Lostart Street

by Vinnie Hansen

  Warm-hearted and big-footed, they stumbled in, not yet hyped with the bravado they manufactured or marked with the cowering they manifested to avoid being stuffed into garbage cans. Just one of the terrifying things they’d heard upper classmen would do.

  They’d only begun to ingest their candies and colas. For now, they were as vulnerable as babies awakened from naps.

  Rosaura had been absent since Tuesday. Earlier, I’d dropped by her counselor’s office.

  “Her family is migrant,” the woman pronounced matter-of-factly. “They follow the crops. They’ve probably moved on to Arizona.”

  No wonder Rosaura had wished to be a mountain, fixed in place. Disappointment must have shown on my face because the counselor chirped. “They’ll be back in the spring.”

  “I wish she’d said goodbye.” Then I realized she had. The churro had been a goodbye present.

  As the second bell rang, the students settled into their desks, but the room felt empty. One missing person and the whole atmosphere changed.

  The students quieted, looked at me, waited. I’d done a great job of training them in only two months.

  I shot a quick glance at Annette, bent over her papers at her desk. “I don’t think I’ll teach today,” I said.

  Ruben clapped. A few giggled and commented. Then they returned to an even more receptive attention, expecting me to teach.

  “I had a lesson prepared, but I can’t teach it.” I could feel Annette’s eyes boring into me. Was I about to unleash chaos in her room?

  Ruben slouched in his seat and crossed his ankles. His back-to-school haircut was now a two-inch bush. “Are we going to kick back?”

  “Why can’t you teach your lesson?” Liliana asked. “What happened to it?”

  “Yeah,” Ruben chimed. “Did your dog eat it?”

  “Well, last night there was a fire and a stabbing where I live.”

  Ruben pulled himself up straight in his desk. “Where do you live? Across the bridge?”

  The class erupted into questions. Again, in my short teaching career, I had every student engaged. The stories of apathy simply weren’t true. When something seemed immediate and important, their interest soared, but to seem important the topic needed a touch of the personal, of the human. The period ended with them still asking questions, some that I couldn’t answer like, “Where will Mrs. Bean live?”

  As I passed by Annette’s desk, she said, “Pretty interesting.” And then to my surprise, muttered, “Glad you’re okay.”

  That day would have been chaos if I had not already established an atmosphere of discipline and respect. But, I thought, there had to be a way to hitch an agenda to all that curiosity.

  The Invisible Lady’s note resonated in my head: help your students to be human. I’d learned that I could help them to be human by sharing myself, a good person, an adult, a role model, and not by effacing myself behind the lesson plan on the board. If I wanted them to show interest in the lessons, my class had to be real life because that was where their interest thrived. I had to work more, not less, on my lesson plans to find the connections.

  I went home that day certain that I learned more from my students than they learned from me.

  The Invisible Lady Appears

  Telling my students for five periods about the fire and the stabbing objectified the events until they seemed like something I’d seen on television. When the students asked their questions, I realized I’d missed so many details, I doubted the reality.

  Exhausted, I drove up the asphalt drive, scouting for clues of what had transpired the night before. An aura of stillness surrounded the front units, although Vince’s Datsun was parked in the driveway. Toward the back, the charred remains of Mrs. Bean’s apartment, encircled with caution tape, looked about to collapse.

  A huge box emerged from Florence’s apartment walking on a pair of tiny, unmistakable legs propped in two-inch red heels. Bobbi Headland leaned backward as she carried the load toward the dumpster.

  Even though my students’ questions buzzed in my head, Bobbi Headland was not the person I wanted to answer them. And now did not seem like the appropriate time to complain about the roaches. I had a sudden ache for Florence to be in the laundry room. I delayed getting out of my Volkswagen while Bobbi trudged by with the box. What was she doing in Florence’s apartment anyway?

  I climbed from my bug with my usual cargo—book bag, purse, lunch sack, and bundle of keys. The apartment complex smelled of old damp smoke. I could bear smokers puffing live cigarettes and fires pluming smoke on the beach, but ashtrays and dead fires stank of death and disappointment. The reek reminded me of the persistent, sulfur stench choking my hometown, a smell that wrapped my classmates who stayed and married and had babies.

