange-brown-vomit color of the shag carpet hadn’t been fashionable or even sanitary for a decade or two. Nothing matched. Everything felt like it was covered in dust, not because the house wasn’t being cleaned but just because everything was so old. There was dust embedded in everything so deep that no amount of cleaning would fix it up. The only bit of consistency in the décor was the religious paraphernalia guarding everything. When she hung up that cross-stitched “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” she really carried the theme throughout the house because I didn’t want anything there, hell, I didn’t want to touch anything there. I sound terrible, don’t I? Wait for what happens next before you get too sympathetic for my newfound grandparents.

We stayed for dinner. Potatoes that were cooked so long they crumbled at the sight of my fork. Meat that had been cooked so long it would take a jackhammer to break into it. Rice – what the hell are you doing here? Bread pudding; I think I’m ready for the cheque.

The conversation though, now that took the cake. After a decade and a half of absence my new grandfather, who just seemed to emit bad vibrations, managed to wait until the coffee and tea were served to lay into my mother.

“You must have your mother’s brains,” he told me after she made a big to-do about how smart I was. I’m not sure he even believed her about my intelligence, but my grandmother ate it up like the gospel gracing the walls. “Let’s just hope you have better sense than her. Speaking of which, where is Tommy?”

“He’s on a business trip with Tony and Senior.”

He raised an eyebrow and repeated, “A business trip?”

My mother took a long sip of tea before replying dryly, “Yes, a business trip.”

He slammed his cup down on the table breaking the handle clean off and spilling black coffee over the white table cloth. Things were getting exciting in the sleepy sanctuary.

He shouted at my mother: “Give it up!”  

They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other. (John Irving)

A firm rapping on the window startled me.

“Penny! Penny!” cheered the frayed-looking lady. “Penny, you came home.”

“Drive, just drive,” I said in a hushed but firm voice from behind my mother.

“Mom!” The word was like a ray of sunshine breaking through her gray cloudy face. Suddenly everything was in color.

My mother hopped out of the car and raced around to embrace her mother. It was a touching little scene. They both cried and I was uncomfortable. I tried to blend in with the black leather interior.

“Is this the baby?”

My mother didn’t make words just awkward sniffling snorting sounds. It was unattractive.

The woman, my new grandmother, climbed into the backseat and held me. She rocked me and cried. She smelled like beets. She was really soft but maybe not in a good way. She wasn’t nearly as beautiful as my mother. I wondered how long this hug would last. I began to go through the periodic table of elements in my head as I waited for it to end. I had a chemistry exam coming up and I didn’t need to but I wanted to memorize the periodic table. I got through the noble gases and she was still clenching me – it was beginning to hurt a little. I finished the non-metals and had recalled almost all the semimetals before she released me.

“Let me look at you,” she cried. “My God, you’re beautiful.”

Maybe I could warm up to this woman.

Tell me what life is like past that city limits sign. (Doc Walker)

The plane rocketed down the ad hoc airstrip we used to call a driveway. Thank God we were so far from the roadway because if our driveway had been any shorter they would have landed in the trees. I loved our house. I loved the grounds: the meadow, the forest, I loved it all. As I sang Leaving on a Jetplane loudly but muted under the noise of the engine I realized that would be me. I would be leaving. I felt a twinge of sadness in my chest and mentally began to say goodbye to my home.

Scotch hung around for the evening. We ate cake for dinner and drank coffee. We cried and complained and all our drawn words were ripe with concern. We watched Grease, the movie not the slimy oily substance. My mother and Scotch argued about who looked more like John Travolta: my father or Uncle Tony. The joke was on both of them because a blind man wouldn’t mistake either of them for John Travolta. It was nice though to sit with women and chat, I don’t know if I had ever chatted before. We sipped on red wine and I was nearly sober but I didn’t mind. I forgot what it was like to be a girl.

Scotch slept over. Uncle Tony’s bed would have been lonely without her. Since Scotch had come back into his life, no matter how intermittent her presence was, he slept well once again. Thus my father did the night shift alone. I’ll never understand how he lived his life without sleep. I guess the occasional hibernations were what got him through. He would crash sometimes and sleep close on a week. Still, if I pull an all-nighter with him I have to write off the next day. I need sleep – I think that’s human though. I don’t know what that says about dear ole Dad.

My mother drove Scotch home. Sometimes I forgot that she could even drive. I stayed in the backseat of my father’s Cadillac even after we dropped Scotch off. I pretended I was being chauffeured around town. When the car slowed in front of a modest little house, I was confused.

“Where are we?”

“This is where I grew up.”

“No,” I disagreed.

My mother had a faraway look and I thought she might cry.

“This is a dump.”

“No,” she dismissed, “this is a decent part of town.” She sighed as the car slowed to a stop. “It’s just as it was back then.”

“Why have we never been here before?”

“Your grandparents and I had a bit of a falling out.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“We didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things and they tried to take matters into their own hands and, well, here we are: estranged.” She wasn’t talking to me anymore. “I never imagined that I could be estranged from my family. We were so close and…” she swallowed as tears began building in her eyes. I thought she might be holding her breath. She cried a lot lately. I didn’t get it. Save an occasional spike in hormones that made me cry for no real reason, tears were foreign to me. Sometimes I cried to be dramatic and fuel fire to my cause of the day, but those weren’t real tears. Maybe I could be an actress when we moved out to the City of Angels.

Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons. (Donald Miller)

When we left our family owned a private jet.

When we left, the move away from the crime of Philadelphia had become a strategic move that put a significant spike in our family’s crime. We could go to the source. We could cart heroin all around the country to clientele anywhere, though it would likely just be those well-established in Philly and those to come in California. Senior didn’t understand that we wanted to get away from crime. To him, crime wasn’t a choice or an avoidable entity; it was simply our way of life. We were a crime family.

