by Liz Murray
I turned sixteen at Fief’s house. The group chipped in and bought me a Carvel ice-cream cake. They carried it in, already melting, candlelight illuminating the bare mattress Carlos and Sam and I had been sleeping on, far in the back of the dark apartment. In my slowly waking state, I mistook the dirty mattress for my parents’ on University, the one that had been riddled with holes. While everyone sang, I was there, back on University, running my fingers over the coils of the springs, talking to Ma. Someone mashed ice cream on my face and brought me back. There was clapping while Carlos kissed the cream off of me, but everything felt wrong without Ma, Daddy, and Lisa. Shouldn’t I be celebrating with them, too? In the bathroom, I turned on Fief’s shower, slumped to the filthy floor, and stared at the wall, numb.
By that fall, three or four times a week, Sam and I would wake up to Carlos’s absence. If we crashed at a friend’s house, he might have left word of where he went, when he’d be back. If we’d slept on the top landing of a stairwell, the most we could hope for was a note. Sam and I might spend a whole morning deciphering it, sitting in the parkway, or while she showered at Bobby’s and I sat on the bathroom floor, clutching the paper. This was becoming routine.
Hey Shamrock,
I had to bounce right quick, today’s Grandma’s birthday. I want to get her something nice, like some Indian oil and two lampshades. Be on the roof landing at Brick’s or at Bobby’s. If you can’t, I’ll find you wherever you go.
One Love, Always,
Your Husband,
Carlos Marcano
“You think it’s really his grandmother?”
“I don’t know, Liz, how can you really ever know with him?” Sam said, leaning out of the shower to shave her legs, her large breasts hanging down as she made careful strokes with Paula’s disposable razor. Her arms and legs were sticks, and her head was covered in fuzz too short to look wet.
“Sam, you’re losing weight,” I said.
“I like food, I just don’t catch up with it often. You’re no picture of good eating yourself,” she said, chuckling.
Lowering Carlos’s note, I stood to gaze into the mirror—the same place Sam and I had stood just two months before, after she’d cut her hair off. I kept a single braid of hers taped inside my journal, next to a page of cartoon caricatures Sam had drawn of the two of us, and of Bobby and Fief. Squinting at my reflection, I saw my own weight loss, pale face, and tired green eyes. Momentarily, I was startled to see Ma staring back at me. Sick and weary, she blinked, wondering why I had visited her in the hospital only once this month and when, if ever, I was going back to school.
“I guess if he needs the space, I should just give it to him,” I told Sam, pushing Ma’s image quickly out of mind. She shut the shower off, leaned on my shoulder to climb out, and began drying herself.
“Yeah, but I know why you worry. You have every reason to; I worry myself. Sometimes I don’t know how we would do this without him,” she said, looking at me with concern. “I mean, it’s one thing to wait it out ’til we get settled, but I couldn’t take this crap if I thought it would never end.”
“We’ll be okay, Sam,” I assured her for no good reason.
It was a legitimate fear. Every time Carlos left, we had to wonder whether he was ever coming back. I knew in the same way Sam knew that your life could change in an instant. People caught viruses. Eviction notices were served. You fell in love. Parents just let go of their children. Stability was an illusion. Carlos had similar holes in his life; so did Sam. Without him or her, I wasn’t sure I could manage.
The group cared. But they went home at night, kissed their parents, complaining if dinner was burned. I could enjoy them, but only by forgetting portions of myself. And I was done with being lonely. I would grab Carlos and Sam and hold on as tightly as I could.
“I don’t know if we can do it without him, either,” I finally told Sam. The thought frightened me; saying it out loud made it that much more real.
By Halloween night, the unspoken tension that was bottled up between us snapped. Homelessness was becoming more difficult, and I think we all could feel it, how the strain of not having your most basic needs met can drive you a little crazy. Hunger wears on your nerves; nervousness wears on your energy; malnutrition and stress just plain wear on you. I hadn’t realized how uptight it was making me until Halloween, when I decided to join in on Carlos’s craziness and to let go of some of the tension myself.
