L.A. Blues Read online

  I kept my eyes on the road as I spoke in a voice which almost sounded like a demon; it was so filled with hate. “Venita, you were just so weak for men. It’s bad enough you were out there banging when we were kids, but none of this would have happened had you not been so dick-happy.”

  Venita sucked in her breath, as if I slapped her. “Oh, so now you’re grown so you can talk any kind of way to your poor mother.... That hurts, but I guess I deserve it.”

  I was on a roll though, fueled by years of frustration, abandonment, and rage, and I continued. “You killed my father.”

  “You know I didn’t kill your father. I tried to help him.”

  “But that’s why he’s dead.”

  Venita was quiet for a while. When she spoke, her words were measured. “Zipporah, we get no do-overs in this life,” she said. “But I’d appreciate it if you remember I am your mother. I did give birth to you—not you to me—okay?”

  We both shut up. Mother. Hah! What a joke! You weren’t therefor me in the years I lived with you, so busy gang banging or running with your men, let alone after you went to prison.

  Years of silence fell between us, creating a wall that neither one of us wanted to climb over. Neither one of us wanted to go back and revisit that life-changing night.

  When she got out my car, we didn’t even say good-bye. I helped her carry her little duffle bag to the front door, then walked back and climbed in my car and headed home so I could get drunk again.

  7

  AA Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

  It was almost nine months after I got fired before I completely sobered up. I guess I hit bottom when I went to a bar on Alameda, had a black out, and didn’t wake up until three days later in McArthur Park. I was laying on a park bench when I came to. I looked around and then had my last recollection of sharing a bottle of wine with a bum in the park. I felt all over my body to see if I’d been violated, but I didn’t feel any evidence of it. I had no idea where my car was, so with the few dollars I had in my pocket, I caught the public bus home.

  But, it got worse. I stumbled home to find my furniture sitting in the driveway and on my lawn like some tent city under the freeways here in L.A. Obviously, the county sheriff had put me out. A padlock was on my door. I hadn’t paid rent since I was fired. Even though I drew down my pension, I blew most of the money while I was blacked out on benders. Not knowing what to do, I did what I did best. I trudged to a local liquor store and copped another bottle of Hennessy with the last twenty I found in my pants pocket. I came back and sat on my front porch, sipping and trying to figure out what I’d do next.

  I didn’t know how and where Shirley came from, but she was standing over me when I passed out on my front yard. Maybe the neighbors had called her.

  “You’re not coming home until you dry out,” I remembered Shirley saying, as she lifted me up and placed me in her car.

  Shirley, the collector of abandoned children and stray dogs, took me in—once again—took me by the hand, bathed me, cleaned me up, sat through a week of one of the world’s worse detox in history, accompanied by chills, tremors, sweats, dry heaves, hallucinations, and then, finally, the runs. After a week, Shirley finally got some food down in me that would take hold in my stomach. When she felt I was strong enough, she took me by the hand, once more, then put me in the twenty-eight-day detoxification program that Romero left the card for that was still in my jacket. The program in San Pedro was called House of the Future and it was a turning point in my life.

  House of the Future was located down by the Pacific Ocean in San Pedro. From the second-story floor, which had an outside veranda along the back, you could both see and smell the ocean, which gave the residents a soothing feel. This was a place you could see yourself getting sober in. The refurbished Victorian home possessed an old rustic feel. Walnut-stained hardwood floors, a library in the front room filled with some of the great philosophers of our times, wood cane back chairs, which made you think you were in an antique museum. Clusters of tiger lilies, begonias, impatiens, geraniums, and bougainvillea filled the front yard. A few stray tomcats hung around, waiting to be fed by the residents. The house was wrapped around by a white picket fence, which drew up childhood memories of my father’s bungalow in Compton.

  That first afternoon, as I headed to my bedroom, I was thinking how I hated sharing my personal space with someone I didn’t know. I really didn’t like the idea that I was going to have a roommate. I was advised my roommate was named Haviland and I’d seen her when we were at the first orientation meeting. She appeared to be about in her early thirties, and had a young, well-cared for pampered appearance about herself.