When I told my mother about the plane as she set out the meal that had just been delivered, she was shocked. Senior assured her that he had bought it as a going away present for us. It was a means of keeping us close even when we were a country away. Senior was smooth with words. As he explained that he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing us only on holidays and occasional vacations even I was convinced by his clear emotion. As he told her we could hop on the jet anytime we wanted to pop back for a visit even I was moved by his generosity. So I guess it wasn’t fair for me to think my mother a mindless drone for believing it all. But as she was moved to tears and hugged Senior thanking him for everything he did for us, I was sceptical as to the assumed intelligence we kept crediting to her.

Manipulation: making smart people do what you want is one thing, but I wanted to reach the next level, the Senior level. I wanted to have the power to make smart people think, feel, believe what I wanted them to. Senior was my hero. My father and my uncles had their shining moments but Senior was the spring, they were just the pooling water in comparison.

About a month later as I was counting down the days until we moved, the boys – even Senior – piled onto the plane bound for Vietnam. Their dirty diplomat had arranged for his source to provide a planeful for them.

I couldn’t decide whether or not my mother actually believed that this was just a little leisure trip. It didn’t matter because before he left my father told her the reality of it. I lay in my bed listening to her crying through the wall. It was dangerous, more so than other trips. They were returning to the country where drug dealers had shot Ricky dead. She had probably believed it was a leisure trip before Tommy came clean with her. He should have just left it well enough alone. Senior had an ability to turn the most farfetched lies into blindly followed gospel. I don’t know why he was compelled to tell her the truth when it wasn’t even him who had actually lied to her.

My father was not a righteous man, in fact, he was anything but a righteous man. He sat vacantly in a church pew back when my mother had forced us to go but that was hardly grounds for righteousness. Yet when it came to my mother, he followed all the rules: thou shall not lie, thou shall not cheat, or however those commandments go. If there was one thing I was sure of as a kid it was that no man would ever treat me as well as my father treated my mother. To be fair, I was also quite sure I would never treat a man as well as my mother treated my father. It’s a two-way street.

So all the men in my life left on a jet plane and John Denver said it first: I didn’t know if they’d be back again. I thought they would. I trusted them and their competence in the criminal world. However, the way my father spun my mother around in a youthful embrace just seemed to scream: don’t know if I’ll be back again, babe, I hate to go. Then her tears coupled with Scotch’s tears, well, it didn’t seem promising. Still, I thought perhaps they might be too dramatic. They were attached to gangsters, they weren’t gangsters themselves. They didn’t understand this business like I did, or thought I did anyway, at the sage age of 15.

You love it here. You've got to stay. (The Kooks)

My father put his arms around my shoulders as I sat at the kitchen table across from my mother. He kissed the top of my head. “This girl is brilliant. She’s so smart and grounded. I can’t believe this is my daughter.”

My mother smile meekly. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” asked Uncle Tony when he walked in.

“We’re moving,” I told him with excitement. “We’re going to live with Uncle Rider.”

“In his bachelor apartment?” Uncle Tony asked.

“As it turns out he bought that whole building.”

“No? Since when is Rider a slumlord?” asked Uncle Tony.

My father shrugged.

“I don’t know about this,” said Uncle Tony.

“Going to miss us?” I chided.

“No,” he said looking away thoughtfully. “I’m just trying to figure out what I’m going to do with all the spare room.”

“Uncle Tony,” I cried.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll miss you. I’ll have to get Scotch to move in or something just to keep the place from getting depressing.”

“A ball of dust blows through the empty kitchen,” I envisioned. “Grass starts growing through the tiles. Spiders will be dangling from cobwebs in the corners.”

“When do you think this move will be?” asked Uncle Tony.

My father looked to my mother, who promptly informed him that it wouldn’t be until I finished school for the year. I sighed because that was my main motivation for getting out of Philadelphia.

“But that’s only another couple months,” complained Uncle Tony. “Have you even told Senior yet?”

“Told me what?” he asked as if speaking his name aloud had summoned him into the room.

“Tommy’s moving,” Uncle Tony said as if he was tattle-telling on his older brother.

“Where?”

“West,” my father said proudly, “with Rider.”

Senior considered this for a moment then walked away.

Everyone exchanged anxious looks. My mother opted to go for a walk about the grounds. As soon as she was out the door Uncle Tony reached for the heroin. The three of us got sufficiently high. Who says families don’t do anything together anymore? Then Senior returned with his jacket on.

“Come on,” he heckled and the boys jumped. We piled into his Mercedes and drove to an airstrip at the end of town.

“What are we doing here?” asked Uncle Tony.

“Making an acquisition,” Senior said with a sly smile.

“Are you buying me a new brother? I was getting sick of this one anyway. It’s for the best that he’s leaving.”

“Shut up, Tony,” my father said in tandem with Senior.

I giggled and touched my hand to Uncle Tony’s shoulder sympathetically. He shook his head at me as if to say: the stuff I put up with. I responded with a smile that said: I know.

Failure is a fantastic teacher. (Forces of Nature)

I hated school. I was smarter than all my teachers. I was better than all classmates. I dated guys just to manipulative and abuse them – not physically, but mentally and emotionally. It was fun and I liked the little injection of power into my otherwise mediocre lifestyle at school. I rarely brought them around the house and if I did it was only to torture and terrify them by letting the men of my family have a go at them. I never loved them, I rarely even liked them. For some reason they kept coming back for more. No matter how I treated them, they were like horses, once you broke them in they would do whatever you wanted, it didn’t matter how I yelled at them, ordered them around, or how hard I dug in my heels, they were mine as long as I wanted them. It was a social experiment more than a relationship each time. That was the other thing: there was no shortage of them. I cut one lose and there was another to take his place. It’s like they loved to be treated badly. It set a bad precedence in my love life.

One night my father was on the phone with my more or less estranged uncle in California. He was getting all excited. My mother rolled her eyes, not in the sarcastic, you-are-an-idiot way that I do it. She rolled her eyes in an oh-my-he-is-so-silly sort of way. When he got off the phone he announced: “We’re moving!”

“We’re what?” my mother asked.

“Moving,” my father repeated. “Rider was telling me about his life there and about all the opportunities. Remember when we visited him, we loved it.”

My mother nodded half-heartedly.

