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{affirmations} katherine luck It was her silent affirmations that kept her from going completely insane. She had posted them on the wall of her cubicle, in ornate 24-point Copperplate Gothic font.
“Which is exactly never. Condo-renovating jerk.” She left them up for the benefit of her clients, however. “There’s days I find myself buying their line of bullshit, and I want them to see that even if I’m currently addled by caffeine and sleep-deprivation and low-paying social service job blues, at one point in the past I was immune to their tricks.” I sat in her cubicle, drinking aged coffee from a gray Styrofoam cup and reading her affirmations. She’d kept me waiting for twenty-five minutes; average for her on a Wednesday at four o’clock. “That copier is infested with Satan—with demons from the bowels of hell, and I know who put them there. That punk-ass intern from the IT department. As revenge for me calling him a locomotive pimple to my co-worker over the phone where he could hear me. Ain’t my fault he hasn’t learned the beneficial powers of benzoyl peroxide. So…” she hefted a waist-high stack of bright yellow files from her chair onto her desk and sat wearily down. “How’re you doing?” “Oh, you know—” “See, the thing is, I needed to use the copier today, for real. I need to send damned food stamp renewal applications to the Tenth Street DV Shelter in frickin’ triplicate since moron over there always loses my clients’ apps twice before the end of the month deadline. No, I never insulted him out loud where he could hear, before you ask. Not by email, neither.” She tapped rapidly on her keyboard, peering at her computer screen. “So, you’re doing okay? Job’s going well?” “That’s what I wanted to talk to you abo—” “And you know what bothers me the most? Admin won’t reimburse me for months if I run my glorified ass over to Kinko’s and use my hard-earned dollars to make copies on my own free time. Once, I made copies of a client’s resume to help her get a job at the Gap, and I didn’t see that $7.95 for eight months! I am not even exaggerating—I kept track.” “Actually, Sheree, I was wondering—” “You don’t suppose I could use the copier at your work real quick?” “One time, alla us social workers photocopied our faces, and then fashioned, like, masks, see? For April Fool’s? And we each wore another person’s face and sat at their desk. Would’ve been real funny if the boss would’ve shown up that day.” Sheree was efficient on the copier located in the deserted office of the theatre where I worked. I glanced at the clock over my friend Toby’s desk. 5:15. I drummed my fingers nervously against my thigh as Sheree skimmed goldenrod paper through the manual loader. “I really appreciate this, Janie. You’re a pal and a half.” “Oh, well, yeah,” I put some aw-shucks into my posture to hide my impatience. I received formal training in acting during college, though I had been squandering it as a lowly theatrical researcher post-graduation. “Most people these days only help out a sistah if they want something. Most people are always on the make; know what I mean?” I met Sheree’s oh-so-innocent eyes over the flaring light of the photocopier. I was the first to blink. “All right, I need you to do me a favor, okay?” “Cracker always wants something from the black woman—I knew it! She can never bring her rarified boo-tocks into my grungy office for coffee and a chat unless ol’ Sheree’s got something she needs. Well, what is it? One of your honkey-ass boyfriends on the ice and you want me to be all subtle and assess him and get him rehab?” “No, no, nothing like that. This is a fun thing, actually. See, my friend, Toby, is doing this play—” “Oh, Lord, no!” “He’s doing this play about drugs or drug dealers or something. I didn’t quite read it yet. He wanted me to find someone who knows—” “Janie-child, no way!” “Someone who knows what, um, drugee-types really act like. He wants authenticity.” “Aw, come on, Janie! You know I love ya fine, girl, but those artsy-fartsy fruity friends of yours always rub me the wrong way. Can’t I just buy you dinner and call it even?” “Do you have any money?” “I gotta have it! Don’t you understand? I’m trashed…twenty-four…seven. It’s all I have! It’s…all…I…AM!” Onstage, Johnson, portrayed by an actor with a depressingly typical resume—Shakespeare summer stock, local musical theatre, voice-overs for the Mattress King on Highway 99—squatted on the floor and began to itch himself all over. He scanned the audience, which consisted of myself, studious-faced Toby, and eye-rolling Sheree. “You can’t save me—no one can save me, Marie!” “That’s not true! Hold on—hold on to me!” Marie, a too-large-headed actress Toby had met at a Renaissance Faire, ran to Johnson and clutched him desperately. “Good,” murmured Toby, hands templed beneath his chin. “Jesus, save us,” muttered Sheree. When we met two years ago, she’d been muttering exactly the same thing, wearing exactly the same stop-the-world-I-wanna-get-off pinch at the corners of her eyes. “Jesus, save us. I’ll pay for the damned cat food if it’ll get us all outta here this century. I’ll write a check—a good one, even.” The old lady ahead of us in line at the Buy’n’Save hadn’t heard her, but hovering at the end of the conveyor belt with my basketful of single-gal groceries, I had. I let out an inappropriately loud laugh, causing all heads—except the old lady’s—to turn my way. “It’s been a long day,” I explained, apologetically. It had