by Liz Murray
Besides, what was I going to do, let Sam go out there by herself? Carlos was a survivor; so was Sam. We all were. He could teach us how to get by the way he had for so many years. And, most important, we’d have each other. There was nothing left for either of us here. The answer was simple: just leave.
“Sam, wait,” I said, running up to her as she zipped her bag shut, a small blue pack containing her journal, underwear, and clothes. “I’m going, too. Wait right there.” She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
The closet was a labyrinth of wrong turns. If I left my journal, then I could fit more clothing. If I left my clothing, then I could fit a photo album, a hairbrush, and a change of sneakers. If I didn’t carry something, who knew if I’d ever see it again. That’s when I cried, too—at my confusion, at yet another change, at the urgency I felt as I heard Brick shouting at Ma. How could I leave her here with him? But how could I stay? I couldn’t; not anymore. I cried, frantically tossing clothing, a toothbrush, my journal, and multiple pairs of socks into my bag.
“Let’s get out of here before he comes back. I don’t want to see him again,” Sam said, nervously pointing her thumb at the door to rush me.
“Okay, just one more thing,” I told her. “Hold on.” I slid a chair over to reach the top shelf of my closet, where I’d hidden Ma’s NA coin and that one photo of her, the black-and-white one from when she was a teenager, living on the streets. Opening my journal, I slipped the picture carefully inside and snapped the book shut.
“Now I can go,” I said. “Let’s just go.”
Chapter 7
Breaking Night
MOSHOLU PARKWAY, A SEEMINGLY UNENDING STRIP OF TREES AND benches divided by wide streets just off of Bedford Park Boulevard, is supernatural at night. The middle strip, the most wide-open, grassy expanse, is the perfect center from which to draw on its magic. Cuddled into each other for warmth, with our flannel shirts thrown over us as blankets, Sam and I listened to the trees whispering their wind dance, and to the infrequent cars streaking past, so close that our hair fluttered and snapped around us.
“Where do you think they’re going at this time of the morning?” Sam wondered aloud.
“I guess the place most people are headed if they’re driving around this late . . . home,” I said.
Lying there, breathing the rich smell of soil, the parkway’s expanse made everything above us seem less real. The stark tenements glowing in the night, park benches, swan-necked light posts, the New York Botanical Garden in the distance; nothing was three-dimensional from the ground. A plane soaring overhead was the last straw.
“Look at it go!” I yelled into the sky, only to have my words swallowed, echoless by the night.
“Whoo!” Sam howled, testing the same effect. The roar of the jet’s engine high above us was suddenly hilarious.
“Kind of makes you wonder, who’s on the ground, us or them?” I laughed.
“How do you know we won’t fall?” she said, biting her bottom lip and faking a frightened face.
“Better buckle down,” I shouted, draping my black-and-gray flannel over our heads as we screamed with laughter, high off the risk we’d taken and pumping adrenaline.
When we awoke, tangled together, the sun strained warmly against the seams of my dark shirt. I was the first to peek out. It was barely dawn, and several older Asian women stood nearby, sweeping their arms through the air in sync, slowly, as though under water. Making a visor out of her hand, Sam looked on and asked, “What the hell are they doing?”
“Good morning,” I said, plucking leaves from her hair. “I think it’s called Tai Chi.”
We sat there for a long while, as the sun broke and bled gold over the rooftops and the women did their underwater dance, birds singing and fluttering in the trees.
“We made it,” I finally said, taking a whiff of the cool morning air.
“Yup.” Sam added, “Maybe this won’t be as hard as we thought.”
“I have an idea,” I said, standing up, brushing myself off and extending my hand down to her.
Just blocks away, in front of Bobby’s building, we hunched behind parked cars and waited for Paula to go to work.
“I think she leaves at a little after seven,” I told Sam. “Let’s just wait it out.”
