Proof I was Here

by Becky Blake

  “Never,” he said. “She’s not my type.”

  Everyone else at the table was talking a little too loudly – they seemed tipsier than usual. Pau poured some wine into a mug and handed it to me. “You need to catch up.”

  I drained the mug and Pau refilled it. Soon after, we all stomped down the stairs and into the street. As we headed toward the city centre, Sylvain started belting out a cheesy pop song that had been playing everywhere lately. The other squatters joined him on the chorus, looping over and over, making up words and laughing. “I’m yours” got changed to “I’m bored,” and “Love, love, love,” to “Blah, blah, blah.” We were blocking the road, walking side by side with our arms linked. Each time a car approached, we broke apart in the middle and then came back together like a magician’s trick cigarette.

  I didn’t have as much energy as the others. I was still sleepy, and trying to figure out the nightmare I’d had while napping. I’d been dreaming that my body was covered in tattoos, words and images that had all been scribbled over or crossed out. Only one tattoo had been left unvandalized. It was simpler than the rest, an outline of a human shape. It looked like the chalk line police draw around a dead body they find on the sidewalk. I’d discovered it hidden in the palm of my hand.

  I noticed we were getting close to Plaça Catalunya. “Hey, where are we going?” I asked.

  “Gótico,” Annika called over.

  I missed a step and felt the jolt in my arm. I didn’t want to go to the Gothic Quarter and risk running into Peter, especially not on the night before we were supposed to get married.

  “There’s always lots of good garbage in Gótico,” Pau said. He flexed his bicep, squeezing my arm into the crook of his elbow. “People never live there for long.”

  Less than a week – that’s how long I’d lived there. I glanced backward, wishing I could return to Gràcia, but the line of squatters was pulling me forward. It would be hard to explain my sudden need to back out of our plan. I reached over with my free hand and snagged the cap off Pau’s head.

  “Hey!” Pau frowned.

  “Come on, it looks better on me, don’t you think?” I liberated my other arm, then twirled my hair up under the cap, pushing it down hard. It was possible Peter wouldn’t even recognize me – not in the company of the squatters, not if I kept my head down.

  Pau grumbled and passed me the joint that had been moving slowly down the line toward us. I took a long hit, then handed it back.

  We turned down a street I’d never been on, and I stopped and pulled away from the group. We were in front of a concert hall – Palau de la Música. It was the building that had been on the postcard I’d sent to my mother. The architecture was even more impressive in person – the arched windows and mosaic pillars, the huge stone balcony wrapped around the second floor. From one corner of the balcony sculptures of impassioned people were reaching out. Leaning out the furthest over the street was a woman in a long dress. She looked unafraid of falling.

  Pau came back and pulled me along.

  I turned to look over my shoulder. She was so lovely, like a figurehead on the front of a giant glowing ship.

  “You’re high,” Pau said.

  I held out my thumb and forefinger a short distance apart.

  “More like this.” He grabbed my fingers and stretched them wide.

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.” Pau did an imitation of me, letting his mouth drop open, then looking up to the sky as if awestruck. I punched him in the arm.

  Annika called back to us.

  “We’re coming!” I shouted.

  Pau wiggled a finger in his ear as if I’d deafened him.

  We hurried for a few steps, then sunk back to a more leisurely pace. Pau rethreaded his arm through mine to keep me on course.

  When we caught up to the others, they were standing in the middle of a wide street, lined on both sides with discarded furniture. Enzo was bouncing from foot to foot like a boxer.

  “Is everyone ready?” Annika asked. She looked at Pau and me.

  “We’re ready,” Pau said. He smacked his hands together.

  “Let’s go then!” Annika lifted a coffee table and carried it a few feet away, then set it down in front of a ripped leather couch. Enzo ran off down the street with his arms out like an airplane and returned with a tall silver floor lamp. John pulled a dusty carpet from a long box and rolled it out, kicking down the corners with his foot. Sylvain had found a book about antique cars and he laid it open on the table.