been a long day for Sheree, too, it turned out. In the twenty minutes it took the old woman to shakily withdraw all the pennies and dimes from her purse, count them out, change her mind about buying the Salmon Surprise, reconsider and put it back, and hunt for the corresponding coupon in all her pockets, Sheree and I got a lot of getting to know you chit-chat out of the way. “Hey, call me sometime and we’ll go for coffee,” Sheree had proffered a crisp business card bearing the title “Social Worker II” surmounted by an official governmental seal. She seemed like such a grown-up with that dignified business card. I could come up with nothing better than a crumpled program from my theatre’s recent production of The Vagina Monologues with which to introduce myself and my work. I decided to meet Sheree at her office for coffee that Friday. I had no idea it would prove to be my most humiliating experience on record. “I finished the song for you, Marie! I finished all of them! Don’t leave me!” Young Johnson, tastily sans shirt, gripped his nice round biceps to indicate cold as blue light shimmied over him to indicate rain. Backstage, a cookie sheet was shaken to indicate the lamest thunder I’d ever heard. Toby’s rapt face indicated satisfaction, however. “I need you! I need you more than the meth! Time to get real. Time to live. Time to live in the world.” Sheree’s arms were folded and her head was cocked at an annoyed angle. Her boot was tappity-tapping fast and loud on the floor. Johnson knelt in the presumed rain puddle that was the stage floor and gazed into its depths. “I gave up the meth for you! I’m clean—I’ll be clean forever! Because of you, Marie—because of your love!” “Okay, nah-uh, no way! I gotta stop y’all right there.” Sheree heaved herself to her feet and turned to us, hands on her hips. “Unless Johnny Knoxville up there is about to keel over and an ice pipe comes rolling outta his pants and his gangbanger pals come smoke it up and rob his dead body and roll him into a ditch for the cops to find about three weeks from now, then there’s been absolutely nothing real that you’ve shown me in the past three damned hours.” “Oh? Pray tell?” Toby affixed a sweety-bitch smile to his lips and twiddled his fingers under his chin. Sheree motivated up to the edge of the stage. “You really think Junkie Johnny can just drop the meth like that? Just because he got some girlfriend motivating him? That’s lunacy! It never works that way.” “It’s the power of love. Ice Dance: Love and Drugs in the Twenty-First Century—” “A play in eighty acts, yeah, I’ve been here the whole time.” “A Modern Tragedy,” finished Toby, bristling with defensiveness. “Well, it ain’t reality.” “What exactly would you suggest to make it, as you put it, ‘reality?’” Sheree laughed, hard and brittle. She never usually laughed like that. She rubbed her forehead too hard and exclaimed, “Where exactly should I start?” Sheree’s office was located in the heart of the Mission District downtown. I found myself clutching my purse tight to my side before I’d even parked the car. Twelve blocks up it was all art galleries and $500,000 condos. Abruptly, the milieu had degenerated to burned-out vans and filthy sidewalks littered with dead, or passed out, bums. I was disoriented and filled with an unconditional desire to flee. The front doors to the James Street Community Action Office had plywood where the glass had been. The wood was in turn patched over with complex silver webs of duct tape. A stale scent of old paper, like in used bookstores and the back stacks of university libraries, hit me as I entered. This literary smell called to mind term papers, and added a nervous fear that I couldn’t recall when Moliere had been born to the already palpable terror I was feeling at the sight of the many scary characters shuffling along the scarred linoleum. A tall front desk loomed, with a plastic shield surmounting it. Half the shield had been knocked out, and from the legion of yellowed memos and comic strips taped to its edges, it must have happened years ago. I sidled up, coughing lightly to attract attention. I received formal acting training in college. “Excuse me?” I ventured two minutes later, when I realized that most of the people in the crowded waiting room were coughing with the impressive vigor of nineteenth century consumptives. “Yes, can I help you.” The hard, diner waitress-looking woman seated behind the front desk stated without looking up. “Um, hi, I’m here to see Sheree.” The lady gave me a gimlet glare in reply. “Sheree Marshall?” I dug through my purse and hesitantly offered the business card. “Is this your first time here?” “Yeah,” I sighed, laughing in relief. “I don’t usually come to this part of town.” The lady shoved a small cup with a screw-on lid and a stack of pamphlets across the desk. “Fill the cup in the bathroom on the right. Leave the specimen on the shelf by the toilet. Do not attempt to adulterate or alter the specimen in any way. After you’re done, proceed down the hall to room 342 for orientation.” “No, no, you don’t understand. I’m here to see Sheree. For coffee.” “Coffee will be provided at break time at 2:00. No smoking except on the patio.” “No, wait, I—” The woman flicked a telepathic glance at the beefy security guard a few feet away. “If you do not choose to comply, your parole will automatically be revoked, and you will return to jail. Immediately.” The security guard was armed with a massive canister of pepper spray suitable for halting