Bridge Daughter

by Jim Nelson

  “If your uncle was here,” Aunt Azami warned.

  “Don’t call my mother,” she said quietly.

  “Your mother is incensed with me already,” Azami said, shaking her head.

  Hanna’s eyes adjusted to the amber votives running down the bar. Out of the corner of one eye she caught a dim outline in the dark corner. It leaned forward and edged its gaunt, pale face into the light. “Hello, Hanna,” Maureen said.

  “I need money,” Hanna said softly to both of them.

  Aunt Azami reached across the bar and patted Hanna’s wrist. She dipped her hand into the ceramic honey pot beside the cash register and brought Hanna a splay of dollar bills.

  “It’s been a slow night,” she said. “I wish there was more.”

  Maureen unsnapped her purse. From it she produced a crisp bill neatly folded in half and offered it to Hanna.

  “Thank you,” Hanna said. “I promise I’ll pay you both back.”

  “No way do you do that,” Aunt Azami said. “I can never see you again. You have to run.”

  “Where are you staying tonight,” Maureen said.

  Hanna shrugged. She still half-hoped Aunt Azami would invite her to her apartment.

  “I have a couch,” Maureen said.

  “You don’t have to,” Azami said to her.

  “One night won’t do any harm,” she replied.

  Hanna pushed the new money into the pocket of her backpack, joining Erica’s savings. She couldn’t imagine the total was enough, but she had to try.

  Aunt Azami came around the bar with red eyes. Azami and Hanna hugged for a long while, rocking slightly, Hanna’s face buried in Azami’s chest. Then Hanna made an impromptu mitten with her sweater sleeve, wiped her face dry, and said goodbye to her.

  *

  Maureen and Hanna rode the bus for so much time Hanna wondered if they were still in San Francisco. They traveled so far, the city stopped naming streets and simply numbered them, much like Hanna numbered her tsuru. Tenth Avenue, Sixteenth Avenue, Twenty-third Avenue. How high would the numbers go?

  In the hard revealing light of the bus’ interior, Hanna had her first opportunity to really take in Maureen. She was more sickly than Hanna estimated in the bar. She wore nice clothes, classically fashionable her mother might say, her long skirt and blouse flaring to hide her emaciated frame. Hanna had seen women who looked like this before, but they were much older than Maureen, women who’d lived hardscrabble lives waitressing in diners or scrubbing corporate toilets in her father’s office building. None as young as Maureen.

  At Thirty-third Avenue they stepped off the bus. Maureen lived two blocks off Geary Street, in a walk-up with no front yard to speak of, the stairway to the front door ascending right at the sidewalk. At the top of the stairs, Maureen keyed them into a surprisingly attractive apartment with hardwood floors, bean bags, and a rattan couch before a television and hi-fi. Maureen told Hanna she could place her backpack anywhere.

  Maureen prepared ham sandwiches. Like Hanna, Maureen used a footstool in the kitchen to reach the upper shelves of the cabinets and the top of the refrigerator, where the bread loaf was stored. They ate the meal with glasses of milk in the kitchen nook. As on the bus, few words passed between them. Hanna gathered the plates and bowls when they finished and washed and set them in the drying rack.

  The kitchen, and the rest of the apartment, was meticulous. The hardwood floors shined. Hanna felt hesitant to even sit on the rattan couch, where the throw pillows seemed placed with an eye for aesthetics and not comfort.

  “My roommate may come in later tonight,” Maureen said. “I’ll leave a note on the door that you’re here, so you don’t surprise her.”

  “Thank you for this,” Hanna said. “I saw people sleeping on the sidewalk tonight. I thought I might have to do that too.”

  Maureen led her to the rattan couch and motioned to sit. “What are your plans?”

  Hanna hated to admit that she’d made little in the way of preparations. She was sure Maureen had gathered as much when she came into the bar asking for money. In Hanna’s fervid imagination, ten years earlier, when Maureen was thirteen, she had systematically saved the requisite monies, had the bi-graft performed on schedule, and an hour later boarded a flight to San Francisco where a job and apartment waited as per her mailed instructions. Hanna couldn’t even tell Maureen she was improvising, as improvisation at least suggests one knows the shape of the situation and not just feeling around in the dark. She bent her head and admitted to Maureen she had no plan at all.