  Soot smeared the front of my ugly, mustard-colored apartment, but I was lucky to have a place to live. I opened the door without getting my mail so I could be inside before Bobbi Headland returned. I sat at my desk by the window to spy on her.

  “You fucking cunt!”

  The Invisible Lady’s words hurled into the driveway and shattered all my illusions of her.

  Bobbi Headland halted right in front of my window and pivoted toward The Invisible Lady’s unit. “You should know a thing or two before you start screaming obscenities,” Bobbi said.

  “What do I need to know to recognize a bitch raiding my friend’s house?” The Invisible Lady shouted.

  For the first time, I could hear her. This was not the private, celebratory language of an Emily Dickinson recluse.

  “Florence died last night in the ambulance,” Bobbi shot back.

  I gasped, but The Invisible Lady did not miss a beat. The door to her apartment flew open and a wheelchair sprang from the landing to the blacktop. I gasped again at the sight of the legless woman in the chair with auburn tresses streaming behind her like a battle flag. I sprang to my feet.

  “That’s fucking convenient, isn’t it?” the No-Longer-Invisible Lady yelled at Bobbi as she charged with the wheelchair. Strong arms madly pushed the wheels. This apparition apparently didn’t believe Bobbi, but then, she had not seen the stabbing, had not witnessed the length of steel wrenched from Florence’s belly. I felt sick to my core, a little wobbly on my legs.

  Bobbi Headland dodged the chair, but the woman popped a wheelie, turned, and propelled her legless body and her chair toward the tiny apartment manager in her red pumps.

  Bobbi jumped aside again, and again the woman popped the wheelchair around as though the absence of legs made it airy. She aimed her vehicle at the frightened redhead panting in the middle of the driveway and tipping from her red perches.

  First Lefty and now this one. It was too much, but at least this time I didn’t freeze. I heard The Visible Lady’s next words from my step.

  “You’ve been looking for a chance to get rid of Florence,” The Visible Lady shouted, her face contorted with wrath. “You’re just too much of a chicken shit to come when she’s here.”

  “I tell you Florence is dead,” Bobbi screamed. “It was internal hemorrhaging.”

  If The Visible Lady made another charge at Bobbi, I planned to grab the back of her chair, but the specific words, internal hemorrhaging, deflated her. The broad shoulders sagged, the muscled torso collapsed, and the thick, wavy hair dropped forward over defeated breasts.

  “Don’t you think I care?” Bobbi said, sensing her advantage.

  The manager glanced toward me conspiratorially.

  My stomach turned. I disliked her. Intensely.

  The Visible Lady raised her head. “Frankly, I don’t think you give a shit about anybody.”

  “Well, just so you know,” Bobbi huffed, her offended glance including me as if she knew my sympathy had shifted, “I’m clearing Florence’s apartment so Mrs. Bean will have a place to live.”

  “How very altruistic of you,” The Visible Lady said as she whizzed past Bobbi to her apartment.

  I ran down my steps, thinking to assist The Visible Lady,
to let her know I was on her side. In her chair, she had flown from the single step that now, to me, seemed insurmountable.

  “What do you want?” The Visible Lady snapped at me. I felt Bobbi Headland smirking as her red heels snick-snacked toward Florence’s; I would have been offended at the Visible Lady’s tone if I hadn’t seen the telltale shimmer of tears in her eyes.

  “Hold open the door,” the woman said.

  I did as commanded. The Visible Lady tipped her wheelchair to a rakish angle, skipped over the single step, turned on the landing, and pushed through the open door.

  “Thank you,” she said curtly, in dismissal.

  The Roller Coaster of Life

  Punky got the job at the family-run grocery store, and Vince took Todd with him to Dominican where he learned of Florence’s death. The two met later at Punky’s apartment, Vince long-faced and full of sorrow and Punky glittering and full of joy. Punky resented the undermining of her elation. It had been a long time since she’d felt as good as she had at the store when the manager, a woman, asked, “When can you start?”

