Road home, p.18
Road Home, page 18
“Or avoid it.”
Sydney looks me in the eye. “You’re unbelievably stupid.”
“I am not.”
She shakes her head. “The streets will break you.”
“Maybe they won’t.
“Maybe,” she says. She rummages around her purse, pulling out a paper cigarette box. It’s still empty. “Fuck.” She crushes the box in her hand and tosses it. She gets up, dusting off her butt. “I need to go get my clothes, clean up. See ya.”
“That’s it? You’re just taking off? Am I going to see you again?”
“Probably,” she says. “The city isn’t that big.”
“What if we meet again? On purpose, I mean,” I say.
“What do you want from me?” she snaps.
“I just. . . . you’re the first friend I’ve made out here. And I think . . . you and me should . . . should stick together. I’ll pull my weight, and we’ll get food and we can share. . . . and maybe we can find a way off the street. Get back on our feet. Make things better.”
“We’re not Disney princesses, Rex. We don’t get a happily-ever-after.”
“Maybe we do.”
Sydney shakes her head. “You’re sweet.” Like it’s a consolation prize, she kisses me on the cheek.
“Please don’t go away.” I’m trying not to cry. But I’m failing. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“You already are,” she says. “You just have to be okay with it.”
“Why? Why do I have to be okay with it? Why can’t we change it?” I grab her hand. “You don’t have to be alone. We can take care of each other.”
Now Sydney’s eyes are welling up. She shakes her head, exhales heavily. After a minute, she says, “Fine.”
“Really?”
“You fucking cross me, I’ll kick your ass.” Sydney offers me a half smile. “We can hang for another week or two. See how it goes. I’m not making any promises beyond that. Okay?”
“Shake on it?”
“You’re so ridiculous.” She reaches out and takes my hand. We shake.
“You sure I can’t come with you?”
“I’m sure. But I’ll meet you back here after. Don’t wait up. It’ll be late.”
“I’ll be here.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Sydney says.
sunrise
I’m under the bridge, on a pile of cardboard, being lulled to sleep by the sounds of trucks and cars rushing by overhead. I wake up a few times in the night, but there’s no sign of Sydney. Each time I come to, I’m a little more anxious.
As the sun comes up, I sit up, look around, hoping Sydney will have snuck over and fallen asleep beside me.
But there’s no sign of her.
I reach into my backpack, pull out my little red dragon for luck. I rub him over and over, rocking back and forth, asking him to make her return.
today
It’s been a week. I keep returning to the same bridge. Keep hoping she’ll show up. I read there. I sleep there. Hoping she’ll be there, waiting for me, when I wake up. But it doesn’t happen. I see familiar faces. But not hers. Not Sydney’s.
I gaze up at the graffiti, at the colorful tags of people who came before. Whether they were homeless, or in gangs, or just simply artists, I don’t know. But for me, this is the closest I’ll get to being in a museum anytime soon.
Standing up, I have to shake myself off. No matter where I sleep, or how much cardboard I put down, dirt and sediment gets everywhere. Like the freeway overhead dusts me gently in my sleep, not with the sleeping powder of the dream god Morpheus, but with grime, particles from tires that come from distant places.
Near the center of the underpass is an orange tent. A woman lives there by herself. Every morning, she comes out and sweeps the dirt and dust away from around her home. She wears a plastic bag pulled over her hair, and a flower-print housecoat that reminds me of an old woman from a cartoon. I wonder where she got the broom.
Someone honks. Maybe someone rushing to get to work. Maybe someone running errands. Maybe a parent taking their kids to school. I imagine bologna sandwiches in brown paper bags or Tupperware containers or lunch boxes, sitting in the passenger seats of their car or in a colorful backpack, to be ignored until later, when the food will be eaten without a second thought. My stomach rumbles.
After my morning routine, I walk to the Pancake House and take a seat near the entrance. Mostly the tourists in line for food ignore me. One of them offers me a look of annoyance. I wonder if I stink.
