A knock at the door dragged me from the world of dreams back into my tiny downstairs apartment in the Armory Park neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona.
It’s Autumn, 2003. I stumbled to the door, half-expecting to find the neighbor who thought nothing of asking strangers for beer or wine at all hours. Instead, Julie, my son’s mom, stood there with Ricky bundled against her hip.
“What’s up?” I asked. It was about 5:30 a.m., and the sky behind her was turning dusty pink.
“I need you to take him,” she said.
My mind was still cloudy, so I didn’t—couldn’t—grasp what was happening.
I craned my head around the doorway to see a gold Plymouth PT Cruiser nestled against the curb. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t tell whether anyone was inside.
“For how long?” I asked. “I’m shooting a quinceañera this afternoon.”
“I don’t know. It could be a week, it could be three…”
She trailed off.
“Three what?” I looked at her, unable to continue… Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
“I don’t know… I just need you to take him.”
A ray of sunshine reached from around the corner and touched her face. The light revealed that her eyeliner had been running. Ricky, about 20 months old, nuzzled into her neck. If he understood what was happening, he showed no sign of it.
“I’ve got a job this afternoon,” I repeated. “Can I get him tomorrow?”
She shook her head impatiently. In that dawn I sensed that she was being pulled by invisible hands toward a destination that I’ll never know.
As I stared at her in silence, the picture suddenly snapped into focus: She was leaving him with me, maybe for good.
I thought about it for a moment longer, then I took Ricky into my arms.
Without speaking, I carried him to the futon in the living room and laid him down there. He wrapped himself with a blue felt lion-print blanket and swiftly fell asleep. After kissing his warm head, I returned to the doorway where Julie stood.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Her face contorted in ways I’d never seen as she reached for the words.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I’m just… all fucked up. I’ve been up for like, two days?”
Now, I was beginning to understand—but I didn’t want to hear it. My stomach clinched as I felt the downward pull of anger, frustration, disappointment and . . . was that fear?
“Can I do something to help?”
“Yes—take him!” Urgency, desperation and need colored her voice. She shamelessly chewed the nails on her right hand.
“Okay, I’ll take him,” I said. “But I’m not going to let you have him again until you’re clean.”
She nodded, looking down. I looked down to find that she had been twisting her Adidas shell-toes into the rocky soil beyond the concrete patio. A moment passed in silence.
I opened my mouth to speak but she turned and walked toward the Cruiser. I could only watch as she got into the passenger seat. The Cruiser zipped away as she closed the door, then disappeared around the corner.
I stood alone in the early morning sun, wondering how I got there. In short order, all of the greatest fears a new father carries had happened: Our relationship stopped working; my efforts to patch it up failed— miserably—one after the other until we separated; I moved into a dumpy little studio apartment; our inability to be together became clearer each day; and now, she was trading motherhood for addiction, leaving me to raise our son . . . alone.
That day was supposed to be first I’d be paid to make pictures. Instead, it was the day I became a primary caregiver. I was only 24, and had no idea what that entailed, or the scope of sacrifices I’d make in the next 16 years.
She called at random hours for the next few weeks or so.
“I’m coming to get him,” she’d say, her voice sounding somehow distant. She feigned toughness, confidence, but I suspect that deep down she knew that I wouldn’t allow it. Which only intensified her projections of strength.
“I can’t let you do that,” I’d say. “Call back when you’re clean.”
A month later, Ricky and I moved to another apartment, also in downtown Tucson. I thought that the move would protect us from the off-chance that she’d show up unannounced. One night, she called and threatened to bring “a couple of guys” to forcibly take Ricky away from me.
“That’s kidnapping,” I said in disbelief. “I could call the police right now and begin the process that will ensure that you’ll never see him again.”
Of course, she knew that I didn’t want that. Even though we couldn’t be together, I needed her to be a mother almost as much as Ricky did. Not for my sake, but for Ricky’s.
She also knew that, where I’m from, nobody calls the police.
“Trust me: If I get him, you’ll never see him again,” she said.
“How do you intend to do that? You don’t even know where we live…”
A pause followed. I thought that I’d shut her down, but I could almost hear the gears turning in her mind. Was she smiling?
“You live in the red-brick apartment building at the corner of Broadway and 5th Avenue,” she said with a weird sense of pride swelling in her voice.
Stunned, I hung up the phone.
I sat beside Ricky that night as he slept, and for the next few weeks, filled with anger, apprehension, paranoia and fear. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see that gold PT Cruiser pulling up to the curb on Broadway. Julie would get out with two companions. They would come upstairs. They would knock, and I would pretend we weren’t home.
My phone would light up every night around 9 p.m. If I answered, she’d demand that I bring Ricky downstairs. If I didn’t answer, she’d call repeatedly. At some point, I made the difficult—if obvious—decision to shut my phone off.
***
That created another problem. It was during that time that my maternal grandmother, Maggie Lee Morgan—Mamaw, I called her—went to the hospital with a blood infection.
My mom, Lois, took Mamaw to Northwestern Hospital. Mom called around 2 a.m. to invite me to say goodbye to my grandmother but my phone was off.
I woke the next morning before sunrise. When I turned the phone on, there was a message. I woke Ricky and we drove to the hospital. By the time we arrived, Mamaw had died.
I remember her body being contorted in a way I’d never seen—like a fallen tree whose branches were covered with a sheet and, where visible, skin—her jaw hanging agape. I no longer remember what I said to her. She suffered from dementia. For years, she blamed me for things that went missing around her home.
“He was here again last night,” she’d say to Mom.
“Who was here?” Mom would ask.
“Davey,” Mamaw would say.
“How did he get in? I was asleep on the couch. I would’ve sen him.”
“He came in through the keyhole. He sat on my shoulder for a minute, whispering terrible things into my ear. Then, he stole my medicine and disappeared.”
“That’s crazy,” Mom would say. Of course, she knew that Mamaw wasn’t dealing with reality.
It began when I was a teenager, and lasted until I was in my mid-20s. Mom complained to me about this ongoing argument.
I wished that I could say something to put an end to it. But I never could find the words. The manners I’d learned from Mamaw—respect your elders, don’t talk out of turn, don’t speak on things you don’t understand, and above all, modesty—prevented me from confronting her about the nuances between reality and her imagination.
It was a blessing in disguise. How would a conversation like that have gone? What kind of person would I have become, if I’d had the gall to say such things to Mamaw? Barring the way she spoke of my dad, who cheated on my mom before marrying another woman, Mamaw was by far the sweetest, gentlest person I knew… and I walked all over her.
Besides, I had something more important to say to her. I didn’t know it at the time.
If I could go back, I’d say one thing to her: “I’m sorry for the way I behaved when I was a teenager. I was truly awful, and I took you for granted. Please, forgive me.”
Though Mom and Mamaw seemed passive, docile, maybe even frail, to younger versions of myself, 17 years of parenthood taught me otherwise. To prioritize one’s individual needs for another, and for an indeterminate period of time, is the pinnacle of strength in this life. It’s not for the faint of heart. And I had completely taken she and Mom for granted.
***
I blamed Julie for my missing the final moments of Mamaw’s life. After that, I refused to turn my phone off at night. Which left me vulnerable to Julie’s frequent late-night calls.
Eventually, she stopped calling. I was relieved, of course, but I was also quietly devastated. In addition to being a new single dad, the woman who raised me was gone. And I had no idea how to move forward.