This Side of Providence

by Rachel M. Harper

  I keep going to different meetings so everybody will think I’m still a newcomer. That way I can always ask questions, and I don’t have to remember anything about anyone else’s story. I go to one meeting at St. Joe’s and realize halfway through that I been there before, two years earlier for a six-day detox. During the break some lady comes up to me and tells me to just keep coming back, even if it doesn’t make sense to me. I tell her I’ll try, but really I just want her to leave me alone. She smiles and hugs me like we been best friends for years. I can’t remember if her name is Karen or Kathy, but as she holds onto me in the middle of the room, I feel okay. Then she lets go and suddenly I feel light-headed. The bright fluorescent lights are shining down on me and I think I might faint.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, holding onto me with both her hands.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t do this.”

  She squeezes my hands as she holds them. “You don’t have to do it by yourself, sweetheart. Remember that.” She hands me a copy of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. “Here, take this. I have another one at home. Just remember to keep coming back, okay? Even when you think it doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s what everybody keeps saying.”

  She nods and rubs my shoulder. It’s hard to let strangers touch me when I’m not fucked up, but I don’t push her away. I know she’s just trying to help.

  “It’s the truth,” she says, smiling at me, like she knows some secret I don’t.

  I walk out before it’s over because I don’t want to stand in the circle and hold hands with everybody and act like I think I’m gonna be okay. I know it’s early—I only got out a month ago—but I don’t know how long I can go on like this without getting outside of myself. They tell me to do that by giving my will to God but I only know how to escape into the highs and lows of a good fix.

  I walk down the hallway quickly, trying to outrun the sound of their prayers. I try to quiet the noise in my head, but it just keeps getting louder. I look at every person I see along Broad Street, hoping to recognize someone or something familiar. I watch a line of cars pull into D.L.’s Funeral Home. My mother’s funeral is the only one I ever went to. After that, I promised myself the next one I’d be at was gonna be my own.

  Within seconds, the sidewalk is packed with mourners, men in dark suits escorting women with their heads down, sunglasses covering eyes that cried all night. I walk to the bus stop wondering why it’s easier to celebrate the dead than the living.

  SHE SEES the girl in the backseat of an old Buick. Waiting to go to the hospital. The interior is all white, the leather as soft as the inside of a shell. Her legs are spread. Her skirt is lifted up, high above her waist. The leather is hot on the backs of her legs. She doesn’t want to give birth here, but the baby is coming. Her second one in two years. Her insides begin to ache. She’s afraid of the pain. The car door opens. A burst of sunshine blinds the girl. Someone calls her name. “Mami.” A voice she recognizes. The girl squints. Her son comes into focus. He climbs into the car to sit beside her. Her eyes adjust. She looks at him. He wants to meet his baby sister. He tells her it’s okay. She waits for her husband to arrive. Her son never lets go of her hand.

  Miss Valentín

  Cristo surprises me with a present on Valentine’s Day. Other kids make cards, or bring bouquets of pink and white carnations, which they drop on my desk like late assignments, but Cristo gives me a solid chocolate heart the size of a plate. I need to get a knife from the teacher’s lounge just to break off a piece.

  “You shouldn’t have gotten something so big, it’s too much.”

  “I know how you like chocolate, Teacher. Don’t act like you won’t eat it.”

  I blush, embarrassed by how well he knows me. “I just mean that you shouldn’t have spent so much money,” I tell him when we’re talking after school.

  “I have a job, you know.” He sits on the edge of my desk. “Speaking of jobs, since this holiday’s named after your family, I think you should get the day off.”

  “Oh really? I didn’t think you knew my last name.”

  “I know your name, Teacher. I just don’t like to use it.”

  I cut into the heart and hand him a waxy sliver. “So, how’s school going?”

  “It’s going good,” he says.

  “How does Mrs. Reed think you’re doing?”

  “She thinks I’m doing good.”

  “Good, or just better than before?”

  He bites on his fingernail to stall. “Better than before, I guess. But there’s still time for me to do good.”

  “How’s it been with your mother back?”

  He shrugs, looking down at the floor.

  “I heard you’re forgetting assignments again, turning pages in half-done. Is that true?”

  “It’ll be better once we have our own place. I can’t keep track of my things there.”

  “Kim didn’t give you a desk? Or a bookshelf?”

  He shifts against the desk. “There’s not a lot of extra room. I try not to complain.”

  I cut off another piece of chocolate. I don’t want to eat this much in front of him, but I can’t help myself. Why does this always happen, with even the smallest taste in my mouth? “How’s your mom doing? It’s got to be hard for her, to come back and have everything turned upside down.”

  “She’s okay.”

  My mouth is full so I gesture for him to say more. He clears his throat.

  “I mean she’s good. She’s going to a bunch of meetings and she has some job training class she’s gonna take. She’s really trying.”

  I force myself to put the chocolate away in my desk drawer, though I continue to think about it during the rest of our conversation. I am beginning to think I am no different from her, or from any addict. The only difference is that my drug is legal.

  “How are things at home?” I ask him, sensing there’s something he’s not telling me.