Every so often, the building door swung open and people would emerge into the crisp morning, on their way to work. Women with neat hairdos in button-up pastel blouses, black slacks, and heels clicked away, uphill. Families guided children out the front door, leading them by the hand to school. Men in button-down shirts and ties, wearing thick watches, slung book bags over their shoulders. They were the type of workforce that staffs the receptionist, retail management, and restaurant host jobs of Manhattan. Shaved, shampooed, Walkman-wearing people heading in droves for the subway—different from University Avenue, where those up and out in the morning were few, and they shared the sidewalks with junkies and drunks still lingering from a long night out.
“There she is,” Sam whispered, ducking. Paula exited the lobby door looking preoccupied. Checking the time, she made for her car, where she lit a cigarette, pulled out, and drove away, shrinking into the distance. No sooner had she left than we heard Bobby’s music, fast-paced punk, blast from his first-floor window.
Once inside, we tore into the refrigerator, feasting on last night’s leftovers, pork chops and rice, wrapped in tinfoil. Sam and I passed soda back and forth to wash it down.
“Just be out before my mom gets back at three thirty,” Bobby told us on his way out to school. I hugged him goodbye, tightly.
“Thanks, Bobby,” I whispered. “We really appreciate it.”
Once the front door shut, his apartment became a roadside stop, a fill-up before heading out again.
“Girl, the first thing I need is a shower,” Sam said.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” I told her, waving the air between us and curling my face in disgust. “You funky.” She sucked her teeth and flashed me the finger, smiling playfully.
Over the sound of the water, I flipped through the pages of a notepad Sam had given me weeks ago, past Ma’s photograph, past poetry Sam had written in the hallway or under my bunk bed, and turned to a fresh page.
Hey Journal,
Sam and I are free. We’re really doing it. Today we’re meeting up with Carlos. He’ll be proud we finally made moves.
Too excited to write, for now. —Liz
When we were showered, I took Paula’s White Rain deodorant from the shelf and swiped it under my arms, careful to place it back exactly as I’d found it. While I tied my thick hair back with a rubber band from my pocket, Sam stood in front of the mirror, making up her eyes with Paula’s eyeliner. When she was done, we paused together. Our pasty reflections stared back at us and our hair dripped. We both looked exhausted.
Sam frowned at the job she’d done on her eyes, and tossed the black pencil into Paula’s makeup bag.
“You look better without that crap,” I told her.
“I’ve been thinking about my family,” she said in response.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said, throwing open the cabinet, digging through Paula’s knickknacks and retrieving a pair of scissors. I could tell she was irritated; I had seen that look before whenever she spoke of home. Her change in mood was making me uneasy.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Do you think I’d look good with a butch cut?” she asked.
“Sam, you sure you want to do that?” I said, reluctant to irritate her further.
“My dad always loved my long hair . . . well, I hope my dad hates this.” She lifted her thick ponytail above her head, digging four hard cuts into the curls before the whole mass broke loose. “It’s hot in California anyway,” she said, as she clipped away at what was left. “I’ve been thinking about doing that for a while. Today seemed like the right time.”
I cupped my hands over my mouth and began laughing.
“You’re crazy!” I yelled. She passed me the huge clumps she’d chopped off.
Holding Sam’s silky hair, still moist and fragrant with Bobby’s shampoo, the change struck me as funny, but also sad.
“I’m not stopping ’til it shines,” she said, smirking.
“You’re beautiful either way.”
She gave a small grunt in return and stuck out her tongue. I laughed and looped my arm around her tiny waist to hug her.
“It’s kind of cool anyway. That takes a lot of guts that I don’t have. I’ll tell you that much,” I said. In Paula’s cabinet, I fished for a razor and helped Sam finish the job to her satisfaction. The only hair left on her head were two locks of bangs up front. We spent forever cleaning hairs out of the bathroom, off the sink, out from between tiles, until there was no trace of us left for Paula to find.
Our plan was simple: Stick to the group. One big family, just like we’d said. Maybe this was the only reliable family I’d ever had. Sneak in when their parents went to work, feast, rest, and start again. “Just swing it, baby,” Carlos said, promising to stick with us on the streets until his money came through.
“Enjoy the freedom, make it work for you,” he said, and we did.
