Whether she came into my life or I came into hers, I do not know. What I do know is that because of Rose, my eyes were pried open to the seedy side of big city living. And I loved it.
Rose was a black flower child. As in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, large, dark, and looming, her hair was like Hagar’s, a thundercloud. Golden hoops hung from her ears like doorknockers. She was six-feet-tall, skin like coffee, with daddy long legs and arms. She wore California peasant shirts with Chevron stripes and blue bell-bottomed jeans. I don’t remember her shoes. Maybe the bell of her jeans gobbled them up.
Rose grew up in the 60’s and 70’s when everyone did uppers and downers, when everyone knew what Quaaludes and Black Beauties were. Quaaludes and Black Beauties, the sound of those words when she whispered her Newport-scented secrets to me resonated in my young mind as lovely.
Rose had two friends, DeeDee, a pretty little caramel woman with a quiet mystery about her, and Ray, a high-yellow, shell-shocked, Vietnam War veteran. DeeDee always wore tube tops and halter tops in summer with short-shorts to show off her gorgeous runner’s legs. Her copper hair was short, hard-pressed and uncurling, and she sometimes stuck a random flower just above her right ear. Her eyes were the color of whiskey in a glass; Ray’s were, too.
DeeDee and Ray were inseparable. Like Siamese twins. There was no one else in the whole wide world for either of them. They drank, they laughed, they loved, they got high, they slurred their words and cursed and shit. They stayed up late, they fought, they made up. The next day would come in bright and shining blurring the night before, and whether they had jobs or not, they cranked up their personal merry-go-round and rode again.
Over time, DeeDee’s beauty faded. Large Jackie O sunglasses hid her eyes when they were black and blue. A cut would be seen at either corner of her lip. Sometimes a bruise would appear on her thigh. A sling on her arm. Ray, who was skinny from the jump, seemed frailer. And his nicked skin looked as if a bird regularly pecked at him—as if he’d been rough-and-tumbled dry with rocks. DeeDee sometimes called Ray a dog, but if Ray was a dog, the soft-spoken kitten that was DeeDee turned wild cat when she was high and drinking. Through it all, no one ever doubted their love for each other. No one.
After years of abusing drugs and alcohol, the addict’s brain is never the same. Never normal. Something’s missing. The one thing that they do, their dance, their two-step, however, is constant. Predictable. Take one step forward, two steps back. One step forward, two steps back.
DeeDee, they say, was driving some old car when Ray was thrust through the windshield and killed. Although DeeDee survived for years without her heart, we say, DeeDee died with Ray that very day.
Ray’s “bathtub” was a car. DeeDee never did a day in jail.
This walk down a twisted path is just to say that I’m not sure if DeeDee and Ray were guilty of anything but addiction. Facing her final days, I’m not sure if Bobbi Kristina and Nick Gordon are guilty of anything but another sad case of acid love.
