Demons

Demons

        I watched her fight hard to leave the liquor bottle alone with the demons inside swirling around calling her name, begging her to set them free. She wanted to throw the bottle away but she was afraid to touch it, knowing that she would take a drink. There she sat on the old green sunken sofa, believing that her three young children were asleep, wondering how she had gotten into this mess and how she would ever get out.
         When I was two years old, three of my four grandparents died. My mother’s parents died three months apart. Leaving her with a self-centered useless brother, heroin addicted soon to be ex-husband and three small children. She turned to alcohol.
         My mother was never alone. There were always drunks around, many of them related. Not surprisingly, alcoholism ran in our family. The drinkers, that’s what they were. Loud, fighting, breaking things and passing out. The horrifying monsters belonging to them and my mother roaming around our house, intruding while my siblings and I hid in the bedroom, waiting for the night to end. If only for a short time, grateful for the quiet calmness that would slowly creep into our house, knowing the terror would soon begin again.
         The youngest of the three, by the time I was five, I had begun to partake in the game of hiding mother’s purse. No money, no alcohol or so we thought. One of the many pieces of sorry advice my uncle gave to us. My sister being the oldest and feeling responsible for the care and safety of my brother and me, she always called my uncle. She had nowhere else to turn.
“Uncle, can you please come over, mom’s drunk again,” my sister said
“I can’t right now, where she at?”
“Chasing after Kenny, she cause she can’t find her money.”
“All the liquor gone?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Then don’t worry, she’ll get tired and fall asleep soon.”
“But she says she’s going to kill him. Sugar’s in the corner balled up crying, we haven’t eaten and I’m scared.”
“Well I can’t come right now, quiet down, she’ll be sleep soon. Get some cereal, go in the room and put a chair under the door.”
“Yes sir,” My sister said
         Another time being sorry and unconcerned as usual, he told my siblings to pour out her liquor and replace it with water. We spent years tormented by my mother looking for her money or running from her rage after finding water in her bottle. Eventually she began to hide her purse and that wicked bottle that was destroying our lives.
         I listened quietly as she woke from another drunken stupor, hung-over and mumbling to herself. “I can’t keep going like this,” she said, moaning in a low desperation. The demon bottle sitting on the table, the one with the jagged crack in the glass from the time she threw the phone at my brother, glaring, teasing, cajoling, and daring her to pick it up. I listened silently, tears rolling down my cheeks as she said, “I’m killing myself.”
         Curled up in the corner in my usual spot, watching and praying that mother wouldn’t die. She sat up straight, staring at the bottle as if it were her enemy. “I don’t want to die,” she said, with a hard hostility. Sofa creaking as she pushed herself off, the taste of bile in her mouth from having not eaten in days. Grabbing the bottle with both hands, she headed into the kitchen. I peered through my fingers unsure, as she stood there cursing and pouring her demons down the drain.