by Sara Hosey
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“And you’re telling me the individual at this apartment resembles the shooter whose image has been released?”
“Yeah, I think it might be him.”
“You realize that in order to get the reward—”
“I don’t care about the reward,” I interrupted. “Look, I gotta go now,” I glanced around, suddenly aware of the amount of time I had spent on the phone, out in the open. “But he’s usually there until around noon, I’d say. So. You know.” And I hung up.
My stepbrother didn’t really look like the black-and-white sketch of the guy on the poster hanging up around the park, its edges curling up. When I saw it I’d thought, Someday that’ll probably be my stepbrother. And then later, I thought, Well, maybe I could say it was him. Why not? My stepbrother had done terrible things. He might even have shot somebody once. He wasn’t, like, an upstanding citizen or anything.
I took a deep breath and looked around again, afraid they’d tracked the call or something, maybe sent a squad car right over to pick me up. But no, as conspicuous as I felt, nobody seemed to see anything unusual about me, about a scared-looking girl using a pay phone. The cars and buses kept racing down Woodhaven Boulevard, the shop owners kept rolling up their gates, the old men sitting on benches kept feeding their pigeons. Don’t worry, Iffy, I told myself. You’re still invisible.
Chapter 10
I used a ballpoint pen to write “Hugnry Please Help” on a piece of scavenged cardboard, tracing over the letters again and again to make them legible. I set it against a tree and took a step back to see if I could read it. I smiled a little. I had spelled hungry wrong on purpose; the sign looked perfectly pathetic.
“Okay, Ang,” I called, and she bounded over and I put the cord I was using as a leash around her neck and the two of us trudged over to one of the main paths to set up shop.
I was worried, after that guy tried to bother me, about running into him again. I was worried he would try to take revenge or something like that. But a full week had passed and I hadn’t seen him anywhere, and I needed money. Not desperately, but I was planning on picking up some supplies later in the week and I worried about spending money without having a little coming in. So, I needed to go out begging.
That first time, I just sat cross-legged on the ground, holding my sign while Angel snoozed next to me, lazily lifting her head and letting out a low growl if she thought somebody was getting too close. I’d pat her and say, “It’s okay, girl,” and she’d rest her head, sometimes letting out a little contented whimper.
I was playing it cool, but my insides were churning, my heart like a bird trying to break out of my chest. I was afraid someone would recognize me or someone would try to steal from me or the cops would hassle me.
None of that stuff happened, at least not that first day.
The first person to give me money was one of those ladies who collects cans to turn them in for the deposit. That was a surprise to me. She was walking by, pushing her stolen Waldbaum’s shopping cart, bags of bottles and cans piled impossibly high, and she came creaking over and parked the cart. Angel growled and I told her it was okay, and when the lady saw Angel wasn’t gonna attack she reached into her fanny pack and handed me a handful of crumpled bills. She said, “God bless you,” with an accent I didn’t know.
I looked up, into her eyes, and I whispered, “Thank you.”
When she started to walk away, my throat began to swell. But I swallowed hard and called after her, “Hey!” I stood and jogged up to her, Angel trailing behind me. I dug the photo out of my jeans.
She turned and stopped. “You seen her?” I nodded at the picture.
The woman didn’t take the photo, just looked at it as I held it out.
“No,” she said, gently, shaking her head. She touched my forehead. “God bless,” she said and turned to go.
Her touch surprised me, but I hadn’t flinched. Instead, I stayed, as though she’d frozen me to the spot, still feeling the place where her warm fingertips had been.
I watched her walk away and I felt a sharp longing. I almost wished for a moment that I was one of her stupid cans, that she would pick me up and put me in her shopping cart and take me along to wherever she was going next.
Angel tried to sniff at something just beyond the reach of the leash and her tugging snapped me out of my daze. I walked back and sat down on the low curb that lined the walking path.
I looked into the photo.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but too late—big tears pushed their way out.
