I didn't mix them, it was Ruda.
I'm going to do a bunk anyway.
There were nine of us in the detox — horrendous! There were some winos, too. We told each other about our lives. Renata was already twenty-five but she looked more like fifty, she said she'd been at it for eight years. This was her third time here and she said she'd kill herself anyway. She said she'd already tried to lots of times but someone had always spoilt it. The last time she lay down on the tracks, but the train stopped about half a yard from her. Then the engine driver jumped down and picked her up and
because he was in a state of shock he thumped her and yelled at her that he'd kill her. So why did the cretin stop, then?
Renata told me I should be grateful to Mum for dragging me here. 'Nobody could ever give a fuck about me, and just look at the state I'm in.'
There was also one pro. Her name was Romana and when she told her stories it was great. She said she'd once had eight guys in a night and earned as much as a government minister did in a month. She said she was born in Sicily where half the inhabitants had actually come from India and when she was born, Kali was reincarnated in her. Kali was the fiercest of the Indian goddesses. She even defeated her husband, who was a god too, and then danced a victory dance on his chest. In Sicily, Romana learned witchcraft and how to destroy men.
She said it took her only two weeks to turn any man into a zombie who believed he couldn't live without her. There was a son of a Catholic priest who wanted to reform her, and in two weeks he had aged a hundred years and not even junk could help him afterwards. Another guy, some businessman, started going round graveyards digging up skeletons and bashing himself on the head with the bones until he clubbed himself to death. Then there was this professor who taught magic at university: after he got to know her he had to climb up to the roof naked every night and sit there in all weathers. She said he sat there until one night he froze to the chimney and firemen had to fetch him down. About a dozen of her lovers jumped out of windows. And she'd beaten up a heavyweight wrestler and tossed him off the balcony straight into an enormous cement mixer.
It was obvious she was bullshitting, either that or had amazing trips, but she was great fun.
The worst thing was that they locked me up with an old bag who was actually the reincarnation of Dad's beanpole. She looked like a human being but she had turned into a vampire ages ago
and she went for me. I expect she went for everyone, but I hated it that she was out for my blood. I told the nurse about it — she's a bit like Mum's Eva — and she told me not to be afraid, she'd keep an eye on me when I was asleep. So I could only sleep when she was on duty and even then I was frightened and tied a scarf round my neck when I went to bed.
It was lovely outside — outside the window, I mean, because we weren't allowed out. That's what pissed me off most: the fact that outside it was the holidays and the rest of them were lounging on Kampa and I was rotting in here like a squashed tomato.
I'm going to do a bunk anyway.
And we also had therapy all the time. There was this peroxide blonde in a white coat who came and started to go on at us about how it was really stupid to take drugs, even though the rest of us knew it was great. The cow told us that what she was saying was for our own good and she told us to repeat after her, just like Dad, that it's stupid and we won't do it again. And she also asked us about our circumstances. She was really chuffed about Mum being a dentist. 'A mother like that and there you are causing her distress. But you don't want to distress her any more. So try saying it out loud, or at least to yourself.'
Really horrendous!
I never supposed that Dad was actually giving me therapy.
Mum really pissed me off shoving me in here. After all, she was always going on about everyone being the engineer of their own fate. That was when Dad used to go spare about her getting stoned on those drugs of hers.
I didn't begrudge her them. I was sorry for her more than anything else. She almost always had a downer 'cos she only got stoned on the legal drugs. Then she'd have the shakes in the morning, but she couldn't top it up 'cos she had to go and drill in people's gobs, as she put it. She couldn't even imagine what it's like when you're totally spaced out on a really great trip. So why didn't she leave me alone?
And she's got a bloke. That really knocked me out. Really thin: he looks like a piece of bloated string; I bet he took dope too, but he acted as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Mum's completely nuts about him, I could see it straightaway, even though I was completely zonked at the time. I really wish her well; maybe she won't be so pissed off with life all the time and she'll get me out of here.
She came and visited me for the first time on Sunday, after I was let out of the detox. She brought me a cake, some oranges and a book of stories by Karel Čapek. She baked the cake herself, so it was a bit burnt. If only she'd brought me a box of roofies instead — but I couldn't expect that of her. She told me I definitely wouldn't be in for long but I had to make an effort. And she went on in a really inhuman way about having put me here for my own good, 'cos she loves me and doesn't want me to ruin my life.
I pretended to be taking it all in and promised I'd make a real effort to reform.
I'll make an effort to do a bunk out of here as soon as I can.
But I don't know where I'd make for. If I went home Mum would be bound to bring me back here again. Romana told me not to worry; she'd look after me.
But I'm fucked if I go with her; that's all I'd need: to spend my time sleeping around with some guys I don't even know!
And Gran came to see me too and told me how Mum is fretting on account of me and how she is too, because she knows what a clever girl I am and how she pins all her hopes on me 'cos I'm her only grandchild. And just afterwards that ginger-haired guy looks in, the one that hijacked me here with Mum. He brought me a flower, something purple. I expect it was an iris. That totally wiped me out. First he hauls me to this loony bin and then he rolls up with a flower. To have someone bring me a flower, that's something that's never happened to me before. But otherwise he steered clear of the educational claptrap. For a while he fed me with stories about how he keeps poisonous snakes.
Apparently one was so poisonous that if it had bitten him he'd have been a goner in an hour. I told him I hoped the snake had never bitten anyone. And he laughed so much that his John Lennon specs jumped up and down on his nose. He also told me he'd noticed I've got a drum kit at home and said he used to play an American Indian tom-tom. He'd learnt to send signals with drums, flags and smoke. He was always showing off so I told him that I was good at throwing letters into letterboxes and that I could remember all the phone numbers I need — about four, in other words.
Before he got up he started raving about Mum and how she's totally fantastic, totally nice and unique, and how she loves me.
I didn't argue with him. I don't have anything against Mum. I simply told him that if she's so nice, she ought to take me away from here before the vampire witch sucks me to death. And he laughed again. I like the way he's always laughing.