“Happy Halloween . . . Heepy halawana!” I screamed behind Carlos as we walked up Bedford Park, loud, surprising myself. Seeing me get into it, Sam jumped in. “Happy Fettuccini!” she yelled. For blocks, I shouted until my throat was sore, screaming into the night sky, kicking up autumn’s red and gold leaves in the gutter where I walked. Suddenly, just like Carlos was doing, I began throwing things, smashing bottles on the cold cement, helping him overturn trash cans. We completely lost it together. I was so tired from walking; I felt delirious and angry at people who were sleeping in their homes, rageful even. The more I let loose, the better it felt. Carlos smiled at the sight of it, passed us bottles to toss, egged us on.
The three of us walked for hours, screaming obnoxiously, chucking hard candies in all directions. Perhaps it was out of spite that we’d traveled past most of our friends’ windows, in some inadvertent effort to wake them. The closest we’d come was when Bobby, who’d already been up, stuck his head out the window, TV remote in his hand. His hair had grown down to his ears and it shone in the moonlight.
“Waz up?” he asked coolly, looking down at the three of us. What could we say? “We’re tired? This sucks? Can we sleep on your floor tonight again?”
“Heepy Halawana” was all that came out, from Sam, in one cute yelp that made Bobby laugh. Carlos stood away, aiming hard candy at cars, laughing sickly. A girl’s head popped out of the window beside Bobby’s. It was Diane, one of the few girls from the group.
“Hiya, guys,” she said, so chipper I became irritated. She leaned over and planted a soft kiss on Bobby’s cheek. They looked good together, so healthy, rested, and cheerful. I thought of how she probably slept peacefully in his arms, comfortable on his soft pillows. Carlos appeared at my side. I noticed his five o’ clock shadow, the way his eyes were pink from lack of sleep. “Let’s go, Shamrock,” he said, and I followed him up to the Concourse.
Our only other stop was at our friend Jamie’s, on whose ground-level window we tacked a note using smashed M&M’S to make it stick. It had a smiley face and read:
Stopped by real quick. Chillin. Heepy Halawana. 10-31-96
Despite our noise, she never woke up. Despite our shouting, the others never knew we’d come by at all.
By sunrise, we had stolen a blanket that had been hanging out of someone’s closed window to dry. We camped out with it, leaning against the warmth of the token booth in the Bedford Park D train station. Rush hour brought traffic, people swiping MetroCards that beeped incessantly, rattling us out of any comfort we’d managed. Sam and I cuddled for warmth, tucking the blanket, which was still somewhat damp and smelled soothingly of fabric softener, underneath and over us. Carlos marched in aimless circles around the station and shouted commentary.
“The girl in the green coat knows karate,” he announced through his makeshift bullhorn, a poster that he’d stripped off the wall and curled into a funnel. She shot a nasty look his way. Mostly though, he was ignored. “The man in the booth digs disco dancing,” he went on and on, fading into a thin, wiry buzz in the distance.
In my dream, Ma was starving to death. Nurses and doctors made a semicircle around her hospital bed, but could do nothing to help. Nearby, trays of steaming food sat in Tupperware. She smelled the food, cried softly for it, but would eat only if I fed her. While she waited for me, all moisture drained from her body, wrinkling her like a raisin, collapsing her eyes. I walked the halls of the hospital, frantic, lost, and worn, too tired to climb the stairs. When I finally arrived at Ma’s room, exhausted from the journey, only red and
gold leaves filled her bed.
When I woke up, Sam was nudging my side.
Carlos had vanished.
For the first two nights after Carlos’s latest disappearance, Sam and I crashed at Bobby’s. In his little room, we tried to stick to the futon and keep as low-key as possible. We washed whatever dishes we used and folded whatever blankets we slept on in hopes of becoming invisible. Though use of the bathroom couldn’t be helped, we did our best to do it in runs, together. At least food consumption was a matter of willpower, staved off until absolutely necessary. Bobby was happy to see us, and I could tell that he took little to no notice of our efforts to hide our presence. Good, I thought.