Endless walking. My feet carried me more than any other time in my life, before or since. Downtown, the streets of the Village glowed with nightlife. Freaks, punks, religious fanatics, drag queens, and NYU students crowded the same sidewalks Ma and Daddy must have known in their youth. Street kids littered St. Marks Place, Washington Square Park, Eighth Street; they stared back at us with our own faces. Mohawked, pierced, tattooed versions of ourselves—insane, running, drugged, or just hungry. Hunger: the acidic burn that racked my insides some nights, the visitor from my childhood that did not care whether the rain beat down or if the temperature dropped. It was there to twist and prick and demand, the foremost nuisance in our days.
“You gotta hustle,” Carlos said firmly when Sam and I worried where we’d get our next meal. “Yo, there’s enough out there for all of us, it’s just a matter of getting our hands on it. Keep your head up, ’til we get the cash,” he’d insist, his eyebrows arched in urgency. “I been at this for a long time. Do not think, just motivate.”
Carlos practiced what he preached. I’d been down the streets of the Bronx and Manhattan many times in my life, frequenting the same few areas, the Village, Eighty-sixth Street, Fordham Road, and Bedford Park. But visiting these places with Carlos was like having never seen them before.
I found that society’s guidelines and norms in actuality meant nothing. Carlos showed us that with persuasion—sweet-talking—you could walk into a diner and come out carrying a warm meal and a soft drink, no cash required. Strangers were willing to open their pockets and help out; they just didn’t know it yet.
“You see I got a lot of peeps, right? It’s all good. They’re just people, like you and me. C’mon, if you worked somewhere and someone was hungry, tell me you wouldn’t feed them? It’s all about the hustle.”
Wherever we went, Carlos pressed himself on people. And everywhere we went, he knew someone. Walking with him meant stopping every few minutes for the hot dog guy on Broadway who hugged him and fed us, or the Jamaican man passing out flyers on Broadway, or the tattoo artist at Tommy’s who’d etched “Tone,” Carlos’s DJ alias, into his shoulder for free. But when we stopped for girls, I began to wonder if there was any discretion about how far the hustle went.
Carlos and I had officially become a couple that day in Brick’s kitchen, although he formalized it by asking me before the Garibaldi statue in Washington Square Park. We’d been sitting in a diner on West Fourth Street when we heard thunder crack and rain suddenly dropped down in heavy sheets. He grabbed my hand, running and laughing, out to Garibaldi, where he held a large plastic trash bag over our heads. He’d shouted, “Be my girl!” over the pounding downfall in the deserted park. With water sliding off our faces, we’d kissed there, under the plastic bag, his sinewy arms holding me tightly.
But when we ran into the girls, all ages, all body types, and all races, with their cat-claw nails and enormous hoop earrings, they purred their hellos to Carlos, although some called him by other names—Jose or Diego—and he let go of my hand. There was a direct correlation between their beauty and whether or not he chose to introduce us. Sam and I learned to stand off to the side while he greeted them. Every so often, one might shoot me a look, roll her eyes. A few had the nerve to smile and wave at me. Sometimes Carlos took their phone numbers.
“Who was that?” I’d do my best not to sound accusing. Always it was a cousin, a neighbor, or a friend’s girlfriend.
“My friend’s girl, ain’t she a sweetheart,” he’d explain. “I might check them for dinner, she just gave me the address.” And always, the explanation was a concrete wall that I could not penetrate. The more I persisted, the more I might draw attention to myself. Better to let it slide; he cared about me, I was certain. Besides, there were other things to focus on, like Sam and me learning to navigate our newfound “freedom” for ourselves.
Our tactics were in need of some polishing, Carlos said. We begged for change on a street corner near Washington Square Park, in front of the NYU dorms. Carlos would have come out of the bookstore to help, but he assured us that as females, we’d do better without him. He’d be nearby, observing us.
People streaked past us, more real than we were, an ebb and flow of citizens whose faces surfaced in my dreams like stains. I did all the talking. “Just get them to give you whatever they can and forget them,” I’d coach Sam, borrowing from Carlos’s confidence, secretly speaking more to myself than to her. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, they’re just people.”