  “You know where you’ll have the procedure performed?” Maureen asked.

  Hanna nodded. “On Ellis Street.”

  “And then what will you do?”

  Hanna shrugged. “I can’t stay here, can I?”

  “No,” Maureen said firmly, “you cannot.”

  “There’s a Greyhound station out by the docks,” Hanna said. “I read in the paper they’re running a special. I’m going to buy a ticket for Los Angeles.”

  Maureen nodded. “And where will you go then?”

  “Isn’t that far enough?”

  “Maybe,” Maureen said. “Maybe not.”

  “There’s a flower market in Los Angeles,” Hanna said. “A big one. I’m going to try and get a job there.”

  Maureen gathered her thoughts. “You can’t do this alone,” she said. “I’m not even sure L.A. is far enough, but let’s say for now it is. You’ll need to find help. There are women like me. Working together is the only way to survive.”

  “Who?” Hanna said. “I don’t know anyone there.”

  Maureen went to the bookshelf and returned with a short pad of paper and a pen. “You need to look for this,” she said, drawing on the pad. “It’s Hagar’s symbol. If you see it on the side of a building or a doorway, it means more of us are nearby. They can help you.”

  Maureen showed Hanna the outline of a portly water urn with a sharply curved neck. Elongated handles spread from each side like perked ears.

  “It’s a water jug,” Maureen explained. “Hagar carried water her entire life. When you see it, look nearby. Find women who look like you and me. Ask them about Hagar. But be careful. Sometimes they’re traps. Always be ready to run.”

  Hanna ran her forefinger along the outline of the urn. She’d been carrying water her entire life too.

  “How much money do you have?”

  Hanna opened her backpack and removed the cash: Erica’s, Aunt Azami’s, and Maureen’s slim folded bill. She counted out loud. Then, thinking how her father counted money when he withdrew from the bank, she turned the stack upside-down and counted it backwards. She arrived at the same figure both times.

  “Six hundred forty-five dollars,” she said.

  “How much do you need?”

  “One thousand,” Hanna said.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Maureen pursed her lips. “I’m sorry I can’t give you more.”

  Hanna hurried to stop Maureen. “I know, I know,” she said, “you’ve done enough.”

  “I know it looks like I live in an expensive apartment,” Maureen motioned about the room, “but, really, this isn’t my place. I rent a small room for cheap. My roommate is doing me a favor.”

  “Is she like you?”

  “No,” Maureen said. “But she’s sympathetic to women like us.”

  “Can I ask something?” Hanna asked. “If this is illegal, aren’t you afraid of being caught?” In Hanna’s mind, Maureen should have been hiding out, like in the movies, sleeping in an abandoned warehouse or on a deserted dock.

  “In San Francisco,” Maureen said, “people look the other way. There’s more of us here than you might think.”

  “Not on television,” Hanna said.

  “Of course not. Television isn’t going to tell our story any time soon. Look,” she said, “wherever you land, make sure it’s a big city. You have a better chance of blending in there. Otherwise, make for the mountains or the high desert, some plac
e where people believe in live-and-let-live. Stay away from the suburbs. You don’t have a chance there.“

  “Don’t worry,” Hanna said. “I’m not going back there again.”

  *

  As Maureen warned, Hanna was woken by the sound of a key scratching around the apartment’s front door lock. The hinges creaked as it opened and shut. A woman whispered, a man whispered back, there was some giggling, and the pair moved to the rear of the apartment.

  Hanna, laying on the floor, waited for them to disappear into the back bedroom. Soon she heard bed springs squeaking and gasps and exercised breathing. She rolled away and put her hands over her ears, wishing sleep to return.

  Unable to drift off, Hanna’s imagination began to run visions she’d begun to see in her mind over the past few weeks. She had begun to imagine her parents living their lives after she’d run away. She saw them eating at far ends of the dining room table, not saying a word to one another. She saw her father sealing off her bedroom from the rest of the house, locking the door and stashing the key in the garage with the gardening tools and the bicycles the three used to ride together. Her mother slept in the master bedroom while her father improvised a bed each night: on the couch, in the guest room, sometimes conked out on his easy chair at two in the morning while the television’s dartboard test pattern irradiated the living room. So quiet, the house without her, and so still.

