Too nervous to speak or afraid I'd say something to make her change her mind, I nodded my head yes.

"Okay, good. Call me tonight," she said as she took out a piece of paper and wrote her number on it.

I took the paper and bolted for the door. I wanted to get out before she changed her mind. Once outside, I paused for a moment, reflecting on what had just happened.

"She said yes!" I shouted to the sky, startling an old black man passing by. "She said yes!"

My simple prayer had been answered.

"Thank you," I whispered as I stood staring at the piece of paper with Venita's number on it.

46.

I CALLED VENITA that night. I didn't have any money, but the nurse on duty was so ecstatic to hear I'd finally found a sponsor, she gave me a dollar's worth of dimes. As I picked up the pay phone, I was so nervous my hands were shaking and sweating. I forced myself to dial the number, using one hand to steady the shaking one so that I would hit the right buttons.

I was worried for nothing. She had the same sweet voice, and the same pleasant and friendly personality she'd shown me at the meeting. She told me she'd been clean for five years. Five years! That seemed like a lifetime. I hoped I could get to five weeks! But knowing that she'd been clean that long, I was even more eager to work with her because she obviously knew what she was talking about.

Phone calls were usually limited to ten minutes, but considering it an extra-special call, the nurse said I could have twenty. It wasn't a lot of time, but it was long enough for Venita to give me an earful. First, she laid down the rules.

She said that if she was to be my sponsor, there were several things I would have to do from the start and continue to do them. First, I had to go to 12-step meetings every day. Second, while at those meetings I had to get women's phone numbers (preferably women who had been sober at least six months) and then call one of them every day. Third, I had to be willing to go to any length to stay clean and sober. She said this meant that I would have to put the same energy into staying clean as I used to put into staying high.

I really didn't have a problem with requirements one and three. But calling other women? I quickly informed Venita that I didn't like that one. Without skipping a beat, she replied that I didn't have to like it; I just had to do it.

"But what do I say to them?"

Just the thought of talking to another woman was causing fear to form a large, dry lump in my throat.

"Just tell them your sponsor told you to call. They'll take it from there. Trust me."

There was an uncomfortable silence as I sat thinking about whether I could actually do it.

"If you want what I have," she said, "you'll have to do what I did to get it. So what's it gonna be?"

I quickly thought about it. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted what Venita had. She was so confident and self-assured. She seemed to really like who she was. I admired her beauty and her intelligence. But most important, I wanted her recovery. I had never been able to stop using. I couldn't. Even when I didn't want to use, I had to. More than anything, I wanted to stay clean.

"I'll do it," I answered.

Next, she warned me that she could not keep me clean or sober. To do that, I would have to have a power greater than myself. I'd heard that phrase in the meetings. I wasn't sure what it meant, but every time someone mentioned it, they seemed to be talking about God. I didn't do God-at least not in the religious sense-I wasn't any particular religion and knew no religious rules.

"But, I'm not religious," I blurted. As soon as the words came out, I regretted them. Maybe not having a religion would make her not want to be my sponsor.

"I didn't say anything about religion," she calmly replied. "Cupcake, listen to me and listen good." The intensity in her voice made me listen. "I only require that you believe in and depend on a power greater than yourself. Remember, alcoholism and addiction are diseases-diseases that are cunning, baffling, and powerful. Too powerful for man. And by 'man' I mean 'human.' Recovery has nothing to do with willpower, being weak, or a lack of self-control. Not even love can do it. Think about it. How many parents, grandparents, family members, friends do you know who, if they could, would use love to get their loved ones off of drugs and alcohol?"

My mind instantly brought up Daddy and Jr.,-about how much they loved me and about how badly they'd tried to get me clean, but to no avail. Venita was right, if their love couldn't get me clean, no one's could-at least no human's.

"I'm not promoting religion or any particular concept of 'God.' And personally don't care what religion you are or aren't, whether you're an atheist or whether you believe one giant cosmic boom created the earth. The only thing I care about is that you realize that you're going to have to learn how to trust and rely on a power greater than yourself because unless you do, you WILL get loaded. So you will begin your mornings by asking this power for help to stay clean, and say thank you at night for doing so."

She continued with her requirements by telling me that I had to call her every day. If she wasn't home, I was to leave a message.

Finally, she ended our conversation by telling me that I never had to drink and use again-even if I wanted to.

That was the craziest thing I'd ever heard.

