Rachaels Story

Joy is coming, I whispered to Rocky. Nothing has changed, Joy still detests us. I heard it, the voice saying one thing, being the polite Joy; what do you call it, oh yeah, being the Bhodrolok; and underneath, I could hear the screaming, his mind wanting to tear into me. But, but, he is coming. At least, he has agreed to come see you. I was shaking, quivering, losing the strength that I have acquired over the years, again feeling afraid, molting butterflies dying excruciatingly in my stomach; years later, and I am turned again into that little girl looking up in fear. I waited 20 years to make the call to Joy. Joy, the first Bengali boy I met, whose innocence and sensitivity I fell in love with. Joy, whose heart was big enough to embrace me, whose love was deep enough to almost engulf my darkness, but whose minds inability to grasp an existence-my existence- so different from his sheltered life, made him a stranger to me during those days when the scared little girl in me would surface and bring the shutters down behind my eyes and close me off until the memories would pass. Joy, whose heart I broke when I walked off on him, from whose eyes I tore the glint, the awe that always shone in them as he smiled at the world, away as I looked for succor and solace in his best friends arms. The memory of those same eyes reflecting something other than lightsomething dark, dank and awful as we walked away held us both backRocky and mefrom ever contacting Joy. For over 20 years, Rocky and I lived, loved, made peace with ourselves and our betrayal and abandonment of Joy, but did not pick up the phone or even drop a note to him explaining ourselves or asking for him to forgive us. Rocky and I spoke about a rapprochement with Joy the first few years of our lives together, but did not act on it for fear of being lashed by those eyes, ripped into by the original sin that gave birth to our idyllic life, and reawakening in me the rune horned ones, the leery eyed demons whom I outgrew over the years. We had not even talked about Joy for the last decade; it was only after Rocky became sick, only after we were faced with Karmas rude slap, did we start talking about Joy. Then the last few weeks, as Rocky became infected from a surgery and would call out Joys name in the night from delirium, I started preparing myself to call Joy. So, I did and it has left me shaking, scared and lost. For 20 years I grew and climbed out of my childhood fears and shed my cloak of self-loathing, nourished by a man who could talk me out of places and unlit alleys in my mind, who would step in shoo away the shadows of old men and crying wolves. Rocky, my second

Bengali boy, my second love, my first loves best friend, rescued me from myself, a rescue which Joy was incapable of. But I was rescued at a cost, marred by Karmas frown following our every step since we turned our backs on Joy. _____________________________________________________________________ ________________________ Autumn, 1986. The Dinosaurs were playing at the WOW Hall, Eugenes favorite music venue. All the hippies, young, old and wanna bes came to see this San Francisco Psychedelic super group play. Long haired boys blown on microdots or liquid, little girls in dreadlocks buzzing on shrooms, all chattering about seeing John Cippoliano playing his guitar, or hearing Steve Keyser playing his sweet drums (will he sound the same as he did in Jefferson Airplane, asks one wanna be to show off his hippie creds), or asking whether Merle will show up as a guest. God, I hated these hippies. I wanted to retch at the smell of the skunk weed and patchouli that enveloped them like a protective mist, or the fried on acid empty smiles they gave you as they hugged you. Only reason I was there at the hall was to make a few bucks as my old man, Big Ray, was bouncing at the door. We were also selling hits of acid for $5 each, which we bought for only $100 for 100 hits. By the end of the night, we would walk away with 5 times our investment, leaving some poor hippie college kid to wake up to another tomorrow of melting walls or whispering trees as his constant companions. Oh well, fuck them. I was safe with Big Ray and our whisky. None of these college drugs for us, none of the love thy neighbour, what would Jesus do bullshit. We drank whiskey and we fought and fucked. No empty faces, no moonlight shadows, no whispers from angels or devils for us. hey Rachael, watch the door. I gottta dump the rest of the hits with that kid and I will be back. I dont like carrying so much shit with me in case there is heat. Big Ray walked off. Big Ray was covered in prison tats; tats that proved that he was a One Percenter, one of the true biker outlaws. Ray was more than twice my age; when we met two years ago, I was 14 and he was already 36 years old. We met at Mole Lake, the first festival since the riots of 1980. I was drunk, dancing like a warrior princess, while mama lay passed out by the fire and Grandpa Jerry skulked in the corner (fuck you, Jerry, I dont owe you nothing.) Ray saw me, picked me up and asked me whether I wanted to go for a ride. I never looked back. Ray was good to me. I would say that he even loved me. He didnt hurt me like Jerry did. He was gentle when we fucked. He never beat me if he didnt have to. He didnt let his buddies talk smack to

