From Darkness To Light Again

“I know she has to go but I don’t want her to” she wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

“Here” he said quietly thrusting a couple of tissues towards her, “dry your eyes”.

She took the bundle of soft white paper, dried her eyes and blew her nose. She could hardly breathe.

“You know we’re on the same page with this” he told her taking hold of her hand and looking deep into her eyes.

‘Yes I know. It’s just the guilt I feel. When I look back to when Rachel first changed I should have known. I just should have. I blame myself” she sniffed.

“Why couldn’t we see it Paul? I really thought it was just being a teenager. When I compared notes with some of the other mum’s their kids were just the same. I never thought we would be in this position with our daughter” she said sitting hunched over on the damp grass out the back of their house.

“Paul, remember when I said to you that Rachel never seemed to laugh much anymore. Her beautiful sunny smile had faded too. I should have thought then that something was wrong with her. You don’t just go from being a vivacious, happy child to a solemn withdrawn girl for no reason, even if you are a teenager”.

Inside the house and looking out through the glass doors sat Moochie pining, with her head hung low as if she was in tune with Rachel and knew how she felt.

Paul and Dina’s only child, a daughter had gone into rehabilitation that morning. They had taken her on the two hundred kilometre drive up through the winding and rugged mountains to the place that was supposed to set her demons free. The centre itself was a beautiful old homestead, wide verandas, shutters on the windows and in the gardens a mixture of natives, and annual shrubs, all colourful and bright -  telling visitors ‘welcome – we’re here to help you’.

On the way there inside the car the atmosphere was sombre. They partly blamed themselves for the situation at hand. Hindsight is a wonderful thing – ‘Should we have been stricter? Why did we let her go to places without checking out the parents?’ Why didn’t we see the signs?’ All the ‘if only’ and ‘why didn’t we’ words were swirling around inside their heads

“Are you warm enough Rachel?” her mum asked as the air inside the car grew cooler.

“Sure Mum” was all she said.

“I can put the heater on”

“No mum you know I’ll feel sick”.

“Everything will be alright honey” her dad said and reached his arm backwards through the gap to touch her hand. She gently squeezed it and then he put it back on the steering wheel.

“Anyone like the radio on?” he asked.

“No thanks” mother and daughter said in unison.

“*I wish you could turn around and go home Dad” Rachel said flatly “I don’t want to let you and mum down.”.

“You need to do this Rachel, you know that and before it’s too late. You will get better and come out stronger. We’ll all be here for you just like we are today”

Paul and Dina had driven up two weeks earlier. They needed to see the place for themselves, talk to the staff and feel that their daughter would be in a good facility before they left her here.

On the way home that day Dina had cried nearly all the way. She kept saying over and over to her husband. “I don’t think I’ve been a very good Mum”.

Paul had tried to console her telling her that she had been and still was a wonderful mother and it wasn’t her fault.

“That’s alright for you to say that but you were away at the time. It was me who let her go to that first party and go away on that weekend, and all those other times that I should have said no. I should have been stronger and not so trusting of everyone”, she cried shrilly sounding a little hysterical.

“Look Dina, we’ve been through this a hundred times and it’s not going to make it any better by blaming yourself or even me. We knew a lot of the parents, they are good people, we trusted the kids, and that’s why we let her go. We didn’t know that Rachel was lying to us about things. We’re just human beings, we do our best, and we think it’s the right thing but we don’t always do everything right– we all make mistakes. Maybe I should have been home more? Have you thought about that?”

The car was silent once more and Paul’s mind wandered off to when they realised what their daughter was up to. The signs had been there but they just hadn’t seen them until it was too late.

They thought Rachel had a great group of mates. When they came around to get her for a night out they all seemed polite, friendly, happy, and they were. “Enjoy your evening” we would say to them all as they left the house to pile into two cars with the oldest two of the group “Rachel, 10.30 please - don’t be late”.

“No I won’t”.

“Isn’t it great that she has such a lot of good friends?” we’d say to each other “Gosh when I was her age I was still working in my Dad’s shop til well after 9pm. Times have changed!”

She was nearly always home on time and either let herself in or her parents were still awake and let her in. “Have a good night?” someone would ask

“Oh great, I’m really tired though, night” and off she would go to bed.

“She’s not very talkative any more when she comes home is she?” Paul said to his wife “Just the age I suppose, she is eighteen next week”.

Rachel was in her last year of school and not doing too well. Her grades had been declining since the start of the year. The principal asked Paul and Dina to come in and see them.

