Losing Rose: Part 1

by Lucy S. 

There was a time when I was going to counseling for depression, and I explained to the psychologist that I was worried because my niece and her baby might be coming to stay with us. She’d lived with us at other times in the past, but that had been in California when we’d lived rurally with no stores nearby for many miles. Now if she joined us again, she’d find a couple of liquor stores within an easy mile walk. She was an alcoholic who was trying to beat a more newly acquired meth addiction. I’d explained to him that she was actually my cousin’s daughter, that my cousin was an only child, that Rose considered me her aunt and I considered her my niece. I explained some of our history.

“So let me see if I understand this,” he said. “You’re worried because you feel some kind of obligation to take in your – what is she – second cousin once removed or something – into your home?  You have no obligation to do this in the first place. I mean, if you want to do it, then go ahead, but you aren’t obligated to do this at all.”

At that point, I realized that we were having a parallel conversation. I was wasting my time (and my $25 co-pay), and decided that was the last time I would see him or any counselor. I did not need his faux absolution. I was looking for ideas about how I might handle the situation well for all of us (her and her baby included), not his opinion regarding the correlation between proximal blood ties and obligation. But I have often found that the various experts have been useless or worse for many of my loved ones and me. In the end, our best strategies have been to steer clear and try to figure it ourselves. I wish this were not the case since trying to solve some of the problems has been overwhelming at times, but the ideologies and prejudices of many of these folks make it hard. I’ve often wondered how it might be to go to a psychologist who saw their role as something other than getting someone on track for acceptance of the selfish yet uniform and banal capitalist status quo. But I was not debating the merits of capitalism with that counselor, only trying to figure out how to care for my niece, her baby, and my kids as well as possible. And still, he could not help because he could not connect with me.

As it turned out, she couldn’t come to live with us. Her probation officer had told me and told her that she would try hard to get Rose’s case transferred to our Midwest state if Rose just turned herself in for the 45 day sentence in Arizona county jail. Rose wanted to run, but if they caught her, it would be a two-year prison sentence. Ultimately, she turned herself in on the appointed day. The probation officer seemed to lose interest in transferring her case to our state, but she did get permission for Rose to return to California to live with her father. And so she returned to live in the place she’d tried to escape.

Rose had told her P.O. the truth – that she’d gone to Arizona to get off of meth, that she was afraid that if she stayed living with her dad in the mobile home park in California, it would be hard to stay clean because her friends and fellow-addicts would come knocking on the doors and windows telling her to stop hiding in there, and she could only white-knuckle it for so long. She had a friend who’d gone to Laughlin / Bullhead City to do what Rose was trying to do – get clean and get work. But her friend had relatives there, and Rose had no one but the one not-that-close friend. She didn’t tell me until after she was there. She just threw some things together and drove off with her baby – drove off in a used car she’d recently managed to finagle her grandma into helping her get, with enough money to get there and get a room for a couple of nights. It was a desperate, foolish strategy, but she’d wanted to act quickly, before she lost her nerve.  

She told me what finally prompted her. Anthony had just had the flu, she said. “I mean, I know it was the flu… But, Lucy, what if he got sick because of people smoking it in the house when he was in there?”  I had no answer to this – no assurances for her that her fear was ungrounded and no desire to amp it up beyond what it already was. She’d told me before that she never smoked it around him, but things had obviously deteriorated further, unsurprisingly. “I don’t know, but it made me feel really bad, Lucy; I mean, that’s my baby, and I have to take care of him. It made me feel really ugly.”

I said something close to: “Yeah, I understand that, Rose, but why don’t you come here?  I just don’t see how this is going to work for you to be in Laughlin with no money and nowhere to stay.” She said her grandma had agreed to call in some nights for her at a motel on the Arizona side, just across the river. “Rose, that’s not gonna work for long. Your grandma will just run up her last credit card in no time.” She said she knew she could get a job cleaning rooms soon, and that they’d give her a discount on her own room for doing that. My feelings flip-flopped between despair at yet another bound to fail plan and fleeting moments of hope shooting through me that maybe it could somehow work. “Who’s gonna watch Anthony while you’re working if you get a job?” She said her friend had introduced her to a woman who watched kids and didn’t charge much. I’m sure I sighed repeatedly during the conversation, trying to figure out what to tell her. 

She surprised me by landing a job fairly quickly. Rose had found ways to earn money at times, doing work for people she knew, but she’d never had a real job. Lancaster, her hometown in California, can be a hard place to get work even for those apt to be viewed more positively. I know an 18-year-old who applied at 70 places before a pizza chain hired him. His parents had given him a used car, and he lived much closer into town. Rose hadn't had a car until recently, and her dad lived out east, beyond any bus service. And that other kid did not have the myriad of problems Rose had, some of which she could not hide if she wanted to. Nor did he have a baby. But at long last, she had a job. 