  As I sauntered into my assigned room and witnessed my new roommate, Haviland, having a melt down on her cell phone, I was shocked.

  “Mother, I know you’re there. The gig is up! You know I need this money. Daddy left that money to me. Bitch, give me my money!”

  I stared on in amazement at how out-of-control Haviland was acting. She was wearing designer clothes, had Prada, Gucci, Fendi, and Coach bags on lockdown from what I could see on her shelf, so I didn’t know why she was acting like she was some broke ass chick.

  I was still shocked to hear someone talk to their mother like that though. Growing up, and other than when I spoke up to Venita the day she got out of jail, if I’d ever talked like that to my crazy birth mother, or even to my foster mother, Shirley, I’d be needing teeth implants.

  I could still hear Venita’s voice bellowing throughout our projects whenever we messed up. “I’ll smack the taste out your mouth and knock your ass into next week.”

  Or the smooth way Moochie would get you back since she was under the DCFS supervision. “Call the child abuse hotline if you want to, but I’m the queen of this house. I’ll be waiting at the door for them. Where you gon’ be?” And it always worked, because no one ever wanted to be moved from Shirley’s home. We’d all read the horror stories in the L.A. Times of what could happen in the luck-of-the-draw type of foster homes you could land up in.

  Finally, she spoke to me. “Hey, name’s Haviland.”

  “Yes, I met you at orientation. My name is Zipporah.”

  “Z, is it all right if I call you Z?” She lit up a cigarette.

  I nodded in the affirmative. “That’s what everyone calls me.”

  “I understand you’re a cop.”

  The counselor had introduced me as a cop to the group. “Not anymore.”

  “But don’t you know how to find things?”

  “Like what?”

  “Actually more like people. I’d like you to find my birth mother and birth father to see if there’s any money there.”

  “Whoa, slow down. Why are you so money hungry?”

  “Look, I deserve this money,” Haviland snapped. “These white people adopted me. I gave them their little fantasy about having a baby. Now they owe me. And my birth parents owe me, too.”

  “Why do you think your birth parents owe you money?”

  “For giving me away like garbage.”

  I shook my head. Just listening to her talk was like listening to a rake going over a glass driveway, her speech was so abrasive and nonsensical. “Can’t say you don’t have issues, can we? But the truth is, I don’t have the same access to information now that I’m no longer an officer.”

  “Why not? Don’t you have connections who could help you?”

  “Not for this.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m in a jam.”

  “Oh.” I decided not to probe.

  Haviland continued. “For the past three months, since my adoptive father died and since the reading of the will, I’ve been speaking into an answer machine. I’ve tried blocking out my number and she still won’t answer. I know the Bible says, ‘Honor thy mother and father,’ but how could Mom do this to me? The Bible didn’t say anything about the parents messing over the kids.”

  “How did she
mess over you?”

  “I was her baby, even if she didn’t carry me inside of her. Doesn’t she know, it’s not my fault how I feel. I can’t help feeling like she’s abandoning me. My mother has even gotten a restraining order against me where I can’t go on their estate in Beverly Hills.”

  “Well, have you given her any reason to think that you might harm her?” I asked.

  Haviland shook her hand. “No, it seems like once people know you’ve had a substance abuse or alcohol problem, they always look at you like you some freakin’ crack head. I was only into prescription drugs. The doctor prescribed them for me. I wasn’t on no crack, but you wouldn’t believe it the way this bitch who adopted me is acting.” Havilland kicked her Louis Vuitton suitcase across the room.

  “Don’t you think your mother might have a reason to be afraid of you?” I asked, seeing how wild and violent she was acting.