“I don’t know what’s going on. Rachel has been such a good student up until the middle of term one. She just doesn’t seem interested any more. Is there anything going on at home that I should know about?” she asked, probably hoping there were marriage problems or financial difficulties, or anything to explain why Rachel’s marks had gone from ‘high achiever’ status to ‘not in the least interested’, but they couldn’t offer anything.

“We’ll have a word to her at home and then perhaps you could talk to her yourself” Paul said to the Principal.

“Yes, let’s do that then”.

Paul and Rachel got nothing from their daughter in the discussion. All she could offer was “I don’t know why but I’m not that interested in school any more”.

“I thought you wanted to become a vet Rachel? You’ve wanted to be a vet since primary school, and you know what kind of grades you need for that, AND that’s after you actually get into University”.

“Not any more” was the reply they got.

She began to eat less too they noticed and lose weight, but her mum said it was just the thing teenage girls did at this age – no one wanted to wear mid rift tops and have a roll of excess skin!

“Well you’ve been a teenage girl and I haven’t” her husband told his wife “but she just looks a bit thin and sickly to me”.

“She’s ok Paul, trust me, they all go through it. I bet if we rang up a few of her girlfriends’ parents they would all say the same thing!”

Rachel’s bed became her best friend. It was difficult to get her up in the mornings for school. She usually got out of bed about fifteen minutes before the school bus picked her up, cleaned her teeth, threw her uniform on, grabbed her school bag and ran out of the door.

“What about breakfast?” Dina called out five mornings a week but all she got was “Not hungry”.

When it was the mid-term break Rachel got an unexpected surprise from her daughter. “You know how it’s the mid-term break next week?” she started off “Well a whole lot of us are thinking of going to Sarah’s holiday shack to study together. It will be nice and peaceful and we should get plenty done”.

“Oh what a great idea” he mother enthused “I’m sure you’ll be able to have a little fun too, not all work I hope? I’ll tell Dad when I’m talking to him; he’ll be fine with it”.

Her mum approached her about the baby sitting jobs that she didn’t seem to do any more. “Rachel, you don’t seem to mind the children up the road any more, don’t they need you? It’s just that the money was very good and you had saved quite a bit of money from it. What’s going on love?”

“Nothing is going on. Why do you have to know everything? And she stormed off.

“Teenagers” said Dina out aloud “I’m glad I only have one!”

The weekend of ‘study’ came and went. All Rachel said about it was that it was worth going and they had a bit of fun too”.

“Oh lovely” was her mum’s reply “We should see some good exam results for four days of study!”

“That’s all you care about isn’t it, the study” she yelled at her Mum.

“No I just thought it was great that you got a bit of down time too at the weekend” Dina started to tell her but Rachel had already marched off slamming the door behind her.

The first time she noticed the missing money was when Dina went to pay at the checkout of the supermarket. She opened her purse to take out the bills but there was nothing in the compartment. “That’s strange” she muttered, turning her purse and bag inside out on the counter. But there was no money. Embarrassingly she had to leave all the groceries from the shopping trolley and drive home empty handed.

“Rachel, did you take any money out of my purse today?”

“No why would I? I have money. Are you accusing me?”

“No of course I’m not accusing you, I’m just asking that’s all. I had fifty dollars in there this morning, I know that, so where has it gone to? I was so embarrassed at the shops”

“Well I never saw it. I’m going out to Sarah’s house to study”.

“But you’ve had no dinner”

Rachel grabbed her school bag telling her mum “I’m having dinner there” and went outside to wait for her lift.

A car horn tooted and through the window Dina saw her daughter getting into her friend’s car with two or three others in it also.

Dina sat down on the couch thinking of just how Rachel treated her these days. “What is wrong with that girl? I didn’t say she took my money! Maybe Paul borrowed the money. He’ll be home soon and I’ll ask him.

But Paul hadn’t borrowed the money. It happened again a few weeks later and Dina realised it could only be Rachel taking it. ‘I’ll wait until her dad is home in a few weeks and we can discuss it together first’ she thought worriedly ‘I really don’t know what’s going on but wouldn’t take kindly to a discussion with just me that’s for sure’.

Rachel was hardly home at weekends, and was always staying with one of her friends.

Dina tentatively approached the subject of how little study she seemed to be doing for her final exams and was met with only abrupt and rude answers. The school had sent two letters telling her that Rachel was going to fail if she didn’t change her attitude. The Principal had talked to Rachel on several occasions but it hadn’t changed anything.