She bragged about it with as much pride in her voice as anyone I’ve ever heard talk about an accomplishment. After a couple of weeks, she said, “They told me I’m one of their best workers.” The smile in her voice came through the phone lines, and I too smiled with my eyes watering. “Remember how I always used to say, jobs and me don’t go together? But I feel GOOD in this job. I LIKE working.” She kept laughing.

Please, let it somehow work, I kept thinking. Let this last long enough. Let this be something good.

I dreaded hearing too many details about how they were living, but I had to ask. I had to know. Almost all her money went to paying for childcare, the room, minimal amounts of gas for her car, diapers, and other basic necessities. Her grandma often called in pizza deliveries for her from afar for her dinner. On a night before a day off, she drank and usually called me then, too. She said she was not willing to give up drinking, that she’d cut back, but it was one of the few things she had to look forward to, that it made her happy, so she didn’t see why she should anyway. I argued, of course, and then there came those times when I had to let the conversation move on.

She met people; Rose could always meet people. Despite her insecurities, she was friendly and outgoing. I think people loved how honest she was. She had no qualms about asking people to do her favors, either. Soon, she had a few other friends. One became a boyfriend, but that relationship abruptly ended not long after it started when he left water running in the bathroom sink of her motel room and it damaged the floor below. Rose lost her room and her job.

Soon after that, she was on the Arizona side, driving over the speed limit with Anthony in the car, and the police pulled her over. They soon discovered that she’d also been drinking and arrested her, allowing her friend to pick up Anthony until Rose's family in California could come and get him. She was in jail for a few days, charged with both driving under the influence and child-endangerment, a felony. I don’t know how she did it, but she somehow managed to talk a bail bondsperson into getting her out and taking a not very valuable necklace as part of the collateral. At any rate, she went to court and was given her sentence, 45 days in county jail with two years’ probation. Failing to turn herself in or any subsequent violation of probation would change that to two years in an Arizona prison.

Rose returned to her dad’s place in California, dreading the approaching jail time.  The single-wide trailer in bad shape that she’d hated so much – now she was sentimental about it. At least it was her home, she said. The floor still had holes in some spots which revealed the dirt below. The mice still ran everywhere, including over her and Anthony while they slept on a mattress on the floor at night. The sliding glass door still couldn’t shut all the way, and there were spider webs near that opening. When she’d discover black widows, she’d kill them. Rose didn’t do any meth because she was savoring the time she had left with her son and her family. Her dad worked about 60 hours a week as the main cook at a Mexican restaurant. (I should say “chef” since all the recipes were his, but I will use the word he used, the word his employers used with their wages and treatment reflected in the word.) He’d often been irritated with her in the past, but now he brought her food when he got off work. And she cooked big breakfasts for him and Anthony and her other siblings if they were there – chorizo and eggs, flour tortillas heated on the gas stove flames and stacked up on a plate with a dish towel over them, or French toast and various egg combos. She bathed Anthony every day and put him on the phone with me. “Papas! Say hi, Papas! Say, love you, Lucy. Love you!”

During every phone call, Rose asked if I thought she should just run. “I know people think forty-five days is nothing, but I’m scared,” she’d say.

“Yeah, I understand, Rose. I’d be scared, too. I don’t know what to say. I mean, I would hate the thought of going in, too, but then what if at some point they catch you for something and you have to go in for two whole years? And into a full-scale prison? I mean, can you stand to live with that sword hanging over your head?” 

“Yeah, I know…” she’d say.

Rose signed and notarized papers making me Anthony’s temporary guardian during the 45 days, then mailed them to me immediately. She wanted him to come and stay with us. But as the day approached, she decided it would be too hard to get him across half the country, and that it might scare him to go to a house where he didn’t really know us when he’d already been moved around so much and his mother was going to be gone from him. Her 17 year old sister would take care of him at her dad’s.

Rose had me on the phone for a long part of that morning that she had to drive herself back to Arizona to turn herself in.  Her usual hoarse voice was weak and shaky. She’d been throwing up all morning and the day before. She continually shimmered back and forth between blunt cussing to bolster her strength and crying that cracked through. Her younger brother Ricky would make the drive with her and take the car back. “Lucy, can you make sure he takes the car back?” By then, it was not hers; already, something had changed and that car was gone. A friend working at a car rental place had somehow gotten this for her to use, but he’d begged her to be sure that it got turned in the next day. I would end up talking Ricky home for hours that night, and staying on him the next day to get it turned in.  But Rose’s biggest concern was Anthony. She held him and talked to him until the time came to leave. She said goodbye to them all; even her mother came to say goodbye.