  Pau and I watched from the sidelines as an entire living room took shape in under two minutes.

  “Jane, Pau, come on,” Annika said. Little wisps of hair were curling at her temples. “We’ve got a whole street to decorate.” She shooed at us.

  I didn’t know where to begin – there were so many possibilities. I looked around, imagining different configurations. There was a futon leaning up against a wall.

  “Bedroom?” Pau asked.

  “Sure.” We flopped the futon onto the sidewalk, then added a rickety bedside table, a tasselled pillow and a framed portrait of a family, the five children lined up from largest to smallest like a set of Russian dolls. I stood back and surveyed our work. “I think we need a blanket,” I said. “And maybe a light.”

  “What you need is this.” John came over, thumbing through a glossy porn magazine.

  “Eww.”

  “Here.” Sylvain handed me a stuffed elephant with a ripped trunk.

  I laid the elephant on the futon, and then I felt like we were in the bedroom of one of the children in the photograph – a kid who maybe didn’t own a lot of things but was still well looked after.

  Down the street, Enzo was yelling, his bald head glistening with sweat. “Hey, chavales, where can I hang this?” He was holding up a wicker swing chair. We all looked up, considering the buildings for a moment, then shrugged; he was going to have to figure it out on his own.

  The more progress we made with our decorating, the more passersby stopped to watch. A few of them were taking pictures. Sylvain and Annika posed in one of the living rooms as if they were a perfect husband and wife from Better Homes and Gardens. Annika lifted a foot into the air behind her and leaned in to kiss Sylvain.

  Across the street, John was turning up his Irish charm, explaining what we were doing to a group of giggling British girls in matching tiaras. “Homes for the homeless,” he said, sounding like a campaigning politician. One of the young women was wearing a bright yellow sash with the words Former Slut written on it in a teasing font. I figured she must be the bachelorette. I looked for the ring on her left hand and there it was: heavy and glittering. Her hand was slightly flexed as if she was afraid the ring might fall off. Suddenly my arms felt tired. I didn’t know why we were bothering to haul heavy things over cobblestones when the next day the garbage men would just disassemble our mini-habitats and throw the pieces into their trucks.

  I noticed a homeless man in shabby clothes watching us from a short distance away. He was swaying, and his shoes looked too big.

  Annika came up beside me. She called over to the man. “Hey! Would you like to come and sit down?” She made a wide sweep with her arm to indicate the most recent living room we’d built. She looked like a game show assistant highlighting a special prize.

  The man stared at her but didn’t move.

  “We built this for you.” She pointed at him, talking slowly as if he were a child. “For you. Do you understand?” She tried a couple of languages, but he didn’t respond. Instead he turned his back and shuffled off.

  Annika shrugged. “He’ll come back later. Probably when we’re gone.”

  “I doubt it.” The words popped out before I could stop them.

  Annika raised an eyebrow at me, and in that instant I was certain: our relationship had an expiry date. A rat ran down the centre of
the street and the Former Slut started squealing. John laughed, then moved in to comfort her. He repositioned the sash between her breasts, his hand lingering for a second, and she swatted him away. Someday soon she’d be promising to love one person forever. That would probably be a lie.

  I was suddenly sick to death of avoiding Peter’s street like it was roped off and belonged to only him. I couldn’t believe I’d never passed by in all this time.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I said to Annika.

  “Okay.”

  “I just want to pass by my old apartment.”

  This surplus information seemed to push her off balance, and she took a small step back. “Of course.” She bent down and began searching through a box of old dishes.

  I waved goodbye to the guys from a distance, then hurried off before Pau could catch up with me. Peter’s apartment was only two blocks away. I forced myself to walk toward it, past the grocery store that’d briefly been mine, the pizzeria we’d gone to for takeout. The closer I got, the more I was trembling. I didn’t know what I would do if any of my things were out on the curb for Big Garbage Night.

