The First Drink

My first drink came when I was fifteen, from an open bottle of wine that I found hiding in our refrigerator. My mother had placed it there, I would later learn, for a new recipe she was trying to make, but at the time none of that mattered. I discovered it after coming home from school, and any notions about marching to my room to do homework were replaced with the question, How can I get a drink of this?

My mother worked from home, running a daycare out of our living room and, later, our garage. Being saddled with anywhere from five to twelve children, she rarely left the house during the day, and so I knew that there would be no way of getting to the bottle safely. As I stood holding the refrigerator open, my mother walked in the kitchen, and I had to slam the door to avoid her suspicions. The contents of the refrigerator rattled like change in a dryer as she looked at me, and I darted, mouselike, to my room at the other end of the house.

I sat on my bed for a while, unable to do my homework or even focus enough to watch television. My few years at my mother’s church taught me that basically anything I might want to do or try — drinking, cursing, reading anything other than the New or Old Testaments — would send me to Hell, and so I found it odd that my mother would have such a thing sitting there, open and unapologetic. I entertained wild hopes that she had woken up, as if from a dream, and that the reign of Jesus Christ was over.

Though I’d never really had a desire to drink before, now that the chance was here, easily accessible, my curiosity had the better of me. Imagining it as some kind of rite of passage, or at least something sophisticated, I felt I was entitled and that I should become accustomed to it for when I traded in small-town life for something more cerebral. So I went back to the kitchen.

More or less a single room, our kitchen and dining area were separated only by an open entryway about five feet wide. From our dining room table, it was impossible to miss anything going on in the next room. It would be particularly hard to miss one’s teenage son trying to sneak alcohol from the refrigerator. This, of course, was where my mother was sitting.

I froze once I realized she was there, and I had to kick-start my legs to get moving again. Otherwise, I might’ve stood there, in her full sight, for what might have been the better part of a day, shuffling my feet and asking idle questions like “What’s for dinner?” or “How was your day?”

She smiled at me, and I forced one back. I thought that maybe this was a trap, some kind of trick she had gathered from one of the radio station call-in shows she sometimes listened to, or from the Christian television programs that talked about how you could pull your children’s cell phone records or find out if your kids were looking up pornography online.

“I’m thirsty,” I said, pushing to sound like I had been hiking through a desert for the past eight hours rather than doodling though math class and daydreaming about the boys in gym class. I even coughed, dryly, as if that proved everything.

My mother said nothing, further cementing my belief that opening the refrigerator would have deadly consequences. But there was no backing out, so I stepped forward, opening the door to let out a wash of impossibly bright light. I squinted against it, and in reaching for a can of soda I accidentally brushed the adjacent bottle with my hand. I didn’t pause, though. I thought that if I stood looking into the fridge for too long my mother would know that I knew about the bottle, that she would know I desired it. “And what do you think you’re doing?” she would say from her place at the table, in that particular voice available to all mothers, the one that seems like the voice of God, only scarier.

I pulled out the soda and shut the door.

On my way out of the kitchen, I stole a glance at the figure leaning over a notebook, one hand tapping soft keys on a calculator next to her, and, counting myself lucky, I returned to my room.

The unwanted soda sat open and mostly full until after dinner. The recipe, for something like a tenderloin or a roast, wasn’t much of a success, and the soda helped to wash away the residing flavor. The wine still called for me, though. In my mind the bottle’s call had all the subtlety of a child screaming in my ear, and trying not to think about it only made me want it more.

My parents settled into the living room together, and despite my knowledge to the contrary I imagined them laughing, clinking together glasses full of rich red liquid. I didn’t like the idea of being excluded. Though my first attempt had been a failure, I was determined to try again.

Our bathroom was next to my room, and so I snuck in and grabbed a tiny paper cup from the dispenser my mother kept by the sink. My mother would hear me if I had to rummage through the kitchen cabinets for a glass, so this would have to do. As I made my way down the hallway, avoiding the spots in the floor I knew were prone to squeaks and groans, I arrived in the now-darkened kitchen.

The linoleum was cold on my bare feet, and the sounds of the TV filtered in from the living room. I felt like an agent from a spy movie, and it occurred to me that if I were to engage in any sort of espionage, it wouldn’t take long for someone to spot me. As it was, I stood before the refrigerator sweating like I’d just run a marathon, and I had to remind myself every few seconds to breathe. Had she stepped in the room, my mother would have thought I’d been swimming, though we didn’t have a pool.

Grabbing the refrigerator door with my free hand, I pulled, trying to use just enough force so that it would open without making a sound. I had to try three times, but finally it gave.

There again was the bright light, and the remnants of my churchgoing guilt made it seem like the light of Christ was shining upon me, heavy and judging, so much so that I had to grab the bottle and yank it free. I paused, thinking that if my mother didn’t catch me here and kill me, that I might be the first person at fifteen to die of a heart attack. But neither she nor my father came.

I unscrewed the top of the bottle, and under the blazing light of our Christ-filled refrigerator I poured myself my first drink. I didn’t take much out of concern that I would be stumbling around my room if I had a full paper cup’s worth; bad enough was the fear that my mother would notice the missing amount and trace its theft back to me.

Returning the bottle to its place in the chaos of our fridge, I adjusted it back exactly as it had been. The cup felt like a feeble relic from sometime long ago, and I held it gently as I traced my steps back down the hallway.

The wine, more purplish than red, sat on my desk for a few moments as I willed myself the courage to take the final step. In the back of my mind were those regular injections of guilt from years listening to stories of sinners and the threats of damnation. Finally, I took the paper cup in my hands, lifted it to my mouth, and tilted it back so that the liquid flowed.

I swallowed quickly, and the wine — something cheap and bitter — left a terrible aftertaste, and I wondered if in my urgency I had instead poured myself a cocktail of grape juice and pickle brine. I felt disappointed. I wanted to enjoy it the same way that, later on, I would imagine enjoying opera or theater before actually subjecting myself to them. The idea of wine, I realized, had been the attraction, and the fruits of my efforts tasted disgusting.

The next day, the bottle was gone, and when my mother brought it up at dinner, saying that she noticed some of it was missing, my father and I each shrugged and feigned our innocence. My brother, only ten years old and still believing it to be bad, wouldn’t have touched it with a stick, and so he was guiltless and safe. I envied him that, and so I began planning ways to kill him. My dad eventually copped and said, “Well, I tried just a little,” but I remained silent.

The guilt felt heavy, but the thought of my mother angry and disappointed kept me quiet. Worse though was the sense of smallness, the feeling that I had made some dimwitted mistake at a party, like a peasant still yearning for culture. I had hoped that the wine would elevate me, elevate us, from our lowbrow spirituality to more intellectual places. But here we still were, a house of evildoers, our deeds hesitantly overlooked, living with the saint.

While nothing afterward changed much, what made the aftertaste and the anxiety and the shame all worth it, though, was the brief look in my mother’s eyes, a confession, I thought, of her own humanity. It was only there for an instant, almost unnoticeable, but it leveled us out and made her feel closer: just a glint of devilish glee, free and unhindered, as if she had stepped down from her Christian pedestal and, facing the harsh light of the refrigerator, taken a quick trip to the dark side to drink with the sinners.