Then it was Sunday, and still November. She called me and asked me to bring her some food. She told me where she was: the section of town where the human rats live. I got there and pulled over. She walked across the street to my car. I hardly recognized her. Her hair was up…all matted and dirty…her skin was so pale…her green eyes had no luster at all. She had no expression, and was wearing a tan and brown plaid bum’s coat. I promised myself I would stay calm: not scream or yell or cry or tell her to get in the car like I did so many times before. I handed her the food…but I broke. I broke all the way down to my birth to my own death. I broke from my stomach to my heart to my soul. My lungs collapsed and changed places with my throat. I broke everywhere…and was all over breaking…never to be whole again. I gasped for breath and choked out the words. I pointed to my heart and said, “You killed me…look what you did with the life I gave you.” I could see in her face that she was not expecting that. I could see that somewhere in her she was trying to come back…to come back…to living…to feeling…to me… but she couldn’t, she just couldn’t. She just took the food and walked away, as if she didn’t even realize it was her own mother that night, giving her food…breaking down like that.

The next day she called to say, “Come and bail me out quick or I’m going to jail!” I asked what happened. She and her “friend” were breaking into a car and got arrested. I thought it was a miracle. My prayers had been answered: it stopped…it would all be stopped now. Now it would be over. I didn’t bail her out; no matter how many times she called she stayed in jail. So she’d call my sister. My niece would answer, and say, “Mommy! Maria’s on the phone and she’s crying!” I would not bail her out to stick a needle in her arm…it was November. She came out of jail two months later to go straight to rehab. I told the judge that she had never been away long-term and that she needed a chance…and she went to court-mandated rehab that day…and I thought we might have had a chance. On that day in January when I hugged and kissed her goodbye, knowing she never saw Thanksgiving or Christmas, that those holidays came and went without her, that she never got to see the tree…I thought it was so that we might have a chance…with the agonizing agreement that I wouldn’t be able to even hear from her for the first thirty days, I thought we had a chance…in the clear cold crisp of January, I thought we had a chance that day.