I wiped them away with my fists.
I had found that Christmas photo between the pages of an anthropology textbook. My hair dryer had blown out one day and, rather than dare to touch my stepmother’s, I went digging for an old one that I thought might have been stowed in the back of a cavernous hallway closet. I came across a box of books. This itself was a big surprise. We didn’t have a lot of books around the apartment, generally.
Sitting on the floor of the hall, I took the books out one at a time. An old printout fell from one of the book’s pages like a feather to the floor. I picked it up and looked at the blue ’80s font on yellowing paper for a long time, nervous at having discovered something illicit, the knowledge slowly dawning on me that this was a remnant from a time when one of them—either my mom or my dad—went to college for a semester. The schedule listed “Comp 102, 3 cred. Art 101, 2 cred. Bio 101, 4 cred.” That one of them, my mother or my father, had saved these books—An Introduction to Anthropology, Figure Drawing, An Introduction to Biology, The Collected Works of Aeschylus—demonstrated a kind of heartbreaking optimism, a promise to themselves that someday they were gonna read the books, like they were gonna go back to school and really do it next time.
When the photo fell out of Introduction to Anthropology, a shiver went up my spine. She had put it there just for me. A ghost of her past self had interceded and wanted me to find it. It later occurred to me that maybe Introduction to Anthropology had been my father’s book, and I felt confused and upset by that. Had he once loved her enough to keep her photo in a textbook? That didn’t seem anything like the man I knew as my father.
There was a second photo, too, an even earlier one that I don’t remember ever acquiring; I’d just always had it. It was my mom and me on a beach. I liked to think it was Rockaway, just like the Ramones sing about, but I couldn’t be sure, not without asking my dad. And I knew what he would say if I asked, and it went something like, “Shut the fuck up,” maybe punctuated with a slap.
But in the photo she looked amazing, just the way I remembered her: tan skin and long black hair, wearing a tiny pink bikini and sunglasses, smiling up at the photographer. And me, a chubby toddler, sitting next to her, in my matching pink bikini.
I had one other photo, and I knew that was the one I should have been showing around, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was taken later, maybe even right before she left for real. In that photo, which I kept stowed, buried with my reserve cash, she was sitting on the green couch and she was skinny and haggard, her hair cut short and bushed out, and her eyes dark and ringed with circles. She looked unwell. She looked unhappy.
I preferred the Christmas photo, so that’s the one I’d used.
No one else gave me money for a while, although plenty of people looked at us sideways as they passed, walking their dogs and pushing their baby carriages. Later, I realized that I should’ve had a hat or a cup out. I don’t think people like to get too close or want to risk touching.
About an hour in, it started to get real sticky and hot. Angel sat in a patch of shade, panting, and I had given up on trying to wipe the sweat away. I just let it collect, drops rolling down my face. I thought, isn’t this what people go to saunas for? Might even be good for me or something.
I noticed a guy after he walked past us several times. Eventually,
he sauntered near and then stopped and stood a little distance away and waved at me to get my attention.
“Hey, sweetie,” he called. He was a white guy with a round face and a superskinny body. Probably in his twenties. “Mind if I come over and talk to you?”
I just shrugged and looked at him with my best, blank stare. A voice in my head was screaming, though at a distance: Wake up, Iffy! When are you gonna learn? Just get out of here!
But there were tons of people around. I didn’t really feel in immediate danger. Plus, he wasn’t threatening. Just the opposite—he was working real hard to not seem threatening. But still. Something was not quite right. What did he want with me?
He walked over and Angel rose. Her tail was down and she looked nervous. I patted her.
“Your dog friendly?” he asked, putting out a hand toward her.
“No.”
“Okay,” he said, again, trying to keep things calm, keep things smooth. He walked around us, to avoid Angel, and squatted nearby.
“I just seen your sign and all. Pretty girl like you … it’s just so sad to see a pretty girl like you living on the streets.”
