All The Way Broken

just about a year ago on june third nineteen ninety four a woman in new york city named eileen come along i'll die it's not a name you're likely to know but tonight we're going to hear the story of her life and it was a very rough life eileen was a heroin addict and a prostitute for nearly twenty years he lived on the streets of new york city police shooting galleries and jails finally in nineteen eighty six after years of struggle she managed to kick her drug habit only to find out just a month later that she was infected with the age of the virus she died of aids in new york at the age of forty six a few months before a death eileen khalil ahmed radio producer david isay and together they set out to preserve her life story on tape she said it was her dream to leave something behind to give people a chance to hear her story to know that she was more than just a junkie more than just a criminal the primary you're about to hear is taken for more than thirty hours of interviews and recollections of the memories of a woman who had a very harsh life a very

hard life a life that was lost just when it seemed to be finally changing the program is called all the way broken eileen story aired its partners to joni but yeah i can't come home no and yeah they can't come home no job he can't come home mama is to johnny but yeah i can't come home causes them all along that chain named to moan my name is eileen kant landau and i have the aids and dying from aids it and weeding for an operation i don't think you can expect her prognosis to turn out very well armed this is my life story and pulleys com anatomy and i

have to carry on i'm a really nice you heard some of the poetry she been writing about about the reported i set up my tape machine and started growling but instead of reading her poems eileen launched into the story ever like i was a travel trailer and noise tantrums of painting in nineteen forty eight and my mother was a dancer in a sideshow an icon on my father worked to find called a rollback as a crooked reel with a foot pedal and a room for suckers every couple minutes i start like a lot harder and asked eileen if she might be interested in recording or in ireland jury she said yes i can tell people the absolute truth because i had nothing left to lose a is nothing that anyone could take for me on a lead now r and i allowed myself to experience life of his own feelings on the fearless personality

ok and not even get steamy best ones and any young age is because they did not skinny kid with the book i wanted to write out to the very end for the next several months i lean and i got together once or twice a week going through her life we made it as far as the age of fourteen and her story when she became too sick to continue keeping he died two months later eileen stories were given they worked hard and horrify often poetic always disturbing as i learned in our first interview when i lean began her story by telling of her earliest memory when i was five years old my brother came home from work i couldn't get my mouth open and i could not say a word arrested there and it's an inventor my mother looked at me and still fly really it started to

dawn on you know ok what had happened and i saw and wherever we go up that i've never seen before her great and she has stood up and she's snatched two big handfuls of hero for her head she ripped her head and she screamed a terrible sound like a person who's been mortally wounded and i was like mommy you know i was trying to to fix her and i couldn't she reads all the way the broken old away broken as you enter the kitchen and she had a hectic and she started shark been hatched on a wait staff and we had to sit on the couch and listen to that what's now been passed over the blade and issues come to kill harry when he came on the scene or write

away out of the corner of his imam she was heartening and the refrigerator we get it and she chased and it just barely made it out to the core issues chopper her way through the roof the court as he wanted to or an arm he managed to get away american their hands and we'll say and silence in the living room for a long time and then the mossad had to cry and she cried all day and she cried all night until about four o'clock in the morning and she got up and he took the bible and we fell asleep on the couch it's businesses never until after we ate there i would think about the things that happens

is getting high i was in the galleries barres or see on a drug addict is a person is in the theater of their mind and their emotions in the camp that would talks are writing these galleries with the mentally ill and the minister got ok and you'd be used in a degraded sit and play games with hypodermic needles to forget ok that's how i remember it we like you're sleeping in a car in an ira lost souls reconciling it might've been three or four months we were living in the streets you know and i mean when my mother would go into

bars we sit in a car me and on the date and the baby animal going to allow bars and get people want to bring that to colorado ok we're alive and kerry seemed to voice intonation willingly kill somebody and i no longer well now have because i was so young and my concept of time is it so we put in here but eventually she went in some lamb and we've seen a squad car pull up and she and come out okay and then she came out with the police and she walks them over to the kabul we were and told us yeah ok and then they took her away and he took us to day can you mom came to take a stab me

on my baby sister they left my older sister in the air and i remember being on the airplane right and was at night and we look it was raining or something and we looked out the porthole it was still black and up diapers or when i'm feeling fear can blacklist out the window because a double act as though it was nothing to wonder there was nothing off and i had this terrible fear wright says i have a compulsion to run and it now we're i was kind of i couldn't stay at my family's

house i couldn't i'd wander off i'd get up in the middle class and school and walk out the door and then the conflict three weeks a better informed school by the judge for being an incorrigible child very unusual art i was i went out when i was eleven there was only like maybe two other girls that when they hear that young actors in there a couple years the social worker called me and told me that my mother had committed suicide like it was weird i remember china krohn when they told me that i couldn't stand it was like a state when somebody is really spiritually heard they make a weird sand and i and the sound that scared me really get i remember

