Her cheeks are slightly less concave and the wrinkles that have formed around her mouth over the last few years look as if they’ve been smoothed out by Botox. Not younger than her age-she’s only thirty-nine-but younger than what her addictions have made her appear to be. She’s a little swollen and it makes her look younger. One of Janean’s arms is draped over her stomach and the other is dangling off the couch, her fingers resting gently against worn carpet. But shutting the door and sheltering my back from the rain is the least of my concerns right now as I stare at Janean as she stares at Mother Teresa. It’s raining outside and I haven’t even closed the front door yet, so I’m still getting soaked. I drop my purse at my feet as I stare intensely at her face from across the living room. I feel somewhat ashamed at my lack of reaction in this moment. I feel like my voice should be shaky, or unavailable. “Janean?” There’s a calmness to my voice that certainly shouldn’t be present right now. I’ve found her unresponsive several times over the years, but this feels different. Six to seven years is what the internet said. How long can a person live with meth addiction? Once a person starts using meth regularly, their lifespan shortens drastically. I think it was five years ago, right around when I turned fourteen, when I caught her shooting up meth for the first time. Over the years, her addictions became more noticeable and a lot deadlier.
I realized this around the age of nine, but back then, her addictions were limited to men, alcohol, and gambling. It’s as if her eyeballs have stopped working. She’s staring at the picture of Mother Teresa, but she’s not actually looking at it. Janean is lying on the couch in the same position she was in when I left for my shift at McDonald’s eight hours ago.
That’s how my mother has spent her entire life. You focus heavily on the darkness in people in hopes of masking the true shade of your own darkness. I think when you’re the worst of people, finding the worst in others becomes a survival tactic of sorts. I once asked my mother, Janean, why she keeps a picture of Mother Teresa on our living room wall.
In a trailer house, the walls crumble beneath your fingernails like chalk if you so much as scratch at them. The walls of a trailer house aren’t made of the same stuff walls in a normal house are made of. There’s a picture of Mother Teresa that hangs on our living room wall where a television would go if we could afford the kind of television that hangs on the wall, or even a home with the kind of walls that could hold a television.
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