It was a busy night at the bead table, but I pretty much neglected everyone else—the shy Panamanian girl from the week before seemed to be adjusting well. One girl made six pairs of earrings, put the clips on herself, no help from me, didn’t say a word but looked satisfied. A girl named Heaven showed off her sonogram photo. There was a bossy girl from Baltimore named Ellenette, and another girl who made earrings that said SEXXY, except the Y was upside down. Ellenette asked me to read her horoscope from the paper—not because she couldn’t read but because her eyes hurt.
Sam bantered easily with the other girls, praising the shy girl’s bracelet-in-progress, busting on Ellenette for believing in astrology. (“You don’t believe in astrology?” asked Ellenette. “Naw,” said Sam. “I believe in astrophysics.”) Every once in a while she looked up at me and caught me looking at her, but she didn’t seem to mind. She just gave me that half-smile, her lips flattened like she was trying to suppress it.
“This is pretty meticulous work,” she observed.
Meticulous, I noted. Where the hell did she get that word from?
I could have stayed forever that night, but I’d learned to set limits for myself long ago, back in the days when I used to hang out with Amaryllis until it was time for the nightly floor meeting, until I was starving and mentally fried and practically weeping on the subway home. “Almost time to pack up,” I told the girls regretfully.
A few of the girls sauntered off; I got a shy “Good-bye, miss” from Panama. Sam pushed her chair back and started sweeping the stray beads into piles, bagging the reds and yellows as best she could with her one and a half hands. She must have spied the notebook sticking out of my tote bag as she handed me the beads. “You write?” she asked.
“Every day,” I replied. “Keeps me from going insane.”
“Me too,” she said. “You wanna see something I wrote?”
“Uh, yeah. I’d love to.”
She fished a folded piece of paper from her back pocket, dirty around the creased edges, like she’d been carrying it for a while, and passed it to me. It was a poem. Stern and plain, exactly metered—like Dickinson, or Donne, if Dickinson or Donne were a homeless teenage junkie—and short, maybe twelve lines long. The last two lines:
Let me live how I want to live;
Let me die when I want to die.
My eyes filled with tears. She observed. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be hugging anybody, it was against the rules, but it was tempting as hell to put my arms around her. Not that she was asking me to.
“This is great,” I said, passing it back to her. “It’s really great.”
She shrugged again, nonchalant, as she stuffed the poem back into her pocket, but I could see the half-smile trying to break through. “Thanks.”
I looked around for any last few beads to corral, but the table was clean; it was time to go. I put on my coat, picked up my bag, patted my pockets, shuffled my feet. “Well, it was great meeting you, Sam.”
She gave me a funny wave-salute with her cast hand. “Nice to meet you, too. And…thanks.”
Thanks. It pierced me, that one word. She shouldn’t have been thanking me—I was the one who’d been favored. She didn’t even know how much.
“Thank you,” I told her, smiling. “I hope I’ll see you next week.”
I was still dumbstruck when I got home that night, petted the swarm of cats at my shins, and kissed Bill hello.
“Welcome home, Shmoo.”
Bill had moved in with me just weeks before, at my invitation—one of the many signs of the progress I’d made since I started volunteering. He was my family, I’d realized; I couldn’t watch him walk around like a man without a country anymore, schlepping his overnight bag full of essentials everywhere he went, like the kids at the shelter did. It was time for him to come home.
“How’d it go tonight?” he asked, grating cheese for the dinner he’d started.
I put my stuff down, kicked off my shoes, and lit the longest roach in the ashtray, waving the smoke away from him—Bill didn’t share my fondness for the stuff. “Well, I can’t even believe the girl I met tonight.”
He grinned at me. “Oh yeah? Tell me about her.”
I shook my head. “Oh my god. Worst life story! She’s been homeless—like hard-core, street homeless—since she was twelve years old. Totally fending for herself, living the life, dealing drugs—anyway, the thing is, she’s a genius. She’s unbelievable. She’s this amazing writer, and she’s read everything; she’s quoting the Tao Te Ching to me—”
“A junkie savant,” he observed. “Interesting.”
