“Do you cut yourself sometimes?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What with?”
He took out a folding knife from his back pocket. “With this.”
I took the blood-flecked knife. “It’s hard to hurt so much, isn’t it?” I asked him. “You must hurt an awful lot to do this to yourself.”
He nodded, his eyes watering behind the broken glasses.
“When kids hurt this much, there is usually a reason,” I said. “You know, this is a clinic just like any other doctor’s office. We are real doctors and nurses. That means we maintain confidentiality. But I’m also what they call a mandated reporter. That means if you tell me you are going to hurt someone or hurt yourself, I have to report that.”
“What if someone hurt me?” he asked.
“That depends on when it happened.”
He nodded.
I touched his arm very briefly. “Why don’t you tell me, and we will figure it out together?”
“I’m scared a lot.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have anyplace to go. I keep getting beat up.”
“How about your home? Your mom?”
“My stepdad kicked me out. He was always beating on me anyhow. You can call him. I don’t care. He’s just going to tell you he doesn’t want me around.” He willingly gave me the number.
“OK. We’re going to get you help. In the meantime I want you to sign a contract with me not to cut yourself. If you feel like cutting yourself, I want you to call us. I’m going to give you our phone numbers.”
He wiped his eyes. “How about that nurse?”
I smiled. “Jan would love to see you. Did you know she’s one of the top BMX racers in the country? You should ask her about that sometime. She’ll love it.”
“Really?” He looked surprised. “I used to motocross … a long time ago.”
“Ask her about it. She’s got medals and the whole nine yards.”
Before he left, Jan had set him up with an appointment with an optometrist for new glasses and another appointment at a dental clinic for the homeless that primarily handled emergency cases. I had taken a full set of labs, testing for everything from HIV to hepatitis, and given him a ten-day supply of Keflex, the antibiotic. He had three new pairs of socks, new running shoes, and a pair of flip-flops to wear while the foot infection healed. He opened up his backpack to put in the extra shoes and medications. The backpack was almost empty. There was a crumpled shirt in the bottom. He carefully took out an old and creased photograph. “This was my dad.” I saw a bigger version of the boy, a ruddy-faced blond-haired man sitting on a couch. “He died when I was five. He got killed by a drunk driver.” He carefully slid the photograph into the now-bulging backpack. For a moment his face was transformed by anger. “Then my mom marries a drunk. Go figure.”
“You’re not out of here yet,” I said. “I’m calling a shelter program I know about called HomeBase. They serve young adults and teenagers. It’s a great program.”
“You mean I can go there today?”
“Yes, I hope today.”
I glanced at my watch. Almost two hours had passed since the boy had shown up. For once I felt I had done it almost right. The boy was relaxed, happy. I watched him joke with Jan up front as we finished. It was instructive for me to watch how she handled the teenagers. Instead of reacting negatively to her firm and take-charge tone they seemed to eat it up. I can learn something here, I thought, watching Jan. She was very authoritative, and the teenagers seemed to bend over backward to please her. The two of them went off, chatting like crazy about motocross racing. When he was gone, I called the number he had given me for his home. A gruff voice answered the phone: “Yeah?” I identified myself and told the man why I was calling. His stepson was a minor and had seen me for medical care. I wanted to know about the possibility of his returning home. “Oh, yeah?” the stepfather said. “Tell that little asshole not to bother coming back.”
I recoiled. “Why?”
“Little shit called the cops on me.”
I listened to the man rage drunkenly for several minutes, threatening to do worse than he had done, he said. I was unable to get a word in edgewise. Finally I hung up. I decided to try again, later, to reach the boy’s mother. As much as I believed in keeping families together, I realized there were times when it wasn’t going to happen. Some of these kids were never going home. What future they had depended on what they discovered, or didn’t discover, on the streets.
Jan and I were in our ramshackle office the next day, trying to stretch our budget to include more socks and shoes for the kids. The phone rang. It was Mary’s aunt. “She’s gone,” she said through tears.
