The voices are building in intensity, issuing conflicting instructions, cancelling each other out: leave, go, find him, make it worse, they won’t let you have him back. Need to prove your sobriety, your ability to stay on the straight and narrow, to think straight, sit up straight. Thoughts all bendy and circuitous. Apply a ruler to level out. I see myself bent over my copybook, intent on drawing that straight line. No amount of application ever made it right. It shot off up to the right, or down to the left, the ruler like a piece on a Ouija board. I was possessed, even then.
Two fitful days pass in the infirmary where I battle with myself not to bust out of the place, but my dizziness is still intense, and anyway, where would I go? ‘How typical, couldn’t go the distance,’ Father would say. The sound of the rain is constant, at times a soft needling, at others a torrential downpour – a soundtrack of deluge. Tommy always worries about Herbie getting wet, and I’m sure he’s outside in it now and Tommy is inconsolable. Hole in me, Yaya.
16
On the second evening in the infirmary, Sister Anne enters with a tray of tea and scones and butter and jam, which she lays out on the bedside table.
‘How are you, Sonya?’
‘Ok now, Sister, thanks. That hasn’t happened in a while.’
‘You should’ve told us you had a condition.’
‘It’s just low blood sugar.’
‘The doctor says it hypoglycaemia.’
‘Same thing.’
‘Tea?’ The nun gestures to the tray with its teapot and dainty china cups, a delicate daisy pattern dancing on their surface.
‘No thank you.’
Sister Anne pours the rich golden brew in silence, her concentration intense. She slowly adds the milk, stirring with full presence – a ritual that seems somehow holy. I consider telling her about the baby calves separated from their mothers at only a few days old, both mother and baby crying themselves hoarse. I study the nun’s relaxed face, her evident savouring of the contents of the cup, and decide against it.
‘Scone?’
I shake my head.
Sister Anne stops her stirring. ‘Are you really finding it so difficult in here, Sonya?’
How can I tell this woman of my latest mind loop: my son and his best friend being ripped from each other? Catastrophising, the guys call it.
‘I haven’t touched a drop in a month, Sister.’
‘But it’s bigger than that, Sonya, this addictive state. You still seem to be fighting everything – the “system”， as you see it.’
‘I’m sober. Isn’t that the point of being here?’
‘Have you found any relief in prayer?’
How honest can I be?
‘I don’t know who I’m praying to.’
‘Does that really matter, Sonya? Think of prayer as a bridge between longing and belonging.’
I quite like that concept, abstract and romantic as it is.
‘Or another way of looking at it: think of it as a transformational current.’
I wonder why they don’t give us this kind of context before shoving us into large groups of people incanting words that have no meaning for them.
As if reading my mind she says, ‘The literal meaning of the prayer doesn’t really matter; what matters is the line of communication you open up, the connection with a Higher Power.’
‘But Sister, how can the rosary have any relevance for people in the modern world?’
I wonder have I pushed it too far. She seems to give this some thought.
‘The Hail Mary can be a portal to your Divine Mother. Think of it that way.’
The word ‘Mother’ brings about a complicated reaction in me: a grief, I think, a judgement, definitely.
Sister Anne continues: ‘Have you made a connection between your addiction and a severed belonging, Sonya?’
Severed belonging. I immediately think of Tommy.
‘Sister, I’m seriously worried about my own child.’
‘You’re here, Sonya. That is the best thing, for him, for you.’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘You do know that it’s the family’s prerogative to take as long as they need away from the alcoholic?’
‘He’s only four, he’s not capable of making that decision for himself.’
‘Perhaps your father feels he needs a break.’
‘He hadn’t come to see me once in the previous three years. I think he’s taken enough of a break.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She closes her eyes, lost in the moment, savouring the tea, reminding me of Tommy’s little face at moments of such bliss. Yumptious scrumptious. He always had something of a little Buddha about him.