George’s long black hair flaps over his rage-filled eyes like crow’s wings and he screams at me, just like he did years ago. “We don’t need any fucking welfare bitches in our business. Get the hell outta here, white girl.” He vanishes. I’m back in the Laughing Buddha Lounge. I’m alone. My fingers shake as I curl them around J. B. Harrell’s glass and pick it up from the table. I gulp down what is left of his pinot grigio and call for the waiter. I order another glass of wine and then another and another until I pass out on the red velvet sofa.
I woke with a start, relieved to feel the soft cotton of my sheets and threadbare nightgown on my skin. Everything on the bed stand was in its proper place—my reading glasses on top of my book, the beige doily my grandmother crocheted for me when I was a toddler, my black gooseneck reading lamp, my alarm clock showing three o’clock in the morning. I took a sip of water from the glass I fill nightly to ward off bad dreams, obviously nothing but a silly superstition, and thought about my meeting with J. B. Harrell.
I got out of bed and made my way to the bathroom. I looked hungover even though, in fact, I hadn’t touched the glass of pinot grigio that J.B. Harrell left behind last night when he walked out on me, except in the dream. But I had wanted to and right now I craved that glass of wine more than anything else in the world
You know what to do, I told myself as I pulled on the faded pink cotton bathrobe that I inherited from my mother. My bare toes gripped the parquet flooring in the hall, then sank into the long thick pile of the shag rug in the living room. I sat down at my oversized desk in the corner, turned on my computer, and signed into NAICS, the North American Indian Clean and Sober recovery website. I typed in my chat room screen name, Numees, which was an Algonquin name for sister that I chose because it had a nice ring to it. My online recovery sponsor was Hehewuti, a Hopi from somewhere in Arizona. She was always online. Sometimes I wondered if she was a real person, because she never slept. But real or not, over the years of our relationship, there hadn’t been a nook or cranny of my inner psyche, of my soul, that I hadn’t laid bare before Hehewuti. Well, almost none.
“Hehewuti,” I typed. “Are you there?”
An instantaneous reply popped up on the screen. “Hey, Numees. Can’t sleep, huh?”
“I had a drinking dream.”
“Did you wake up before or after you got wasted?”
“I passed out.”
“Okay...so?”
“I want a glass of wine in the worst way.”
“Lie number one.”
“Okay, okay. I want a whole bottle of wine.”
“Better get it out, Numees. Nothing you say can shock me, girl.”
I wasn’t sure about that. Hehewuti might be plenty shocked if she knew I was a white woman from the Midwest and not an Ojibwe from Canada. I justified my lie by telling myself it was okay to identify myself as an Ojibwe from Canada as long as I sincerely felt like an Ojibwe from Canada when I was in the chat room and as long as I was scrupulously honest with Hehewuti about what I was feeling about drinking.
“I know the dream was a warning,” I said. “I want to escape into a state of complete and total oblivion where there are no demands, no guilt, no consciousness, no conscience...no nothing.”
“Why?”
“Something terrible happened,” I said. “And this guy’s breathing down my neck to get me to do something about it. But I don’t know what to do. I have this need to show that I care, and I really do care, but I don’t know why I feel so desperate to prove it to this guy, or to anyone for that matter.”
“What happened?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I don’t know what the truth is.” I knew I was being vague, but if I told Hehewuti the details and then later she heard about Anthony Little Eagle on the news, she might put two and two together and realize I lived in Monrow City. I couldn’t risk her finding out that I’d lied to her.
“What are you most afraid of, Numees?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop and think.”
“I guess I’m scared that I’ll find out what’s going on,” I said, “but no one will believe me.”
“And then what?”
“I could lose my job.”
“And then what?”
“I wouldn’t be any good to anyone anymore.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t want to do this. I want a drink.”
“Walk it through, Numees. If the worst thing that could happen happened and you got fired, then what?”
“It’s not,” I typed.
“What?”
“Losing my job isn’t the worst thing that could happen.”
“What would be?”
“Losing myself.”
“Which is what happens when you get drunk, right?”
“How do you do that?” I typed.
“What are you going to do now?”
“The next right thing. Whatever I have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What about that drink?”
“I don’t need it anymore.”
I thanked Hehewuti and signed out of the chat room. I went back to bed, and although my compulsion to drink had been lifted, I still expected to lie awake trying to figure out what to do next. But as soon as I rolled onto my side and covered my head with a pillow I drifted off to sleep.
—
At seven o’clock my alarm rang and I jumped out of bed. I knew what to do, as if the next right thing had seeped into my unconscious as I slept and popped out as soon as I opened my eyes. I also knew that what I was about to do could alter my life forever. I splashed cold water on my face, brushed my teeth, and combed my hair back into a ponytail. I grabbed my yellow peasant blouse from the closet but then realized it would be too bright and threw it onto my unmade bed. I pulled out my navy blue blouse and a pair of dark blue slacks. Perfect.
Outside, the air was muggy and still, the sky filled with the threat of thunderstorms on the horizon, as I started walking north along Center Avenue. I usually drove to work, but the forty-five-minute walk gave me time to work out the final details of my plan. I carefully weighed and compared the risks of one action over another, and each time I chose what I considered to be the better alternative I experienced a surge of relief. I’d never been able to understand people who couldn’t make the smallest decision because they couldn’t bear to eliminate other options. For me there was nothing worse than the ambivalence of
