Episode 28: False Spring

April 2014

Chicago can be generous. Chicago can also be cruel. Especially with spring. Winter hangs on like an unwanted houseguest. It eventually teases a departure, but don’t you believe it. It will still be there in the morning. It will seem to proceed out the front door, leaving behind pleasant hope, only to return gruffly and loudly through the back door and bringing despair.

Baseball will come. Baseball will be snowed upon. The Caribbean-born infielder will play in thermal underwear. Still shivering.

Taxes will be paid with gloom. Cold, dark drizzle will replace snow.

April can be glorious; she can also be vicious.

Chiquita Riviera marched into the cafeteria like the storm that had marched in overnight.

“Ruined!” she shouted, startling the early morning students sipping coffee. She was referring to her brand new fuschia suede platform sandals. She was wet from head to toe, but her shoes were the only attire that were never going to recover.

She spoke loudly: “I swear that bus driver deluge-sprayed me on purpose.” She saw her table of breakfast volunteers staring at her, mouths agape. “I’m going to my office to put myself back together. Levon, crank up the warming tables and start the breakfast sandwiches. I may need some time.”

Levon Sanders had been a kitchen volunteer since his freshman year. That was three years of breakfast sandwiches ago. Levon didn’t mind. Levon loved to eat. Levon’s mom, Shandra, was a good cook. His Grandma Arlene had been better.

Levon remembered the good years. They all lived together, three generations in his grandparents’ tidy southside house. His grandfather died when he was 7. It rocked the dwelling. But the mother and daughter team supported each other and pulled it together. Although Levon was an only child, who had been doted on, he was not spoiled. People often said that he acted older than his age, but he remembered being little and free from worry.

Three years after “Poppy” died, Arlene fell sick and did not recover. Shandra lost her moorings. She began a pattern of staying out, leaving 10-year-old Levon home alone way too often. She drank and she took pills and soon it wasn’t even partying -- she was just alone in her bedroom. Sick.

Levon tried to fix her. He hid her booze, threw out her pills and ran for cover when she found out. When she was conscious he cooked her food, combed out her hair and washed her clothes. But no amount of kindness seemed to get through to her. One day he came to realize that he couldn’t control her. So he stopped trying.

Shortly thereafter, Shandra got arrested. Levon learned about it when a social worker came to his middle school and told him. She explained that his mom was being sent to a treatment center for her addictions and would be gone for a month. She stated that he was too young to stay alone. She asked if he had anyone who would take him in. He was unsure, but he said that maybe someone from Grandma’s church could help.

The social worker sent him back to class while she made some calls and said that she would return at the end of the day for him. His previous Sunday school teacher, Miss Williams, had stepped up, but the apartment was a loss and the social worker took him there to gather as many of his belongings as he could fit in two plastic trash bags.

The month went quickly. Shandra called Levon from rehab and said that she was better and that they would help her get a job and a place to live. She promised to go back to church. She seemed so grateful to Miss Williams. Levon said his prayers at night and had real hope that Jesus was going to resolve this thing.

Jesus might have tried, but Shandra did not have much stamina for clean living. Levon tried to figure out what he had done wrong, but of course, the wrong person was taking that inventory.

Levon ended up in a longer term foster home. Nice enough people. Do-gooders, you know the type. He got enough to eat. He was a big boy and getting bigger. He liked school because it made sense. He did his work and earned good grades. He stayed away from kids who were trouble because he definitely knew trouble when he saw it. Middle school was OK. He had a plan. Maybe if he was a great kid and good student, his mom would want to be his mom again. He worked that plan. Working the plan gave him hope.

Shandra was in and out of his life. She had a regular guy, but he didn’t seem interested in keeping a kid who liked to be fed regularly. He was a musician. It seemed like they traveled a lot. Shandra looked like she was drinking a lot, too; Levon knew what that looked like.

Levon got accepted at Perkins High School. He enjoyed the school, as it was full of do-gooders. Which was nice. He volunteered to work in the cafeteria. He had a couple of friends. But nobody at the school seemed to know how to fix people like Shandra and that was the only situation he cared about. One day he stayed after classes and asked Miss Chiquita what she knew about addicts and how to fix them. The drag queen lunch lady took him to see Quincy.

Levon laid out the whole scene. Levon asked for help. Quincy stared a long time at Levon, then said that he had an idea and asked for a week to work on it. Levon had hope again.

The next week at Perkins there was a new and weirdly unusual club about addiction. It wasn’t for addicts; it was for people who loved addicts. But all they did was talk. Levon learned that there were other students and some staff who knew just what his life, his hope, his plan and his failure looked like because that was how their lives were, too. But it seemed as though their only answer was to give up hope. Thus, Levon stopped hoping for his mom and started hoping for himself without her. It didn’t feel good, but it felt real.

One day, down in East St Louis, Shandra woke up alone in a bad, ugly room above a nasty dive bar. The musician was gone.She had done every bad thing she had said she would never do and every molecule of her body, mind,and soul hurt. She was utterly hopeless. She scraped herself up and went looking for a way to end the whole ugly circumstance.

She walked up the dirty street, shuddering with her disastrous life. The sunshine hurt. The warm breeze coming across the dirty snow hurt. The sounds of traffic hurt; even the sounds of children kicking a soccer ball in a vacant lot hurt. She watched the kids for a minute. She had forgotten how fast kids could move, how loud they could be. How happy they sounded even when it looked like they had nothing. She remembered Levon. She allowed herself to recognize how she had failed him. That really hurt.

She heard someone behind her unlock a storefront gate that loudly screeched its way open. She put her hands over her ears and tried to hold her head in one piece. She was about to scream at the person causing this piercing, horrible noise.

“Hey, sister, the women's meeting starts in 15 minutes. Want some coffee?”

She never knew why she stepped inside. But she did. “Powerless” was the most powerful word she had ever encountered. Forget 12 steps – she had one word. She stayed. She came back. It finally worked.

Hope. Springs. Eternal.