They were just people, but what we were must have been something else. If we spoke directly to a person and didn’t elicit so much as a sideways glance, we must have been invisible, imaginary. Although some did stop to impart advice, like “Go back to Connecticut” or “Get a job,” but wouldn’t stick around long enough to let us explain that we didn’t know where Connecticut was, and in order to work you needed a reliable address, clean clothes. Then there were the people with kind faces, dropping coins, smiling as they passed. These were the angels who sponsored our meals in diners, where we learned the skill of stretching a dollar as far as it could possibly go.
There were some safe havens along the way.
The public library on Forty-second Street became one of my favorite places, next to Bobby’s futon, after a long night—the stone lion guarding the outside, with his twin beside him; mahogany paneling, rows of copper reading lamps, and ceilings intricately carved into abundant floral displays. Nude, Victorian-style characters looked down on us, so real they might have moved. Carlos and Sam took over a table so he could teach her to draw; I lost myself in the stacks.
For hours, I could read through the cellophane-wrapped hardcover books, just like Daddy’s books back on University Avenue. “I’m doing fine,” I’d insisted just the night before on a pay phone only blocks from his shelter, while the cold blistered my face and fingers. “I’m staying with friends, school is great,” I assured him, hoping he would not call Brick’s until the next time we spoke. I checked out books that reminded me of Daddy, and kept them with my journal in the front pocket of my book bag, reading them interchangeably every place we stopped to sit: on trains, in hallways, in the quiet corners of friends’ apartments.
Friends’ apartments were our safe haven for when the journey began to feel less like an adventure and more like a marathon. You could walk only so long before you needed rest. The respite was there for us, with the group. We traveled, schemed, went hungry, laughed, froze, and on the other side of it a group of friends and their friends were willing to help us: Bobby, Fief, Jamie, Diane, Myers, and Josh. Paula leaves at seven, Jamie’s mom is out by eight. It became so that by morning, we knew just where to go. Deciding was only a matter of whose house we’d hit up too many times that week, whose parents had
gone grocery shopping last, making sure that no one parent caught on.
But under the condition of need, friends’ apartments and friendships alike warped into something stressful. When 90 percent of the time I visited because I needed something, and 10 percent was just to hang out, even my most valued friendships were tested. Whether Bobby actually wanted company became the smallest component on my list of worries, next to his outright sacrifice of privacy, tension over depleted food supplies for which he was blamed, and the evidence of our sleepovers that Paula might find.
“Shamrock, listen, you can’t sweat that. You’d do it for them, wouldn’t you?” Carlos reasoned with me. “Come on, it’s not like you have other options right now. Your situation is messed up compared to theirs.”
But comparison between people was tricky; it seemed an all-purpose rationale that could be wielded in any direction. Yes, compared to Myers and Bobby, who enjoyed sleep in a warm bed and food they had only to open the cabinets to find, you could reason that we weren’t asking much of their resources. Still, did we have it all that bad?
It’s not like we were those homeless people you saw pushing shopping wagons full of sad things like picture frames, electronic parts, and bags of clothing; such obviously broken people that you could guess, just by looking, what it was that bent and broke to get them there. Compared to them we were lucky, without whole lives that needed pushing in carts or carrying in bags that kept busting open and spilling to remind them just what it was they held on to, and why they refused to stop carrying it.
We were still young. And no matter where we slept, I knew, resting my head to the ceaseless lull of the D train, northbound, or closing my eyes against the unyielding boards of the parkway benches, under stars, I had only to carry with me my family and the notion of home. A bundle easy enough to grip, made light by familiarity, things I’d carried with me all along, far before I ended up in Bedford Park or heard the sound of Sam’s warm, sullen voice. In this way, compared to some, I could have explained to Carlos, I had it easy. I’d been practicing all my life for this, carrying things. For others it came as a shock. No matter how exhausted we were or what slant he put on our situation, I was only breaking night, fending off the dark until the sun rose each day, when I’d start over, ready and able to do it again.