My heart fell to the bottom of my stomach. “Gone?” Mary had been with her aunt for only a little more than a month. It seemed as if just days had passed since she had waved good-bye. The sky outside the dirty office window was dark and threatening with coming monsoon rains.
“Her father is out of prison.” She said his name as if it were poison, spit out. “I just found out. He was paroled. I had no idea. He’s back. In Phoenix.”
My heart jerked. I was appalled. He had served only a year in prison? For what he had done to her?
“I’d got her in counseling.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been doing everything. You know what he did to her. He’s not even supposed to have contact with her. He lost his parental rights in prison. I didn’t even know he was out. I came home and Mary was gone. There was a message from him on the phone.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“Nothing. I’m so scared he got her. I called the police, but I don’t know if they know where to look or what to do. I thought maybe you knew.”
I thanked her and hung up. I stared off in space, then got up and told Jan I had to leave. I was barely aware of getting into my truck, and somehow I drove without seeing anything at all.
I made my way to Moeur Park.
The sky had been moody all day, in the dark, threatening way that promised severe storms. The weatherman had said the rainstorms would come again that afternoon. They would be real doozies, he said. Stay inside, he said. There was a sour, decaying smell on the wind, and I thought of war-torn countries and what the dead smell like. It was the same sour smell the street kids brought with them, enmeshed in their clothes.
I made my way across the desert by memory. There was a dense, electric feeling in the air. The birds had roosted in the bushes. A few warning calls broke the air. There were broken bottles in the sand and cans with their lids pried off. I crossed the remains of a fire and caught whiffs of urine. A drunken man rolled out of the bushes into my path, mumbling something. I stepped over him as if I had no time. I didn’t.
The sky was electric by the time I came to Mary’s camp. The bushes seemed to sizzle from wanting rain. The bottom of the wash was hot, claustrophobic, the wind both still and anxious. It was a dangerous time to be out in the open. There would probably be lightning, and once the rains came, a wash like this could turn into a flash flood.
I stood on the concrete lid of her home. The hole below me was square and dark. Please, I thought. Please let her be here, and not with him. I crouched down. Above me the sky went dark, and there was a smell of ozone. Any minute now, I thought. At any minute the rain will come sheeting down.
“Mary?” I asked.
My voice was too soft.
I made it stronger: “Mary.”
I knelt closer to the hole, until my face was almost inside.
It was then that I saw her, in a flash of light from the dark sky above, illuminating her form. She was crouched in the farthest corner, huddled like an animal in her cave. The relief that overcame me was immense. I could see now why this hole in the ground was preferable to other places. I felt a surge of gratitude toward Mary for teaching me this.
“Mary, it’s me, Dr. Christensen. Please come out.” I had my head in the hole now. “Please.” I paused. “You know I’m too big
to fit in this dang hole.”
I saw a sliver of her face.
“I might get stuck, you know. OK, you want to know the truth? I’m too scared to crawl down there.”
I saw a little more of her face.
“The rain is coming, Mary. You could drown in there.”
There was a shake of the head.
The sky cracked above me, and the deluge came pouring down. The concrete pad was immediately a freshet, the wash around me two inches high, rushing in alarming sheets into Mary’s hole. My shirt was drenched to my back, my hair over my face, my glasses blinded with water. When I opened my mouth, the rain poured in. It ran around me and down into the sordid hole. The smell that arose from the hole was indescribable.
“Please, Mary,” I yelled.
She moved maybe a fraction of an inch.
“You won’t ever have to go back to him, I promise,” I shouted through the rain.
Her face turned. Her face was distrustful. She crawled over. Her pale face turned up at the hole, her dark hair against her cheek. The rain above fell onto her skin. It poured off the curving pale form of her ear. She didn’t say anything. Her eyes were pleading. I reached a hand down to her. Nothing felt more important in the moment than my desire that Mary take my hand.