  “All right.”

  “It’s got to be hard for her, moving in with another family like that.” He makes a face, but I decide to keep pushing. “How are she and Kim getting along?”

  He stands up quickly and grabs his backpack off the floor. There’s something he’s not telling me.

  “She’s going to be all right, Teacher. I’m helping her, okay? Don’t worry.”

  “And who’s helping you?”

  He shrugs.

  “Don’t say you don’t need help.”

  “You’re helping me.” He adjusts a stack of books on my desk, neatening the row.

  I pick up my bag. “You want a ride home?”

  “No, thanks. I’m going to walk.”

  “Come on, it’s freezing outside. They say it might snow.”

  “I’m going to the library first.”

  “Well, I can drop you there if you want.”

  He shakes his head. “Nah, I’ll be okay.”

  “You sure?”

  He heads for the door. “See you later, okay?”

  I follow him out, locking the classroom door behind me. When I call his name from the hallway, he’s already gone. I know he’s lying to me, that much is clear, but what I can’t figure out is why.

  The phone rings after ten, waking me from a dream. A half-eaten bag of potato chips falls from my lap as I reach for the handset. A rerun of Law & Order plays on the TV.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Miss Valentine, a teacher at Hartford Avenue School. Do I have the right number?”

  “Yes, this is Vanessa Valentín. Is there something wrong?” I put the TV on mute. I can hear the woman sniff and clear her throat.

  “My name is Kim Douglas and I’m Cristo and Luz—”

  “I know who you are. The kids have mentioned you several times.”

  “Okay, good.” She sounds nervous, like a drunk person trying really hard to act sober. “Well, I guess you know that I’ve been taking care of the two of them for a while now. Well actually just Luz for the last month…” She sniffs
again.

  “What do you mean just Luz? Cristo told me he lived with you.”

  “He did, until a few weeks ago. Him and his mother moved out.”

  They moved, that’s why he wouldn’t let me drive him home. “I see. I didn’t know they had found a place.”

  “They haven’t yet.” She starts speaking slowly. “They’re in that shelter on Pine Street, the one that takes kids.”

  “They’re in a shelter?”

  “Listen, that’s not really why I’m calling. I’ve got a problem with Luz—”

  “What kind of problem?” I sit up on the couch.

  “Somebody called DCYF on me and now Luz is in the system. They took Sammy, too, my son, but he’s back already. Luz isn’t coming back.”

  I try to stay calm. “What happened?”

  “It’s not a big deal. I’m a single parent, you know? And I work for a living. I can’t always be around to keep them out of trouble. I’m not Wonder Woman, Miss Valentine.” By now I’m convinced her sniff is a nervous habit.

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to take her.”

  “Take her? From where?”

  “They didn’t tell me. I’ve got the name and number of her caseworker. You can ask them all these questions.” She sniffs again.

  I wrap the phone cord around my hand. “Why are you calling me? I’m just a teacher. I can’t fix anything.”

  I’m lying, of course, always my first instinct. I don’t mention that I just got D-Rate status with the state, which means that in addition to regular kids I’m cleared to take ones with behavioral issues as well. Apparently my certification got pushed through because I’m a teacher. (Finally someone values this job.) So to request a child like Luz would be easy. But just because I look good on paper, doesn’t mean I’ll do a good job. And Luz is someone I already know and care about. It would break my heart to be another person who fails her.

  “The kids are quite attached to you. They talk about you all the time.” I hear Kim exhale. Then sniff. “I just thought you’d want to know. I thought maybe you could help.”

  I unwrap my hand and watch it fill back up with blood. Is she trying to make me feel guilty?

  “But I’m not their family,” I say.

  “The foster home she’s staying at isn’t her family either.”

  I imagine Luz going to bed in a strange house and reading under a lamp until she falls asleep. I picture Cristo living in a shelter, having to keep his backpack on so nothing gets stolen, and it makes me ill. I can see it all clearly, but it hardly seems real.

  “There’s one more thing, Miss Valentine. It’s about their mother. She’s sick, you know, with that liver disease that junkies get.”

  “Hepatitis?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I guess she’s had it for a while, but she had never really treated it before. Now she’s taking all these pills, AZT and Crixivan, things I’ve never heard of. I just found the bottles when she moved out.”

  “AZT? Are you sure?” I recognize the name as an HIV drug.

  “Yep, that one I know for certain. I’m looking at the bottle right now.”

  Damn. If Kim has no idea what it means I’m not going to be the one to tell her.

  “All I’m saying is…she needs help, you know? This is a tough time for her. I thought that if she knew that Luz was with you…instead of a stranger…that it might make it easier for her to accept. She’s already lost the baby, you know.”

  “I know.” I stand up to get a pen. “Give me the number. I’ll make a few calls.”

  She makes a joke about selling the pills if she can’t get in touch with Arcelia, but I don’t laugh. I tell her it’s illegal to sell the pills from someone else’s prescription. She claims she was only joking.

