From the Dust | The Scent of Books
On Memoir: Back to the beginning. The start of measuring the years in prison sentences and release dates.
Sliding the pages across my cheeks, I pull the book away from my face. I open it again and flip to the page opposite the title page and search for the copyright date.
Copyright, 1937, by John Steinbeck.
I have a thing about dates. I like to know how long it’s been since things began. Going back in time, to the beginning, the beginning of something. The beginning of what? Maybe to the beginning when my r’s still sounded like w’s. When radio sounded like wadio and raid came out like waid. When the cops broke the door off its hinges and raided our little house on Michelle Lane in the dust of California. Mom was taken away in handcuffs. So was Dad.
They let Dad go a few days later because the fingerprints they found all over the homes in San Bernardino County belonged to Mom. Three hundred houses and counting.
Back to the beginning. The start of measuring the years in prison sentences and release dates. Back to marking days on the calendar with sloppy red X’s. Days until I could see her again.
First sentence, 1989.
Right back in, 1992.
Back again, 1993.
In and out and back again.
Thousands of permanent red X’s. Lost days.
Or maybe earlier, going back to the beginning of love. The love I was born out of. The love I felt from the very beginning, from Mom and Dad, for their love of drugs and for their love of us kids.
Born nine weeks early at 2:36 a.m. on the fifth of June to two people who weren’t prepared for my arrival. I was gray like the June Gloom that always hit our California skies.
June. I wish they would’ve named me June. The halfway point in a year, the middle of the seasons. June. One hand stretched toward the light, the other reaching back for the darkness.
My lungs weren’t fully developed, and I lived in a plastic bubble in order to breathe. I couldn’t leave the hospital until I weighed five pounds. Three months of needles, feeding tubes, and beeping machines. The scent of alcohol, metal, and dead air. Iodoform and sick babies.
The scent of fighting like hell for your place in the world.
It was September before I got to join the outside world. The world of my parents.
Her world. The world of polluted skies and drug deals on just about every corner. The world of burglaries and carjackings. The world of methamphetamines.
Smoking. Snorting. Slamming.
Her world. Her drug of choice.
When I was young — not feeding-tube young, but young enough that I still carried around a tattered piece of Mom’s red lingerie as a security blanket and a bottle filled with Coca-Cola — I’d put my little finger in the bend of her arm where the skin looked like a swirl of watercolors, blues and purples like a fading bruise. A permanent reminder of the demons she’s been fighting for me all along.
In and out and back again.
I got a letter from Mom. The envelope was red. It said “W-34413” in the upper left-hand corner. Her inmate number. “W” for women and “34413” for the 34,413th inmate to be received at the prison.
First line: Hi, my darling.
Last line: I’ll see you soon.
Soon being in six weeks when we’d get approval from the prison warden to visit her.
On the flap of the envelope, over the seal laced with her saliva, she wrote “I miss you” in her perfect handwriting.
I miss you Too, Mom.
Capital T.
The scent of ink, of dried glue, and spit.
The scent of yearning.
*This is an excerpt from my book of creative non-fiction, From the Dust. You can buy the book on my website here and if you’re a paid subscriber you can get a discount code for 25% off here.