  I rewound my hair under Pau’s cap, then turned onto the street I’d been avoiding for almost a month. Outside Peter’s building, I stopped and counted up to his floor. All the windows were dark, but I could see Peter’s bicycle on the balcony and beside it a healthy-looking plant. It wasn’t right that Peter was comfortably tucked away four floors up while I was down here in the street.

  I stood very still beneath my old bedroom window, the unforgiving pavement pulsing up through the soles of my feet. Peter had promised me the world, and then snatched it away. Someday I would steal something of his.

  16

  When I arrived back at the street where the squatters had been, everyone was gone, and the decorated habitats felt desolate, like a tornado had blown through, ripping the roofs off the rooms we’d built and carrying away the people. Enzo had managed to hang the swinging wicker chair from a street lamp. I tested to see how much weight it could take, then settled in. I was too tired to walk all the way back to the squat. Slowly, I spun around until I fell asleep.

  The sound of the cathedral’s bell woke me, and I counted how many times it rang out. It was 7:00 a.m. on the day I was supposed to get married. A garbage truck was coming down the street.

  I started the long trek back to Gràcia, feeling dirty, and wanting to brush my teeth. Walking up Portal de l’Àngel, I could see the tourists lining up along one side of Plaça Catalunya, waiting to take the bus to the airport for their morning flights. There were a couple of beggars working the line. I heard someone coming up behind me, pulling a suitcase that clicked against the cobblestones. It sounded like a roller coaster straining to climb to the top of a track.

  I turned and stepped out of the way as a young man rushed past. A few paces in front of me, he stopped for a second to switch hands on his suitcase. When he started off again, a thin wallet fell from his back pocket, then hit the sidewalk, splaying open, gold and shiny. I walked over and scooped it up.

  “Hey,” I called out, but the guy didn’t hear me. Up ahead, he joined two friends who’d been waiting for him in the middle of the bus line. As I approached they were laughing and pushing at him, teasing him about why he was late. I heard the word whore, and I wondered if they were talking about a professional like Fanta, or maybe just some girl they thought was easy.

  The guy who’d dropped his wallet turned suddenly toward me. “Piss off,” he said.

  I looked at him and he stared back coldly, then waved me away. He thought I was one of the beggars.

  I moved off down the line, pressing his wallet tight against my leg and hoping no one had seen me pick it up. After a block my shoulders began to relax. No one was following me. I turned the next corner, then stepped into a doorway and opened the wallet: forty-five euros and some change.

  I touched Manu’s watch. “You always have good luck” – that’s what he would have said if I’d told him a wallet had landed at my feet. I wondered if Enzo might say it was an example of the universe providing. If so, then the universe was no better than a pickpocket, randomly choosing whose day it was to win and whose to lose.

  I went into a café and ordered a coffee with steamed milk, a piece of egg tortilla, some toast and an orange juice. I took the heavy tray outside and sat alone at a shiny metal table on the sidewalk, eating everything slowly, and feeling my stomach becoming big and round like the sun. It was Day Zero of my countdown and I wanted to feel full. After breakfast, I would buy myself some art supplies. Then I could paint over the door frames and start fresh.

  “Welcome back,” Annika said, when she opened the front door of the squat to let me in. Her voice didn’t sound very welcoming.

  “How was the rest of your night?” I asked.

  “Good. We built a bunch more homes. I think there’s even going to be a picture in the newspaper.”

  “Cool.” I followed her upstairs to the main apartment. On the table, there was a rectangular white cake – the cheap frosted kind from the grocery store – collapsed on one side and smushed up against its clear plastic container. “Where’d that come from?” I asked.

  “Someone dropped it outside the Carrefour.” Annika was braiding her hair, her elbows pointing at me. “Do you want some?”

  “No, thanks.” I sat down carefully on one of the wobbly dining-room chairs and pulled off my sandals.