“Rider bought his apartment complex and now he wants to buy another one. He’s going to be a property tycoon. I told him about the crime here and the troubles Honey’s having and he told me we should move there. I can help him with his properties, you can teach, Honey can go to school with nice kids.”

My mother didn’t know where to start. “What about aerospace engineering? What happened to his career?”

“He failed the drug test. He’s getting clean and trying again. This property business is like his new drug, he’s addicted to it.”

“But he’s going to try again.”

“Yes, that’s why he needs our help. We can take care of things when he passes the drug test and starts his career.”

“I don’t know the first thing about managing properties.”

“You can teach. I’ll take care of it.”

“You don’t know the first thing about managing properties.”

“I’ll figure it out. I’ll be his second-in-command until he leaves and learn it all from him.”

“When did Rider become an expert?”

“I don’t know but he is,” my father said enthusiastically. My mother didn’t look as enthusiastic. “Our life would be so much better there. It’s sunny all the time and everyone is happy out there, why wouldn’t they be its sunny all the time. Come on, Penny, just think about this. We can’t stay here forever. We don’t even really like Philadelphia anymore. There’s so much crime and trouble here. We can start over.” He looked to me. “Honey, wouldn’t you like to start over?”

I knew he was referring to the hippie. I knew I was supposed to be upset about it. I pretended to be more moved by it because I knew it would worry them more if I didn’t care. My mother was more upset about it all than me. Sometimes while my father was luring around the kitchen in the middle of the night I could hear her crying in their bedroom. I knew she was lying in bed thinking about the body, thinking about the fact that her daughter was a murderer. She was thinking, she was crying. So when my father asked me, “Honey, wouldn’t you like to start over?”

I smiled brightly and said, “I’d love to.” I said it for my mother. She was apprehensive but I thought it was ultimately what she wanted.

“Are you sure, Honey?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It would be cool to see Uncle Rider more. We could go to the beach anytime we wanted. It would be an adventure. I love Philly, but it would be nice to broaden my horizons.”

Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping. (Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife)

So my family protected me. They took care of it. That was when I finally realized what it meant to govern ourselves.

Senior gave me the boat as a birthday present. He told me it was a small token to compensate me for my troubles. He apologized that I was unsafe in his house and promised that it would never happen again.

I named the boat Freedom.

Scotch didn’t come around much anymore and her friends had permanently moved on. There’s nothing like a murder to clear out a house. It was for the best because those hippies attracted a lot of attention from the police. My family did a lot that was outside of the law but they were quiet about it. They paid police when they needed to. They didn’t bother the general public. They operated as innocently as criminals could.

Hippies, however, have a different mandate. They want to change the world. They want peace and are willing to stir up as much unrest as required to achieve it. They want the law and the government to support their change so they argue and fight and challenge.

Gangsters merely operate in another realm. Agree to disagree, they politely tell the police.

It’s ironic really the way hippies want peace but gangsters achieve it. How does protesting, which is anything but peaceful, bring peace? Practice what you preach; that’s what I’d like to tell those hippies. That’s the only way they will get peace. Actually, if I was to be perfectly honest, I would have to admit that there will never be peace. My father loves peace. He loves the idea of it. He loves talking about it, singing about, he just loves it. Not me, I don’t think it’s healthy. Peace sounds a lot like communism to me. If you don’t have conflict then everyone is just blindly accepting commands somewhere. I think getting along is nice and I’m not a big fan of war, but peace just seems silly to me. Maybe I’ve just read a few too many autobiographies of insolent dictators and rebels.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. (Bertrand Russell)

After your first murder there’s really not much that can faze you. The aftermath is messy. The actual action on the other hand is the cleanest most concise moment of clarity in your life. You are in control. You have the power. You, you, you. To be honest, it’s exhilarating, at least that’s how it felt for me that first time. I was taking back control of my life. It was a step forward for women everywhere. A man thinks he can overpower you with his strength, turn that notion on its head. Now I’m not saying I encourage murder, but I am saying if I had the chance to do it again I would, in a heartbeat. The aftermath, well, that was a little more complicated.

Senior was the first one to enter the room.

“Shit.” That was his response. He scooped me up and carried me away from the mess. My parents were next on the scene along with Uncle Tony. Aside from that, I’m not sure what else was going on. Senior carried me to his bedroom. I had only ever been inside his room while hurrying to the panic room. I admired the majesty of the room through the blurred vision of teary eyes. I started crying as soon as Senior picked me up. I cried and cried but I wasn’t sad or remorseful, I was just overwhelmed. There’s something about having a bunch of people looking at me and speaking to me with sympathy that always makes me cry.

The man was a transient hippie. He had no family who would notice and once Scotch dispelled the story to her friends, there were no friends who would care or contest. They didn’t believe in guns but they didn’t believe in policing either so one cancelled the other. Uncle Tony cleaned up my parent’s bedroom.

Senior bought a boat and the next day, Christmas Day, on its maiden voyage, we dumped the body deep into the Atlantic Ocean.

Maybe we should have gone to the police then. I mean it had been self-defence. But it's all part of living the way we did. You give up your right to be governed by the law the moment you decide to live outside of it. We would be hypocrites if we evaded all the restrictions of the law but raced to the courthouse to follow procedure by the letter the moment something went wrong.

Maybe the law could have protected me. But if I was to be honest, I didn’t believe that I needed protection. There would be no one to report the murder. It seemed I was free and clear. After all, who would believe that a fourteen year old girl murdered a man? They would likely assume it had Uncle Tony or my father or Senior. Even if they did believe it was me, what good would that do? Even if it all came out as it happened (like they would believe that) my permanent record would be tainted with murder. What college wants to accept a murderer? Shit like that stays with you for life.

Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met. (Taylor Swift)

“Tommy,” I yelled out. I didn’t want to be vague. “Penny! Help!” I screamed down the stairs but the noise of the carolling 15-piece band tuned me out. If I had realized the danger one stoned hippie could cause I would have ran down those stairs like a bat out of hell, but I hesitated.

Never hesitate.

