Free I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl by Kelle Groom Page B

One door away, the bathroom sink drips. I know not to move. If I move, my memory will click in, I’ll wake up. Staying very still, I curl up slowly under the quilt, in segments. I could be embroidery. Eyes closed. Sleep.
    By noon, the sun brightens. My contacts are dry, sandy bubbles. I want to find my way back to sleep, but it’s too late. My hands start trembling first. The shaking won’t stop. My skin is stitching, unstitching, needles getting stuck. My ripped wrists burn. The piece of juice glass I broke is on Bill’s nightstand. It looks crazy by daylight. Meant for the wastebasket, not skin.
    It takes almost an hour to punch seven numbers in a row onthe telephone. I have to take breaks, lie back down. I call my counselor at the Navy treatment center. I can’t drink anymore. I can’t not drink. I’m on a line between the two. “Help me.”
    “Will you go to detox?” she asks. I don’t know what that is, but I don’t care either.
    “Yes.”
    “I couldn’t take you back in here, even if I wanted to. But I can get you into another rehab. Can you leave for detox right now?”
    “I lost my car. I can call my mom. She’ll bring me.” I’m not feeling anything as strong as hope. I just want to live. Can’t think of anything more than two breaths ahead. But I do want to live—it’s as if my bones and blood, my body has taken over.
    Mom’s teaching first grade, but she leaves work. Finds my car, my clothes, me. Takes me to my counselor on the Navy base, who arranges for me to get into the Gore Street detox. My mom asks, “But what if she doesn’t make it?” She looks small. Not even mad.
    And my counselor puts her arm around me, the Queen of Going Back Out, says, “You’re going to make it, aren’t you?” She smiles at me. I feel the warmth of her arm, the astounding confidence in her voice. I nod.

Gore Street
    Chain-link fence, metal door like on a submarine—something that would hold under pressure, underwater, fathoms down. There’s a kind of foyer—milling ground for the men. A corridor on the far right wall leads to showers, bathrooms, metal lockers that no one uses. Donated clothes spill out of a human-sized door—left open for those without clothes. A staff desk beside the corridor. Across from the desk, a large sleeping room for the men. Their beds seem to reach to the ceiling, bunk on top of bunk, like in the hold of a ship. The far wall opens to the women’s side. It’s taken days for a space to open up for me—I’m not drunk anymore. It’s early February now. For the month I’m here, there’s never a bed available for me in the treatment center section, no room with the recovering, sober women. I sleep in the one big room of women’s detox with the drunk women like mummies. White sheets bandaging their bodies. It panics me, living with all these people—so many of them, a city of broken people. All of us corralled into this one concrete block building. I have to keep pushing the anxiety down. There’s nothing to do but stand it.
    The Gore Street detox is more centrally downtown than the recovery house on Broadway. The Navy base treatment center was fancy by comparison. At least on the Navy base, no one was drunk. Gore Street takes anyone. It’s so smoky in here. Everyone smokes. Mornings, Nurse hands out juice—fingerpaint purple and black swished in a Dixie cup. With a pill that she says could kill if I drink. I don’t tell her I tried it last summer. When I drank three days off Antabuse, the drug still in me. Drank until my skin burned underneath like soft pear flesh cooking in sugar, jam boiling.
    We line up. Nurse takes our blood pressure. Therapy is in a yellow room. We cut pictures from magazines, look for messages on the opposite side. One counselor has hair like cold sand, clumped. On my last day, I’ll find a note from him on my bed, with his phone number. He’ll want me to call, he’ll want me even though he knows what’s happened. A grainy older man, someone