  “Let me explain my situation. My therapist says I have abandonment issues. Me and my boyfriend were facing foreclosure big time in our Hollywood Hills house—who isn’t right now? But that’s not the point. I had money due me, that’s what makes me so mad. My father meant for me to have that money. She’s lying when she said my father wrote me out the will and the trust. Anyhow, me and my boyfriend got robbed at gunpoint during a home invasion right after I cashed my check when I did get my royalties, so that’s why I lost my money .” She looked down at her wrists, pulled up her long sleeved blouse, and revealed bandages on both arms.

  I started to ask her what happened to her wrists, but I knew a suicide attempt when I saw one. She was definitely a certified nutjob.

  So this was how and where I met my roommate, Haviland McIntire, former child star, current Vicodin queen. I found out that Haviland had been adopted as an infant by a white couple back in the ’70s, when interracial adoption was uncommon. Although she was African American, she said her birth mother was white and her birth father was black. She looked like a light-skinned black girl, but her roan-colored hair was bone straight.

  Thinking back, I vaguely remembered seeing Haviland playing in an eighties TV sitcom called We Are One World. She was on the show from about age eight to thirteen when the show was really popular. Her face graced all types of teen magazines and she even went on Oprah back in the day. She gained a lot of notoriety, even as a teen actress, but her drinking and drugging derailed her career. I figured that we were about the same age because I saw the show after I went into foster care and was living with Shirley.

  I wondered what Haviland was doing in a drug program, but during my thirty-day stay, I saw several other celebrities. I guess there was as much pressure to remain in the spotlight for actors as there was for police officers to go to work and come home alive each day.

  8

  “Spiritually, we choose our parents so that we can learn the life lessons that we were sent here to learn.”

  That’s what my sponsor, and our group leader, Joyce told us in our first meeting where everyone was blaming their parents for how ‘fucked up’ our own lives were. Haviland was so obnoxious during that first meeting she made me cringe in embarrassment for her. She was a repeat offender whose recidivism for drug programs obviously was up there in the double digit numbers. Perhaps that was why Joyce singled her out, saying that Haviland suffered from this syndrome called “narcissistic injury.” When Haviland continued to cut up during the meeting, Joyce used the term “narcissistic rage.”

  During our four weeks of treatment, I experienced a range of emotions myself, which boomeranged between self-defense to self-loathing. This was also the first time I learned the idea that we must deconstruct in order to reconstruct our lives. As time passed, I really couldn’t scrutinize Haviland anymore because I was going through my own melt down.

  The first time I stood up at the podium at a twelve-step meeting and said, “My name is Zipporah and I’m an alcoholic,” I could have died from the shame of it all—like a cartoon character reduced to a pool of ink. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me.

  I guess I’d developed the police force mentality of being above the law. I never faced it before, but, over the ten years as an officer, I drank the Kool-Aid and believed in its superiority and self-righteousness. Just being in this program was an admission of my human frailty and vulnerability.

  This place was breaking me down in ways I didn’t like. My ego shattered as the group broke through all my defense mechanisms. I would get livid when these strangers would get all in my face and challenge the lies I had told myself.

  “You’re an alcoholic, Z,” Joyce said. “You can’t keep everything inside of you. You need help just like the rest of us. Open up and let someone in.”

  “I don’t give a flip,” I shouted back, then retreated into silence the rest of the group meeting.

  First of all, they didn’t know me. I was told this so often, I guess that was my problem. I did tend to keep everything inside of me, but I was not used to opening up with friends, let alone strangers. I started opening up just enough to keep the group off my ass.

  Although I didn’t share any of my crazy antics I committed while I was drunk, I finally admitted, “Drinking cost me my job. I lost my house. I lost my self-respect. Now there, y’all satisfied?”

  Once they got off my case, I started noticing the people around me. That’s when things got a tad bit easier for me.

  There was an Emmy award-winning actor, Mike, who looked like a faded-out beach surfer. I kind of remembered him from an old TV show, Hawaii Five-O . He’d been a polydrug abuser. There was also an anorexic-looking, bleached-blonde meth addict named Amy—a Paris Hilton look-alike. But Haviland was the most interesting.