I kept it up through dinner, talking about my amazing discovery, my priceless find. Bill listened patiently, taking seconds as I rambled on, barely touching my food. “And she’s got this homemade tattoo, it just says, PSALMS 22—you know, ‘My Lord, My Lord, why hast thou forsaken me—’”
“Wow,” he finally interrupted. “Sounds like you had an intense night up there.”
I’d been talking nonstop about Sam since I got home—not a word about Bill, or anything else, for that matter. “Yeah, it was,” I said, sheepish. “But. Anyway. How was your day?”
“Okay.” He smiled a little. “Not as interesting as yours.”
“Oh, honey.” I wrinkled my brow, guilty. Of course I was interested in Bill’s day. He always had stories from his job at one of the city’s daily papers, stories that featured guys with names like “Big Jim” and “Duke.” You could practically smell the ink on Bill at night, though the printing press was a borough away from his desk.
“Well, there were definitely some shenanigans in the morning meeting…”
Seven years, I thought. She’s been on the streets for seven years. She’s practically feral, and yet she’s so tame. I wonder if anybody realizes how intelligent she is. I wonder if she knows. She certainly must have figured out that she’s not like other people, she’s not like the other girls there. They seem to respect her—they can tell she’s been through hell, that’s why. She’s more hard-core than most of the girls in there, the gangbangers and the jailbirds….
“Anyway.” Bill waved his hand, sweeping it all away. “That’s the report. Same bullshit, different day.”
“Well. Huh. That’s…” I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Huh.”
He poured himself another glass of wine, regarded me over its rim. “So, this girl—how long has she been there now?”
A pent-up rush of air escaped me. “Ten days. They’ve lined up a bed for her in a yearlong rehab program; she’ll go there sometime after her wrist surgery. I’m not sure where they send them—Staten Island, I think, or Westchester.”
“So will you get to see her next week? Or will she be gone by then?”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know. I’m hoping she’ll still be there.” A selfish hope, as always—if I cared about this girl, I’d want her to get to rehab as fast as she could. But how often did you meet somebody like this? She was a rare specimen, a real unicorn. You couldn’t blame me for wanting to hang out and hand-feed her some carrots for a while.
“Well, she sounds pretty interesting. Sounds like you’re really impressed with her.”
“I am,” I confessed. “I mean, I just met her, but I have this feeling…”
Bill smiled at me, rueful. He knew the feeling; it was written all over my face. Love at first sight, I believe they call it.
He raised his wineglass and toasted me. “Well, babe, I hope it works out for you.”
No favorites, Nadine had told me. And no presents. And yet there I was, stopping at the drugstore on the way to the shelter the next Wednesday, buying a spiral-bound notebook just like the one I carried in my bag, and a box of blue ballpoint pens. There I was, resting the notebook on my knee as I balanced against the wall outside, opening the notebook to the first page, writing:
Dear Sam,
I want to let you know that you are an amazing writer, with great talent, and I’ve been thinking about your poem all we
ek. I know things are very hard right now, but I also believe that if you hang in there, you will succeed in everything you want to do, and that I will read your work in books someday. I hope you know how very special and talented you are, and I hope you know that I’ll be thinking about you wherever you go.
Janice
I put the notebook in my bag and soldiered on toward the shelter. It was doubtful that Sam would still be there today, doubtful that she’d just go through withdrawal right there in the middle of the lounge, detox with no support while waiting to go to rehab. I’d met girls who were waiting for rehab before—there was Jill, the crackhead from Pennsyltuckey; she wound up using here and there just to keep the edge off, or so it appeared to me. I wondered if others saw what I saw—the dull, red eyes, the bleary stare—and turned a blind eye. I mean, Jill followed all the shelter rules, except for maybe the one about not smoking crack; she was honestly trying to make it to rehab so she could quit, on account of her being pregnant. But I don’t know what happened to Jill in the end—if she made it to rehab, or if she was sent to detox with a police escort behind her ambulance, or if she simply wandered away one day, tired of waiting for her bed to come up.