He picked me up. He looked scrawny and weak but I was helpless in his firm grasp. It was a suffocating feeling. He pulled me into my parent’s room and as dumb and dead as he looked he locked the door and blocked the exit. I looked at the window. It was only the second floor. I would cut my bare legs on the glass, maybe break my legs, but I would live – I would definitely live, I was pretty sure of that.

I jumped back when he tried to grab my arm and he instead landed an iron grasp on my leg. I couldn’t believe this. I had trained all my life to be superior to people like him. I had believed all my life that I was better than people like him. Yet here I was being defeated by him.

He put a firm hand on my other leg and I fell to the floor trying to pull away. I reached and leaned and stretched and when I finally placed my hand on the handle of the bedside drawer I promised myself I wouldn’t hesitate.

I pulled hard on the drawer handle and the entire drawer fell out. It hit me in the face. Instantly I began to bleed. All I could see was stars, stars everywhere. So I felt around blindly until I put my hand on it.

No hesitation. I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. A bullet smashed into his head with such force that he was killed on impact. If you seen the mess you would understand why I can say that with such certainty.

I killed a man on the eve of my fifteenth birthday.

Is there a place for the hopeless sinner, who has hurt all mankind? (Bob Marley)

When I was fourteen, the eve of my fifteenth birthday in fact, I was lying in bed reading a book about civil unrest in the Middle East – a light read. It was a Friday night. This was what I did on Friday nights. Like I said, high school wasn’t really my time to shine. I had bigger fish to fry.

Scotch was hosting a big Christmas Eve party. Scotch turned holidays and quiet family Friday nights into wild party extravaganzas. She had a lot of friends and as far as I could tell none of them had a home, aside from a Volkswagen van or canvas tent. There were lots of sleepovers and my sleepovers I mean Woodstock was happening in our living room every weekend. My family still stuck to the kitchen though. Scotch circulated. Our house smelled like cannabis. The maid and my mother brainstormed new and innovative ways to clean but there was nothing that could get rid of it. It wasn’t just the smell, Scotch’s friends were messy. They were destroying our house, but it reached the boiling that night on the eve of my fifteenth birthday.

A belligerent looking bloke stumbled into my room. He had long brown hair, graced with a couple half-dreadlocks.

I looked up from my book and said, “Sorry buddy, the party is downstairs.”

He didn’t understand this. His glazed eyes weren’t open enough to register what was in front of him.

“Wrong room,” I repeated as he staggered another step into my personal space. Lock door, I noted to myself.

“Shh,” he said and closed the door behind him.

“Hey,” I said sternly and put down my book. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“We got to party.”

“I will scream and if I do my father will be up here in a millisecond and you’ll regret ever setting foot in this room.”

“No regrets,” he said musically. For a second I thought he was going to start into a rendition of Bob Marley’s One Love, but instead he began quickly and unevenly trudging toward my bed. I leaped out before my bed caught his fall. In my oversized pink t-shirt I ran for the door. I was at the top of the stairs before I realized that I was about to race downstairs into a party of free love with no pants on. This was a problem.

99% of the world's lovers are not with their first choice. That's what makes the jukebox play. (Willie Nelson)

My parents came back and tried to scold me for being so rude to our dinner guest but I showed them the caterpillar on the windowsill and instead of sitting through a lecture I sat with my parents and watched a fuzzy caterpillar making its way across the windowsill.

When Uncle Tony returned he interrupted the ad hoc nature show we were watching in rapture.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. How am I supposed to be with someone who smokes grass? That’s crazy.”

We sat together on the other side of the table and watched him freaking out. He ranted and roared and asked for our thoughts but didn’t wait for answers. We nodded and shook our heads appropriately when it was required. I don’t know about my parents but all I could think about was how long his arms looked.

In the end, he decided he couldn’t bridge the gap between their worlds. I think my father was disappointed. He thought her ideals were quite fanciful. He talked about the things she had said as if it were gospel long after the dinner debacle.

I think Uncle Tony was disappointed with his decision too. He missed her. He got high and drunk more often, which speaks volumes in itself because it was already a pretty frequent occurrence. In the weeks that followed Scotch’s visit I don’t remember ever seeing Uncle Tony sober. He seemed to stop sleeping altogether too. My father was never big on sleeping so they kept each other company. Sometimes they would wake me up in the middle of the night with their shouting and shenanigans. Senior didn’t like it. Uncle Tony was a mess and Senior really didn’t like that. Uncle Tony bailed on my father when he was supposed to go to Washington and so my mother replaced him.

Another time she was at school (she was a substitute teacher at the time) so Senior had to accompany my father on the trip. Senior really, really didn’t like that.

Senior fired up his engine when he returned home. He revved the engine and left tire marks on the floor of the garage as he sped out. Rarely did he make a scene like this. When he came back he had Scotch with him. She was, more or less, a permanent fixture in our house after that. I loved her. She was like the big sister that I never had.

Scotch came with baggage though. She was a lovable girl and she had received plenty of love in her day. Her ex-boyfriends were constantly coming around. They would bring their acoustic guitars and play love ballads barefoot outside our house. They would call her name. They would cry, no wail, like starving babies who had no other way to ask for food. One night Senior took a gun and opened fire all around one of the poor mopes. He didn’t hit him but he didn’t come back. He must have spread the word because the lovelorn traffic depleted significantly after that incident.

Our family was too strange and weird for even Santa Claus to come visit. Santa, who was jolly - but, let's face it, he was also very judgmental. (Julia Sweeney)

My family was a heroin family. It was not only the drug of choice in our house, it was the only drug in our house. The idea of something else was weird.

“You won’t do heroin but you’ll smoke marijuana cigarettes?”

“It’s natural, Tony. It comes from the earth and it gives you a natural high. It’s not like your body’s chemical reaction to those toxins you shoot into your veins. This is an organic experience. This is how God intended it to be.”

I might have been a Sunday school dropout, but that was where it got fishy for me, I knew enough about right and wrong to know drugs were wrong and I knew enough about drugs to know cannabis was a drug. All in all, I was educated enough to know Scotch didn’t know what she was talking about. God did not condone drugs.