  The hardwood floors of the store gleamed. The workers moved at a slow, gracious pace and items were displayed to look irresistible. Although a bit yuppie for her, the store certainly was a hell of a lot more personal than Lucky’s, and the manager seemed warm and honest.

  She had the job. All she had to do was line up childcare. Lefty Hunt was out of her life, and Vince, for now, was in it, so when he met her at the door with his bubble-popping news of Florence’s death, she simply could not bear it. She burst into unabashed tears.

  The pitches of her emotions no longer mystified Vince, but he still held her ineffectually. Florence’s death left him hollow and sharply aware of his mortality, but not sad or tearful. He’d longed for the reassurance of Punky’s company, and instead had received a weeping woman. He couldn’t know she cried bitterly for a lost happiness, for a sad knot of complication in her stomach that threatened she might never experience an unqualified emotion again.

  Their awkward embrace came apart when they heard yelling. All three of them went out the door to witness The Visible Lady in her wheelchair chasing Bobbi Headland as the English teacher gawked at the scene from her steps.

  “She doesn’t drive that thing like an old maid,” Vince commented, not caring a dot, not even a molecule, if The Visible Lady rammed into Bobbi Headland.

  Punky sniffled. Her nose twitched, and she laughed, heartily, throwing back her head, the thick hair reaching her butt. She didn’t really believe, after all, that a woman in a wheelchair would hurt anyone.

  “You notice the weirdest things, Vince,” she choked through her laughter, strangling on the words.

  Vince stared at her. Her moods swung as wildly as the woman in the wheelchair.

  Vince didn’t realize, as Punky did, how close tears and laughter resided. The wheelchair, hopping over the step, punctuated the end of the scene.

  Oh, For a Heart With Wings

  I wanted Florence in the laundry room to console me for her own death. What happened to her remains if no relative showed up? To have no one at your death seemed like the most lost and alone a person could be. At least I had family, even if they were as far across the country as was geographically possible, and even further away culturally.

  Homework papers heaped before me on my desk. What would happen if I “lost” them, if I took them to the beach and let the breeze liberate them, lift them into the sky like white doves. They could fly off like Florence’s spirit. What would it matter in the end?

  Instead of attacking the work before me, I fantasized about the ugly fireman with the gorgeous eyes. I crossed my legs and swung them vigorously and considered calling Imogene in The City, but on Friday night she’d be watching an old flick at the Roxy, catching the plays at One Act Theater, or having coffee and a treat at Just Desserts or, at least, that’s where I’d be if I had a hot new love to accompany me.

  I picked up the top essay and sighed. That was my old life. My former life. I needed to carve out that kind of life here. Find havens, sanctuaries … people … friends.

  Perhaps I should put an ad in the Good Times: Twenty-eight-year-old, thin, nice-looking English teacher desires to meet SWM, disease free, for coffee, movies, dinners, beach walks, literary discussions, sex.

  Terribly uncreative, I thought. I wouldn’t answer it.

  Scarred heart would like to have wings again.

  Mr. PROPRTY

  Saturday unfolded. The stench of the damp, charred wood assaulted me as I sat on my step. The structure next door retained its shape although mostly blackened and gutted inside. The firemen had warned us to stay away from it.

  Sun spilled over the asphalt and glared off the papers on my lap. A cool sea breeze riffled them occasionally so I had to keep one hand on them when I paused to sip my coffee or to glance surreptitiously at The Invisible Lady’s window.

  Down past the laundry room, Vince, Punky and Todd sat like Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear on Punky’s steps. The setting filled me with déjà vu, not for an event, but for a feeling. Once upon a time the apartment complex had seemed peaceful, like this.

  I broke the spell by waving. They all waved back—Punky with an exaggerated arc, Todd with a childish flapping of the hand, Vince with a salute.

  About midday Bobbi Headland showed up again, wearing skintight Guess jeans, canary yellow oversized blouse with turned up collar, canary yellow plastic hoop earrings and plastic beads, and canary yellow pumps, apparently her cleaning outfit since she parked a black plastic garbage bag on either side of Florence’s steps.