  *

  A beam of dawn light struck Hanna in the face, warming her cheek and forcing open her eyelids. She’d slept lightly. Anxiety acted as a kind of adrenaline, and she came alert in an instance.

  She rose, folded the blankets, and piled them on the rattan couch. She used the bathroom and took a drink of water from the kitchen tap, mindful to clean the glass and return it to the drying rack. She tiptoed about the apartment. The two bedroom doors were closed. No one was up and about. It seemed for the best.

  On the kitchen table she left a brief thank you note to Maureen. In the bottom corner of the note, she drew to the best of her abilities Hagar’s water jug. On top of the note she set a bright yellow origami crane numbered 994.

  Twenty-one

  Reaching 555 Ellis Street required another extended bus ride, this one among the throng of Geary’s morning commute traffic. Seemingly bumpier than the night before, the bus stopped at corners all the way back to San Francisco’s downtown. Anxiety was in her neck. It gave her hands light tremors. She told herself she had no choice, this is what must be done. Otherwise, she would be dead in six weeks.

  The Hotel Mavis was a six-story building done up in San Francisco’s gaudy cake-frosting style, dark purple with banana-yellow window sills and eaves, the colors having faded long before. High overhead, painted on the side of the building in flaking blanched letters, the hotel proclaimed “Rooms By the Night / Week / Month” and “Fully Furnished.”

  A rococo alabaster archway framed the hotel entrance. It was deep purple, the same paint as the hotel’s exterior. Twin purple tornadoes composed its sides and curved to meet at a top point, in the style of a Turkish arch. Hanna scarcely noticed the carvings until she’d passed between them, then stepped back to study them closer. The motion lines of the swirling, violent tornados were ribbed deep into the gypsum. Caught in the winds’ violence, tossed about casually by its gale forces, were molting breasty angels, sneering devils with engorged phalluses, and woodland satyrs, centaurs, and nymphs. All wore garlands on their heads, but otherwise were buck naked.

  A hotel clerk sat behind a long tiled counter reading a copy of Reader’s Digest. A beehive of mail slots covered the wall behind him, each cubbyhole numbered. It wasn’t until that moment she realized she had no room number to ask for. The only clue on Erica’s business card was “Arch.” Was that a name to ask for? Or did it mean to look for the carved archway entrance?

  “Can I do something for you?” The clerk was entirely bald with a white stubble chin and thick bags beneath each eye. His glasses sat on the top of his shining head.

  “Arch,” Hanna said.

  “Thought so,” the clerk said. He dialed two numbers on the house phone. After a moment, he said, “Got one down here for you.” He hung up. “Be just a minute.”

  Hanna, wide-eyed, backed away from the front desk, wondering if she should run. Isn’t that what Maureen said, always be prepared to run? She casually turned and started for the entrance.

  Scratched into the ribbed alabaster archway at knee-level, perhaps done with a pocket knife, was Hagar’s water jug, the exposed gypsum in high contrast against the purple paint job. She would never have noticed it before, just mistaken it as vandalism, but now Hanna’s keen eyes pinpointed the sign. Carved so low to the ground, she thought it possible the desk clerk didn’t even know of its existence. Maureen warned her to watch for tricks, but the strength of the rotund jug reassured Hanna and gave her the confidence to wait.

  A lanky, handsome young man in a UC Berkeley sweatshirt and jeans bounded down the stairs and into the lobby. He’d not shaven in days. He studied Hanna through wire-rimmed glasses, hands on his sides and chewing on his top lip. Then he went out to the sidewalk and looked both directions down Ellis Street. He returned to the lobby and motioned with his hand to the clerk. The clerk slapped a key on the front desk’s tiled top. The lanky man swiped it off with his palm and kept walking.

  “Will you call Lenna for me,” he called back to the clerk. Then to Hanna: “Come on then,” moving toward the stairs, “let’s go.”