Senior left without notice. I spotted the garage door rising and his Mercedes pulling out. He didn’t make a big deal about things. He was mature and quiet. What I always respected most about Senior was his ability to convey his feelings so coherently without a word. Everyone knew what he felt and thought and wanted and he never had to rant about any of it. He lived a fluid sort of existence.

Scotch rolled her marijuana cigarette and passed it around. Even my mother was curious enough about this holy high to take a drag. For once she didn’t gripe about me joining in on the fun. It was okay. It wasn’t heroin, that’s for sure. I just felt kind of dumb and dull. I wasn’t excited. I didn’t feel invincible. I just felt dumber. Wait, is dumber a word? See, that’s the kind of shit smoking pot will do to you. Maybe if you were stressed out or had a really rubbish life that you wanted to disconnect from, then I could maybe see it being a viable substitute, but it would never be the drug for me. Heroin is the drug of world powers; marijuana is the drug of hippie bums.

Uncle Tony still couldn’t grasp her lifestyle. “You do this but you don’t drink?”

“This is good for you. Alcohol is poison and it’s addictive. This relaxes you and releases your body from the stress of the world.”

I snorted as I tried to retain my laughter.

Everyone looked at me and I could help but let it go. Giggles and chuckles and chortles and laughs fell out of my mouth.

“You’re stupid,” I laughed, “like you’re just really dumb.”

Scotch just smiled mildly.

“I think it’s time to drive you home,” Uncle Tony suggested and without reproach she collected her things. My parents walked her out with Uncle Tony and thanked her for the meal, promising to return the favour. Sometimes I could almost forget that my family wasn’t normal.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo (George Bernard Shaw)

After doing dishes they returned to the kitchen and sat with us. Uncle Tony started to prepare some heroin.

“So how did you two meet?” my mother asked.

“We met at a café,” she laughed. “He was getting a cup of coffee and I kindly informed him that the cup of coffee he was purchasing was instrumental in exploiting child slave labour in South America.”

“Kindly! Kindly might be generous.”

“Okay,” she admitted, “I was protesting with some friends outside the shop.”

“She batted the cup of coffee out of my hands,” Uncle Tony motioned.

I was shocked. “And you asked her out?”

“I demanded that she buy me a new coffee.”

Uncle Tony and Scotch laughed. It was sweet. I liked them together.

Scotch declined the needle Uncle Tony offered her before injecting it himself. Who says chivalry is dead?

“I don’t like that stuff,” Scotch said.

Senior poured an after dinner glass of Scotch for himself and left the several glasses on the table next to the bottle. My father started pouring out glasses for the table, including me when I protested.

“No thanks,” Scotch said and pushed her glass away.

“I’ll take hers,” I offered. “There’s no point in being wasteful.”

“You don’t drink?” Uncle Tony laughed.

Scotch shook her head.

“You’re kidding!”

“My mother was an alcoholic, well, my father too, but it was my mother’s abuse that affected me the most. I’ve been addicted to alcohol all my life. I’ve been clean now for nearly three years.”

“Did you hear that?” my mother asked me.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“It’s not easy but I’m trying really hard to stay clean.”

“You don’t drink, you don’t do drugs. What do you do?” Uncle Tony asked.

Scotch pulled out a baggie of crushed green herbs. “I like to keep it all natural.”

It's like finding something you haven't been looking for but have always wanted. (Unknown)

The third and final step rarely came, but when it did, it was a big to-do. Uncle Tony would first practice making a meal and it would be an elaborate one. After he was sure he could make it properly, he would make it for the entire family plus one. Uncle Tony would be cooking all day. My mother would help him. My father would laugh. Senior would make an unmoving appearance at the debacle. As for me, I would test her. I would be myself and if I was to be honest, I am a challenge. I would undercut her, turn everything she said against her, repeat her previous statements later when they contradicted her. I found lies where there were none. I not only made Uncle Tony question her as a viable option, I made her question herself. I love my Uncle Tony. I want him to find a nice girl. I want him to be happy. Most of all, I just like messing with people. It’s not as fun now but I’m not the bratty kid now that I was back then.

There was one girl who almost made it past the third step: her name was Scotch. No, this is not a joke about my uncle’s love of scotch, the woman’s name was actually Scotch. She was had a bleach blond bob and she had a funky style. She was a short woman with an unforgettable face and a slender, almost wiry body. She came over with a bright striped scarf and a bag of groceries.

For the first time, the female candidate made the meal. She had brought all organic ingredients, most of which she had grown herself. It was a lot healthier than what we were used to. She was enthusiastic and fun so I pretended to like some of it but for the most part it was terrible. Senior didn’t pretend to like it. My mother actually liked it. Uncle Tony didn’t taste the food; he was too involved with the evaluation taking place. My father didn’t notice it. He just shovelled it into his mouth like any other meal as he digested her fascinating ideas.

In a house of corrupt war veterans it was taboo to talk about war in such a demeaning way. My father thought she had moxy to be so bold about her ideas when everyone else tiptoed around the topic with them. For all she knew, Uncle Ricky had died serving his country. For all she knew my father and Uncle Tony believed in the cause, believed in the war. For all she knew she was compromising our approval with her ideals but she didn’t care. Save Senior, we were all suitably impressed by that.

Things were going fairly well, so well that when the meal ended Uncle Tony didn’t drive her home right away like the others. She offered to wash the dishes and Uncle Tony helped her just like my parents did sometimes. He wanted Scotch to be his Penny.

You make me melt like a popsicle on the 4th of July. (Little Rascals)

High school was humbling. There were already well-established rock stars. I didn’t really like it and I tried to gain friends with drugs but that usually got me in trouble. I was an expert at getting in trouble.

My mother cried each time she met me in the principal’s office. Senior was friends with the principal and by the grace of his carefully worded calls alone I eluded stays at a juvenile detention center. I wasn’t old enough for jail yet but everyone was concerned that was where I was headed, everyone except me. I always had faith that my family would protect me.

“She’ll straighten out,” Uncle Tony assured, “you should have seen what I was like at her age.”