Dina was beginning to think that perhaps Rachel was sick, telling her daughter that she thought a visit to the doctor for a check-up might be in order. She must have gotten her on a good day as she replied with “Yeah ok Mum in a couple of weeks ok?”

One Saturday morning when Rachel was away at a friend’s house, her mother decided that as Paul was arriving home that evening she would give Rachel’s room a clean-up. ‘If her father sees the state of her room there will be trouble’ Dina thought picking up most of her wardrobe of clothes just lying on the bedroom floor.

There were half empty coffee mugs, wrappers from snacks and her dressing table was littered with bottles, tubes and brushes from her makeup. “What happened to my neat and tidy little girl I wonder?” she said aloud as things were put back where they came from. “What’s this?” she asked herself picking up a small bag that was in the corner of the wardrobe under a pile of clothes. The bag was a brown colour with a drawstring pulled and knotted so tightly that Dina found it hard to undo the knot. After trying to a few minutes to open the bag she decided to cut the knot. For some reason it seemed important to her to get it open and see what was in it.

Shocked at what she saw inside, she sat down on the unmade bed and tipped the bag upside down, spilling the contents on the crumpled sheet. Out of the bag tumbled tablets, a small vial with liquid in it and three needles. Two had guards on them and looked new but the third needle looked as if it had been used. Too dumbfounded at her discovery Dina just sat staring at them for a few minutes before deciding what she should do with it. She didn’t even want to touch the stuff.

She put the bag on the dressing table and not quite knowing what to do, she continued to tidy up the room, hoping she wouldn’t find other things that would leave her in a state of disbelief. She did find some different coloured pills in a little metal box that had been sitting behind the photo frame that housed Dina, Paul and Rachel as a five year old.

“Oh my goodness” she said aloud putting the lid back on the box. Dina picked up the photo, stared at the face of her innocent and angelic looking daughter and once again wondering where she went wrong –  started to cry.

Paul had come back not to the usual seemingly normal home, but a house where his wife was telling him that their daughter seemed to be taking drugs. On reflection, the signs had been there and they could see that now. They put the paraphernalia in the kitchen cupboard away from the user.

“Let’s just ask if they are Rachel’s first, let’s not get ahead of ourselves”.

She had been home for about ten minutes so they both went up to her neat and tidy bedroom and asked the only thing they needed to know. “No they’re not mine. I’m keeping them for someone and can I have them back now?”

“No way are you getting those things back. I don’t care who they belong to – they’re staying with us. I’ll get rid of them myself” Paul told her in an angry voice.

“You have to give them to me…NOW” Rachel shouted, agitation starting to be heard in her voice. Beads of perspiration were forming on her brow and she kept wiping it with the back of her hand. “Give them to me” she persisted.

“Rachel, calm down. If they aren’t yours then I want them out of this house, and I will dispose of them. You can tell your friend, whoever it is, that we don’t have that sort of thing in this house, and never ask you again to mind them”.

“Just give them to me” her voice was getting louder and shriller and her body shook angrily.

“Rachel what is wrong with you? Are they your drugs? Tell us now, for your own sake” Paul’s voice sounded anguished and he moved towards his daughter with his hand held out, knowing what the answer already was.

“Get off me” she yelled shrugging off his hand, and now starting to shake uncontrollably.

“YES THEY’RE MINE” she screamed, tears beginning to roll down her pale face.

Rachel threw herself onto her bed face down and started sobbing. Her mum and dad sat down on the side of it, Dina white faced and silent and Paul shocked and feeling sick in his stomach.

They just all stayed on the bed, no one talking and Rachel sobbing. After what seemed like a long time she calmed down and the shaking stopped. Outside it had grown dark and the room felt cold.

Paul was the one to break the silence, telling the other two that they all needed to go downstairs to the kitchen and talk – no shouting, no yelling just talking.

 Paul told his daughter, for the first time about his younger brother dying from a drug overdose, aged nineteen. He didn’t want that to happen to his daughter and they would be doing everything they could to keep her from that fate.

Six long months after Rachel went into rehab she was ready to come home. Paul and Dina had been allowed two visits in all that time, the last one being a month ago.

They pulled up in front of the homestead. Inside the foyer Rachel was waiting, suitcase down by her side.

As they walked in she bounded up to them, arms outstretched and enveloped them both in her hug.

“We’re going home my darling” Dina said to her. “Your smile is so bright again and the light is back in your beautiful blue eye.