  She glanced toward The Invisible Lady’s apartment. I remained seated on my step and watched, but nothing eventful happened. Bobbi disappeared into the apartment.

  About one o’clock a metallic blue Cadillac Seville sporting PROPRTY plates rolled supremely over the asphalt and stopped, blocking the driveway, in front of the burned remains of Mrs. Bean’s. A man disembarked. Long legs in gray slacks. His silver hair, cut short, had enough length left on top to fall in a debauched fashion across his well-tanned forehead. He had Southern California written all over him.

  Standing before Mrs. Bean’s, he stretched, a light gray, short-sleeved embroidered shirt falling into place. The gape of his arms was not just that of a man tired from a long drive, but also proprietary, embracing his kingdom, right at home even though a stranger. He inspected the scorched building and loudly clucked his tongue.

  “Hello there,” he said to me.

  “I don’t think you can rent it,” I said dryly. I had a profound distaste for slumlords.

  “Ah, these places don’t make me any profit,” he retorted with airy nastiness. He’d not missed an iota of my intent and studied me now with hard eyes. “I’d be better off if they all burned.”

  Rage bubbled in me. These places, my home, had been subjected to a mentally ill person, a fire and a murder, and here he was discussing profits. He probably considered Florence’s death a convenient eviction. Rolling up the papers in my lap, I lurched upright. “Three-hundred and twenty-five dollars may seem like peanuts to you, but it’s a quarter of my salary for a place with roaches, a stove that leaks gas, constant theft, and an unavailable manager.”

  Well, I’d spilled that. No measured teaspoon this time.

  He marched the short distance to me with his hand thrust out. For once I was glad to see Bobbi Headland coming my way. The hand’s impulse must surely have been to hit me, but instead it brusquely shook my hand, which had somehow extended itself. Looking into the man’s face, I realized his hair had prematurely silvered and he was quite handsome.

  “Citrino,” he said gruffly. “John Citrino.”

  “The owner.”

  “You got it.” He turned toward Bobbi and curled an arm around the skinny woman’s shoulder. “Hi ya, Babe.” He hugged her sideways, and kissed her forehead. “You’re looking good.”

  I sat back down on my step, very aware that the concrete under my
butt didn’t belong to me.

  “Seems we have a dissatisfied customer,” the man said snidely to Bobbi.

  “Well, you know how it is, John, with all these crazy things happening here. I haven’t had time to deal with normal problems.” Bobbi Headland turned to me. “Look, dear,” she said in a saccharine voice, “you can call PG&E on that leak. I doubt they’ll charge you, and if they do, deduct it from next month’s rent.”

  “Speaking of rents,” Citrino switched back to his gruff voice, “this lady said hers is three-twenty-five.”

  The spiky-lashed eyes with their constant look of surprise widened with genuine alarm. Bobbi Headland looped her arm around the man’s. “We need to sit down and chat,” she said softly. “In private.”

  She shot me a glare, laden with hatred, unjustifiably intense for simply going over her head with a complaint. “This has been a hell of a week, John.” She stroked the tan biceps.

  I sat numbly, certain there would be no next month’s rent from which to deduct anything.

  Across from me, the door banged open. A flying wheelchair whopped against the blacktop. John Citrino and Bobbi Headland whirled, and Bobbi immediately cowered behind John’s back.

  “What the fuck?” he said, more shocked it seemed by Bobbi’s clutching at the back of his shirt than by The Visible Lady’s dramatic entrance.

  “What a gutless wimp you have for a manager, John,” The Visible Lady chuckled.

  John Citrino bristled at the comment. No wonder. The way Bobbi Headland had stroked his arm indicated she served as a bit more than a manager. John Citrino locked his jaw as if to restrain a rebuttal attacking this legless wonder.

  “John,” The Visible Lady said, “you might like to know I also pay three-twen—”

  Bobbi popped from behind the man. “Shut up.”

  “Three twenty-five,” The Visible Lady shouted, shooting backward as Bobbi charged, body lowered and hands extended to push over the chair.