“I did,” said Senior.

“And look at me now!”

My father and Senior looked at him sceptically. My mother cried. I didn’t care really, but I heard it anyway as I lay on my bedroom floor, which sat right above the kitchen.

I was, as per usual, high.

“Penny, don’t cry.” My father put his arm around her. My bad behaviour hurt him more than her because he suffered twice: his daughter was becoming a criminal and his wife was upset. The latter was worse to him. Penny was more than just a wife, she was his world and I think he resented me at times for hurting her. I was living in my mother’s shadow. Everyone was. She was an angel among heathens.

“It’s this city,” my father complained. He rustled the newspaper angrily. “Philadelphia is going to the dogs. This used to be the home of brotherly love now it’s the home of violence, drugs and crime.”

Uncle Tony didn’t like it any more than my father when my mother was upset. It made everyone uncomfortable.

“It’ll be okay, Penny,” Uncle Tony offered and grazed his hand over her arm sympathetically.

Uncle Tony was looking for his own Penny. He had a three step screening process. There were girls who stayed over sometimes. That was no surprise. Girls who liked drugs liked Uncle Tony. He didn’t go out to the clubs often, mostly just on business, but he never had trouble meeting them, especially not after Vincent died. With the family dwindling down and his relationship with my father quickly becoming the most significant relationship in his life, Tommy encouraged fostering these relationships.

Step two was breakfast. If Tony snuck them out in a manner he considered discrete or even if he just smuggled something upstairs she had not advanced to step two. The players who successfully landed a spot in the second stage of screening were invited to breakfast with the family. I found it amusing, Senior didn’t play ball, my mother was cordial but uncomfortable, and my father loved it. He would quiz them and kid with them. My father found it all very amusing and he embraced it. Uncle Tony appreciated that but he could get defensive when my father went too far.

Uncle Tony cared about everyone’s opinion and while he drove her home, we would talk over what we would disclose before he returned. Senior hated the process. It was demeaning for the women and threatened the integrity of his house, but when Uncle Tony was gone he would offer something: a “hell no” or an “okay”. We would mould our opinions around his. Senior wouldn’t speak, sometimes he wouldn’t even stay, but Uncle Tony would try to get his opinion every time nonetheless.

Uncle Tony would take away our opinion, couple it with his own opinion, and then said girl would advance to step three, or she wouldn’t.

Romantic love is mental illness. (Fran Lebowitz)

When Liam took the job as security guard all the boys were concerned with how he acquired this position. I proudly told someone, who told everyone. Liam punched me in the face. I had a black eye for a week and a half.

“My name’s Tommy,” my father told Liam when he dropped by the playground the day after I came home in tears with my haggard eye. “I’m Honey’s father.”

Liam gulped and fear slid down his throat with his little hand enclosed in my father’s hand, a hand that has killed a man. I wonder if Liam could feel death in his hand even though he didn’t know what my father had done. Judging by Liam’s face, he could.

“I hear you gave Honey a black eye.”

He shook his head and nodded simultaneously. His mouth hung open. He looked dumb. I wished I had chosen a braver boy.

“Honey is my only daughter and I love her very much. Is there anyone that you love very much? Your mother maybe?”

“I love my mom,” he stuttered.

“How would you feel if someone hurt your mother? I bet you would feel the same way I feel right now. It’s not a very nice feeling, Liam. I don’t think you would like to feel like this so I don’t think you should ever hurt my daughter again.”

Simultaneously, he shook and nodded his head again.

“Honey,” my father called out toward my place at the top of the slide, “can you make sure you let me know if this boy does anything to hurt you again?”

I nodded.

“Anything.”

I nodded.

“If he looks at you the wrong way,” he said to me but was looking at Liam, “I want you to let me know and I’ll make sure he never hurts anyone ever again.”

Liam gulped again.

My father gave me a kiss on the cheek and left. I had street credit in the playground before but after that things changed. Liam’s position as security guard of the slide was up for grabs and all the boys realized that there was a lot of power in the coveted position. The group of kids waiting to be chosen to climb the slide were all calling out for my approval. All the boys wanted to kiss me, a small sacrifice to secure a permanent place of power on the top of the slide. I was an elementary school rock star.

The spotlight shines upon you and how could anybody deny you? (Coldplay)

There were two girls at school who thought I was brilliant. Okay, maybe they didn’t, but they let me believe they did and that was all I needed. They were afraid of me and as far as I was concerned that was a good enough basis for a friendship.

We sat at the top of the slide in the school playground and we permitted some kids to come up and others we did not. Some didn’t mind, some did. Some we forced to slide down, some wanted to slide down, either way once you went down you were at our mercy to regain entry at the top of the slide again.

One boy pushed me down the slide. He cheered: “I’ve defeated the Queen.”

He was the first boy I kissed. His name was William but everyone called him Willie. I called him Liam and that became his name.

He pretended to be too cool for girls, all boys did then. I ambushed him behind the school and dared him to kiss me.

“Ew.”

“Ha! I knew you were too much of a sissy.”

He furrowed his eyebrow and made a fist.

“I’ll let you be the security guard of the slide. You can have the final say in who gets up to the top and who doesn’t.”

He considered this.

I didn’t have time for him to search his soul. I quickly kissed him. It wasn’t magical. There was manipulation and bribery and I didn’t let a moment form first or linger after. I stole a kiss. I had no problem with stealing anything. Now that was over.

We read to know we're not alone. (C.S. Lewis)

Something peculiar my mother did for a long as I can remember was read to my father. When I was a baby, a toddler, a child, it was sweet how I would sit between my parents in their bed and my mother would read and my father would hold me and listen intently.

When I was a little older, ten maybe, I walked by my parent’s bedroom and behind the closed door, under the low glow of her bedside lamp, my mother read to my father. I sat outside their door and listened. Her voice was muffled as it filtered through the sealed bedroom but I could make out the story. There was something beautiful about it, as strange as it seemed. My father was like a child in the way my mother treated him and cared for him. I fell asleep outside their door and slept there on the hardwood floor until my father left the room in the middle of the night after my mother had fallen asleep. He scooped me up and tucked me into their bed beside my mother. He paused in the doorway and returned to the bed. He climbed onto the edge of the bed and watched us, I know because when I stirred in the night between the warm bodies of my nearby parents, my eyes creaked open and there he was: wide awake watching.