  Hanna, confused by the man’s abruptness, glanced to the clerk for a hint or a clue, but he’d already picked up the phone and was dialing. Hanna followed the lanky young man, hands clutching her backpack straps and wondering if she should have run after all.

  Surprisingly, he took the stairs down, although he’d descended from an upper floor when he first entered the hotel lobby. A single bare bulb lit a steel door at the bottom of the stairwell. The man used the clerk’s key to unlock it and they moved down a narrow dim hallway beyond. Slits of dingy brown glass ran along the top of the wall. Through them Hanna saw foot traffic, sneakers and hard-soled shoes and dog paws. They were underground, below the sidewalk, and they continued further underground.

  They descended again to another steel door. The key unlocked this one as well.

  Inside, the man threw a wall switch. “This is my theater.” Two rows of fluorescent lights chained to the concrete ceiling shuddered on.

  The lights revealed a concrete room with no windows, exposed pipes, and a fat iron boiler in the corner rumbling as though it had indigestion. For all the sound it made, it appeared to be nonoperational, as the room was quite cold. The room smelled stale as well, fetid and musty, much like the basement of Ma Cynthia’s farm house where she stored her jarred preserves on open shelves like medical specimens.

  Other than the boiler, the room appeared designed for no purpose other than storage. Paint cans and painting supplies were piled up beside the door. Along another wall four wooden ladders lay on their sides, each in varying states of trustworthiness. A mystery pile in the far corner was covered with a paint-streaked tarp. Attached to the wall was the brownest, dankest, filthiest sink Hanna had ever laid eyes upon.

  “There’s the matter of the money,” the man said.

  Hanna, who’d been mesmerized by this little underground journey, snapped to and realized all of this may end right then and there. She offered Arch the money from her backpack pocket. He counted the bills with brisk efficiency, much like a bank teller, fronting and facing each bill as he went.

  “How do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

  “There’s only one reason thirteen year-old girls come looking for me,” he said, still counting. He reached the end of the stack. “This isn’t enough.”

  “I know,” she said. “I can explain—”

  “This isn’t just about me,” he said. “Miller upstairs, he’s the owner. He gets fifty off the top. That buys his silence. I take five hundred. That’s my fee.”

&nb
sp; Hanna’s heart lightened. “Then I have enough.”

  “For me and Miller, yeah. What about for yourself?” He riffled the bills with the meat of his thumb, making the six hundred forty-five dollars seem as valuable as a deck of cards. “You need expense money. You’re going to be on the run for a while. That’s why I tell the girls to bring a thousand.”

  “I can get more,” Hanna said.

  “Are you an orphan?” he demanded. “A ward of the state?”

  “What?” she said. “No.”

  “Where are you from?” When Hanna hesitated, he said, “Come on, let’s hear it.”

  “Concord.”

  “Concord,” he murmured sarcastically. “You’ve got a long way to go before you’re far enough away from Concord. From everyone in your life. Wherever you land, you can’t know a single soul. One person recognizes you—“ He snapped his fingers. The crack pierced the cold basement air and echoed off the concrete walls. “It’s over.”

  Two sharp knocks sounded on the door. Arch called out it was open. A short woman stepped inside, platinum blond with high cheekbones and candle-wax skin. She wore plain gray T-shirt and ragged blue jeans a size too large for her bony frame.

  Behind her, out in the dark hall, the clerk stood with his hands in his pockets and his glasses atop his bald head. He was chewing gum. Arch counted six bills from the stack, making each snap when it separated from its brethren. He handed the clerk the fifty dollars and the borrowed key. The clerk’s hand snaked out from its pocket, swallowed Arch’s offering in one gulp, and slithered back to its hole. An instant later, the clerk was gone.

  “If I don’t have enough money,” Hanna said, “why did you give him that?”

  “That’s nonrefundable,” Arch said. “Miller gets his cut no matter what. That’s the price of silence.”

  “She doesn’t have the money?” the platinum blond woman said, her voice high-pitched and squeaky.

  “She can cover our end,” Arch said, “just not her own.”

  “Where are you going to go after this, honey?” the woman asked.

  “Los Angeles,” Hanna said.