I was skeptical. I might be a lot of things, but pretty probably wasn’t one of them.
He was wearing those guido parachute pants and a white T-shirt that looked like it had been ironed. He talked like he was trying to sound like a black person or Southern or something.
He caught and held my eye. He wasn’t terrible looking, but I noticed that he had bad skin, bumpy and blotchy and irritated.
“Can I take you out, get you a bite to eat?” He took a buzzing beeper from his waistband and looked at it. I was happy to have broken eye contact, to go back to looking at my raggedy Converse sneakers.
“No thanks.”
“Aww, come on,” he said, pulling his eyes away from the beeper and then placing it carefully back in his waistband. He pointed at the little curb I was sitting on. “May I?” I shrugged again.
Angel came around and tried to sniff him; he made that novice mistake of trying to pet her right on the top of her head and she pulled away, moved to my other side and watched him.
“Aww, now doggie, don’t be scared,” he cooed.
His beeper went off again and again he took it out, looked at it and put it back.
“Sorry about that,” he said, not really apologizing. “Business.” He nodded and I don’t know why, I nodded back. “So, honey,” he began again, the tenderness returned to his voice. He was unhurried, talking slowly, almost like a singsong. He leaned toward me, as though he was going to nudge me. “I just think that you and I could help each other. I could take care of you, you know, be your boyfriend. I can tell you don’t got a boyfriend, ’cause there is no way you’d be sitting out here hungry if you did. But I could be your boyfriend, you know? I got plenty of money.” And here he reached into his pocket and took out a wallet and then, slowly, opened the wallet and took out two tens. He held them in the air and then offered them to me. When I didn’t take them right away, he kind of shook them at me, thrust them a little closer. “Go ahead. This is for you,” he said softly. “No strings attached. Just don’t want a pretty girl to go hungry.” I wanted to tell him that twenty bucks didn’t impress me, but the reality is that I wanted that money. So, I reached out, shyly, only looking out of the corners of my eyes, and took the bills. I held them, looking and not looking, like the way you would after the teacher puts a test with a bad grade on your desk in front of you.
“There you go. And I got a real nice car too, you know. I’d love to drive you around in that car. And I got a nice big place, not far from here. Why don’t you let me show you? I’d really like to show you.”
I was lulled by his voice. It made me feel sleepy … almost.
He drawled on. “I got this big old king-size bed and, you know what I’d like? I’d like to put you up in that bed and turn up the AC and bundle you up in blankets. That’s what I’d like to do, just tuck you right in. Feed you some french fries and a milkshake.” He laughed, delighted by his own image. “Wouldn’t you like that, too?”
I was aware of the sweat beading on my forehead and I felt ashamed, because a part of me couldn’t help but imagine it: a cool room, a soft bed. Pillows. French fries dusted with salt.
I stared at my dirty shoelaces, just listening. But then he reached out and gently took hold of my arm and I startled.
I whipped my arm away and he let go. Angel growled.
I stood up, quickly. “No thanks.” I shook my head, trying to get whatever had been loose in there back into the right place.
I was about to walk away, but I forced myself to stop, to hold out the photo still clutched in my hand.
“I’m looking for her,” I said, thrusting it forward. “Have you seen this lady?”
He rose and took the photo and looked at it. Angel growled at my side.
“Your mom?”
I just stared at him. How did he know?
“Maybe,” he said, smiling. “This an old picture?”
My stomach fluttered. “Sort of.”
He looked again at the picture and then handed it back to me. “She looks familiar, but I meet a lot of people,” he shrugged. “Can’t really help you, though.”
“Thanks,” I said, absurdly. I started to back away, Angel at my heels.
“Talk to Dougie.”
I stopped. His eyes flicked past me, to the distance and then he looked me in the face. The kindness was gone now, although he didn’t seem angry or upset. Mostly he seemed chillingly indifferent.