a grizzly bear attack. The front desk lady’s hand hovered over the telephone. I hesitantly took the cup as the security guard began to edge my way. I’d seen enough TV to know that I was likely to be swarmed by cops and hauled off to jail for a night of misunderstanding and cavity searches if the front desk lady were to call them. Surely Sheree would appear any moment to set things straight. I decided to stall for time. It wouldn’t take Sheree more than five, maybe ten minutes, to come looking for me. An hour and forty-five minutes later, I cowered on a cold aluminum folding chair, surrounded by thrift store stretch pants and sun-ravenged hair skinned back into french braids, whilst a scary man with a crew cut harangued me. “We can’t help you, Janie, until you admit that you have a problem! Just say it—‘I am addicted to meth!’ You can do it. ‘I am an addict! I need help!’ Say it!” “But, I really don’t use drugs. I swear. This is all a mistake.” “A mistake. Well, that’s a start, at least. You’ve made a mistake with your life. How many of us made a mistake that first time we shot up; that first time we smoked or snorted? Raise your hands.” All hands shot into the air. I almost put mine up too, due to peer pressure. “Come on, Janie! We want to help you regain control of your life.” “But…” “Non-compliance in our twelve-step program results in immediate revocation of your parole. You don’t want to go back to prison, do you?” The man thrust his drill-sergeant face close to mine, eyes glaring deep into my presumably drug-ravenged soul. “Okay, okay, um, I’m sure a big drug-banger. I enjoy smoking the drugs. I’m probably high right now. Um…” “Lloyd, for the love of Christ, what’re you doing? That’s my friend—she’s here to see me socially!” Sheree stood in the doorway, haloed by flickering greenish fluorescent light like a velvet painting of the Virgin Mary or Elvis. “Why didn’t you say something, Janie?” Lloyd grouched, as I scurried out of the room. “You sure seemed like you had a problem to me.” Sheree bundled me off to the refuge of her cubicle, far from the addicted masses. “You gotta tell the front desk that you’re a friend of mine when you come here, seriously! Alla my clients say they’re here for coffee. You gotta be clear—didn’t you give them my card?” For the next year, I would only agree to meet Sheree at the eclectic art house coffee shop twelve blocks from her office. “When you’re on meth, you don’t care about anything but the meth. The meth’s your girlfriend. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, and you don’t write touchy-feely Michael Bolton-sounding songs to some hydrocephalic-looking bitch. You clean the bathroom floor with a toothbrush for nine hours coz you can’t stop. You pluck out all your arm hairs one by one with tweezers till you’re all bald, and then you start plucking the skin away and you bleed all over your nice clean bathroom floor. You get scarred and ruined and you lose everything you ever loved. You do not get all cute and buff like homeskillet up there!” Sheree pointed a bit too vigorously at Johnson, who was looking all glistening and firmly bare-chested and baffled. “You get skinny and old and sick and you die! It ain’t some prettily-tragic love story. You don’t love anything but the drug—not even yourself. Don’t you get it?” It had grown very quiet in the theatre. Sheree’s voice was bouncing harshly off the empty seats and dark walls. Her eyes snapped sparks as she held up counting fingers. “Methamphetamines are illegal. Methamphetamines will not solve your problems. Methamphetamine dealers make more money each month than I do, and you know what? In spite of that, I do not sell methamphetamines.” Her voice echoed to silence. She muttered, almost too low to hear, “I deserve a raise.” She lowered her head. “Forget it.” She didn’t glare at Toby, or his handsome drugee, or even me as she stalked out. I don’t remember if Sheree had her affirmations posted in her cubicle when she plied me with coffee and talked me down out of my jittery, addiction-confessing state, that first ill-fated visit I made to her office. When I finally dared venture back a year later, they were prominently displayed on bright salmon cardstock right above her computer screen, where she would see them dozens of times each day. It never before seemed important whether her affirmations had been there all along, but maybe it was important. Maybe it was the most important thing about my friend. “Are you okay?” I trailed Sheree out the stage door into the crisp night. “Yeah, yeah. Just tired and stressed out. Whatever, you know.” Sheree was shaky. Sheree was never shaky. She was always steady; always smooth. She was shuffling about. Moving her feet, rummaging in her purse, adjusting her bra straps. Gradually, eventually, she became still. “See, the worst thing is when you start getting a messiah complex,” she said finally. She tipped her head back and stared up into the bare yellow bulb which hung like a harvest moon over the stage door. “It’s better if you burn out and stop caring. When you care—when you actually believe that without you, your clients will all OD and die alone in the streets, well…” She let out a ragged laugh. “Aw hell. It’s just another line of bullshit they feed you.” Sheree jingled the change in her coat pocket and bit her lip. She met my eyes, hard. “Isn’t it?” Katherine Luck is an award-winning playwright and short story author. Her first novel, In Retrospect, is available at www.amazon.com. |
