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Abstract

r ride a horse (nana). I don’t know how to marry men who hurt me (all of them) although I did learn how to shrink myself in their presence. I learned to cut off parts of me as offerings and sustenance. Not all the links of the chain are weak; this link was tempered by the hands of my mother while I held it in place and watched her technique.5. The shape of my body is long under the sun on the beach in a country that was first infected by the Dutch but successfully immunized itself in 1986, the year I was born. I am aware of the sharp contrast between my body as it inhabits my world and the body of my mother as it inhabited hers when she was 32. She was in the California desert with a 15-year-old daughter who had just found out her mother did drugs. The shape of her body as I remember it was tall and commanding though marred by the 15 years she spent raising two things given to her by my dad — me and her drug habit. The shape of her body was long under a blanket on the second day she did not leave her bed, which was the first day I had courage and sense enough to check in on her. She was crying softly as she asked for cranberry juice. It was years later I learned about UTIs as an effect of the chemical reaction between drug use and poverty.For most of my life I placed responsibility for my mother’s suffering at her feet, like a cat that kills something and presents it as a gift.6. My mom was gifted her suffering. She would say it was a gift from my grandma, but I know my grandma received hers in her childhood bedroom. I don’t know who gifted my great-grandma hers, but I trust she received it. That suffering would be forged then wrapped neatly to be distributed to generations to come. For most of my life, I placed responsibility for my mother’s suffering at her feet, like a cat that kills something and presents it as a gift. I decided it belonged to her, and she chose to make me suffer. I killed my potential and placed it at her feet, a gift for her when she decided to keep me from moving out when I was 16. I killed her hope to correct the course of her life through mine, a gift for her when our house was raided by the police on a day I stayed home from school while I was sick. I placed the notice from my high school stating I would not graduate at her feet, a gift for sharing her suffering with me.7. What I remember of the Earth is a field of trees behind the house I lived in with my dad’s sister, my placement there the result of a rescue, an attempt to remove me from the infection zone. “Abduction” wasn’t a descriptor that was allowed given the level of exposure. Quarantine procedures weren’t exactly followed; my aunt was a carrier, too. I thought it was a forest that went on for miles. It stopped abruptly in the shape of an L, then gave way to a field that also went on for miles. I remember what it felt like to be small while running through that forest. I remember what it felt like to be encased in color — green, brown, blue, the gold of the field at the end of the trees. I remember the smell. I remember how wet the ground felt after rain. I remember the places I found to escape that house — the forest and an upstairs closet.8. The consequence of silence is death. The first of the 12 steps is to admit you have a problem. I was 11 when I called my mom a “tweaker,” not knowing what it meant but understanding when she hit me that there were consequences for speaking. I was 16 when I called my mother an “addict,” not knowing it would be my stepdad who hit me but feeling the repercussions of breaking the silence sharply across my face. I was 21 when she finally said she had used drugs, but the tense was wrong and death was still living between us. It continues to live and create the necessary conditions for me to become symptomatic, although I refuse to acknowledge possible signs of infection.9. I know dismemberment is a mutation of the virus unique to me. Myeloma cells prevent the production of antibodies and leave my body susceptible to infection. I’m not addicted to substances; I’m addicted to people. As a result, p

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eople carve out space in me. They crawl inside and sit with their feet hanging down, kicking back and forth in the wide openness inside of me. Summer forever feelings in the hollow of my body. People take vacations inside them. One took residence inside my stomach; one lives inside a hollow in my chest. One throws stones while standing on the socket of my shoulder, after I severed my arm. The practice of gift-giving didn’t stop with my mother. It continued with the people in my life, but instead of giving them things I killed, I give them limbs and the gift of space inside my body. They learn how to inhabit me, how to receive a love that is all-encompassing, but it’s not the warmth of the sun—it’s the warmth of my organs surrounding them as they dig further inside. I take an inventory of the holes and their residents at the start of spring, and I wave pleasantly at the man who is checking out. He stayed for three months, a respectable guest who cleaned up after himself, always neatly folding the towels he used before starting his day. On his way out, he said he needed a change of venue, expressing concern that the view was one he couldn’t commit to. He was looking for a permanent residence. A few weeks later, I saw him inside another body. He apologized and said it wasn’t the view after all—he just needed something a little newer.10. The air outside was cool; I think it was fall. I was 26 or 27, and he and I had been living together for a year. We drove all day from north Texas and got to Missouri late at night. I was startled by how dark and loud my grandmother’s property was. Cicada sounds everywhere, without a discernible starting point, like the sirens in Dallas that announce tornados. We sat in the living room and listened to my grandma tell stories about killing rattlesnakes and meeting animals at eye level. When we crawled into bed that night, he pulled me close and told me how wild it was to see me on someone else’s body, to see my mannerisms mimicked, to hear hints of my voice coming out of someone else’s mouth. The next morning, I woke up without fear and found my grandmother on her porch drinking coffee, surrounded by hummingbirds and cats. Sometimes when I feel incorporeal, I remember that inside him lives a moment of connection between me and my grandmother — a moment where, between the two of us, alchemy had occurred visible only to him. During a conversation, my grandmother and I phased together, and for a weekend the links in a chain that stretched into the past and present indefinitely were able to be seen.I have prepared for my death by removing the possibility of vertical infection: I will not have children for fear of exposure.11. I have prepared for my death by employing methods similar to those used by the CDC when dealing with an epidemic. The implementation of control and preventative measures in an effort to stave off further infection. I have prepared for my death by removing the possibility of vertical infection: I will not have children for fear of exposure.11. I am taking steps to reduce the likelihood of horizontal infection, taking measures to limit exposure. Books about codependency and attachment theory are used like soap and hot water, an effort to track further mutation. I don’t know that I can fill the holes inside of me caused by generational exposure, but I am careful in cauterization of the dismembered parts of me, working to keep the holes from becoming infected. I can keep a sterile environment in an attempt to keep those who occupy them from becoming contaminated.12. If I could, I would say suffering is the virus. It is the genesis point for the disease of addiction. If I could, I would say the women in my family were infected and became carriers, reservoirs of an infectious virus that spread vertically and generationally. If I could say it this way, addiction is an epidemic. If I could, I would say epidemiology can be used to break the chain of infection, that immunization is possible, but I don’t know how to create an antiviral drug to halt the life cycle of suffering.</article></body>

