Before Anything

[Bud (DELETED 3277)]

Before anything, you gotta ask yourself where **** went wrong. For me, it went wrong the minute some good-looking ******** creamed into Ms. Vicky Campbell’s fifteen-year-old cervix. Nine months later came out me, Miracle of Life, Christian Campbell.
Ma was always saying, Baby, you’re the best mistake I ever made. And then she’d laugh. It hurt the first twenty times, but after a while I started appreciating it. It was funny. We laughed. I’m thinking she laughed so she wouldn’t cry, because we both knew that I didn’t want to be here, and she didn’t want me to be here, but here was where I was. Harper Rock, Ontario. **** City.

There were rumors that my father was a fisherman or something. One of those big, red guys at the port who go down in boats, dragging up freshwater fish from the deep. Whenever I passed the wharf I peeked at their wet, briny faces, wondering if one of them would recognize me and, I don’t know, take me out to watch hockey and buy me some chips. Be a dad, or something. At least acknowledge that I existed.
That never happened, and I always ended up feeling like one of the stupid-looking, gawping fish that they threw into their ice buckets. Ma took one look at me and she knew I had been down there again. And she always said, “There’s no use looking for him, Chris. He won’t give a ****, anyway.”

There was a time when Ma and I lived with her ma, my grammy. I don’t remember what grammy’s name was, but I remember that grammy was really nice and loving, the way grandmothers are. She baked cookies. She had an apron. She smelled like vanilla and Cheese Whiz.
She and my ma always got into these big arguments though, and by the time I turned three and ma was eighteen, we were out of there—out of that sweet gingerbread house in Cherrydale and into the ghettos of Harper Rock City.

When Ma got sick, she bought a self-help book called “Where is God When It Hurts?” It was light blue, and the title was in blocky white font. Like the sky and clouds. Like Heaven. She put it beside her bedtime pills and her water. I never wanted to read that stuff. I knew it would say something that was complete ********, like, Pain’s there for a Reason. God has a Reason for everything.
But anyway, I guess it helped her. She smiled a lot more when she could, when the pain wasn’t too bad from the chemo. And then, when the money ran out, no more chemo. The cancer kept spreading. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a good enough reason for any of that.

So that’s when I started dealing. First it was that I did a few runs for my friend, Freddy, who was a drug dealer par excellence. Everybody knew that if you wanted anything good, you went to Freddy. Freddy would hook you up.
Freddy hooked me up with some money because I ran fast and did what he said. Couple of times I almost got caught by the police, but running into the forest makes it easy to get away—even from their dogs. You just gotta run into the water and stay under there for a while. Learn to breathe through your mouth like a fish does. Grow gills. More on that later.

I’m guessing that Ma knew what I was up to, but she didn’t say anything. She just rolled in bed and sighed, and then told me, “I love you, Chris.” “I love you too, Ma,” I’d say, and then on cue she’d throw up in the vomit bucket by her bed. Then she’d laugh.
Ma had a nice laugh.