Words from Emily:
glassblower
verdigris
Vermeer
janitor
sedate
charcuterie
folly
forepaw
detox

Detox was going well, all things considered. Considerin’ one of those things was a run-in with a janitor on PCP which resulted in a nail run straight through her right eye. She felt like the deer meat her pa used to pound on for days, trying to get it tender enough to chew. But she knew she would get through it. After all, she had Charlie on the outside, waiting for her.

She had found him when he had caught his forepaw in a steel trap that hunters had set out to catch raccoons for pelts. Who traps raccoons anymore anyway? Oh hell, that was a question for Doc Murphy, not for her. She just wanted to get through the next week and get out with her other eye.

She loved that dog. She had never known love, not really, if you didn’t count her pa who traded her to the neighbor in exchange for $1000 and a 1978 Nissan pickup, or the neighbor who had her out pickin’ in the fields before the sun hit the treeline that day.

She couldn’t remember ever having a mama, although she knew that she had to have one because babies don’t just come from nothin’. But who she came out of, she had no idea.

Doc Murphy asked her about her folks on the first day in. She said she didn’t right know what her mama had been doin’ for a livin’ afore she had her. Then she asked Doc what his parents had been doin’ when they had him. He smiled in a funny way and said “Thank you for asking”, like no one had ever asked him that before. And then he said that his father was a glassblower and his mama had worked in a charcuterie, which was some kinda store for fancy meat. She nodded and let him talk. He seemed to like talkin’ and she liked listenin’ more than trying to figure who her mama was.

She liked Doc alright. He had a painting in his office of a girl with a scarf wrapped round her head. She looked like she was about to say something, like “Well, it was good while it lasted, but I’ll be seeing you now”, wishing she could stay but knowing she couldn’t.

She told Doc that, when he asked what she was thinkin’ about. He smiled again. He said the painting was done by a man named Vermeer who had eleven children and nobody liked his paintings ’til after he was dead. She said that seemed like a shame. That made Doc nod and look kinda sad.

He told her that what had happened to her was a shame too, and that it wasn’t her fault. She said that she reckoned so too. He asked if she was mad. She thought about it but then said no. She didn’t see what bein’ mad would help. Can’t make an eye out of bein’ mad. She just wanted to get out and get back to Charlie.

She wasn’t really an addict, and she thought Doc would catch on, but he didn’t seem to notice. That was fine, because that meant she could come back in a month or too with a relapse and have a bed to sleep on for another three weeks. It meant leaving Charlie with the church lady, but it couldn’t be helped. No dogs allowed in detox.

But maybe she wouldn’t have to come back. She had heard the nurses talking when they thought she was sedated. They were saying how the government would give her money, now that she had lost her eye, so maybe she could get enough to get by and not have to come back. She could maybe get a little place for her and Charlie, out by the river.

She didn’t think too much on it though. She knew imaginin’ was a kind of folly. It could make it harder to get through livin’. If you don’t think about you would rather be doin’ and just do what’s starin’ at you, you could get through the day without it bein’ too bad. If there was money comin’, it would still come, whether she got to thinkin’ or not. And if there wasn’t, well, thinkin’ there was would just make it harder.