An hour goes by. A couple comes out. Without my asking, they offer me their to-go bag. I say, “Thank you.”
But when I open the bag, I don’t eat. There’s a receipt on top of the Styrofoam container, with a date I recognize all too well. It’s August 18.
It’s my birthday.
I take the half-eaten short stack of blueberry pancakes across the street, to enjoy my meal out of the direct view of the patrons. Eating with one hand, I hold the receipt in the other, gazing at the date and trying to remember where I spent my last birthday.
In Texas, I know that much. Ready to enter my senior year of high school. That means I would have been in Abilene, living with my abuela. She made me an omelet for breakfast, then drove me to driver’s ed class. After, she took me to Chik-fil-A for lunch. Later that night, she surprised me with cupcakes, made from a box mix.
The year before, I celebrated with friends. We went to Applebee’s. Or was it TGI Fridays? I push my memory, but all I recall is us sitting around a table eating mozzarella cheese sticks and loaded potato skins and fried chicken tenders with honey mustard sauce.
I think back to other birthdays in the past. Sometimes there was a cake. Sometimes there was ice cream. Sometimes there was nothing. But even though I don’t remember, I know I always crawled into my bed at the end of the night.
I try not to think about where I’ll sleep tonight.
Instead, I focus on my food. With the last piece of pancake, I soak up every drop of syrup. I throw the container and the bag in a trash can. I put the receipt in my pocket next to my dragon.
Walking, I think of all the neighborhoods I’ve traveled through. Audubon Park, Freret, Touro, East Riverside, Irish Channel, Lower Garden District, Warehouse District, Storyville. Think of all the famous landmarks I’ve stood in front of. The French Quarter, Lafayette Cemetery, St. Louis Cathedral, Preservation Hall, Jackson Square, the Superdome. Where do I want to go on my special day?
I make my way down a street new to me. And then another. I want to get lost. And I do.
Then I find myself standing in front of a public library. My abuela always took me to libraries when I was a boy. Over summers, I spent hours there reading in beanbag chairs. Eventually, I stole away to my local library to escape from my home life. It was always a welcoming space. And the books . . .
I take a deep breath as I open the door, hoping no one will look at me, judge me. The receptionist has her head down, checking in books. But an old man reading a newspaper gives me a foul, condemning look, as though I’ve invaded his space. Which I suppose I have. Guilt rolls over me. But the air-conditioning is too much of a draw on a hot, humid day like this one.
Wandering the aisles, shelf after shelf after shelf, I find myself browsing the titles of books. So many books. So many that I read in my life. My life before.
Brave New World. Dune. The Hardy Boys series. Alice in Wonderland. A Clockwork Orange. Wuthering Heights. The Great Gatsby. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Great Expectations. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Misery. The Catcher in the Rye. Frankenstein. The Odyssey. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
So many memories come rushing back. It’s a flood of nostalgia, for all the times I escaped into a book. And for a minute, a long minute, maybe a few, I consider stealing one. Just one book. There’s so many.
But I don’t.
Instead, I find a corner and cry.
* * *
The heat is unbearable. I find a tree in the park and lie under the outstretched limbs, thankful for the leaves. I take off my shirt, shoes, and socks, hoping some tiny breeze will dance across my skin. I lean against the tree and nap in an awake kind of way. Eyes closed, but aware of every sound, even as my thoughts drift like clouds.
Holding it in my hand, I rub the curves of my luck dragon. I’m not sure what I’m hopeful for. A cake? A cupcake? Maybe some half-eaten dessert? I’ll pretend it has a candle in it and blow out the flame, make a wish, a wish to get off the streets, to find a home again.
I’m not greedy. I’d take a small studio with a tiny bathroom and a kitchenette. The fridge would be stocked with food, and I’d have a job to go to earn enough money to pay my bills and maybe eat out with friends once a month, or go to the movies.
As the sun sets, relief washes over me. I gulp down water from the park fountain, letting it fill my empty stomach, wondering what the weather is like here in the winter. Will it be cold, will it snow, will I freeze to death?