“Mary. Please. I promise.”
Mary was taken back to her aunt’s house in Chandler. Everyone reassured her that no matter what happened, she would never again live with her father. He was arrested for parole violation for trying to contact her. The police said he would probably be out of jail the next day. They were right. Mary’s aunt created a safety plan. Every day she took Mary to school; every day she picked her up. She decided to move across town to a new apartment and change her phone number. “I wish I could just move out of state or something,” she said on the phone. “But I’ve got my job here, and I can’t afford to move. What do you think?”
“I think you need to do what works for you. The safety plan sounds like a good idea. Can you ask the school for help?”
I was filled with outrage. This man had hurt his daughter in the worst way possible and had served only a year in prison. Now he was stalking her, and again nothing would happen. Never before had I understood how lightly abusive parents got treated. For the rest of her life Mary would have to deal with the knowledge that her father could be around the corner. The thought made me angry and sick. No wonder so many kids are homeless, I thought, if this is all that happens to their abusers.
I went home that night and found Amy sitting on the living room couch folding laundry. I was trying to find a way to bring up Mary’s father and what had happened. It seemed like such a terrible thing to discuss, yet I wanted my wife’s opinions and support. Amy looked up and smiled at me. I looked at the framed photograph on the mantel over her head. It was a picture of her mother, Jane, during the last months of the breast cancer that killed her when Amy was just fifteen. Her head was covered with a blue kerchief and a straw hat, but the woman’s warmth and kindness shone on her freckled face. They were the same qualities I loved in Amy. I remember Amy’s telling me how her mother used to sing to the homeless at their Quaker meeting in Whittier, California. Sometimes when I told Amy a little about the kids on the van, she told me about her childhood and how she wished all children could experience the comfort and faith her mother had given her: the stories every night at bedtime, the family dinners at the table, the homemade bunk beds her mother had made, how she had taught Amy how to sew when she was little. When Amy shared these memories with me, it was as if she were passing secret messages over a high wall.
When she was a mother, Amy said, she would do the same things her mother had done. Once again Amy would be part of a sacred loop of family. She had missed it for so long. I thought maybe I would tell her later about Mary. It is too much right now, and I don’t want to burden her with my sorrows. I wanted her to be happy in her pregnancy. It should be a time of joy, I thought, not a time to talk about the evils people are capable of doing to children. Amy saw me watching and folded one of my shirts. She was smiling. “I scheduled an extra-early ultrasound,” she said.
“Really?” I sat down next to her, picked up a pair of my shorts, and made a clumsy effort to fold them. “When is it?”
“In a few weeks, on Friday.” She smiled.
I gave her a kiss. “Can I get you anything?” I asked, standing up to unload my pockets.
“I’m craving ice cream,” she said.
“You craved ice cream before you got pregnant too,” I said, teasing her. As I went into the kitchen, I thought it was best I hadn’t talked about Mary. Instead I could enjoy this peaceful time with my wife.
The morning of Amy’s ultrasound Mary’s aunt, Diane, brought her back to the van for some tests. “I don’t get paid much and don’t have insurance,” she said apologetically. “And I’m trying to save money to move.” I assured her this was fine. Mary would always be welcome.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
“It’s hard,” she admitted. “I never had any kids of my own. This whole thing with her father, well, I used to stay awake because she was missing. Now I stay awake because he is out …” She trailed off. “But as far as money goes, you know, there’s lots of ways to cook potatoes.” I smiled at her. I saw her strained eyes and reminded myself to give her some referrals. We had started a binder filled with the numbers of agencies that helped families, from food boxes to aid to new mothers. Many times kids left home because there simply wasn’t enough to go around, and if helping their parents helped them, I thought it was worthwhile. A relative like Diane needed support too. Parenting a child as traumatized as Mary, especially dealing with the looming threat of her father, could not be easy.