“Shh,” he whispered with his index finger to his lips, “go back to sleep, Honey.”

I rolled over and fell back asleep instantly. He was proud that we were his family. It’s a comforting feeling to know your parents are proud of you before you even do anything to earn it. It didn’t slow my drive though. I kept learning, dreaming, reaching.

Power is not alluring to pure minds. (Thomas Jefferson)

When I was eight I got high for the first time. I didn’t mean to. I made a pot of tea to share with my mother who was in the study reading by the fireplace. I prepared the tray: poured milk, dappled out sugar from the bowl on the table, where my father and Uncle Tony were having their usual Sunday afternoon riot. I brought the tray in and even prepared my mother’s tea for her from the rations on the tray. She doted on me and was enthusiastic about “what a great girl” I was and “how sweet” I was. When the teacups were empty she realized that my sugar was heroin.

She was upset then angry, not angry like when the boys get angry, but angry in her own quiet way. It may have been the maddest I’ve ever seen her. She wiped away her tears and barged into the kitchen where in a firm voice she explained to the boys sternly what had happened. They giggled at the incident. She disappeared from the room and returned with Senior.

“What did you do?” Senior asked ominously.

“Nothing,” Uncle Tony defended with newfound sobriety.

“Penny tells me you two had a hand in getting her and Honey high.”

“Well,” my father started to explain before Senior silenced him with a fierce swipe that wiped the drugs and drug paraphernalia off the kitchen table.

He stormed out and my mother went with him, leaving the boys in silence. I could hear my mother crying in the other end of the house somewhere. I could hear Senior’s rich soothing baritone voice. I didn’t care about anything. I was high. I felt indestructible. I was a hero, no a heroine, and I loved heroin. I didn’t care about losing control. I had never felt more powerful. When my mother wasn’t around, which was rare, I would sit in the kitchen with my father and Uncle Tony. I would do drugs discretely and eventually not so discretely. I would listen to them intently and try to absorb every morsel of information they had to offer. I began to realize the importance of the information I could gain from them because they were the most powerful people I knew. I wanted to know everything there was to know about drugs, everything, and I wanted to know all about their lifestyles. They answered my questions and told me their stories. They didn’t realize it but they were training me to become a gangster.

After I got high that first time my fate was sealed. I always knew I wanted more power but now the plan was formulating as to how I could attain it. My family had the knowledge, history, connections – both good and bad, but I had something they never had: ambition. Ambition would make me and break me.

At age eight, heroin graced my palette and ignited the direction of my tireless thirst for power.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. (Ronald Reagan)

I realized the power of a gun that day and when I considered how many guns were at our house I realized my family must be pretty powerful. I started to look at our life more critically. I started to assess the people in my classes at school. I was suddenly very aware of how different my family was.

I thought I was better than the others. My clothes were nicer and newer. I didn’t have to take the bus. Someone was always waiting to pick me up after school in a car that cost as much as most of the teachers grossed in a year. People treated me with respect. No one ever butted in front of me in the cafeteria line. When I raised my hand in class other people would even take theirs down so I could be picked. They had been warned about me by someone but I wasn’t sure who exactly. Even the teachers seemed to have an element of fear when it came to me. No one dared to cross me. I liked it and I got carried away with the power.

Before I was out of elementary school I was commanding the student body as if it were a dictatorship. I was raised by men with addictive personalities and whether it was inherited physically or mentality, once I got a taste of what it was like to be in a position of power I was addicted. I devoted my life to it. Drugs were the downfall of my father and uncle. I watched them get high and dumb and thought that I would never be like them, not because of any sort of moral implications, I just didn’t like the idea of losing control of my body.

Knowledge is power, so I decided to be as intelligent as possible. My mother adored the library so I would go with her but I would never go to the children’s section. I would find atlases, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and biographies – I loved biographies. I was grasping at the best of times to understand what I was reading but I understood enough to know that I was learning. My mother thought it curious, but she smiled and encouraged me to read and learn.

My mother was amazing. Everyone in our house had a profound respect for my mother, perhaps just because she put up with their nonsense. She was kind to the maid and helped out around the house more than she had to. She was sweet, much nicer than I ever was or ever will be, but she always looked tired. My father never slept while my mother kept regular hours, but she was the one who always looked tired. Maybe she was tired of living with boys, maybe she was tired of pretending she had no family of her own, maybe she was just physically tired, I never figured that out but I remember seeing her face change. It was perfect and pure and angelically pale but as I got older I watched it get wrinkled and lumpy. She was still beautiful but her face wasn’t as soft and wasn’t as young. She aged faster than she should have. She was becoming an old lady while she was still a young woman. But my father didn’t seem to notice. He looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. I envied that, not in a malicious way, but I envied the way he admired her because she was the only person – the only woman anyway – I knew who was treated better than I was. She was more respected, more beautiful, more gentle, more compassionate, more knowledgeable, more spiritual, and more loved than I was. I began to realize that all the traits that she excelled in over me all combined to make her more powerful. What was frustrating about this was that she didn’t care about power. She was content to be poor, ignorant, and utterly forgettable as long as she had her family. When I say her family I mean my father and me not the family she knew before us. She gave up even them to be with us. There’s something to be said for sacrifice but I didn’t learn lessons in sacrifice until I was much older.

Every war is different, every war is the same. (Jarhead)

I was born into a world of dreamers and drugs where hope was everything so it only seemed apt that Hope would be my name. Hope was written on my birth certificate, it was my mother’s choice. My father wanted to name me Martha. Uncle Tony wanted to name me Lucy. Senior called me Honey. Eventually Honey replaced Hope.