me. When his biker gang, the Gypsy Jokers annual Birthday Bash took place, he didnt bring me to it in the first year. When I said that I wanted to go the next year, he warned me about the girls being passed around and told me that I was too young. I still went. After the wet t-shirt, the group striptease of all the girls, the passing of the bitches started; Ray took a member of the Free Soul, a lesser biker gang, out to the back and beat him to pulp for trying to fuck me and dragged me out. No one said a word. I didnt go to the Birthday Bash after that. Excuse me, a voice snapped me back to the WOW Hall, could I please buy a ticket to get in? A clean cut boy, brown like me, with a shaved face and smiling eyes looked at me. Among the skunk smokers, the patchouli wafters, the acid eaters, the coke tweakers, the heroin shooters, this boy with a sing song accent, eyes bright and white, with the most gentle face and voice, all of a sudden reminded me of the time I was 7 years old, sitting on a blond haired and blue eyed angels lap as she sang songs to me in Mole Lake. hi, I didnt know what to say. I am Rachael My name is Joy. You know, you look Bengali. You look like a very beautiful Bengali girl. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Joy was unlike any man I had ever met. He was wild, funny, alive, but did not drink, smoke or do drugs (until I met him, I did not think that was possible for someone to be straight and fun at the same time). From that first night we met, he would show up at the door of the WOW hall every weekend. He would smile at me, talk to me for a few minutes and then dance as if all his bones had turned into liquid mercury. Then, at the end of the night, he would walk out, wet with sweat and clear eyed, while all others stumbled around him. One night when Ray was off on a run to Portland to pick up some more sheets of acid, I saw Joy walking out and asked him whether he wanted to go for some breakfast at the greasy spoon next door. He nodded happily, and then asked if he could bring his friend along and pointed to a guy slouched, almost passed out, by the corner bar. That was the first time I noticed Rocky, as he did not stand out at the WOW; he was as wasted as the rest of them, if not more wasted and cheebaed out then the rest. After we closed up and I handed my door-take to the manager, Joy and I walked and half carried Rocky over to breakfast. While Rocky nodded at the corner of our booth, Joy weaved stories of family, laughter, his Bangladesh, his Dhaka, his neighbourhood Dhanmondi, around me. Joy entranced me with his sharing about the food his mother fed him by

hand, the songs his father sang in the mornings. He made me laugh with his stories about playing in the fields all afternoon, and then running home before the evening call to prayer, to wash up and eat evening snacks and talk to his family on their balcony while the birds would sing their way home. That morning, over bacon and eggs and cheap coffee, Joy showed me a life I could not imagine, but instantly craved for it was what I had never believed was possible. I wanted in. We became friends, Joy and I. I also got to know Rocky from hanging out with him and from stories Joy told me about his friendship with him, stories almost of mythical proportions of the bad boy, the top student in the class who acquired a taste early in his life for smack, the boy who turned Joy on to music and books, the boy who at turns could be a big brother (Rocky always kept me away from drugs), best friend and worst nightmare, the boy who could suck the oxygen out of any room when he was not nodding or turking. But it was Joy I wanted, for Rocky at that time was like everyone else I knew. As Ray moved on and left me, I wanted my morning walks and evening coffees with Joy to lead to more. But as in those early days I tried to be sober around Joy, I did not know how to go about jumping him, for without the courage of booze I knew only how to be taken, not to take. But by night when I was away from Joy, I would give in to the call of the bottle, and end up drunk in some strangers bed.

Then into about three months into our friendship, a couple of weeks after Ray was gone, Joy called me in a panic and asked me to go over to their place. Rocky had overdosed on Mexican tar-cheeba, and Joy was freaking out as he did not know what to do. I sobered up instantly and told Joy to throw Rocky into the bathtub and throw ice on him. After I called the NA hotline to send someone to intervene and help Rocky, I ran over to Joys and Rockys apartment. One NA guy had already magically appeared (being clean must give these guys Flash like speed), and together we drove Rocky to the detox unit in the hospital. Joy held my hand and he shook with silent tears as we waited through the few hours it took for Rocky to be admitted and for a doctor to come and relay to us that Rocky was stable. Joy hugged and kissed me, our lips moist with salty tears. When we went back to Joys place, I crawled into bed with him and he held me all night. The next morning I experienced for the first time being made love to, and I felt, for those few minutes, peace. The demons were lulled, but as the weeks went by, I found to my and Joys dismay, that they were not gone.