By the light of his television, I thumbed through my journal and studied Carlos’s letters.
Your Husband, he always signed them. Curling up beside Sam that second night, I wished I’d never met him.
Our third night without Carlos we spent on one of the rooftops of a very small roof attached to an entrance into Bronx High School of Science. Surrounding us was the large expanse of Clinton High School’s football field, deserted and nighttime eerie. The sky was gray and billowy; wind whipped past us in ghostly howls. With our backs pressed to the stark tar landing, Sam and I devoured a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips and slept, cold and still as stones. That night, we were the only two people on earth.
On our fifth night of walking, taking the train all night, and trying to crash at friends’ houses, we were worn out. Sam brought up the idea of a group home. It came about when we were so hungry that we couldn’t make jokes anymore. As we walked through Tony’s diner during the graveyard shift to wash up in the bathroom, the smell and sight of food was just too much. We passed through the club-going crowd typical of predawn hours. Their night magic had visibly worn off, and subtlety was lost: women sat in sequined dresses with their runny makeup, bra straps showing, while men forgot themselves, leaned in close, and put their hands on everything. Together, couples drunkenly occupied the booths, dining on rich breakfasts of hash browns, eggs, and tall glasses of orange juice that made me want to scream.
“I smell like a moose,” Sam said in the bathroom. “I don’t know, Liz,” she continued, looking over her shoulder as she scrubbed her panties in the sink. “I know you say St. Anne’s was the worst, but I’m starting to find that hard to believe,” she told me, rubbing circles of pink metal-dispenser soap into the cloth.
My period had come. No tampons; I substituted carefully folded toilet paper, again.
“I don’t care what happens, Sam, I’m not going to let myself get locked in some prison again.”
“Well, all I’m really thinking is food and sleep. You should at least consider coming.”
We shoplifted instead.
A few hours later, when the gates of the local C-Town came up, we slipped in, pretending to be customers. With quick sweeps of our hands we made cold, spicy, sweet, and crinkly things disappear into our backpacks. Clanking nervously out the sliding front door, we bolted and made our getaway, pursued by no one, to the nearby P.S. 8 playground. We sat on a jungle gym and tore packages open, stuffing bread and cheese and turkey into our mouths, chewing, coughing, and laughing, drinking orange juice right out of the carton.
That night, I lay in the stairwell of Bobby’s building with Sam and considered my options. I thought of returning to Brick’s, but quickly decided against it. Mr. Doumbia had promised to put me in a home if I kept up my truancy, and now I hadn’t been to school in months. I was not going back into the system. But being on the streets was not working out either. I would go pack bags for tips again, but child labor laws had become more strictly enforced over the last few years. Now those packing bags were men in their twenties and thirties, usually immigrants officially employed by the supermarkets. As for the gas station, I was old enough now that I feared doing anything that could get me arrested, so that was out. I really did not know what to do. On a whim, I went to a pay phone and dialed Brick’s number, looking for Lisa. I hung up after getting Brick the first time. So I called back a few hours later and got Lisa.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said.
“Lizzy? Where the hell are you?” She sounded disgusted and angry; she was too aggressive, and made me regret calling.
“At a pay phone. Lisa—listen, did you tell Brick about Sam? Was that you? I just want to know.” I’d decided to confront her with it.
“No, Lizzy.”
“Lisa, really, did you?”
“Really, I didn’t.”
I believed her. “Okay . . . It’s been crazy lately.”
“You should come home, Lizzy.”
No way, I thought.
“Lizzy?”
I stayed quiet, letting Lisa’s question hang between us, feeling the weight of her judging me.
“How’s Ma?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.
Now it was her turn not to say anything. Lisa was silent for so long that I thought our call had been disconnected. “You should go see her,” she answered. “She doesn’t have that long. You should really go see her soon.”
