Free Bebe Moore Campbell by 72 Hour Hold

unhinged.
    “You have to take care of yourself,” I said, which was support-group speak, better than English for easy detachment. I tried to step back from Bethany, not wanting to think about her pain, let alone see it. Her sorrow was a skin I had partially molted. But Bethany wouldn’t release me. We stood there hanging on to each other, while above us we heard the commotion of people getting out of their chairs. In a moment they would troop down to the basement en masse.
    “Angelica’s becoming a monster,” Bethany whispered against my neck. “She goes into bars and starts physical fights with anybody: men, women. She’s attacked me.” Her sunken eyes filled with tears. “It’s not as though what she has is a death sentence. Why won’t she take her meds?” She pulled back from me and stared into my eyes. “Why? She’s not so far gone that she can’t see what a mess her life is. Do they forget what normal feels like?” She took a breath, flipping her cigarette up and down. “And then they give us this asshole, telling us about vitamins.”
    She wiped her eyes, squared her shoulders, and dropped my hand.
    “Look at this,” she said, turning so I could see the back of her head. I tried not to gasp. There was a large bald spot near the top.
    “It’ll grow back. You need to stop worrying. Listen, the kids are on their own timetable. Angelica’s not dead. She’s not in jail. Be grateful for that. She’s still here, so she has a chance to begin again.”
    “Like your daughter?”
    I nodded. “Six months ago, if anyone had told me that my child would be where she is now, I don’t think I would have believed them. My hope was gone at that point. This is a kid who’d beaten me up, was smoking dope on a daily basis, was hanging out with the dregs of the earth.”
    “Promiscuous?” Her voice dropped when she pronounced the word.
    We both looked at each other and breathed deeply. It didn’t matter that hypersexuality was a standard part of the illness, this tragic impulse we couldn’t take in stride. Bethany saw what was in my eyes: Don’t go there.
    “What am I supposed to do, leave this up to fate? I’m supposed to say the goddamn Serenity Prayer while my child destroys her life because her fucked-up brain keeps telling her she’s okay?”
    “It’s hard, but what else can you do?”
    “Not everybody sits around waiting,” she whispered, then glanced around her. “There are other alternatives.” Bethany must have seen the question in my eyes, but she didn’t answer it. “You haven’t been to many meetings lately. I think you feel the same way I do about this crap. You just don’t know it yet.”
    “No,” I said quickly. “You’re wrong. The group helped me. I couldn’t have gotten through this alone.”
    She gave a short laugh; then her face went grim. “There’s all kinds of ways not to be alone,” she said. “Better. There is such a place. It’s not just a rumor some shrink got started. I will do whatever I have to do to get there,” she said.
    “You can’t make it happen.”
    “Yes, I can.”
    Her intensity sent a tremor through me, like when I heard Aretha sing “Respect” for the first time. I watched her as she walked away. She moved like a warrior woman, with long, purposeful steps, as though she were on her way to someplace very specific.
Yes, I can.
Wherever those words led her, it wouldn’t be an easy journey.
    People were already filling up the basement. I looked around. The meeting was on the west side of town, land of high real estate, fair-skinned people, and the coldest ice. Part of me resented having to trek all the way from Crenshaw to get help for my child’s issues. But the truth was, mental illness had a low priority on my side of the city, along with the color caste and the spread of HIV. Some things we just didn’t talk about, even if it was killing us. So I had to come to the white people, who, although just as traumatized, were a lot less