March 13, 2007
But there is no Light that can penetrate the Darkness within.
At 8:00 AM, Angie and I head twenty miles east to the methadone clinic on the near west side. We must not be late, as the clinic closes at 9:30 AM on Saturdays. It is a gloriously beautiful morning, about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, 10 degrees Celsius, and traffic is light on the Eisenhower. Maggie is too tired to crawl out of bed to join us.
I met Angie three years ago when she was 22. Then a dancer at Black Jack’s, she captured the hearts and the wallets of many. Her hour-glass figure, full, natural breasts, innocent face with huge eyes, and her thick, full mane of auburn hair caused the strip club’s parking lot to fill.
She has not aged well.
The morning light is not best suited for displaying Angie’s charms.
Or maybe it is.
She looks as if concentric black circles are radiating from her sunken eyes. A few large pimples decorate one side of her face. Her arms are bruised from failed attempts to insert needles. She has picked several scabs on those arms. She looks scary.
The methadone clinic, just west of the intersection of Cicero Avenue and Chicago Boulevard, is depressing in its appearance, reflecting the spirit of those within. It appears to have been built without benefit of architect or design. It is a simple, one story, low rectangular building of concrete block.
The blocks are painted white, now dirty with neglect, in full reflection of the neighborhood where the clinic resides. The glass door is covered in something like a sheet of aluminum foil, but the sheet is translucent. Through this door walk the human debris of Chicago, with little hope, in full despair.
Angie must report daily for her 70 MG dose. On Saturdays (today), she is also given the Sunday dose, as the clinic is not open Sundays.
She is handed a pink plastic cylindrical pharmaceutical container, similar to a standard pill container. It is about one inch in diameter and three inches in length. In it is her methadone dosage in the form of a wafer and sections of wafers.
Each wafer contains 40 MG of methadone and can be broken into four quarters. Her container holds one wafer, half of another wafer, and a quarter of a wafer, total 70 MG.
The clinic nurse pours some red Kool-Aid into the container, causing the wafers to dissolve into a sandy substance with a disagreeable taste. Walking out of the clinic, she attempts to drink the substance, and it so upsets her that she pukes it up.
So now I have a dope fiend without her Saturday fix, headed for dope sickness.
Now, of course, it is my problem.
She calls our friendly neighborhood dope dealer, and arranges a delivery. She orders “a whole one on the down”, a “whole one” being a “jab”, “on the down” being heroin. The price is $120.00.
She cannot clearly define a “jab” to an amateur like myself, as she states a “jab” is sometimes ten dime ($10) bags for $100, sometimes fifteen for $120. Typically, in the current market, a “jab” is 12-13 dime bags for $120.
This industry could use some standardization.
The order is delivered by a runner for the dealer Jo-Jo, and the runner is a short, fat black woman who is a crack addict and hides that fact from Jo-Jo. In addition to Angie’s order, the runner claims Angie also ordered a dime bag of crack. The runner smokes the dime bag herself and tells Jo-Jo that Angie shorted her $10.00. We don’t know that.
Jo-Jo now thinks that Angie screwed him out of $10.00.
There is some trust in this industry, and that trust is sometimes violated. The runner approaches the car window, leans in seemingly to shake hands or just rest an arm on the window, and cash and drugs are traded in a flash. Neither check what the other has given them until minutes later, when in private and the other is gone.
We’re twenty miles from home, and Angie’s hurting. In the car, she takes the cap from the methadone container and places some heroin in it. She adds a little of my bottled water, and heats the mixture. It is an ugly dark brown color, and looks like the devil’s substance itself on this Earth.
She says she can smell Vitamin B in it, as this dealer cuts it with Vitamin B. She has no idea why.
Probably just a holistic approach to his craft.
She sops up the fluid with cotton, then draws the fluid into the syringe from the cotton.
At the age of 25, she has lost all her teeth to crack smoking. She just had $10,000 worth of surgery to remove the roots of her teeth so $4,000 of dentures could be fitted. As she would be knocked out for the procedure, an IV needed to be fitted.
The regular nurse tried and tried, but could not find a vein.
The nurse known for her ability to find veins was called in, and also could not find one.
Finally, it is left to the anesthesiologist who searches her entire body, and finally is able to find a vein.
Now I am faced with an amateur in my almost-new car trying to find a vein at 70 mph.
She affixes a tourniquet to her forearm, just below the elbow. She places a second right next to the first. Both are tightened as tight as she can tighten them.
I watch the forearm swell, bursting, turning red and purple. It seems to swell to the size of a ham hock. She’s in great pain.
“Meat” from knuggetz’s photostream on flickr.com
Finally, the needle goes in, and she’s in agony over the burning caused by her inability to loosen the tourniquets. If she loosens them, she’ll lose the vein. Finally, the needle comes out, and a small amount of blood flows from the wound as she applies a cotton compress to it.
The image of that needle inserted into that ham hock of reddish-purple flesh, blood flowing, with pretty, young, French-manicured fingers sticking out of one end, is one of the most repulsive things I have ever seen in my life.
All this occurs at speed, with the stiffer suspension jarring the cabin as we hit the normal breaks in the pavement.
I worry that she’ll stain my car’s rug as she sets the cap with ugly brown residue on the floor.
Later in the afternoon, I decide to ask her about straightening out her life.
Of course, she doesn’t want to.
Both her father and her grandfather have beaten her since childhood. This past summer, an off-duty fireman, driving by, saw her dad beating her and had the father arrested. Of course, her boyfriends also beat her. One intentionally hit her with his car when she was running away.
Her mom says her dad beats her because he loves her.
She says she has no where to go. Every place is lonely. Knowing full well that only she can save herself, I reply that she still has the future and that she can return to the wonderful beauty she once had, if she so chooses.
Her sister, three years older, was also a dope fiend and died recently at age 27. Her sister began experiencing skipped heartbeats, then later odd heart rhythms, including racing of the heart.
Angie’s heart is now skipping beats. I tell her that she is on her way to her sister’s fate unless she does something. She says she is different, as her sister died of a brain aneurysm.
That nuance is lost on me.
Angie is friends with the Superstar, who lost her brother to heroin this past summer.
The loss of young, loved, heroin-addicted siblings, so recently, seems to have caused both women even greater depression, resulting in greater heroin and crack use.
Sunday morning, driving Angie home, she talks me out of $20 and she has $20 left from a recent trick. She’s getting dope sick again, and we need to see Jo-Jo.
Angie is horrified to hear that Jo-Jo thinks he was shorted $10, as she needs $40 of dope now, and Jo-Jo needs an extra $10. She starts sobbing. After hollering and moaning for several minutes, Jo-Jo finally gives her time to come up with the extra $10, and delivers the $40 of product.
Yes, I would have come up with another $10 had Jo-Jo not extended credit.
It is a horrid, miserable, painful, and sad life.