“Mean dude, hangs out around here. He might know something. Yeah,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants as though he’d touched something filthy. “Now I think about it, I mighta even seen them together.”
I was frozen, unsure of the abrupt turnaround. Was this a ploy, a trick?
I forced myself to speak. “Really?” I squeaked. “Dougie?”
He laughed, a full, deep laugh and his face changed again. “Shit, no, I’m just messing with you. Never seen her before.” He looked me up and down. “Now I see you standing up, you too skinny anyway.” He wrinkled his nose. “And you need a bath too.”
He turned and limped away, an affected gangsta walk.
I stood, watching, still stunned. Why would he make something like that up? Just to be a jerk? Or had he recognized her, but then changed his mind about helping me?
I wanted to stop him, to shout for him to come back, but I was stuck in my spot.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, I told myself. Something-for-something. He wasn’t going to give me any more for free.
The exchange left me dizzy, the way he changed from being one thing to another thing without warning. Or maybe I’d stood up too fast in the heat.
A bird shrieked in the trees above me. I wished I’d checked that bird-watching book out, instead of just hiding stuff behind it back when I was making my plans in the library. Maybe then I’d know what kind of bird that was, calling out a warning so loud.
Angel and I started walking. I wanted to tell that bird I didn’t need its warning. I knew what he’d been offering. I knew that if I had called “Wait!” or if I’d smiled, he wouldn’t have thought I was too skinny after all.
There was too much in my mind. I walked, trying to figure out what to feel first. Gratitude that Angel had been with me, that her reliance on me had made it not a question, made it impossible for me to have gone with him. And fear of him and of myself and of what could be or what could have been. And uncertainty of whether or not he was telling the truth, and a longing that he was. And that other longing that was always there, underneath it all, just as there is always the hot core of the earth under our feet, under rugs and floors and leaves and dirt and rock. A longing for her was always there, the pull so constant as to be unnoticeable, like gravity, keeping me from spinning off, ke
eping me on the earth.
Part III:
Corinne
Chapter 11
A few days later, I was begging at the off-ramp of the Interboro, a highway that ran next to and in some places cut through the park. Watching from the woods, I had seen another girl doing it: she held a sign and when the cars stopped at the light, she’d walk up to each driver’s window, peering in. Some of them rolled down their window and gave her money.
At first I couldn’t bring myself to approach the cars. I just waited at the light and every so often a window would roll down, a hand would wave me over. I always could tell right away who was going to cough up some cash. Some people were working so hard not to make eye contact, staring at their radio dials or out the passenger window, I’d almost bust out laughing. They’d see me and then look immediately, totally conspicuously, down, to check that the door was locked. Like I was gonna try and jump in their car or something. They were so scared of little old me.
Then there were people who you’d see right away look to the seat next to them or the cup holder, and others who’d look for their wallets or purses—they were the ones who usually came up with something. A buck. Sometimes only a quarter.
“Thanks,” I’d say. Sometimes, “God bless,” ’cause that’s what I’d heard other panhandlers say and it seemed to make people happy.
Women gave more than men, at least to me. And men, well, sometimes they were fine. Some said things like, “You okay?” or, “Take care of yourself.” More than one asked me if I needed a ride anywhere, more than one asked how much for a blow job. When they said stuff like that, I’d just walk away, not even touch the money.
Times like that made me feel glad to have Angel, too. Maybe it didn’t make a difference, but she made me feel safer, less alone.
That cloudy day, though, I was there at the off-ramp and a police cruiser came along and they were just looking at me, the way cops can—completely frankly. I saw them staring at me, talking out the sides of their lips at each other, so I tucked up my sign and started moving along, crossed the street to get back to the park. And then they hit the lights and made a left and pulled over, right alongside me. “Hold on there,” a female voice called over the loudspeaker. “Espera,” she added flatly, a word she’d learned but couldn’t be bothered to pronounce correctly.