Contagion

The pathology of addiction

1. Who are you and whom do you love?

2. Where did you come from/how did you arrive?

3. How will you begin?

4. How will you live now?

5. What is the shape of your body?

6. Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?

7. What do you remember about the Earth?

8. What are the consequences of silence?

9. Tell me what you know about dismemberment.

10. Describe a morning you woke without fear.

11. How will/have you prepare(d) for your death?

12. What would you say if you could?

— Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers

1. I am my mother’s daughter, born to her in August, the full force of summer barreling down. I love my friendships, born to me by a determination to put as much distance between us and our old worlds as we can. Something like manifest destiny, but our conception of “the West” has less to do with expanding an empire in God’s name and more to do with pursuing the sincere belief that another world is possible. I love with the full force of the sun. I love with the idea that love should be all-encompassing, like the sunlight saturating the shore on the hottest day of the year.

2. I came from an act of rebellion. The teenage impulse to break a rule, to run toward something new and vaguely scary. My mom sneaking out of her bedroom with her older sister, riding their bikes in the dark down Southern California streets. I came from a chemical reaction, the circumstances necessary to create an explosion. Hormones and methamphetamine, a 15-year-old girl alone with a 24-year-old man. A 15-year-old girl already forced out of her body by the hands of other men. Rebellion was the reason she and her sister snuck out at night, the reason they peddled west.

2. I arrived in the desert while walking between Joshua trees with a boy who lived down the street. “You know your mom does drugs, right?” I didn’t know but I pretended to know, a skill still in its infancy but one that I would eventually master. He explained the circumstances behind my mom’s friendship with his, how he and all his friends knew me because they bought weed from my mom. “Don’t be surprised when you get to high school and people know you” he joked. I went home and looked in her office — a drywall cube my stepdad built in the garage to encase their drug use in an air of professionalism. I was familiar with the contents — a desk, a scale, a drawer with glass pipes; although now I understood why the pipes were made from glass. I think I cried but not because I was sad, because I felt stupid.

3. I will begin with questions in an effort to prepare for fieldwork. What was the first substance to give birth to abuse? How was it introduced into a previously pristine environment? What circumstances created a hospitable environment for addiction to thrive, and how were those circumstances maintained intergenerationally? Who taught the women in my family how to tend to these gardens of poisonous flowers? I will begin with the women in my family because onto the backs of women worlds are placed. From them, worlds are created.

4. I will live now in front of the weak links in a long chain that connects me to these women. I don’t know how to garden. I don’t know how to run a steel mill (grandmother). I don’t know how to speak Spanish, never learning on either side. I don’t know how to make tortillas or ride a horse (nana). I don’t know how to marry men who hurt me (all of them) although I did learn how to shrink myself in their presence. I learned to cut off parts of me as offerings and sustenance. Not all the links of the chain are weak; this link was tempered by the hands of my mother while I held it in place and watched her technique.

5. The shape of my body is long under the sun on the beach in a country that was first infected by the Dutch but successfully immunized itself in 1986, the year I was born. I am aware of the sharp contrast between my body as it inhabits my world and the body of my mother as it inhabited hers when she was 32. She was in the California desert with a 15-year-old daughter who had just found out her mother did drugs. The shape of her body as I remember it was tall and commanding though marred by the 15 years she spent raising two things given to her by my dad — me and her drug habit. The shape of her body was long under a blanket on the second day she did not leave her bed, which was the first day I had courage and sense enough to check in on her. She was crying softly as she asked for cranberry juice. It was years later I learned about UTIs as an effect of the chemical reaction between drug use and poverty.

For most of my life I placed responsibility for my mother’s suffering at her feet, like a cat that kills something and presents it as a gift.

