5
Little Toy Bikers and a Woman on the Run
Chapter 38 Broken
Wendy knew what no one in rehab would ever admit—some people were born to be junkies and there was no getting around it. Having parents and grandparents who were alcoholics wasn't a coincidence. If she had understood how her family history made her more vulnerable to substance abuse, she might have made different choices with her life. Or if she hadn't had parents whose main priority in life was alcohol, she could have had a different life too.
She never had the kind of mother who made sure she had lunch money or made her a lunch. Her mother never asked if she did her homework and never went to PTA or PTSA or whatever the hell it was called.
Wendy skated through school solidly in the bottom half of every class. She did enough to pass a class, but never more. Finally, she got tired of making even that much effort and she quit mid-way through her sophomore year.
Her parents split before she was a year old. She rarely saw her father and had never seen him when he wasn't drunk. When she was eight, he was so drunk he could barely walk. That hadn't stopped him from attempting to cross the freeway. The high speed impact and the other cars that hit his body left him in meaty chunks and backed up traffic for five miles. When she thought of her father, she always thought of dog food.
Her mother always had a boyfriend of some kind living with them. One of them taught her how to shoot up and when her mother wasn't around, he taught her other things. She threw her out of the house when she found her in bed with him. It didn't matter that she was fifteen. She kept her boyfriend and threw her out like she was rotten food.
Wendy lived with a friend's family for a few months until her mother finally let her move back in. She had finally thrown out that boyfriend when she found him cheating too many times with best friend.
Wendy worked odd jobs here and there and lived with men because she never could earn enough to support herself. Eventually, she found a job in a factory making candy. She didn't mind the repetition of the job and she liked having a regular pay check. She found a friend at the factory and they moved into an apartment together. It was the first time Wendy hadn't depended on a man to put a roof over her head.
Her roommate's boyfriend was a friend of Chibs in SAMCRO and one Friday night, they went to the clubhouse. Wendy thought she'd gone to adult Disneyland. Some of the men were better looking than the others, but most of them had a hard tough look that she found irresistible. She was looking forward to riding them just like a ride in Disneyland, but more roller coaster and much less "It's a Small World".
Two weeks later, she'd been drinking and smoking a joint when a blonde god of a man walked into the clubhouse. The women flocked to him, draping themselves all over him competing with each other for his attention.
That was where her experience paid off. She continued talking to a club hang around named George and pretended not to notice him. It took him more than an hour, but he finally worked his way over to her.
When he introduced himself and called her darlin', she fell in love with him just like that. They had only known each other a few months when they got married. She thought that meant that Jax was madly in love with her and wanted to make her his as quickly as possible despite the fact he never told her he loved her.
She expected that Jax would tell her he loved her soon. As time went on and it didn't happen, she became more and more insecure. Anytime he was late, she would accuse him of cheating. She would scream at him. He tried to calm her down. After a dozen times or so, he would just leave and stay gone for a couple of days.
He would always claim that he'd slept at the clubhouse, but there was no way he could prove that. The MC was a brotherhood and as a brotherhood, lying to wives and girlfriends was routine.
She liked to use crank with sex. As things worsened with Jax, she used it to make herself feel better. Before long, crank was the only thing that made life worth living. When Jax filed for divorce, crank was there to take some of the sting out.
She tried to remember what she had been thinking about before she ended up thinking about Jax. It took her almost a minute before she remembered she had been thinking about her mother.
Her mother had done a lot of bad shit to her and caused a lot of bad shit to happen to her. Tomorrow, she was going to pawn every single thing of value in this shit hole and she wasn't going to feel guilty.
She would spend the money she got from the pawn shop to do one last farewell binge of crank and then she was going to go to Jax's house. He would have to take her in. She was pregnant. He couldn't let her be homeless even though he wasn't happy about the baby.
That was one thing they had in common—neither one wanted this baby. She frequently wished she'd had an abortion, but as long as there was even the slightest chance she could get Jax back by having this baby, she was going to give birth.
She rubbed her belly. Now, she was bringing into the world a baby who would be born addicted if she couldn't get clean. Even if she got clean, her addict genes would be passed on.
Her kid was going to be a drunk or a junkie. Maybe both. The baby would go on to have alcoholics or junkies for kids. What a proud lineage that was going to be. Her family coat of arms could be a bottle of booze and a syringe.
She began to think about how there would be no love for her. Maybe the baby was her chance at love. It wasn't just about getting Jax back. The baby would love her because it wouldn't know any better. It was automatic.
For the first time since she'd returned from rehab, she felt optimism. Once she finished her crank and the crank she was going to buy when she pawned her mother's stuff, she was going to quit using and read a book on how to be a mother. She might even get a library card if they still had them.
Just as she was about to begin preparing the crank in the thumb bag with the skull and cross bones on it, she discovered that the needle was broken. She didn't have a spare.
This wasn't a big problem. Lois who lived three doors down was a diabetic. She was the best place to score syringes and hypodermic needles. Wendy checked the time on her phone. Lois would be home from work now.
She stuffed the crank into a pocket of her jeans and headed over to Lois' with a joint. That was Lois' going rate for a new syringe and a couple of hypodermic needles.
And then soon, the amazing new crank mixed with a hallucinogenic would be shooting through her bloodstream and the baby would be doing somersaults of happiness.