  At a group meeting the night after I heard her go off on her mother, I listened to Haviland’s testimony closer than before. She had the cynosure of all eyes as an actress, and the whole audience was held spellbound. I looked on as Haviland gesticulated all over the place like someone doing sign language. She used her hands to paint the picture.

  “My name is Haviland, and I’m an addict. I used to be Hollywood’s Black Flava ten years ago, but now I’m a washed-up has-been on the C-list.

  “See. I was adopted at birth and raised by a white adoptive mother and father, so just say I’m a mixed nut. As you can see, I’m as brown as wheat. I’d like to blame my parents, like I tell my therapist, but the truth is, they were good to me. Paid for my two college degrees.

  “Maybe, they shouldn’t have adopted me. It’s my adoptive parents’ fault for the predicament I’m in. Why? Because they raised me to think I should only have the finer things in life. I’ve been called a spoiled brat by all three of my ex-husbands.

  “To say I’ve been backsliding is an understatement with this treatment thing, but this time I’m going to really try to stay straight. I might even go back to church. Yeah, I admit I haven’t been to church in many moons. I had been raised part Jewish, where I went to the synagogue with my parents, but was allowed to visit Black churches so I could stay in touch with my culture. Then, as an adult, I joined the Church of Scientology for a while.

  “Anyhow, last week I got tired of it all, and I tried to end it. When I woke up in the hospital, I decided I wanted to get clean and stay that way.”

  Now, the more I listened to Haviland’s story, the better I understood why she behaved the way she did. She was spoiled rotten. I didn’t feel an iota of pity for her. I wished some Beverly Hills couple had adopted my ass out of Jordan Downs when I was a baby. Get over yourself. Boo hoo freakin’ hoo. Get over yourself already.

  A week later, when we had the group meeting where our parents or family members come to participate, since addiction is viewed as a family problem, Shirley came as my mother. Right away, I noticed Haviland did not have anyone come to fill in as her family member. I guess her mother was just too burnt out with her addiction.

  Although my mother, Venita, was out of prison, I didn’t invite her, because one, she was a stranger to me as far as I was concer
ned, and two, I didn’t want her to know that I was an alcoholic. Not that she should say anything since I probably inherited the gene from her. Those first nine years I grew up watching her down forties like they were Kool-Aid and smoke weed in front of us like cigarettes. I grew up knowing the smells of marijuana and alcohol like it was our air freshener. I never knew if Venita ever used anything heavier though. I’m not sure if she’d look down on me, but I felt kind of ashamed. Particularly in light of the fact that I looked down on her all these years. Now I was the drunk in need of treatment. Ain’t that a blip?

  Instead, I asked Shirley to represent me as family because I knew that she’d gone through the rehab bit with Chica, and stood in as the surrogate parent. She knew about addiction, relapse, and recovery and how tenuous the whole process could be.

  As soon as Shirley walked in, to my surprise, Haviland leaped out of her chair, knocking it over. She ran up to my foster mother and threw her arms around her. “Miss Shirley! What are you doing here?”

  Shirley looked taken aback at first. She gave her a strange look which made me think she didn’t know her. She didn’t say anything. Meantime, I was too shocked to react. What was going on? I wondered.

  Haviland continued, “It’s Haviland. Remember my mother, Ilene Rosenthal?” Shirley’s face lit up. Obviously, she recognized Haviland.

  “Haviland? Is that you? Where’s your mom? I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

  “Well, you and me both. I haven’t talked to her since my father died three months ago. She wouldn’t even let me attend the funeral.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father. The last time I talked to your mother she told me you were just getting out of rehab and that you were back into acting.”

  “Well, let’s just say I backslid.”

  The group convened once all the families got there. During this family session where just about everyone in the group had someone representing them, Haviland really acted out. She ragged on her mother, calling her a racist bitch, to the point that Shirley spoke out.