Joy asked me to move in with him while Rocky was in detox. After Rocky was released from detox on the fifth day, it became obvious that Joy needed help taking care of Rocky as he was still dope sick and could barely eat, wash himself or go to the NA meetings. The few weeks I got to take care of Joy and Rocky, be the boys mama, I felt relieved, as if I had arrived at a place closely approximating happiness; I did not have nightmares nor did I feel the craving to drink myself to oblivion. Those were some of my best days of my early life. But my respite was short lived. As Rockys health improved and his commitment to his NA meetings and 12 step program made his recovery stronger, Joy and Rocky would fall into long conversations in Bangla where they would laugh and share stories about their childhood. Both boys needed me less and their bond got stronger with Rockys recovery. My incredibly tenuous grip on happiness slipped and the horned ones, the restless ones started again peeking out of the corners of my eyes, ambushing me while I walked down the pathways of my mind. The fear weighted, selfloathing little girl could not hide anymore, and I would wake up screaming from my nightmares in the middle of the night. I tried not drinking, but the less I drank, the more shuttered and withdrawn I became. Joy, at that time already stretched to a breaking point from trying to take care of Rocky during his drug bottom, seemed to me to be repulsed by my behaviour. Every time I would fly off the handle, hurt myself or shut myself in the pantry, he would try to talk to me, calm me but, only after a few minutes, exhale with frustration and walk away. His experiences, his imagination, did not leave room for him to understand the scorching interventions into my soul and psyche off my past. He would usually give up and then send Rocky to soothe me, to try to hold the little girls hand and walk her out of the nightmare. _____________________________________________________________________ ________________________ Little one, come. Its not safe. Come with me now; run back to the reservation my Grandfather, Jerry Ahmik whispered to me. I stood there, seeing the festival grounds outside our Chippewa reservation turned into a sodden pit of broken bottles and shattered bones. He pulled me away, my Grandpa Jerry, from the hundreds of outlaw bikers chaining, knuckling, kicking the college kids into bloody pulp, the hippies who came to the Wisconsin Mole Lake music festival to dance for a weekend under the stars. No, wait. We have to get mama. Wheres mama, Grandpa? I came with mama. I followed her here from the reservation. When mama ran out of her cheap wine, she just walked out of our trailer

and started moving towards the music, knowing that the bikers would let her have all the booze she wanted. I was nine years old, but I knew what would happen to mama. I followed her so I could protect her, help her if she needed it. The first time I came to the bluegrass festival was a few years back, when I was 6 or 7 years old. I remember it being fun, with Indians, hippies and bikers all dancing around a huge bonfire. I felt safe enough to wander around, and last year I remember a beautiful white girl, with big blue eyes and long blond hair, buying me a kebab and sweet corn and sitting me on her lap while she sang to me. I thanked God all year for bringing me that angel. But as I ran after mama, the music stopped. The air felt different, heavy, as if the rains had not yet arrived. Silence, no laughter, then suddenly I heard the screaming. mama, wait, dont go I ran after her. She stumbled, by now I could see that she was frothing in her mouth. oh mama, please stop I ran after her, grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back. Her lips were already turning white, dried spittle and vomit. She brushed me aside, pushed me and I fell to the ground. MAMA! I dont exist. Only the bottle, nothing else matters now. I run the quarter mile back to the reservation. Right as I enter, I take a left turn past our trailer to the large trailer with the sign Healer by the mailbox. Grandpa Jerry, Grandpa Jerry I shout running into the trailer. Since uncle Toby, my last stepfather, walked out on mama in a drunken stupor 3 years ago, Grandpa Jerry stepped in to look after me. Grandpa was mamas uncle, the younger brother of my Granddaddy. By the time Toby walked out, mama was drinking everything she got her hands on, from moonshine to vanilla extract; I loved mama, but during some nights I would pray that she would pass out. Grandpa Jerry became my father, my friend, my playmate; many nights I would escape the shadow of mama scratching imaginary bugs of her body as she convulsed in withdrawals, or retching in some corner of the trailer from too much cheap liquor. I would enter Grandpas trailer, find the small blanket he kept for me and lay down on the floor beside his bed. He would stop snoring for a second, letting me know that he is there. In my world where liquor was a curse, a disease that pulled the skin off my young mamas face, that pulled out her teeth and broke her mind, Grandpa Jerry was the antidote; the only man I knew in the reservation who did not drink. Grandpa Jerry, I shout. I run into the kitchen, hoping to see his smiling face. He is sitting at the table next to the stove, staring at his glass, no smile, just a blank, angry stare. Grandpa, I shout, please come with me. Mama is drunk and she went to the festival. There is shouting and I think there is fighting going on. Please