6. My mom was gifted her suffering. She would say it was a gift from my grandma, but I know my grandma received hers in her childhood bedroom. I don’t know who gifted my great-grandma hers, but I trust she received it. That suffering would be forged then wrapped neatly to be distributed to generations to come. For most of my life, I placed responsibility for my mother’s suffering at her feet, like a cat that kills something and presents it as a gift. I decided it belonged to her, and she chose to make me suffer. I killed my potential and placed it at her feet, a gift for her when she decided to keep me from moving out when I was 16. I killed her hope to correct the course of her life through mine, a gift for her when our house was raided by the police on a day I stayed home from school while I was sick. I placed the notice from my high school stating I would not graduate at her feet, a gift for sharing her suffering with me.

7. What I remember of the Earth is a field of trees behind the house I lived in with my dad’s sister, my placement there the result of a rescue, an attempt to remove me from the infection zone. “Abduction” wasn’t a descriptor that was allowed given the level of exposure. Quarantine procedures weren’t exactly followed; my aunt was a carrier, too. I thought it was a forest that went on for miles. It stopped abruptly in the shape of an L, then gave way to a field that also went on for miles. I remember what it felt like to be small while running through that forest. I remember what it felt like to be encased in color — green, brown, blue, the gold of the field at the end of the trees. I remember the smell. I remember how wet the ground felt after rain. I remember the places I found to escape that house — the forest and an upstairs closet.

8. The consequence of silence is death. The first of the 12 steps is to admit you have a problem. I was 11 when I called my mom a “tweaker,” not knowing what it meant but understanding when she hit me that there were consequences for speaking. I was 16 when I called my mother an “addict,” not knowing it would be my stepdad who hit me but feeling the repercussions of breaking the silence sharply across my face. I was 21 when she finally said she had used drugs, but the tense was wrong and death was still living between us. It continues to live and create the necessary conditions for me to become symptomatic, although I refuse to acknowledge possible signs of infection.

9. I know dismemberment is a mutation of the virus unique to me. Myeloma cells prevent the production of antibodies and leave my body susceptible to infection. I’m not addicted to substances; I’m addicted to people. As a result, people carve out space in me. They crawl inside and sit with their feet hanging down, kicking back and forth in the wide openness inside of me. Summer forever feelings in the hollow of my body. People take vacations inside them. One took residence inside my stomach; one lives inside a hollow in my chest. One throws stones while standing on the socket of my shoulder, after I severed my arm. The practice of gift-giving didn’t stop with my mother. It continued with the people in my life, but instead of giving them things I killed, I give them limbs and the gift of space inside my body. They learn how to inhabit me, how to receive a love that is all-encompassing, but it’s not the warmth of the sun—it’s the warmth of my organs surrounding them as they dig further inside. I take an inventory of the holes and their residents at the start of spring, and I wave pleasantly at the man who is checking out. He stayed for three months, a respectable guest who cleaned up after himself, always neatly folding the towels he used before starting his day. On his way out, he said he needed a change of venue, expressing concern that the view was one he couldn’t commit to. He was looking for a permanent residence. A few weeks later, I saw him inside another body. He apologized and said it wasn’t the view after all—he just needed something a little newer.

10. The air outside was cool; I think it was fall. I was 26 or 27, and he and I had been living together for a year. We drove all day from north Texas and got to Missouri late at night. I was startled by how dark and loud my grandmother’s property was. Cicada sounds everywhere, without a discernible starting point, like the sirens in Dallas that announce tornados. We sat in the living room and listened to my grandma tell stories about killing rattlesnakes and meeting animals at eye level. When we crawled into bed that night, he pulled me close and told me how wild it was to see me on someone else’s body, to see my mannerisms mimicked, to hear hints of my voice coming out of someone else’s mouth. The next morning, I woke up without fear and found my grandmother on her porch drinking coffee, surrounded by hummingbirds and cats. Sometimes when I feel incorporeal, I remember that inside him lives a moment of connection between me and my grandmother — a moment where, between the two of us, alchemy had occurred visible only to him. During a conversation, my grandmother and I phased together, and for a weekend the links in a chain that stretched into the past and present indefinitely were able to be seen.

I have prepared for my death by removing the possibility of vertical infection: I will not have children for fear of exposure.

11. I have prepared for my death by employing methods similar to those used by the CDC when dealing with an epidemic. The implementation of control and preventative measures in an effort to stave off further infection. I have prepared for my death by removing the possibility of vertical infection: I will not have children for fear of exposure.

11. I am taking steps to reduce the likelihood of horizontal infection, taking measures to limit exposure. Books about codependency and attachment theory are used like soap and hot water, an effort to track further mutation. I don’t know that I can fill the holes inside of me caused by generational exposure, but I am careful in cauterization of the dismembered parts of me, working to keep the holes from becoming infected. I can keep a sterile environment in an attempt to keep those who occupy them from becoming contaminated.

12. If I could, I would say suffering is the virus. It is the genesis point for the disease of addiction. If I could, I would say the women in my family were infected and became carriers, reservoirs of an infectious virus that spread vertically and generationally. If I could say it this way, addiction is an epidemic. If I could, I would say epidemiology can be used to break the chain of infection, that immunization is possible, but I don’t know how to create an antiviral drug to halt the life cycle of suffering.