The Family that Hooks Together...

Family is a strange, strange animal. We've all heard the adage that you can't choose the blood, but you at least get a little freedom with friends. As with everything, I am a mixture of amused and repulsed by the story that follows:

"I've been away from home for years. I have one connection to the place, my best friend from high school. The other day she called and was like "Girl, I was in the hair store and you will never believe who I saw!" So I guessed some cute guy from high school. And she's laughing and saying "no, your big sister! Anyway, I talked to her and she said you guys had a falling out a few months ago but for me to tell you she loves you."

Mrs. Carnegie...a FALLING OUT? That doesn't quite cover what happened between us. I hadn't spoken to the girl in years and she found me via email. We chat, I'm happy to hear from my sister and then she lowers the whammy on me. She pregnant and she wants me to take the baby she's going to have. This I consider for a very short period of time - I know my sister is on drugs, involved in lifestyle choices I can't support. WE have different mothers and very, very different upbringings. After asking me to take the baby, which she didn't take too hard when i said no, she started telling me how she had to have this one because she'd already had seven abortions since the last baby (who was five) and she was superstitious, but really didn't know what she would do with the one on the way."

That isn't really when we stopped talking, though. It was when she asked me to watch her daughter after the new baby was born so she could go out to Nevada and work in the brothels. I can't judge on hooking, for some it seems a viable career choice. But my sister? And she wants me to watch her kids while she hotfoots it out to Nevada for the legal action. Well, I refused, but I guess someone else took on the kids because a few months later she was calling again to borrow money, again, saying she didn't meet the success she'd hoped for because - get this - apparently the johns didn't like her baby fat! So we argue about money - as in why won't I give her some - and I suggest, mildly, that she consider kicking her heroin-addicted-cheerleader-turned-pimp mother out of the apartment so her elder child can sleep on the bed. Yep, mommy dearest is a pimp out on parole for cutting a "trick" and living with my sister and her two daughters. Is she a recovered heroin addict? She can't even make it through two weeks of rehab without a fix and it's been this way for 30 years!

So far in the equation we have a mother who is a pimp, a daughter who is a prostitute and two toddlers. Is this not a recipe for disaster? The closer aunts and uncles have tried to take the kids on several occasions, as has the state, but they leave the state whenever the grapevine says someone is coming. I don't ask for advice, I don't even know where my sister is beyond a general geographical region, but that is my holiday story. My sister sends her love via my friend during a chance meeting at the hair store.