Drunk Mom Read Free Page B

that day.
    The wedding ended with my waking up sick in an unfamiliar hotel room.
    I woke up with flashbacks of burning my maid-of-honour dress with a cigarette, stuffing my face with cake and fish at the same time, flexing my muscles and laughing manically when pictures were taken, fending off my best friend’s boy-cousins who tried to kiss me, dancing with my best friend’s sister’s husband and telling him that I’d wanted to sleep with him back in the day when he was much thinner. I remember telling him, too, that I had to do a pregnancy test the next day. I was feeling funny lately.
    And you’re drinking?
    If I’m preggers it’s the last time I’ll party so it’s totally okay, I told him. We danced.
    Later, someone carried me through darkness, my body half leaning on his back.
    This is all that I recalled the next day when I woke up in the unfamiliar room.
    At home, I puked for hours. Then I slept.
    In the evening I bought the pregnancy test, found out I was pregnant.
    There’s an expression in AA, “to white-knuckle,” which means not drinking but not going to meetings either. It implies a struggle:clenching your fists so tightly as you’re trying to hang on to your sobriety that your bones shine through your skin.
    I don’t believe that AA is the only way to stay sober, by the way. However, it was the only way I had managed to stay sober for a long time before I relapsed. And now I definitely wasn’t going to AA meetings but I was definitely trying to stay sober while pregnant. It was a period of almost-grace. I white-knuckled some of the time, but for most of it, I was in such awe of my pregnancy and I was so scared of hurting the little boy growing inside my belly that I didn’t struggle that often.
    It worked with the exception of holidays, when I drank sombrely and greedily, a glass of wine on Christmas Eve, three glasses on New Year’s Eve, every drop like a hiss against a hot surface. My wanting burning bright.

MOTHERHOOD
    H ere’s how it is: One day I wake up and it turns out that I am now the head of a country. A whole country—imagine that!
    What happens is that I’ve been given a crown one very painful morning and now the entire country depends on me. Not only that, but because of my genetic makeup it is obvious to everyone around me that I’ll naturally know how to rule this country: how to feed it and protect it from disasters and attacks. How to make its people happy. As the genetically designated and designed monarch, it is expected of me that I will know exactly what to do with the little people who depend on me, that my nature will dictate how to help them and feed them and clothe them.
    To help me rule it properly, I’ve been given a gift: an endless supply of food that the country’s people live on.
    I’m also given a generous pension for ruling this country. Free money that comes every two weeks from the government. The king (there is a king!) insists I am given this money to do my job as the ruler. It isprecisely why I’ve been given this money by the government. Me and not him. He is right.
    Not only that—to prove myself as a worthy ruler, I’ve been given a whole year off from my other duties that usually involve sitting in a windowless office and typing on a computer. It’s also strongly suggested I put my un-duties—such as writing novels and taking photographs—on hold. The things that take up time and bring no money and do absolutely nothing for the good of the country.
    When I say “it’s suggested” I don’t remember if an actual person suggests this, if everyone perhaps suggests this or if it’s just me going through the bouts of guilt. I do those wasteful things from time to time anyway, but the sense that they take away from the people of my country is overwhelming and creates anxiety. And guilt.
    By the way, the first time the country goes through a serious internal conflict, it is over guilt about that money when it starts coming in. I quickly learn