I took Mary into a room for an exam. I was astounded at how much she’d changed in such a short time. Her once-dirty hair was now sleek and clean. Her eyes were clear and made contact with mine. She wore clean jeans and a fresh top. She stood up straighter. When she hopped onto the table, her movements were sharper.
She saw me looking at her wrist. She was still wearing the bracelet.
“My counselor says I’ll take it off when I’m ready.”
“I’m glad you wore it. You give me a reason to ask.”
She studied me for a long time. “You came to find me.”
“You are worth it.” I felt that I sounded trite. It was hard to communicate to Mary how sincere I was about her care.
When we were done, she turned toward me. “I was lucky to come here,” she said.
Tears pricked my eyes. I never would think of her life as lucky. She gestured toward the outside of the van. The gesture spoke not of dozens of kids but of untold thousands. “Most of the kids out there don’t have someone like you. Or my aunt.”
What I wanted to say was, “Most doctors aren’t blessed to have patients like you, Mary.” Instead I held my hand out and we solemnly shook hands. She went out to find her aunt waiting, talking crockpot recipes with Jan. Jan was saying she had two teenage kids who were eating her out of house and home too and how that crockpot was a lifesaver.
I had scheduled that afternoon off for our early ultrasound, and I drove the truck to pick up Amy at our house. I thought the ultrasound would be a special way to start a special weekend. We would meet our baby and then pick up some food for dinner. There was nothing Amy liked more than our cooking a leisurely dinner together, and I couldn’t disagree. We had planned our celebration meal. Amy wanted to try a new dessert recipe. We had gotten a fancy little blowtorch for a wedding present from her stepsister, and Amy said we could use it for finishing a crème brûlée. We had never used it, and now seemed like a good time.
“Crème brûlée,” I kept reminding her, “is my favorite dessert, just under my grandmother’s seven-layer bars.” I joked as we drove.
“You keep talking about your grandmother’s seven-layer bars, and maybe I will turn that blowtorch on you,” she said, smiling out the windshield. “How was the van tod
ay?” she asked. “The kids? Anything hard?”
“Fine, fine,” I said. The image of Mary sitting on my exam table, her eyes clear, flashed in front of me.
“It’ll be neat to hear her heartbeat,” she said, looking out the window. There was a misty look in her face. I noticed she was referring to the baby as a girl.
In the clinic we watched the doctor, a friend of ours, prepare Amy’s belly with the conducting gel. Amy winced a little at how cold the gel felt. I felt the cool transducer myself in sympathetic prickles across my own stomach. Amy smiled at me from the table. I kissed her. She shifted. The full bladder necessary for the ultrasound was making her uncomfortable. Then it was there, on the screen: our baby. I studied the grainy gray image. A surge of pride filled me. There was my baby. Our baby.
But the doctor frowned. “Are you sure you’ve got the dates right?” she asked.
I looked at Amy. My wife never got dates wrong. There was a cool place growing around my heart.
“Sure. Why?” Amy asked.
“I don’t hear a heartbeat yet. Maybe we’re too early. Are you sure it has been six weeks?”
“More than that,” I said.
“We should use the ultrasound at the hospital,” the doctor said. “This clinic machine isn’t quite as good.”
“Right now?” I asked.
“Yeah. I think it would be a good idea.”
I was tired and hungry and thinking about dinner and sleep and the kids on the van. I didn’t want to think about what the dates meant. But Amy wanted to go, and so we did, driving in silence to the hospital only a few blocks away. The joking happiness from before had evaporated. There was a line of worry between her eyes. Another room, another gown, and this time Amy winced when the conductor was applied. Her bladder was now causing pain. The sac, the place inside my wife where our baby lay, appeared on the screen again. The room was quiet. The doctor moved the transducer slowly over Amy’s stomach. We all listened. I heard nothing but the sound of my heart. The blurry grayness inside Amy lay still, cupped, and silent.
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