Chapter Nine
Of course Rockie wants a mother, I thought as I bent over the seedlings of squash, picking weeds and stroking the newest leaves. I want a mother and Rockie is just part of me. Anybody I ever told about Rockie, there weren’t very many and they were all in a “professional capacity”, always said that Rockie was just a part of my own personality. A part that I had given a face, a body, and a name. They said that even a very small child can create an elaborate image like Rockie. I don’t care. She is still my best friend. Next to Harlan, that is. When I first met Harlan, Rockie was hard to find because I was always high and that made it hard to find anything that belonged to my mind. She came back when I got clean. It was just like opening a door. There she was a small step away, a turn of a key, and everything is unlocked and Rockie is standing among the baggage and garbage of my before-life ready to pick up where we left off. 
Light through the tinted greenhouse glass made the air an odd blue color and the spinach I picked for salad looked like some alien species. I reminded myself that it was just a trick of the light. I began filling a bag with the tender curly leaves and thought about the first time I saw Harlan.
After he accepted the cookie from me, he sat down without invitation. I could tell that Loser was upset because Harlan was being nice to me.
“My favorite. Peanut butter,” Harlan said. He looked over at Loser then at me. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”
I shook my head. On my feet, I can move faster. I didn’t really like getting beat up and I liked to be ready to run like hell, if necessary. I stood near the door watching Loser and Harlan. The big biker turned his attention to Loser. “You’ve been beating this girl.” It was by no means a question. A simple statement of fact.
“She’s a liar,” Loser said. As if my bruises were painted on.
“I don’t think so.” Harlan shook his head. “Seems to me she should find herself another place to live.”
“That’s my decision.” I was angry. What right did this biker, dealer, thug, even if he liked my cookies and hated Loser, have to tell me where to live and who to live with?
“No it isn’t. You’re an addict. You don’t make decisions.” Harlan brushed cookie crumbs off of his beard. “Ned, I don’t want to come back here and see bruises on this girl anymore.”
Loser didn’t respond. He sat all sullen and quiet waiting for Harlan to leave. He wasn’t going to stop beating on me anymore than he was going to stop using, or cheating, or stealing. I felt a movement in my mind. A voice way back, unclear, just a murmur. I knew my friend, Rockie, was trying to speak, but there was so much in between. Like someone trying to talk through water, the bubbles were breaking but the words were lost in thick water.
What Loser learned to do was hit me where no one was likely to see the effects. If he knew Harlan was coming, he’d send me out on some stupid errand. I got back early from one of these one day. I didn’t notice the Harley in the yard because it wasn’t there. Harlan was driving a pickup that day. My arm was broken and in a sling I made for it. It was hard to juggle the beer and open the door with one hand. I sort of stumbled through the front door. Loser started up out of his chair like he was going to slam me into the wall for coming back too soon. He thought better of it and sat down. Harlan took it all in. My broken arm, Loser’s reaction to my entrance, and he just went over to Loser and pulled him up off the couch by his hair. Loser started screaming at him. “Fuck you! You asshole! Let go of me!”
Some survivor mode kicked into me. I dropped the beer and ran to the bedroom. I grabbed an old suitcase Loser had in the closet and I stuffed it full of clothes. I looked for the bag of smack I had been stealthily saving and adding to grain by grain, which I’d hidden under the mattress, but that jackass loser had already stolen it. I swore at him, “You fucker! You took my shit!”
I could hear Loser’s bones crunching under Harlan’s fists and I ran out the back door. Where the hell do I go now? It didn’t matter. I know it was Rockie telling me to run. I ran. Half a block later, Harlan caught up to me. He pulled his pickup over and told me to get in. I didn’t know if things would be better with him than they were with Loser, but I was pretty sure that if Loser was still alive he’d never come after me if I was with Harlan.
I don’t know what made me think that Loser’s dealer was going to take me home with him. That was definitely not on his mind. “You’ve got a choice, ” he said turning onto Powell Boulevard and heading east. “If you’ve got a friend I can drop you off with, I’ll do that. Just tell me where. Or I can drop you at rehab.”
“Rehab? Oh that’s rich. You’re a fucking dealer. Talk about hypocrisy. You live off people like me.”
“Not any more. I don’t deal in the hard stuff. People don’t get addicted to pot. I’m not taking you home with me.”
I started to cry. “I don’t have any friends,” I said. “Junkies don’t have friends. We have connections.” I tried to laugh.
“Then it’s rehab.”
I felt relief. I didn’t expect to, but I did. “Sure, why not?” I was terrified. I tried to quit before a few times. “They don’t make you go cold turkey, do they?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been.” Yet he seemed to know right where he was going. He told me later that he had looked up the address after the first time he saw me. There was something about me, he said, that just made him think I was worth saving. Harlan had a need to save people. Correction, has a need to save people.
Until I walked through the door of Alcohol and Drug Recovery Resources, or ADAR as we liked to call it, I don’t think I realized how much I wanted to get clean and get off the crazy wheel I was on. I’ve never been more scared or more hungry for change. Harlan came in with me. He must have been planning this for awhile because he had made a reservation for me and paid for me, too. I found out later that every time he came into town, he set it up. Sometimes, they had an opening, sometimes not. It was a toss of the dice, Harlan told me—some cross between luck and fate he gambled would come together at the moment I was ready. This wasn’t a free clinic, this was first class. I found it ironic that drug money was probably paying for my rehab. I wondered what Harlan was going to want in return. I figured I could stay there, get clean and get out. Maybe someday, when I had a good job and a good life, I could pay him back. On my own terms. And that’s what I told him when he came to see me after I was there about six weeks.
“Harlan, I don’t know why you did this for me. I don’t know what you want from me, but I swear I’ll pay you back. Just please let me decide how I want to do that.”
“You don’t need to pay me back. Maybe I owe you already.” Harlan didn’t say anything more and didn’t stay to hear me argue. That might have been it. Might have been the last time I saw him if Loser hadn’t been such a big dickhead.