  When I get off the phone with Kim I place the call to DCYF. No one answers, so I leave all my information on the caseworker’s voice mail. I hang up and sit there for a while, letting it all sink in.

  I watch the muted TV, men in fancy suits standing in wood-paneled rooms deciding a poor person’s fate. I feel like the defendant as they wait for the verdict to be read, sick with fear and anticipation. It’s hard to admit that I’m not in charge of my fate, and that the only thing I know for certain is that everything is about to change.

  Luz

  It’s always warm in Miss Valentín’s apartment. All the heaters work and the sun shines straight into my room in the morning. Plus, she can afford to pay the gas bill. Every room is painted a different color—peach, yellow, and many of shades of blue—and all the appliances work. The floors are all a shiny, caramel-colored wood, even in the kitchen, and I like to run on them in my socks and slide halfway across the room. Miss Valentín says I might get a sliver in my foot but she lets me do it anyway. Sometimes I wonder how long I’m going to stay here, but most of the time I pretend that it’s going to be forever. I could ask Miss Valentín but usually I don’t want to know the answer.

  The night she came to get me from the foster home seems like a hundred years ago. She showed up after dinner with a short white lady who wore a badge on her lapel like she was a detective. Nobody told me she was coming. When I saw her I stood up from the table and didn’t even finish my bowl of ramen noodles. I gave her a hug with both arms and she picked me up off the floor. I thought she was just coming to visit me, but when she said I was going home to live with her I started to cry. And I don’t cry easily like some girls.

  I didn’t have to pack my bag because I had never unpacked it, even though I stayed there for almost a week. I said thank you and good-bye to the lady who ran the house, and she waved at me from the recliner she spent most evenings stuck in. None of the other kids came out to say good-bye and I didn’t want to walk into the back of the house to see them. I’ve already forgotten their names and pretty soon I’ll forget their faces, too.

  The first time Cristo comes to visit me here I show him my new bedroom, the same room where he and I slept that weekend back in September when we ran away from home. I know he’s jealous because we painted the walls and put up new curtains that Miss Valentín let me pick out.

  “Why’d she paint the room yellow?” he asks.

  “She said the old color made it look small.”

  “Small? This is a huge room, you could fit three beds in here.” He hops onto my bed and puts his feet up.

  “I could share, if you want to come back.”

  “And what about Mami?” He glares at me. “I can’t just leave her.”

  “We could ask Miss Valentín if she could come, too.”

  “Mami didn’t want to live with Kim, why would she want to live with Teacher?”

  “Look around. It’s nice here,” I can’t help but say it with a huge smile on my face.

  He shrugs. “The shelter’s not so bad.”

  “You said they stole your books and your Yankees hat.”

  “That was my fault,” he says, using two pillows to prop himself up. “I shouldn’t have left anything out. Now I know to leave my books at school.”

  “But how can you do your homework if you have to leave your books at school?”

  He stares at me like I’m an idiot. “We only have a few more weeks to wait anyway, before Mami’s case manager finds us a new apartment. Then we’ll get Trini back and you can come live with us and we can all be a family again.” He sounds just like Mami when he talks like that, but I don’t believe him anymore than I believe her. I decide it’s best to change the conversation.

  “That Colombian girl asked about you the other day. Graciela.”

  “Who?” He pretends for a second to not know who I’m talking about. “What’d she say?”

  “She wanted to know if you were my brother.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I told her the truth, dummy.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  I shake my head. “She didn’t have to.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It me
ans she likes you.” I lower my voice. “You should ask her out.”

  “Why, so I can bring her back to the shelter?”

  I can’t think of a response so I just stare at him. After a while there’s a knock on the door. I’ve never lived with anyone who knocks on doors.

  “Come in,” Cristo says, as if he lives here. He kicks off his sneakers and slips his socked feet under my comforter.

  Miss Valentín peeks her head in the door. “I’m making pernil and arroz con gandules. Are you staying for dinner?” She looks at Cristo and smiles. “Well don’t you look comfy?”

  “No, I should go back. I have to meet Mami.”

  “Why don’t you wait until it’s done, so I can send you home with some. For you and your mother.”

  “Okay.” Cristo looks around the room. “By the way, I like the paint job, Teacher.”

  “Thank you. Luz helped around the baseboards.” She points toward the floor as if we don’t know where they are. “You’re welcome to stay over any night. You know that, right?”

  “I’m going to help Mami get back on her feet and then neither one of us will have to stay here.”

  Miss Valentín nods, and makes herself smile. She tries to cover the hurt on her face but I can still see it. She closes the door behind her, her head bowed like she’s in church. Cristo leans against the wall behind him. I try to look into his eyes but he keeps them focused on the ceiling. He stares into the light as if he’s trying to make himself go blind.

  “Have you seen César lately?” I ask him.

  “Sure, I seen him around.”

  “You talk to him?”

  He turns to face me. “Just spit it out, Luz. What are you asking me?”

  “I heard he dropped out.”

  “He’s ten. He can’t drop out.”

  “Well, he’s on medical leave or something. And he’s so far behind that even if he does come back, he’s going to have to repeat the fifth grade.”