Born a Crime

When we first met Abel, he smoked
a lot of weed. He drank, too, but it
was mostly weed. Looking back, I
almost miss his pothead days
because the weed mellowed him
out. He’d smoke, chill, watch TV,
and fall asleep. I think
subconsciously it was something he
knew he needed to do to take the
edge off his anger. He stopped
smoking after he and my mom got
married. She made him stop for
religious reasons—the body is a
temple and so on. But what none of
us saw coming was that when he
stopped smoking weed he just
replaced it with alcohol. He started