‘Heroin is the worst thing in the world’
DORSET, Vt. — The midnight phone call woke them all up. As Bonnie Bruce struggled to understand what the police officer was saying, her 11-year-old grandson, Elias, appeared in her bedroom doorway and walked to her bedside, listening. He knew: It was about his mother.
“Wait a minute, what are you telling me?” Bonnie gasped into the phone. The coil of dread lodged hard in her gut for the past 11 years, since her daughter first shot heroin into the soft crook of her elbow, abruptly gave way. “Is she all right?”
Bonnie thought of her daughter Tamara Bruce as two different people. When Tamara was clean, she was “Goose” or “Mara,” the fun-loving mother of three who would bop outside to play pickup basketball with Elias, her oldest, or sprawl on the floor to color with her niece.
But when she was using, she was thin, distant, and deceptive. Bonnie had stopped keeping money in her house for fear that Tamara would steal it.
Lately, that Tamara had come back, picking at her skin and avoiding questions.
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