I waved at the guard in the booth out front, signed in at the front desk, walked past (but not through) the metal detector, and went into the cafeteria. There was Sam, sitting alone at a corner table, staring at a Styrofoam cup of fruit punch like it was ipecac.
“Hey!” I approached her gleefully, there was no hiding my excitement, but she didn’t look well—her skin was pale and sweaty, and there were purple circles under her eyes. She looked up at me, caught my eyes with her plaintive ones, and she looked strung out, like she really would have appreciated some heroin right about then. And all I had for her was a notebook with an inspirational message instead.
She gave me a brave smile, then winced and put her hand on her back, as though the smile had been too strenuous. “Hey, how are you?”
I dropped into the chair next to her, alarmed. “I’m fine, but you don’t look so good. Are you all right?”
She started to nod, then corrected herself and shook her head. “Well, yeah…no. They’re gonna take me to the hospital after dinner, as soon as someone can go with me.”
“Oh, no way!” No hugging, I reminded myself sternly. Especially not the ones who looked like they were about to puke. “What happened?”
“Well…” She looked reticent for a minute, like she didn’t want to tell me, like she was going to think up a lie. I watched her turn it over in her head, saw her face soften a little. She leaned toward me, dropped her voice. “I kind of did something I wasn’t supposed to.”
“What’s that?” I asked, sympathetic.
“Well, you know, I been trying not to use, I been here on house restriction all week, but last night, it got real bad, and this kid from the guys’ floor had these hypnotics on him—”
“Wait, what are hypnotics?” I interrupted. Galling, that they kept inventing new designer drugs after I’d quit doing them.
“Like, downers. Vikes, Oxys, stuff like that. Anyway, I was going crazy in here, so I bought a bunch of pills from this kid, and…I took ’em. And I kinda OD’d a little bit.” She flashed me a hangdog smile, like, Oops. Don’t be mad. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself or anything, I just wanted to be out of it for a little while, you know?”
Yeah, I knew. If we’d had hypnotics back in my day, I probably would have spent a lot of my time hypnotized. “So what happened? They found you unconscious?”
“No, see, I took ’em before bed, and this morning, when I didn’t respond at first, they didn’t know what it was. I mean, they knew I was real sick, but…” Here she leaned in farther, and her voice lowered even more. “See, I have these bad kidneys, from all the meth and the other stuff I did, and they know my kidneys are bad, so I just told them that’s what it was, my kidneys acting up, and maybe it’d get better. But they still want to take me to the hospital, ’cause I been trying to play it off, but…” She gestured helplessly and grimaced with the pain it caused her, then flashed that hangdog smile again.
I wanted to squeeze her shoulder, pat her head, tell her it was going to be okay, tell her how glad I was that she was going to the hospital, as scary as that might be. Tell her I knew how hard she’d been working to stay at the shelter, how much she didn’t want to mess up her chance at rehab. She’d been so forthright with them, even asked them to make her stay indoors all day, just so she wouldn’t be tempted to use, but it wasn’t enough—they couldn’t protect her, in the end.
“Well, I hope it goes okay at the hospital. And I hope they’ll let me know how you’re doing. I know we just met last week, but…you know, I brought something for you.”
Her face brightened. “Really?”
“Don’t get excited—it’s not an Oxy or a Vike.” I mugged at her as I dug in my bag and fished out the notebook, put it on the table with the box of pens. I pushed them toward her casually, like we were conducting a drug deal in a restaurant.
“Wow, for me?” She waited until I nodded to take the notebook, holding it carefully as she read the inscription. “Wow. Wow, this is so nice of you. Thanks.”
So sincere, her thanks, her voice clear and sweet, high with surprise. She sounded like a girl, for a change, and for a second the audible pain was gone. Then she winced again and groped for her back.