Walking toward the French Quarter, I go where it’s busiest. Maybe I can scrounge together enough coins and dollars to treat myself to something special. A meal. Maybe I’ll run into Sydney. Maybe I’ll run into Roger, and he’ll take me out to dinner again.
In front of a glass window, I stop. My reflection looks so much older. Grit stains me, my clothes, under my fingernails. I wear the street on me like a uniform that can only be earned by begging, eating out of trash cans, and sleeping on cardboard. I want to be disgusted with myself. But I’m too tired for even that.
The streets grow thick with throngs of people. Music and shouting fill the air. Beads, bars, neon signs, tall plastic cups, drunk tourists and locals alike. It seemed so magical when I first arrived. Now I take my seat against a wall, place my sign, and sit with my hat out in front of me.
I sit for an hour. The clink-clink-clink of coins joins the parade of noise. And I try to be grateful. Until—
A shoe crashes into my hat. Kicks it, and my change spills along the street, some coins spinning, falling flat, others fleeing away from me. I chase after them, as laughter hails me from above. After I’ve grabbed what quarters I can, I look up, saying, “What the fuck?”
Three stocky guys, only a few years older than me, stand over me, wearing shirts with Greek symbols. Frat boys. Already I’m worried, but as they laugh, I can’t bite my tongue. “You did that on purpose.”
“What if I did?” asks one of them.
“Serves you right,” another adds. “No one wants to see you. You’re ruining our visual fun fest.”
The third is staring off at a group of women, shouting, “Show us your tits!”
One of the women flips him off.
“Bitch,” he says. Burps. Takes another swig of his beer, crushing the can on his forehead with a grunt.
The three of them walk away. I want desperately to shout after them. To call them out. To fight them in the street. But I’d only have my ass handed to me. And I don’t want to risk it. Not today.
* * *
I walk away from Bourbon Street with enough money to buy myself two Happy Meals. But it’s too late. McDonald’s is closed. Still, my mouth waters at the thought of a McDonald’s breakfast.
Turning down a side street, I make my way toward the park, hoping I’ll get a night in the grass without police. Entering from the next block are three shadows. I cross the street, hoping to be invisible.
But as they get closer, they cross the street too. In dim light, I can see it’s the frat brothers. I start to cross the street, but two of them do the same. The third walks around, flanking me.
“Well, what do we have here?”
“It’s our friend from earlier.”
“I wouldn’t call him a friend.”
The three of them laugh.
I try to walk away. But one of them pushes me. “Where ya going?” He stumbles and sways a little, drunk. All of them are drunk.
I say, “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Who wants trouble?” he says. “We just wanna have fun.”
“Leave me alone.”
I try to brush past, and another grabs me. He shoves me to the guy behind, who shoves me back, like a basketball being passed back and forth. “Fuck, man. He stinks. Don’t make me touch him.”
“He’s probably filled with parasites.”
“Diseased from eating rats and pigeons.”
“AIDS from all those needles.”
I am trying to get away. Again, they shove me back and forth.
“Just let me go,” I say.
“Say please,” one frat brother says.
Trying to will myself to say it, I fail. My pride gets in the way. Instead, I can’t help it, I say, “Fuck off.”
“What’d you say?”
“You think you can talk to us like that, you piece of shit?”
One shoves me from behind. Instead of getting shoved back by the brother I was shoved toward, he rears back and brings his fist forward, hitting me in the face. I taste blood, and I’m not sure if I bit my tongue or he busted my lip. Then I realize my nose is gushing.
One of them hits me in the side. Another hits me in the back. Then I’m on the pavement, and they’re kicking me. One after the other, knocking the air out of my lungs. I can’t breathe, and I can’t stand. They’re kicking my legs, kicking my arms, kicking my ribs.
I curl into a fetal position, the way I hid in my mother for nine months, hoping this protects me. Instead, the shoes keep coming. Until bright white takes over my vision and I feel like the world is closing in, smothering me. I’m going to pass out.
