Help

Back then I spent my days washing greasy pots and pans in a restaurant kitchen and my nights drinking myself to sleep. Each morning I’d stagger to work hung over to find burnt, crusty pans stacked to the ceiling. Head throbbing, I’d vow never to take another drink, but by noon I’d feel well enough to have a beer; by seven I’d be returning from the liquor store with three six-packs and a pint of Jack Daniels.

Then Randy, a four-hundred-pound, grinning hulk of a man, was hired. He’d come from an extended stay at the local rehab and made no secret of it, which irked me. I poked fun at him and his Alcoholics Anonymous “cult,” with its childish belief in God, but he never took offense and was always kind. I figured he wanted to sleep with me.

Then he started soaking my pots and pans before I got to work, so that they’d be easier for me to clean. He even seemed happy to do it and never asked for anything in return. Now I felt sure this Jesus freak was messing with my head.

I kept on drinking, and Randy kept on soaking my pans. And we started talking: about life, and about drinking. I decided to prove to him that I could quit without anyone’s help.

After a month of abstinence, I celebrated with a drink, and then another, and another. At the end of the night I blacked out behind the wheel and almost killed myself. I’d taken my best shot at quitting and failed. I couldn’t do it on my own. So I knocked on Randy’s door and asked if he’d take me to an AA meeting. It was both the hardest and the easiest thing I’ve ever done.

A.Z.
Jersey City, New Jersey

In the summer of 1974, when I was twenty-six, I moved from Colorado to Florida to live with my parents. I was divorced and broke, with a five-year-old son. My judgmental parents made my life miserable and frequently reminded me that they were sacrificing their summer to help us. Mother baby-sat while I worked. She washed my son’s mouth out with soap daily and enumerated his many crimes for me as soon as I got home.

I had originally planned to stay for a year, but after the first week I made a new plan: I would return to Colorado as soon as I could save enough money for the trip.

One night someone threw a brick through the rear window of my Honda, filling the back seat with broken glass. My insurance company sent me to a Honda dealership fifty miles away to have it replaced. There I talked to a salesman named Frankie: graying hair, stocky build, silk shirt with the top button undone to reveal a thick gold chain. I explained about my window, and how I needed to get it fixed before I could go home to Colorado. Frankie motioned for me to follow him.

At the parts department, the clerk told Frankie that it took three months to get a rear window from the factory in Japan.

“I want one tomorrow,” Frankie said.

Two days later I dropped off my car to have the new window installed, and Frankie gave me a ride to work in his big white Cadillac with the license plate that read, FRANKIE. He tapped the leather steering wheel with his diamond rings and talked fast. I was nervous about his intentions until he told me his mother had recently come to live with him. I told him about my divorce, my parents’ sacrifice, and my son getting his mouth washed out with soap. Frankie shook his head.

That afternoon my car was ready as promised, except for a rubber seal the factory still needed to send. I was set to leave for Colorado in two weeks.

When I returned to the dealership for the seal, Frankie pointed to my front bumper. “What’s this?” he asked. I told him I’d rear-ended a car at a stop sign. He popped open the hood and showed me that the fan had hit the radiator, damaging it. Driving from Miami to Colorado would cause the radiator to blow. I needed a new one.

The long, hot summer with my parents caught up with me, and I burst into tears. “I can’t afford a new radiator!” I cried.

“No,” he said, “but I can.” He put his car key in my hand. “See you tomorrow afternoon.”

As I got into his Cadillac, he yelled, “Don’t hit anything!”

“What does he want in return?” my parents asked at dinner that night. “Nobody helps someone out like that unless they want something.”

The next day, when I got to the dealership, my car wasn’t quite ready: Frankie was having them give it a complete tune-up. While we waited, he took me across the street for coffee. Here it comes, I thought. He reached across the table and held my hand. My chest tightened.

“I got a girl like you,” Frankie said. “Ran away right after her mother and I divorced ten years ago. I hired detectives, drove all over the country looking for her. I like to think somebody’s watching out for her.”

On the way back to my car, Frankie slipped me a hundred-dollar bill and his business card. “You need help, you call me.” As I got behind the wheel, he asked, “You didn’t hit anything with my Caddy, did you?” I shook my head. He smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “Good girl.”

Mary Zelinka
Albany, Oregon

I was nine years old when my parents divorced and my father moved to another country with a much younger woman. My mother, just turning forty and clutching at her rapidly diminishing self-esteem, was left to bring up four children alone.

My mother had never known her own father and had been abandoned by her mother at the age of six. Now she set out to “find herself” (this was the seventies), returning to school, seeing a therapist, and taking a job outside the home. She also confirmed her attractiveness by attending singles dances. Tall and willowy, she attracted many men, but brought home only those who were her intellectual inferior. A procession of losers, roughnecks, and philandering loudmouths came into our lives. Most were loathsome and should never have been invited into a house with three young girls in it.

To escape, I began to wander the neighborhood. I was drawn to a brick farmhouse — an anomaly in our suburb — with a fenced-in pen where a cocker spaniel nursed five golden puppies: eyes barely open, bellies round with mother’s milk. Their bottoms wiggled when I approached.

The house and dogs belonged to Mr. Grant, who was nearly ninety. I’d stop by on my way home from school to see the pups, thrilled by their growing attachment to me, and often stay past dark, talking with Mr. Grant. He’d lie on the sofa, and I’d listen to stories of his childhood in Scotland and look at photos of his ancestral home, a dilapidated stone castle. I enjoyed his attention and looked forward to his greeting each day: “Ah, you’re here. I’d thought you’d run off and gotten married.”

One afternoon, while running shoeless in Mr. Grant’s yard, I stepped on a nail protruding from a piece of wood. Incredulously, I examined the wood dangling from my foot, then limped into the house. Seeing my ashen face, Mr. Grant rose from the sofa and, with one confident motion, pulled the nail out.

He gently bound my foot in a towel and, once the bleeding had been staunched, applied peroxide and wrapped a bandage expertly around the wound.

That small, simple gesture had a lasting impact. It taught me what it felt like to have a man be kind and nurturing. I wish my mother could have learned the same lesson when she was a girl.

Wendy R.
Portland, Oregon

I became a nurse because I wanted to help people. My first job was in a busy rural emergency room. Methamphetamine abuse, unemployment, and poverty were rampant in the area, and I was overwhelmed during my twelve-hour shifts. Some patients were critically ill or injured, but most had come there because they had no other access to medical care. They’d often wait more than four hours to be seen, their anger building. I became the target of their rage.

One night a mother brought in her five-year-old son; he’d gotten sand in his eyes and needed to have them irrigated. We had to sedate him for the procedure, so I asked one of my co-workers to hold him still while I gave him a shot of Demerol. The co-worker was African American, and the boy started shouting, “You motherfucking niggers, I hate you! Fuck you all!” His mother stared at us complacently, not saying a word.

Throughout the procedure we were bombarded with insults and obscenities no five-year-old should know. I hid my tears, embarrassed because someone might think a small boy calling us names had gotten to me.

Over time my sadness turned into anger. I responded to cruel words with cruel words of my own. I was rough when physically restraining those who were high or mentally ill. I made tasteless jokes while resuscitating patients. I didn’t allow families to come back to the patient area and be with their loved ones. My immaturity and self-importance had eclipsed my compassion and desire to help.

After working there for five years, I moved to a different hospital, where I now have fewer patients. I look back with regret, and hope that if I’m ever put in that situation again, I will handle it differently.

J.P.
Rocklin, California

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