listening to this sound coming out of may and i i said i'm going to die if i let the sound come out so i choke it off and like i just laugh tear and the social worker are in a cause the side of the table and she was trying to get me a crying or you know have some kind of reaction that when you're in an apartment a couple days later right i cry myself and when they need it oh wow okay everything's well way up the thing is that like this like when you really think is at a little fat cigar thing is a new how's mother

said to the doctor what is chic that man you know mother died recently in the last few days in reading keeper announced what is that and he said he said it looks like some kind of severe allergic reaction but today i know was an allergic reaction to it was because i held that sound in you and i when i held that sounds and it had to come out now and he came out and you know decades leave your whole life ok what was once the process of dying starts if you begin to resist it last

experience a physical way that you wish you didn't have to experience are a damning it hurts on physically and allow the pain ok after a while your vision of everything is distorted by the pain and everything that you've you pursued business of pain after my mother died and they decided to relocate me to force rail is a catholic force trauma and i started trying to do doing school because man the focus was on academic ability so i started stand my room online trying to study in and now and really learned so that i could be accepted by people for you know being smart they're

reading or an essay or whatever and i was able to do that you know i was smart i do went with a traveling salesman i guess he was i was walking home from school and is harriet hands nice clothes and start his car and he offered in your eye and i got an interview talking i liked him so he does like asking me some questions about sex and stuff and i told her i haven't had his experience and

say so i'd say we're on you know all the all learned you were i know and i'll give you some my eyes examined twenty review he says i'll give you a hundred dollars i said ok allies so we went to this motel in the afternoon and it's really nice he was very sexy and very gentle and playful letters to myself that this posted yet yeah i do is no doubt lake some allied different from this heiress sure i realized at nine dead pointing out that there were people that obviously used sex in a way to create pleasure in july in a keen and sorrow and humiliation

and regret i suppose changing and you did it this likely to accept this he i'm actively in the process of being consumed by death ok it's it's like rain from eight am standing in front of the falcon grand canyon paul used for the dive and as a grieving process you watch yourself die you different cells and the song and then we will see

cyclists and friends and getting through it with other things it's like wang kar reaction and lessons about a year at the forest around before i burn dan berrigan palace and so in my wrist and i had to go back to recording again this is called green tile walls i hate group tiled walls new cinderblock big thick green send a black tie adults to kind of build institutions they take on an unearthly human to fluorescent lights in the faces the resilience a stricken hail and shocked the quality of sound distorted so that voice is

almost echo against those tiles sound carries like n is to what a place to learn to sing to beat our voices against those walls in an effort to find some freedom i hurled my voice against those was agonizing rose sounds of the blues i stretch my voice heard in flight finding the range of movement to hear some sound decent the cackling of men and women to freedom is a space inside your heart and the cast were the leases was neither are not gotten to the res to sing i'm just like every every day and then after a while i had to find something that was nothing i mean it was just like it was nothing there at it was it

was the most daring environment that i've ever seen a right so i took to sitting in the corner of one of the hallways where i can get you know an echo an old saying the crabs you do they're being in learning that sir we're in the harem and knew the day the sheer on

and the falcon that's what's our crime ok i mean this are older wood thumping commonly when i start crying and i started singing and people would always buy mean you know the falcon not even the nurses started bothering me they say it will use in next sunday's dan akerson in the hallway saying an awful tonight newman racing it's ok i'm finished it's over and it now that it has real human

being and that's a likely to ever ask or are this is yours stop april nineteen ninety four eileen had a collapse and was admitted to roosevelt hospital at this point we suspended reporter her life story hoping she'd recover enough to pick up where we left off to learn about the rest of her life her journey from a psychiatric institution which was in maryland to new york city at the age of fourteen her life as a prostitute junkie and criminal poet and the sometime rock and roll singer eileen was diagnosed with the h ide the virus just one month after heroin for the final time she was clean for the last eight years were like well the plane made it too difficult for

eileen to focus on her past she insisted on keeping a tape recorder by her bed so she could try to keep a journal often at night she'd have immersed at the microphone to her chest so that she could record her thoughts as she was falling asleep on to this is knowing and turn into new set cave may sixth and damian roosevelt has been an unknown here and then a month already i am hill syrian press at an at a time when most of press them ran for him they

i endured price the who is wearing a very nice when i don't know if our moon roof there are fungal or have a life it's worth only moved closer it gets shipped <unk> cities or a duel and these prices are new law i

am a new city he and the anguish in my dear friend a happy bird being a man many many more and head back you would be and it has strong the r and the n hint that you have made a name will be well yeah thank you the

pope eileen carolina died on june third nineteen ninety four it and lows she even when you've gone sooner rather low and the nice to be here oh me

others man and that was all the way broken the story of irene

carolina who died almost exactly one year ago in new york city the program was produced by david isay at sound portraits productions in association with city lore of new york with help from steve zeitlin and joey davis i was the editor the original music was composed and produced by arthur blown it was performed by arthur bloom jack fees then poppa sean mcquarrie vincent rawls micah center can free and jon rogers the technical consultant was cruel wheeler you've been listening to the wild room this is gary camino will be back next week at the same time listening to wbez in chicago