She was calm, she was kind, and she was here to remove our daughter from our home. I knew that before she arrived, before anyone had told me. I’d known that in the hospital when I AMA’d, and I’d known that when I arrived home and husband was cleaning, his face a hard surface of rage and fear.

When I’d gotten home, the first thing I’d done was disappear upstairs to get high. I wasn’t drinking anymore, I pointed out. I wasn’t drinking anymore.

The paper tore under my shaking fingers, and I had to pull out another one. This one I was able to roll around the weed and tobacco easier, and when I lit it the rush of fuzzy warmth and charged up nicotine felt like getting slapped by an old friend.

Two minutes after that first hit, the social worker called. She told me she would be coming over tomorrow for an inspection.

This had all happened before. Less than a year ago, it had happened before. When I’d received that call I’d been scandalized, drunk and furious, questioning that other social worker on who could’ve possibly said anything? She’d shut me down, and we’d cleaned before that last-time social worker arrived, washed ourselves, the dog, the child, and charmed her utterly. She’d mentioned confusion about how we could’ve even been reported.

When this social worker called and told me what was about to happen, I said, “Ok,” very softly. I hung up, and the world was very quiet. It must not have been, is the thing. It’d been nearing summer, and the dealers nextdoor were always outside blasting music soon as the snow hinted at melting. Fights were frequent, gunshots less so, yet still a fixture. I remember in that moment all noise cutting to void, though. The smoke curling upwards. My fingers around the spliff shaking as they rose again to my lips.

A lack of sound that was nearly too loud, the way the cicadas had been when I was a child, and the woods lived crushed back in our backyard.

The social worker we got this time smiled when she talked to us. She looked over our daughter and commented that she was clean and seemed well cared for. I nodded, and my voice shook as I added that I was newly in recovery, going to meetings daily, and I was getting back into therapy.

I said these things because they were true, and I was proud, and there had been very few true things to be proud of for a good long while. I did not say them in an attempt to keep our daughter at home. Somehow, despite all delusions, I knew this wasn’t a possible result.

Still. Social worker was smiling, and she nodded, tilting her head and considering me with a certain light behind her eyes. “That’s wonderful!” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “Keep it up, mama. You’ll get there; I did. What’s your drug of choice?”

I blinked. I’d never heard this phrasing before, and I asked her to repeat herself. She did, and I said, “Oh, uh. Mostly Adderall and weed?”

Husband, who’d been hovering on the sidelines, orbiting our daughter like a desperate moon, let out an appalled laugh. “And alcohol, Holly, christ. Don’t forget alcohol! I mean, I know it’s been, like, almost ten minutes, but-“

I interrupted, absolutely indignant rage firing up in me like it was always wont to do, “I didn’t forget! She said drug of choice! I figured she’d say drink of choice next!”

The social worker burst out laughing, as did husband. Not cruel laughter; not even from husband, who was the deepest into hating me he ever had been and (hopefully) ever would be. If anything, it was a shocking amount of abrupt affection from both of them. One stranger and one beloved, both wary, both charmed.

I didn’t take it that way at the time. I wanted to stay angry. Yet I felt that softness anyway and cringed back from it, chewing the edge of chap on my lip and glaring at our baby. Our little girl, clean for the first time in a long time, dressed sweetly and toddling in the dining room for the first time in months. The floor was clean enough for her to do that – again, for the first time in months.

“Alcohol is a drug,” the social worker said wryly. “Ask anyone at those meetings, alright? Ask em that, ask em everything, and then listen to what they say. You’ll learn. I have faith you will.”