“You’re welcome,” I said, wincing along with her.
One of the counselors—Rina, a thin young woman who always held her arms folded over her chest as though she were cold—came over to collect Sam. We traded how-you-doin’s. “You ready to go?” Rina asked Sam.
“Uh-huh. Just gotta take my notebook.” Sam caught my eye and smiled. She rolled the notebook and stuffed it into one of the giant pockets of her cargo pants, tucked the pens in there, too. “All right. Maybe I’ll see you next week, I hope.”
“I hope so, too,” I told her, holding that look. “Good luck, and take care.”
The rest of the shift went by without incident, not that I would have noticed anything short of a shooting or a stabbing, and only if it was right in front of my face. The week—the week dragged on interminably. I worked (freelance these days, from my desk at home), petted the cats, watched hours of TV after dinner with Bill.
Finally, finally, finally, finally, Wednesday. Finally.
I knew better than to hope Samantha would still be there; I’d had my heart broken before. How many times had I practically skipped down the block, thinking Precious, Amaryllis, Jerrine, Belinda; how many times had I been wrong? Sam could have still been in the hospital, for all I knew; she could have been discharged for smoking a cigarette in her room; she could have decided she was sick of this shit and walked away. I knew better than to hope, but it didn’t stop me from doing it anyway.
I showed up ten minutes early for dinner, landing at the top of the stairs on the Older Females Unit out of breath, too anxious to wait for the elevator.
“Bead Lady!” yelled Ellenette, the bossy girl from Baltimore, from her seat in front of the TV. “You came early!”
“I sure did,” I agreed, smiling at her. Yell louder, I thought. So everyone in their rooms can hear.
Samantha came around a corner with a small bag of clean laundry in her cast hand. “Hey!” she said, pleased. “I forgot you came tonight. Cool.”
“Yeah.” I grinned. She didn’t forget, I could tell; she was just trying to play it cool. Which proved how much she liked me. “How’s it going? I was worried about you.”
She nodded. “It’s good, thanks. Better. I was only at the emergency room for a few hours. My kidneys are still messed up, but they’re not so bad right now. They told me in a few years I might need dialysis. But I’m okay right now.”
“Oh, wow. Dialysis. Jesus.”
“Yeah.” She looked downcast at the possibility but quickly perked back up. “Hey, thanks for the notebook. I been writing in it a lot; do you wanna see it?”
I laughed, giddy with the pleasure of her company, her enthusiasm, her writing. “Of course!” She put down her laundry and fished the notebook out of its cargo pocket. Its cover was worn, and it had already acquired a satisfying curve from being curled up and stuffed in its place. She flipped through it, located a page she liked, and handed it to me.
That handwriting—careful, shaky, spiky, every letter distinct, straight up and down, like it took hours to etch, and that was with her good hand. The poem was about watching the stars from the back of a pickup truck, hitchhiking by the constellations. You could feel every bit of it: the piney smell of the Oregon trees, the jolt of the rocks in the road. I cleared my throat, which had gone froggy, and closed the book.
“This is great,” I understated. “I mean, this could get published. I’m serious. I could even help you. I know people—”
She reached out for it, demurring, and I didn’t want to hand it back to her, but I did. “Naw,” she said. “It’s just for me. And…people I choose to share it with.”
I basked in the glow of the compliment as she went off to stash her laundry in her room, and the rest of us filed downstairs for dinner and lined up outside the cafeteria. The other girls clamored in her absence—“Miss, we gonna do beads after dinner? How late you stay till? I gotta go meet my man, but I’ma come up and make some beads with you before you go. Bead Lady, you got more pink this week?”
I got my tray and grabbed the corner table; Sam came along shortly and joined me. Ellenette put her tray down at the next table, observing the two of us already gabbing away—“So, who do you like to read?” “Kerouac’s all right, and I like Bukowski.” “Have you ever read Augusten Burroughs?” “No, who’s that?”
Have You Found Her Page 4