The following night, I begged Tony to give us a plate of French fries, on the house. We were eagerly waiting for them to arrive when Carlos suddenly walked in. I could feel my body temperature rise when I spotted him. I did not know whether to ask him about where he’d gone and why he’d disappeared, or to just go with it.
“Oh no, he didn’t,” Sam said, with attitude.
As he approached, I stood to grab him. The days without Carlos had showed me how much I missed his hugs. Relief took the place of resentment. But when I went to reach for him, he held up a hand, indicating I should stand back.
“Ladies,” he said smoothly. That’s when I saw a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills, rubber-banded together, land with a plop right in the center of the table. Only then did I notice that Carlos had a fresh haircut, and that the green army fatigues he was wearing were new. Sam saw the money and let loose at massive shriek.
“How much is that?” I said, having never seen more than a few hundreds together at a time.
“Just enough to get a burger.” He winked. Tony brought us the plate of fries, but before he could set them down, Carlos waved them away with a dainty flick of his fingers. Tony spotted the money and looked at me with a deceived expression.
“Tienes mucho dinero,” he gasped.
“That is correct, my good man. So hook it up, will you?” Carlos continued talking to Tony, but looked at us, smiling. “We’ll take a dancing chicken, and shrimp that do the shimmy . . . aaaannd a chocolate cake, Shamrock style—no missing slices.” Tony took down the order, confused but obedient. As he was walking away, Carlos whistled him back. “That table is on me,” he said, motioning to one table of people with his chin but pointing to another with his finger.
“Ju goddit.” Tony shrugged.
Drool filled my mouth as I thought, disbelievingly, of all that food. The knot of bills stared back at us from the table. Sam and I sat speechless, smiling, waiting, and alert, our anger as impalpable as the residue of a fleeting dream. At that moment the only things real to me were Sam, Carlos, and the biggest feast I could imagine on its way. Carlos planted a loud kiss on my cheek as I chewed the shrimp.
“I love you, shorty,” he whispered.
The taste mingled uncomfortably with his words.
Chapter 8
The Motels
WE CHECKED INTO A MOTEL JUST OFF EXIT ELEVEN FROM THE MAJOR Deegan Expressway, where we took the best showers of our lives. I turned the water on hot, scalding, and let it scorch my skin bright pink. R. Kelly sang “I Believe I Can Fly” from Carlos’s brand-new portable CD player. My clothes were so gross and textured with dirt that it was difficult to put them back on. I tied a motel towel around my head, turban-style, and entered the room.
It was surprisingly cold. A draft chilled my wet head, sending goose bumps all over my arms and legs.
“Is the heat on?” I asked Sam, who had already bundled herself up
in blankets, and was lying, propped up, on one of the queen-size beds.
“No,” she replied, “but if you get under the covers, it’s a little better.” She motioned to the other bed with her eyes.
The carpet was shag, the color of sand, and reassuringly soft under my bare feet. The wood-paneled walls were riddled with scratched-on graffiti left behind by previous renters: Jason hearts Maria 4-Ever! Rocky and Jessica, together, always 2-20-89. The residual smell of cigarette smoke gave the air an acrid texture, and anything portable had been bolted down to its neighboring surface. Across the counter, fifties and hundreds were spread about like a scattered deck of cards. The season’s first snow tapped lightly against the window.
Right outside the glass, Carlos stood, talking into a cell phone, which was as foreign to me as our new location. Noting the accumulation of snowflakes in his hair, I wondered, with an uneasy feeling, if he might have been talking the whole time I showered. His laughter, muffled from outside, seemed flirty, like it was in those encounters with random girls on the street. Something about it felt deceitful, making everything in the motel feel strange. I looked to Sam, who was chewing on a McDonald’s cheeseburger we’d picked up at the drive-through. Despite my anxiety, it felt good seeing her eat, safely tucked under the heavy blankets. We had been walking so much lately; we just needed somewhere to rest.
“Sam.”