"You mean even if I want to use, I don't have to?" I repeated in disbelief. The concept of not acting on a desire to use had never occurred to me.

"Even if you want to," she answered matter-of-factly.

I wanted to ask her more questions, but the nurse walked by and tapped her watch, informing me that my phone time was up. When I told Venita, she made me quickly run through the rules to make sure I had them all. I did.

She told me she loved me, and hung up. For a while, I just stood staring at the phone.

Did she just tell me that she loved me?

I must have heard wrong. She didn't know me or anything about me. Surely if she knew the real Cup-the things I had done-she wouldn't have said that.

But she did say it.

Maybe she saw something I didn't. I decided right then and there not to question Venita, her rules, or what she said.

From that day on, Venita was my sponsor. I did everything she instructed: I called her every day; went to meetings every day; and worked on building a relationship with a higher power whom in the mornings I'd pray to, asking for help with not using, and at night, giving thanks for it doing so. And, as much as I hated it, I called a woman every day.

At first I was petrified of calling the women. I'd dial the number, praying their answering machine would come on. Most times it did. When it didn't, however, I just blurted out my name, said I was new, and that my sponsor told me to call women.

Venita was right. As soon as I informed the women that my sponsor was forcing me to call, they'd start running their mouths. Most times, I had to cut them off just to get off the phone. I began developing friendships with some of the women I called. Others were just too damn chatty.

A month or so later Venita explained the reasoning behind this exercise.

"When you want to get loaded, the hardest thing to do is pick up the phone and ask for help-to dial a number and tell the person on the other end that you feel like using. This way, you get used to picking up the phone so when the time comes that you really need to do it, and trust me, the time will come, the receiver won't be so heavy."

It made perfect sense. She was making me practice asking for help. No wonder she had five years clean.

- Besides Venita (whose family and friends-which now included me-called her "V"), I regularly talked to two people when I was in the hospital: Daddy and Jr. I did talk to Ken once to give him a brief rundown of what I was doing and how I was doing. He said, "Take care of yourself, Cup."

As usual, Daddy and Jr. were behind me 100 percent, and provided constant encouragement. When I first got to the hospital, I called them to let them know where I was. Thereafter, I called them often with updates on my progress. They even came to visit me once. We sat out in the garden, enjoying the sunshine. No one said anything for a while. It was an uncomfortable silence. I broke it by retelling them all that I'd been doing in rehab. They patiently listened and responded that they would do anything to help me stay clean, but that I had to want to be clean and I'd have to be serious about it. I told them I was. That seemed to break the ice. We engaged in some small talk for a while, being careful not to bring up any drunk stories or any of my swindles, scams, or rip-offs.

Before I realized it, my release date was approaching and it dawned on me that I had nowhere to go. I couldn't live with Tommy. I didn't even know where he was and hadn't spoken to him since several days before I'd gone on my four-day run. I didn't want to live with him anyway. And even though Daddy hoped I would stay clean, he had no desire to live with me again. Jr. was too much like a parent. I'd go crazy if I had to live with him. The only other choice I had was Mona.

I was nervous about calling Mona, but had no choice. I said a small prayer, asking for her understanding and willingness to take me in, and dialed her number. She hadn't talked to me since the day she put me out; I expected her to hang up on me. She didn't. In fact, she was happy to hear from me and said she'd been worried about me. She'd called my job, but they wouldn't tell her whether I was dead or alive. The receptionist simply said that I "wasn't there." She was glad to hear I was in rehab and said she hoped nothing but the best for me.

After a few moments of silence, I told her why I'd called.

"Mona, I need a place to stay. I get out of here tomorrow and I have no place to go."

I couldn't believe I had the audacity to ask her to let me come back. When she'd allowed me to live with her before, she'd given me several chances and on each occasion I blatantly disrespected her rules, her house, her marriage, and her trust. I figured she'd cuss me out and slam down the phone. I waited for the sound of a dial tone.

"Girl, you know you can stay here," she said without hesitation. "But the rules are the same. No getting high, 'kay?"

"Okay," I whispered, still in shock that she would let me come back. I started to ask her why she'd done it, but thought better of it. No need in giving her cause to think about what she'd just done.

Even though my living-quarters problem was now taken care of, I still didn't want to leave the hospital. I felt safe there. Safe from dope dealers and liquor stores, safe from friends pushing joints into my mouth, shoving mirrors under my nose, and putting drinks into my hand. Safe from me.