But the frat boys tire themselves out first.
“No, fuck you,” the one says, exasperated. Then he spits on me. They all spit on me.
One last kick to the head.
They walk down the street, laughing, high-fiving.
I just lie there.
Broken.
the bridge
When I’m done crying. When I can breathe again. When I’m alone. I’m still waiting to get kicked. For a fist to find me. For more people to spit on me.
Despite the heat, I’m shaking.
My face is sticky with caked blood. I force myself to blink. I have both eyes, despite the ache that says otherwise.
I’m in and out of it, not sleep, but consciousness. Until a car is honking at me. I raise my arm to the headlights, trying to shield my eyes. I hope it’s an ambulance, but it’s just a cab. The driver doesn’t bother to get out. He reverses the vehicle back into the adjoining street, then zips off.
It takes a while to pick myself up, to stand. I stumble along until I find a water hose behind a building, then wash myself. The water runs crimson until it doesn’t. I take off my shirt, covered in blood, and rinse it. I hold the cold rag up to my face, and try not to cry.
I take out another shirt from my duffel bag, and when I lift my arm to put it on, an excruciating agony blossoms in my side, at the bottom of my rib cage. It feels like I’m being stabbed.
Eventually I place one foot in front of the other. I hobble, slowly, gently, unable to move as far or as fast as I usually can. Trudging along as the moon disappears and the sun rises over the city, it takes me hours to make it to the bridge. When I get there, the old woman in the housecoat is sweeping the asphalt outside her tent with the broom. She doesn’t bother to look at me as I gather cardboard and lie down.
* * *
Under the shadow of the bridge, I try to sleep. Every time I move, there’s pain. My face. My ribs. My arms and legs. I tell myself I’m not dying, but I’m not sure if I even believe that. It hurts to breathe, to swallow, to shift my weight. And every time I fall asleep, I jump awake, waiting to be attacked again.
I reach into my pocket to rub my luck dragon. But my pocket is empty. It was in there last night. I turn out my duffel bag, and then my backpack, looking for it. I check my pockets again and again. It’s not here.
And I’m crying, cause all I can think is that it’s out there somewhere, by itself, on the street. Alone.
Tourists won’t see it underfoot and will trample it, crushing it. Or it’s soaked in beer and vomit, to be washed down a drain. Or it’s been swept away by the trucks that suck up the trash in the street, and it’s off to some dump where it’ll never be cherished again.
I’m moaning now, sobbing, tears streaming down my swollen face. I’m curled up into a ball, rocking back and forth. I desperately want someone to hold me. To pat my back and tell me it’ll be okay. To kiss my forehead and assure me that was the worst of it.
But no one comes to comfort me.
Sydney was right. We’re all on our own.
* * *
I walk into the black of night.
If I was invisible before, I’m even more so now. When someone looks at me, they avert their eyes, turn their faces away, walk more quickly. If they don’t see me, then for them my pain doesn’t exist. I don’t exist.
This morning, I saw my reflection. Two black eyes, a swollen lip, bruises all over my body, a limp in my left leg. When I move, the pain in my side shoots through me like electricity.
I don’t understand how I got here. I know how I got here, but I don’t understand why. Why did my dad forsake me? Why did I have so much pride? Why didn’t I beg to stay? Grovel to keep my place among the living?
Cause I don’t feel like I’m living. Not anymore.
I’m here, but I’m not alive.
Not really.
I’m just a shade. A shadow of my former self.
I’ll never get back to where I was. When I had friends. When I had a job. When I had a future. When I had a place in the world.
Instead of returning to the encampment under the bridge, I take the long way around, up onto the bridge. I walk the two-foot path on the side of the freeway as it inclines. Walking up, as though moving toward heaven, one slow step at a time, to a heaven I don’t believe in. Cause if there’s a heaven, there is a god, and how could such an all-powerful, all-seeing, all-loving being exist and let so much suffering go on down here on earth?