In Laughlin, her grandmother met them. She’d made the three hour drive from another part of Nevada. She took Rose and Ricky out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, from which they called me again. Finally, as the deadline neared, they drove to the county jail. Her grandma and Ricky walked her up to where she had to turn herself in. Rose had me on the phone as well, and her voice became higher-pitched as she repeated, “Okay, love you, Grandma! Love you, Lucy!” over and over like some frantic Hail Mary to ward off what she could not ward off. We were the two she had counted on, the two she kept with her by cellphone, and now she would be cut off. At the end, she told the three of us that she loved us. She passed the phone to my aunt, who was crying and saying, "I just hope she'll be safe in there."  Soon it was time to talk Ricky all the way back to Lancaster.

During her time in that jail, I talked with Rose twice. Both times, she was upset; her dad wasn’t accepting her collect calls and she kept imagining that something had happened to Anthony and they didn’t want to tell her. I said it was probably because they couldn’t afford the cost of the calls. Each time, I talked with her cost me about $60, an expense I could not well afford either on our $30,000 a year income at the time. Families always get financially bled when their loved ones are in U.S. jails and prisons, at least if they want to maintain contact and provide some semblance of care, inadequate though it may be for keeping those imprisoned loved ones safe. When I assured her that Anthony was fine, her voice grew harder and more impatient. “There’s fuckin’ roaches everywhere,” she said. “They’re those big ones, the black water bugs.” I asked her what she ate in there and she said, “This food is shit.” I talked about ideas for after she got out, and she cut me off sometimes to ask things like: “Hey, do you have a way to find out if my mom’s stealing my stuff? I know she is, and I don’t want her stealing my clothes. I know they won’t even stop her, either.” I said, “Rose, you know there’s no point in me asking them that.” I told her I would see her when she got out.

I talked extensively with the probation officer in the days before it was time for Rose to turn herself in.  The woman seemed genuinely interested in helping change the location of probation to my state of residence. As I said, Rose had been honest with the P.O. about her problems and the situation in Lancaster. I have learned not to trust very many experts, but I trusted her. Later, she was curt and distant, offering no explanation for why it would not be possible. But at that point, no one could argue with the P.O.  Rose had to take what we could get. Being forced to stay in Arizona for the duration of the probation would have been disastrous for her, although in retrospect, I don’t know if it could have ended much worse than it did.

When she emerged, Rose owed the state of Arizona money for housing her in their jail. If she could not keep up with the payments, she would be in violation of probation. Additionally, she was ordered to go to an alcoholism treatment program in Lancaster which the P.O. back in Arizona had approved, but Rose kept delaying because she could not afford the $547 charge for that treatment. As usual, the experts had no answers; it was up to us to find those on our own. They were so much better at punishment and abandonment than lending a hand when we could have used one.

Much later, that Arizona probation officer called our house because Rose hadn’t reported in anywhere for some time. One of my kids took the call and said she asked directly for Rose, apparently thinking to discover her that way in case she was hiding with us. My son asked who was calling and after the woman identified herself, he told her that Rose was dead. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!” she replied. She asked if I could give her a call back or if we could send her a certificate of death for proof. When my son repeated the conversation, I said something bitter, like, “What proof does she think we need to provide? If she calls again, tell her to send out the whole police force looking for her if she wants. What does she think she can do now?”   

We kept losing Rose in small moments and decisively huge ones. Bits of her bruised and bled out or hardened into scabs that broke off, even as she fought fiercely for whatever life she could grab.

***

Postscript:  After posting this last night, I came across something which made me think again about how the laws are applied and about the harshness brought down upon some lives while others with far more power over those lives maintain their positions of respectability when they behave irresponsibly. Bear with me while I connect what seemingly does not connect at first. 

In Minnesota, Occupy Homes is pressuring legislators to enact a state law which would create a Homeowners Bill of Rights, making it far harder for banks to use highly unethical practices which result in foreclosures for too many. (While calling for them last night, I had a conversation with a man who said he and his wife had been two weeks from losing their home. They'd faxed the same documents repeatedly, to be told over and over that the company hadn't received them. This cost him up to $20 each time. Only when his wife told the company she was going to consult an attorney and file for bankruptcy did they suddenly find the documents and move forward.)  Tomorrow, a state senator, a Democrat who was and is in the banking business himself, will decide whether to kill the bill or let it move forward. 

I decided to look him up on and found this on Wikipedia (with appropriate sources):

On the morning of May 22, 2007, Metzen was arrested for driving under the influence just hours after the 2007 legislative session came to an end. The arrest occurred less than a mile away from his home. During a field sobriety test, he blew a 0.15, which is nearly twice the Minnesota legal limit of 0.08. He wrote a letter of apology for the incident to Senate Majority Leader Lawrence Pogemiller and his peers. On June 14, 2007, he was sentenced to 20 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $377 fine for the arrest.

It is true that he, unlike Rose, did not have a baby in his vehicle, but anyone driving drunk endangers the lives of those whose paths they cross at that time. Yet he is a senator, and  the vice president of a local bank; and his brother is a regent for the University of Minnesota, while that brother's wife is a district court judge. I do not believe that he should have gone through what Rose did as a punishment; rather, I believe that no one should have gone through what Rose did.