Like she would do so many times after that, V walked me through the fear of leaving. She reminded me that only I could get me loaded-not the people or places from my past. Me. "The first drink is up to you-besides, you can't stay in that hospital forever. You've got to leave sooner or later."

I knew she was right. I just wished it was later.

47.

I SOON REALIZED several unanticipated benefits of being free from the hospital. First, I was able to talk to V as long as I wanted and as much as I wanted. No longer under a ten-minute phone limit, we could and would stay on the phone for hours. It was during these conversations that she began to walk me through what seemed to be innumerable fears. V explained that the fears were the result of experiencing life clean for the first time. Fear was only one of many emotions I'd re-experience in my new lifestyle.

I explained to V that it wasn't that I didn't like being clean; I just didn't like all of the feelings: I didn't like being afraid; I didn't like feeling nervous, panicky, or uneasy; I didn't like feeling unsure.

"I've always been the cool one," I said with a hint of arrogance. "I've always been in control."

"You thought you were cool and in control," she replied. "Most times you were probably making a damn fool of yourself."

I had to think about what she'd said for only a moment to realize it was true.

As if reading my mind, she continued. "Because that's the insanity of the disease of addiction. You'd swear the drugs were working. You believe that, if only everyone else would just leave you alone and mind their own business, you'd be okay; you wouldn't have as many problems. Even now, you probably have doubts as to how bad your using really was. That's because you have a disease that tells you you don't have a disease."

She told me not to try to understand everything at once. She encouraged me to stick around and "don't quit five minutes before the miracle happens."

There's gonna be a miracle? I've never seen a miracle. I wonder what one looks like?

She ended the conversation by promising that, if I stayed clean and continued on the road to recovery, everything would begin to make sense. So I did what I was told.

The second benefit of being out of the hospital was that I was able to go to any meeting I wanted and stay as long as I wanted. Without being under the hospital's strict time schedule, I got to meetings early or stayed late, which allowed me to get to know others struggling with the same addiction, the same feelings, and the same problems.

But the best benefit of all was getting away from all of that damn food. Because the hospital prepared delicious meals three times a day, because I could eat as much as I wanted, and because I was finally sober enough to realize I was hungry, I ate like there was no tomorrow. As a result, I quickly put on weight. I was there only a month, during which I'd gained almost seventeen pounds. By the time I left the hospital, the clothes I had brought, my size 1s, were too tight. I wasn't used to seeing myself with weight, I thought I looked like a moose.

"You could use some weight!" Daddy exclaimed when I complained to him about gaining weight and feeling fat. "Hell, you need to put on some more weight! Punkin, you looked like a string!"

So I continued to eat-and fear.

My fear wouldn't allow me to go anywhere except 12-step meetings. I talked to no one except Daddy, Jr., and V. I kept my conversations with everyone else to a minimum, including Mona and James. And I did nothing except pray I wouldn't use that day. I'd learned the "one day at a time" concept in the meetings and V constantly drilled it into my head.

"Don't worry about yesterday, it's already gone. There's nothing you can do about it. And tomorrow isn't here yet. Just don't use today. You can do anything for one day."

I tried it and, surprisingly, it worked. Though it didn't take the fear away, it kept me clean because whenever I got the urge to use I'd tell myself, You can get loaded tomorrow, but not today.

I soon realized why this plan worked so well: it is always "today."

- It wasn't long before I had to return to work-which I was also afraid to do.

Did the other employees know where I'd been?

When I was drunk or loaded, I never cared what people thought about me. Hell, the thought never crossed my mind. Why I cared so much now that I was sober, I didn't know. I just did. I especially cared about what Ken thought. He'd seen me at my worst. How could I ever look him in the eye again?

Again, V walked me through the fear and uncertainty. She made me realize that if Ken had wanted to toss me to the curb he would have done so when he saw the scrawny, dirty, stinky, drunken dope fiend standing in his office doorway.

"Obviously, he cares about you."

Again, V was right. My fears about Ken were totally unfounded. My first day back at work, he welcomed me with a big hug and a wide smile. He seemed genuinely happy to see me. And I was shocked at how happy I was to see him.

The first time Robert came into the office, he leaped into my arms and gave me a big ol' hug.

"Hi, Cup!" he exclaimed. "Where ya been?" He looked up at me, his brown eyes wide in anticipation, as if waiting for an explanation. The concern on his small face turned up toward mine told me he had been genuinely worried about why I'd been gone. I decided he didn't need to know why I'd left, but I wanted to be sure he knew I was glad to be back. So I sat him on my lap and ruffled my hands through his curly, curly brown hair as I told him that I'd missed him. And I had.

