Finding Courage

Each day, and throughout the day, B. finds a way to say 'No.'

Summer garden, photo by Geoffrey Gevalt

I have been watching B. for more than a year now.

She has fascinated me since I first saw her at the farm store on her first day as it turns out when she was tentative and halting and did not smile and looked down on the ground when I asked for organic layer pellets, almost like she did not know what they were, maybe she didn’t.

She asked the manager, and he took me over to where they were and, as a courtesy, hoisted the bag over to the cash register where she stood, remembering what she was supposed to do, how she was to do it, the manager standing behind her, watching her nervous finger whirling tiny circles over the screen as she tried to find the right keys and ask the right questions and finish the sale and give me my receipt.

She smiled. Not a full smile, a hiding smile, the kind of smile you do when you are missing half your teeth and you know how it looks and you know that anyone looking knows what those missing teeth mean and judge you for it, but I looked at her and saw her beauty and saw, in her eyes, her struggle and I knew right then what she was fighting.

I had seen it before. For nine months I ran weekly writing workshops for people struggling with addiction and in those one-hour, two-hour, three-hour sessions they exposed their souls. So I knew.

I said thank you and left and closed the door behind me.

It has been a year now since B. began working at the store. She smiles full on now. Her shame has evaporated. She smiles and calls me by name and mispronounces it on purpose every time because she knows that’s OK and because she’s still intrigued that anyone would have a first name that was spelled as weird as mine. “Joffry,” she says, smiling. “How ya doing, Joffry?” A snort.

I want to ask her how she lost her teeth, how long the meth ravaged her, how long she was on the edge on the edge on the edge. I want to ask her how she lost her baby, how she lost her daughter who’s now with the father’s mother. I want to know where the father is even though I know he’s long gone because that’s the kind of thing you know in a small town, and here she is in this store smiling and goofing on customer’s names.

And she knows exactly what and where every single item is in the store.

I want to ask what she does each morning to find the courage to say no, to have to say no, on this day, on every day and to really mean it. I want to know what her trick is, because I know that all the ones who have succeeded have a trick, a fallback.

Like the woman I wrote with who keeps a dose of Oxy in her medicine cabinet wrapped in foil, taking solace that if things get really really really bad, so bad she can’t stand it anymore, not one more minute, she knows she can get it and crush it and snort it and everything will be OK. The pill is still there, wrapped in labored, wrinkled tinfoil in her medicine cabinet just behind the mouthwash. I know because I saw her recently; she wanted me to know.

I want to ask B. what her trick is. I want to ask her how she finds the strength to get out of bed and come to work each day, to smile, to work so hard, day in and day out, to volunteer for shifts no one wants because she has no family anymore and she can do with the extra pay she gets for working shifts no one else wants.

She has incentives for her resolve, of course: she may soon get to resume visits with her daughter and, maybe, just maybe, get her back. That’s one thing she told me, volunteered it one day. But that’s her motivation. Where does she find the strength?

And why did you stop, B.? How did you stop? I want to ask her that, too. What happened that made you say enough, enough, enough, that made you take hold of your life and your addiction and beat it back with a broom? A hammer.

Like another woman I wrote with who one night was so desperate she robbed two stores at gun point, drove to the city to get heroin, shot up and doesn’t remember anything that came after except “coming to,” as she put it, behind the wheel of her car at a traffic light at 6 a.m., the light red, then green, then blue everywhere as a swarm of police swoop in, surround her, sirens shrieking, cops yelling, prone, guns pointed at her, and she looks down at the pistol on the passenger seat and knows she has two choices and decides, ‘No, I will go on living,’ so raises her empty hands high so they can see them.

I don’t ask B. all these questions even though I want to because I know she is looking forward now, always looking forward, and I must honor that. I must respect that. She is not the past.

So on this day I say thank you and tuck the seeds in my pocket, grab the twine and new gloves and smile, and as I leave, as I close the door behind me, I hear her shout, “Bye, Joffry.” I can almost hear her smiling.