Don’t be fooled by the charming little name, dripping with sweetness, I was not the conventional Honey. I was raised by men, not just men, but wise guys. My mother was the best, don’t get me wrong, but I was always more interested in what my father and Uncle Tony were up to. I clung to Senior like he was my teddy bear. I was a man’s baby.

My mother and father took me to church sometimes and I sat through Sunday school with all the other kids but they treated me differently and I was always aware of that.

Someone asked me once, when I knew my family was different. I didn’t always know it was strange to live with my grandfather and uncle. I didn’t always know it was strange to have guns lying around the house or a panic room – I actually liked it when we ran to the panic room and got locked in there for an hour or two. It was exciting and fun and everyone focused on my needs and comfort the whole time. The baby, everyone worried about the baby.

I didn’t even realize how far from normal my family was when my mother’s father came and tried to rescue me. He tried to smuggle me out of the house one day when I was home alone with Uncle Tony, which didn’t happen too often, I’m not even sure how it came about then. Uncle Tony caught him and pulled a gun. He threatened the nice old man and for the first time in my life I knew fear. It’s ironic, I guess, that the first time I was afraid was the first time I met anyone from my mother’s honest and innocent family. Meanwhile, the lifestyle of the gangsters I was very much incorporated into from birth, well, that didn’t faze me.

Still, I didn’t realize my family was different until I was six. My mother had a book club meeting. She went once a week. This particular week it was at our house. So my father and Uncle Tommy let me come along with them on a routine distribution run. We stopped at a rundown house and they locked the doors of the car with me sitting wide-eyed in the back seat taking it all in. They approached the house and a man staggered out, he looked confused and harmless. As my father and Uncle Tommy joked with him, he raised a gun in slow motion. Their demeanour instantly changed. They didn’t pull out guns but they tried to talk the guy into putting his away. I didn’t understand what was happening. I could sense the danger but didn’t feel any urgency. Guns were commonplace to me and didn’t hold a grave impact.

The man shot at Uncle Tony.

My father pulled out his gun and shot down the dazed aggressor with two bullets. Uncle Tony had staggered back and fell to the ground though the bullet didn’t hit him. My father picked up Uncle Tony and they ran back to the car and we sped off. They acted like I wasn’t in there as they thrashed through what had happened.

At age six, I witnessed my father kill a man. He had never done that before.

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about. (The Beatles)

Dear Ricky,

           If someone is reading this I must have gone through with it. I was never a coward but I doubted I had the strength to put off this final job. My last goal has been accomplished and I’m now in the depths of hell rubbing elbows with Judas, Hitler, and you. I don’t know what will become of my soul. I never gave much thought to spiritual matters so I won’t start now.

           I lived my life fast and hard and now it has to end. Even if I didn’t have the courage to end it myself it would be ended for me so why not do it myself while some dignity remains. What’s one more murder added to my tally? There will be more murders to come at my hand even after I’m gone. I hope that both perplexes and impresses you. I always wanted to impress you.

            Ricky, you were the only friend I ever needed and the only person I wanted to impress. You, alone, were my family. When I lost you I lost my purpose, direction, and my family. Your family was kinder than they needed to be but they couldn’t replace you and in the end they removed me, discretely. They snuck me out of their fold to die alone because without you I wasn’t truly one of them. Perhaps even with you I wasn’t truly one of them, but it felt like I was.

Was I just delusional? I wanted so bad to be a part of you in a more prolific way. I wanted to be more than a friend but I couldn’t quite muster familial status. Now I’ll never know what I was to you. You’ll never know what you were to me. No one knows anything.

             I’ve laced a noose and hung it over a pipe. The Beatles told me nothing is real and nothing to get hung about but I don’t believe that now because there will be no strawberry fields forever for me. There were never strawberry fields for me. My life wasn’t good but it wasn’t hard. No one will write any books about a two-bit criminal who didn’t change the world but I don’t care because who is there to impress with my stories now that you’re gone? It all comes back to you and it always will. I’m dying now but I’ve been dying since your death. I’ll be dead soon but what does it matter when I’m dying anyway? And what does it matter to you when you’re already dead?

            When the prison doctor, who could care less if I lived or died, told me I had AIDS I didn’t ask what it was or how I got it. What did it matter? I asked if it would kill me and he said yes. He frowned as he told me as if it was disheartening but he didn’t care and I didn’t care. It gave me a glimmer of hope because maybe, just maybe, our corpses don’t just rot in the grave. Maybe we do have spirits and maybe death could bring my spirit to your spirit. So why wait around? Why not take control of what is left of my life? He asked me if I had shared needles with anyone or slept with any men. I laughed. He looked at me with unnerving seriousness. I said yes. He listed the danger and detriment of my actions. I was dying, what time did I have for lectures? I didn’t have time for lectures when I was living.

            I came here to my little cell and wrote a letter to you. I ripped it up and threw it out. I’ve written this letter over and over again. This letter is my legacy and I don’t need my legacy to extend any further than you.

            Nothing is real. Lie. Nothing to get hung about. Lie. But my scratchy record player will belt out the Beatles’ lies as I die. I hope when the chair tips beneath me the needle skips and as I gulp my last breaths, wriggling like a fish out of water, the record skips again and again and the Beatles repeat: strawberry fields forever. That’s all I want now: forever, forever in hell with you. I would go anywhere for you.

Goodbye, Ricky, I love you. I always have and always will love you.

The difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole life, if you survive them. (Brittany Murphy)

Vincent had left a note but no one would read it until after his funeral. Aside from a priest and both his estranged parents, our family were the only people present. His father shook Senior’s hand and thanked him for everything he did for Vincent.

I always wondered what could make a man waste his life. How could someone do that to themselves? What could bad enough to make live unliveable? I didn’t know Vincent well when I wondered that.

By the light of the moon the boys returned to Vincent’s snowy grave and built a small fire beside the headstone. They passed around a bottle of scotch. Each time it reached the end of the line they poured a splash onto Vincent’s grave. They talked about all the crazy things he had done and all the reasons they would miss him.

Senior took a flashlight and opened Vincent’s letter. He almost passed it on but neither Tommy nor Rider nor Tony wanted to read it.