  She wrapped a hair elastic tightly around the bottom of her braid. “Are you going to rest for a bit? Or are you ready to go do the shopping?”

  I’d noticed that whenever Annika gave me two choices, she always wanted me to pick the second one.

  “I think I need to rest,” I said. “And then I was planning to work on the mural.” I lifted the bag of art supplies I’d bought. “I finally got some paint.”

  Annika glanced at the bag. I knew she must be curious about where I’d gotten the money, but as usual, she didn’t ask. When she finally spoke, it felt like a box of thumbtacks had spilled onto the floor between us. “So, you’d rather not help with the shopping today.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I think I just need to do my own thing.”

  “Okay. I guess I’ll see you later.” She snatched some shopping bags from the counter and headed out the door.

  “Should I come down and lock you out?”

  “No, I’ve got the key.” Her footsteps were loud on the stairs.

  I let out a long breath. I hadn’t wanted to piss her off, but I couldn’t help myself; she was so annoying. It was something about the way she said things. “We built a bunch more homes.” Annika and Sylvain had no idea what it was like to be homeless. If they did, their protesting would be different, less about photo ops and more about providing help: a good meal, a safe place to sleep. They’d given those things to me, but there were other people who needed them more. Instead of making temporary homes on the street, we should be inviting others to stay at the squat. There was a lot more room.

  I knew if I suggested this, Sylvain would probably have some reason or rule for why the plan wouldn’t work. He was so fixated on the way things should be done that sometimes he seemed disconnected from what was really happening. When he’d explained the law of abandonment to me, he hadn’t even noticed the effect it was having. He’d just gone on and on about how there were two conditions you had to prove: one, that the item was outside of the owner’s possession, and two, that the owner had no intention of reclaiming it. That second bit was the tricky part, he’d said, and I’d nodded, swallowing back tears. Over the years, a couple of neighbours and teachers had managed to prove that my mother had left me briefly unattended, but I’d always covered for her, and she’d had a special knack for reappearing just in time to reclaim me.

  The plastic bottom of the cake container stuttered against the table as I pushed it to the edge, and then further. The co
ntainer cracked as it hit the floor, but didn’t pop open. The cake inside was just a little more distressed, its layers coming apart now, exposing its cheap angel food interior. Almost every day, my mom had brought home similar shitty cakes from the factory. I wondered what Annika’s mother did. Maybe she was a lawyer like Sylvain’s, or maybe a fucking astronaut.

  I picked up the cake and replaced it on the table. I hadn’t slept much, and I considered going to bed. Instead I grabbed some clean clothes from the sleeping apartment and took a cold shower, then went downstairs and lined up my new paints along the wall. Standing in front of the door frames, I realized I needed to fill them instead of painting over them.

  My mind wandered back down the hallway of my mother’s building. I’d been eight or nine the first time I’d gone knocking on my neighbours’ apartment doors, the first time I’d seen how other families lived. There’d been a fundraiser at school: selling cookies to collect money for a new gym. After that, whenever my apartment got too quiet, I’d taken some of the pastries my mother brought home from the factory and gone through the hallways tapping on doors, pretending to be raising funds again. Inside those squares of light, different combinations of people were eating dinner, vacuuming, petting dogs or drying their hands on dishtowels while kids ran by in pyjamas. Sometimes they invited me in, and for each family or group, I would change myself a little – imagining I was a granddaughter of the Hungarian couple in 412, or the little sister of one of the drug dealers in 719, or an extra child of the large Vietnamese family on the ground floor who all slept in one room.

  I lay down on the floor with the long saffron scarf balled up as a pillow under my head. I could feel an idea coming, but it was just out of reach, like a word on the tip of my tongue. I lay there for so long that eventually I couldn’t keep my eyes open. All afternoon, I drifted in and out of sleep as Annika and the guys came and went on the stairs, calling to me as they passed. When I finally woke up, my back was stiff, and the idea still hadn’t come. Above me, I heard the squatters’ voices.