Where There's Smoke

The chore wheel was not designed for fairness. The chores themselves were not equal, and so, everyone having the same number of chores did not mean everyone had a fair share of the labor. Betsy didn’t mind taking out trash or scrubbing the bathroom tile, but a dragging mantle of dread descended when it was finally her turn to clean the sun room.

Pushing back the sliding glass door, the aggressive stench slathered over her. Betsy held her breath, wrinkling her nose at the ghosts of a thousand cigarettes, the cloying nicotine hanging in the unfanned air. The Plexiglas windows were cloudy, and smeared with the corpses of bugs, streaked with scummy layers of rotting pollen and yesterday’s rain. Pungent heat from the toxic incubator made its home in Betsy’s sinuses, lazy motes of fine ash lodging in the back of her throat. The sticky rug under the gum-studded coffee table had once been a cheery yellow, but the tar-lacquered yarn was now a halitosis brown. Above, the long-dead ceiling fan was furry with thick dust and cobwebs, hanging precariously enough to put Betsy’s back against the wall as she trespassed over the threshold.

Trina smirked, under-lit by a joyless LCD screen, and tossed back a curtain of satin black hair. “That’s right; you don’t smoke.”

Betsy managed a wan grin. Immune to the cancerous air, Trina scrolled lazily through her phone between deep inhalations of a red-tipped cigarette. She pushed the nearest ash tray across the table. “Were you waiting for when all the girls were out?”

Gingerly lifting the ash tray, Betsy emptied it into a trash bag, knocking the caked tobacco from the tacky edge. “No, not at all. This is literally the only time I have between jobs.”

Trina flicked her ash into the empty disc. “You should make more of an effort to hang out here. You know they talk about you when you’re not around.”

The small trash can by the door was full of pack wrappers and dead lighters. “I’m not that interesting.”

“That’s not what it’s about.” Trina parked her cigarette in the side of her mouth to apply both of her thumbs to her cell phone, her black curtain sliding over her shoulders. “It’s about being one of us.”

Another ash tray was dumped into the trash. There were fifteen women in the halfway house, living on top of each other in the early stages of recovery. Fourteen of them smoked. “We’re all addicts here.”

Trina shrugged. “Some of us have parole officers, some of us have to pay child support. Some of us have boyfriends we’re trying to get rid of or husbands who won’t take us back. We all have bad days. We all have secrets. All that shit, we talk about it here. You don’t talk. So, we make shit up.”

The heavy vacuum groaned to life. As Betsy pushed it over the carpet, the stained strands all stood at attention, but the smell did not improve. It just took on a slightly burnt aroma, like a toaster toasting moldy bread. Twirling a strand of her dark hair, Trina crushed out her cigarette. “You know why you should hang out more?”

Wrapping up the vacuum cord, Betsy shrugged. “Because I always have a lighter?”

“Because you’re going to make it.” Trina stood up from the cushions, pocked and cratered with little black burns. “Half of these girls will be back in prison in a year, or OD’d in some alley somewhere. But you’re gonna make it, I can tell. And it’s good for them to see what that looks like, instead of chewing up the same old cud.” She put her cell phone away and tossed her raven mane. “Or, fuck these bitches; I like seeing it. Looks good on you.”

The grey sunshine warmed Betsy’s cheeks. “I don’t know. I feel pretty lost.”

Trina smoothed her hand down the length of Betsy’s ponytail. “You’ll figure it out. You’re pointed in the right direction. Out there is a world full of people who’ve never been burned. You’re on your way to being fireproof. And everybody in the sun room just keeps burning.”

* * *

One of Betsy’s jobs was gig work at an event venue, and she’d invited anyone in the house who wanted a few extra bucks to pick up a short-handed shift. Trina didn’t go, but five of the other women did, cobbling together white shirts and black slacks to refill buffets and roll silverware. Betsy hoped there would be a chance for her to have a stronger connection with them, bonding in the trenches of minimum wage. But once every hour or so, she’d find herself to be the only one working, while the others adjourned outdoors.

“Good work, Betsy,” her manager had said, handing over a portion of the tips. After a brief hesitation, the manager added, “You know…I mean, those others are fine, but they’re not like you.”

A whiff of stale cigarettes whisked through the air. “We’re all coming from the same place.”

“Sure,” the manager said. “But you’re going somewhere.”

Outside, Betsy’s housemates lingered in a thick smoke ring, in the same invisible sun room twenty feet from any back door. Betsy wondered what they were talking about, but didn’t dare intrude. Before AA meetings or Intensive Out Patient sessions, there was a pre-meeting smoke where people greeted and checked in with each other, while Betsy just found a seat. After meetings, there was a post-meeting smoke, where people swapped numbers and made plans, and Betsy just headed for the bus stop. She always carried a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, not because she was curious, but because that was the fastest way to make friends. Only they weren’t really making friends with Betsy; she was just the chauffeur for the little filtered playmates in the pack, and she was paid in attention for as long as they’d last. So, when the other girls huddled together in a wreath of dull flame, Betsy just kept walking.

Betsy’s non-smoking co-workers had assured her she had a standing invitation to grab drinks at the nearby watering hole, but she made excuses not to go. Her brain told her that she could stay for a bit, sipping on ginger ale, just to socialize, just to belong. But her brain had told her that before, had told her just a little bit of alcohol was good for you, that it was okay to step into the liquor store for a minute and use the ATM, that she could stop at just one drink. Her brain skipped over the memories of huddled nights under bus stop benches, waking up in hospitals where they took away your shoelaces, the origin story for all those scars. Although she’d been clean for almost ninety days, it would be the fifth time she’d been that clean, and it took no time at all to go back to day one. Maybe Betsy wasn’t stuck in a sun room, but she was always right next to one, with a hand on the sliding glass door. So when the shiny, happy people who had never been burned headed off to the bar for exactly one drink, Betsy just kept walking.

You’re going to make it, Trina had said. You’ll figure it out.

Just do the next right thing, Betsy thought. Just go to work. Just do your chores. Just keep walking. Even if you walk alone.

The house was quiet when Betsy got there, a rarity, and she kicked off her murderous shoes. She flicked on the light in the living room, where somebody had definitely skipped their chores, and read the banner that wrapped all around the crown molding.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.

There was a soft sound, on the fringes of Betsy’s hearing, too indistinct for her to know what it was or where it came from. Listening closely, she heard it again, and could still not identify it, although it was coming from the sun room. Betsy pulled back the sliding door and turned on the light.

The harsh fluorescence and foul nicotine reek rolled over Betsy, stinging her eyes. A long shadow stretched across the tarnished carpet, a chill creeping beneath the Plexiglas now that the sun had left the room. In a disc of thick yellowed glass, a single cigarette had slowly smoldered into a long column of untapped ash, still bleeding wisps of smoke. The sound was creaking from the decrepit ceiling fan, shedding dust as it sluggishly revolved, groaning under the burden that was hanged there.

A beautiful smoker with black satin hair.