come with me so that we can bring mama home. I am sorry little Rozene. I am sorry. But why is Grandpa calling me by mamas Indian name, Rozene or Rose. Why is he calling me Rozene, when my name is Rachael. Mamas not little. Why does Grandpa smell of Heaven Hill vodka and Mad Dog. Oh, why does he smell like mama. Grandpa, its me Rachael. Please come with me so that we can help mama. Grandpa Jerry looked at me, his eyes cleared and he shook himself like a bear. Little Rozene is in trouble? he whispered. I wanted to shout, I am little Rachael; Rozene is big and drunk. But I grab him and lead him back, yes, little Rozene needs our help. We got to the festival and saw the riot and Grandpa grabbed me to take me back. I stopped him and told him we have to find mama, Grandpa. Little one, you wait, I was relieved that he finally knew who I was, I will look for your mama. As he tried to walk away, I saw a big guy, tall as a tree, swing a club and smash a kids face. As blood spattered on the kids tie-dye, I grabbed Grandpas hand and begged him to take me along. As we got closer to the main stage, we saw the wreckage from the violence unleashed by the meth-head bikers, the boot marks on kids backs, the bleeding heads of the boys and girls whimpering in the mud with their skirts ripped off their bodies. We heard the sirens, and the bikers started running to their bikes. Mama! I shouted. Little Rozene, Grandpa, slightly slurring as he shouted her name (why is he calling her by that name). We found her by the smoking coals of the giant bonfire, with all her clothes on and not a scratch on her (I remember thinking later on, when I was older, that even the drunken bikers didnt want to touch the hag my mother had become, at the old age of 30). She lay there with dried blood and vomit on her face and shirt. This is how I have woken up to her ever since I could remember. Little Rozene, I am sorry, whispered Grandpa as he gently wiped her face with his shirt and picked her up. From that night on, Grandpa Jerry could not stop drinking. I found out soon why he was sorry, why he kept on asking my mama for forgiveness. More cruelly, I experienced why Grandpa continued to be sorry to Little Rachael. _____________________________________________________________________ ________________________ Jaan, are you there? Why are you crying? I can hear you. Is it

what Joy said? Dont worry, Jaan. I know he was hurt, he is still hurt. But, but he will still love us. Trust me, my baby Rockys voice drifted in from the other room. In all his pain from the cancer, Rocky never forgot about me and was always as considerate, loving and kind as he was the day I met him. Oh God, I want a drink. I havent even had a thought of the poison, not even when Rocky was diagnosed with fourth stage cancer, not even when mama found me and I took care of her until she died; no, I havent thought about a drink since I quit drinking in 1990, when I walked away with Rocky and left the shell that I had turned Joy into. But now, somehow Joys hurt, the pain and violence I heard in his voice, brought back the craving for this poison, along with the memories of that night. When I looked at newspaper clippings about that night, I found out that it was August 4, 1980. That was the year when the Mole Lake music festival, one of Wisconsins and the nations most storied and peaceful events was turned into a bloody riot by outlaw bikers. Two people died, a number of girls were raped, and my life, until that point sad but peppered with moments of joy, was completely wiped clean of all joy, smothered off all happiness, where the one man I loved and respected turned into my nightmare, where the cruelties of my childhood until that moment paled in comparison to the deprivations of Grandpa Jerry crying to me at night and saying I am sorry, Little Rachael, I am sorry. Jaan, please come to the room I hear the panic in Rockys voice. He knows, as he always does, where I am at; he especially knows when I need his help and his love, when I am at that place where the demons can touch me, the place where 20 years of beauty and recovery can not protect me completely from the reach of the past. I hear his voice. I pray. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference. I breathe, and I call out Rocky, I am ok. I need to call my Sheila, my sponsor. I will come talk to you afterwards. I hear him sigh with relief. My beautiful boy.