Since I was no longer messin' up my mind with dope and booze, my work quality increased significantly. I was amazed at how getting sleep and being in my right mind, i.e., a clean and sober mind, made me a better employee. The reduced number of mistakes was instantly noticeable, so was my attendance: I was on time every day, had no sudden deaths in my family requiring bereavement leave, and didn't call in sick once. Ken noticed my seemingly overnight improvement, and as a consequence began to give me more responsibility, which I gladly took on.

It was amazing how "uneventful" my life became once I stopped the drugs and alcohol.

- I didn't live with Mona long before it became apparent that I couldn't stay there: she and her husband still smoked weed and drank. They tried to respect me by not doing it in front of me. But I still knew they were doing it-I could smell the weed coming from under their bedroom door. The same bedroom door that I used to block to keep the smell of my crack from getting out. On top of that, I'd started getting cravings, and the awareness that there was dope and booze in the next room only made the cravings stronger.

"You gotta get out of that house," V warned one day when we were having our daily check-in discussion. She said that I should never, ever be around drugs.

"What about booze?" I asked. She replied that, one day, I would be able to go wherever I wanted (even places where alcohol was being served), as long as I had a reason to be there. However, she cautioned that, at this point in my recovery, I was still too new and too weak to be around drugs or alcohol. Problem was that my credit was so bad and I had so many evictions on my credit report that no one would rent to me.

"Have you prayed about it?" V asked when I told her my dilemma.

"Pray for an apartment?" I asked. At this point I was only praying about my cravings. Besides, an apartment seemed so menial. "Don'tcha think God got better things to do?"

"You should pray about everything," V replied. "How else are you going to build trust in God if you don't try Him?"

Why not? I asked myself. I had been talking to my "Higher Power," but kept the conversations short and simple. I first decided my Higher Power would be of the male persuasion (a decision which seemed to come naturally and just felt right). In the mornings, I asked Him to help me stay clean. And at night, I thanked Him for doing so. I said the prayers, but still wasn't sure if He heard me, if He was really helping me stay clean, or if He even existed. But that wasn't my immediate concern. My immediate concern was finding someone willing to rent to me despite my horrible credit; which brought me to my next concern: how was I supposed to ask for an apartment? I still didn't know any religious rules, sayings, or songs; and I had no desire to learn any. I wasn't reading any religious materials and, again, had no desire to do so. I tossed the question around in my mind until I got a headache. Aggravated at the thought of needing instructions about how to talk to God, I defiantly decided I'd just talk to Him like I talked to Daddy-straight out. If He was nearby, He should be able to hear.

That night, as I lay in bed, I thanked Him for another day clean and asked Him to help me find an apartment. I thought about it for a moment, and then quickly added, "One I can afford."

A week later, I still was at Mona's. I was getting discouraged and losing faith. V continued to encourage me. "You've got to learn to trust Him, Cup. You're not always going to be able to see the big picture. But you've got to know that, no matter what, you'll be okay. Keep praying. Stay clean. And stay sober."

I did.

Three days later, my prayer was answered, though at first I didn't realize it. I went to view a place that was advertised as "a small one-bedroom cottage." Once inside the place, it was apparent that "small" was an understatement. It was tiny! Tiny and plain. No dishwasher. No garbage disposal. Not even a laundry room on site. A dirty, torn oversized couch sat rather prominently in the center of the unusually small living room. The owner explained that it had been left by the prior tenant. Looking around the cottage, I knew that it wasn't what I had in mind. Still, it was cheap and I needed a place to stay. So I applied for it.

Two days later, the owner called and said I could have the place if I wanted it. I felt as if I'd won the lottery. When I told him I'd take it, he said he was having the Goodwill come and pick up the dirty ol' raggedy couch and that it would be gone before I moved in that weekend. Realizing I had absolutely no furniture, I asked him if I could have it. Even though a moment before he was going to throw it away, once the bastard realized I wanted it, it suddenly became worth something. He replied that he'd sell it to me for twenty-five dollars. Unfortunately, I didn't have a choice. So I agreed-at least I'd have something to sit and sleep on.

I'd abandoned everything when I'd left Tommy-and, frankly, because of our drug use, there really wasn't much to leave. I had absolutely nothing to my name, so moving was effortless. I did it in ten minutes.