Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  I gave her a minute of silence. The minute was not yet up when a new story came to me. The boys could just eat their hearts out.

  * Court Councillor, a title of respect cherished by Austrians even in the absence of a royal court.

  ** The Freiheitliche Partei Osterreich, a right-wing political party.

  MARY JACKSON SCROGGINS is the president of the board of directors of Washington Independent Writers, the largest regional writers’ organization in the country. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she owns a small publications firm, Nekima, Inc. As Dicey Scroggins Jackson, she is completing Who the Cap Fit, an adult mystery, and a slave tale for children, told from the perspective of a ten-year-old slave.

  Dreams or Home

  Dicey Scroggins Jackson

  For women and children temporarily in shelter,

  but away from home.

  For Jocelyn, Rose, and Ernestine,

  working dreams into realities.

  You are not alone.

  “Y our name.” It was a question without a question’s inflection. The little woman-child at the front of the line didn’t move or speak. Apparently she expected common courtesy. Obviously, this was her first time in the in-take line. Her first time at A Woman’s Place. It would probably be her first night in shelter, not at home. She didn’t look the runaway or the castaway. It was warm for late October in Washington, but she was dressed for the season as well as for the weather.

  I’d noticed her sad little-girl face—incompatible with its surroundings—before the line started forming at about six-thirty.

  She looks a little like Amani, like Amani used to look. Light eyes set in a thin dark face. Only the hair—and her bruises—were really different. Amani’s short sandy hair had never been braided with extensions, and this woman-child’s dark hair was—professionally.

  Somebody cared about this child. Fifteen or sixteen, maybe, and a long, long way from home.

  “I said, what’s your name?” Miss Thing tapped a dull-pointed pencil on a wooden desk covered with enough graffiti to tag a small building—generational graffiti.

  I nudged the child with my elbow, and she lifted her head toward Miss Thing. “My name is … Ra-achel … Jackson. I lost my purse … my identification was in it, but I’m—”

  She probably knows somebody named Rachel, and everybody black knows somebodies named Jackson.

  “Didn’t ask you for no ID,” Miss Thing said, displaying an enormous gap in her teeth and one in her manners to match.

  My guess was, Miss Thing had been in this line more often than behind that desk. But memory is short, especially when you’re having fun. And although her tone was flat and uninterested, she was having fun. No one heaps shit on the already shat-upon unless they enjoy it, unless they’re having fun.

  When the girl didn’t move away from the desk and into the building, I nudged her again.

  “Just go on over to the steps. I’ll help you out, I’ve been here before,” I whispered in her right ear, which was bloody and swollen.

  She jerked away. At five-seven and one hundred and forty pounds, I’m not really a big woman, but I have a big woman’s presence and voice. And, why on earth should she trust me, a woman without a home and for all she knew without good sense? But still she reminded me of Amani, and I sure hoped someone had helped, was helping her.

  More than two hours after getting into the in-take line, we had both gained admission to the in-take room. Here, where maximum occupancy was posted as fifty, at least a hundred women waited to be assigned rooms. I sat, and Rachel leaned on the wall next to my rusty, gray folding chair.

  I saw five or six familiar faces. None would be familiar to Rachel if she could help it. She was not strong on eye contact. I was, even here. I needed to be for Amani. Besides, it was a habit pounded into me, literally when necessary, by Gram, who wasn’t having any of her children or grandchildren looking down or away “like as if they had something to be shamed of.”

  Suddenly, I felt Rachel move a nanospace closer to my chair and then grab the side of it.

  “Hey, what you doing here, girl? Got any smokes?” a tall, too-thin woman said, walking toward Rachel and more than invading her space.

  Rachel responded to her nearness or maybe to the unpleasant odor that arrived with her by lowering her head farther into her chest.

  Oblivious to the snub, this twentysomething woman, with a sixtysomething face and gait, continued, “That’s a baaad jacket you wearing. My name’s Grace, Amazin’ Grace.” She laughed and casually placed her bony hand on Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel moaned. “This your first time here?” Rachel’s shoulders slumped and her small brown hand moved up my chair, brushing my back.

  Whatever was blunting Grace’s senses wasn’t sufficient to miss that snub. “Look, I’m just trying to be friendly, to conversate.” And she probably was, just trying to conversate, but Rachel was too far from home to care or to know how to respond. Grace backed up a little and punched out each word separately and distinctly: “Can-you-hear? … Huh?”

  “Uh huh” was all Rachel could manage.

  “Uh huh, you can hear? Or uh huh, this your first time?” Grace said nastily, reverting to her singsong slur and putting both hands where her waist should have been.

  I took Rachel’s hand and stood, briefly locking eyes with Grace, who was a couple of inches taller than me and a couple of dozen pounds thinner.

  “Heeey, sister. Ain’t no problem. It’s all good!” She backed away.

  Backing off was smart. My experience these last few months is that most women in shelter here are smart—unlucky and sometimes self-destructive, but smart.

  “Let’s go over by the window,” I said, and Rachel let me lead her to the opposite side of the tiny, musty room, stepping on newspapers the way you step on peanut shells at The Ground Round. No one moved to let us through.

  A woman I’d seen before was sitting on the paint-chipped windowsill.

  “Hi. Your name’s Janice, right?” I said and matched her I’ve-seen-you-before-but-don’t-think-we’re-friends smile.

  “Yeah. And you’re … Gloria?” she said, and I nodded. “Haven’t been around for a while. I figured your life was back in order or something. Or you’d decided to go to another place—cleaner, friendlier—you know. You could get into one of those, I couldn’t.” She patted her pretty hair—thick, unpressed, unpermd—held back with a royal-blue headband encrusted with rhinestones, and shoved her hands into the pockets of a brownish tweed coat two sizes too large. She looked tired, always, and sounded sad. I liked her. I couldn’t remember why she had landed here but I wanted to.

  “Janice, would you mind letting this kid sit down in the window? She’s not feeling well.” I moved Rachel toward the windowsill. She did look sick.

  “Sure. I’m going back out to smoke anyway.” As she walked away, she looked at Rachel and then back at me.

  Had I told her about Amani? I didn’t think so.

  Rachel stood to the left of the window, looking out, but didn’t sit down. She scanned the small crowd of smokers, dealers, users, legitimate vendors, pros, and passersby.

  “Rachel, why don’t you sit down?” Although I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t answer to Rachel, I didn’t know what else to call her. She glanced outside again and then sat down, with her back to the window and her head still bowed.

  I sat on the floor beside the low windowsill. “Look, honey, nobody’s going to bother you. Really. I know you have no reason to trust me, but do, please. You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure we’re in the same room.”

  “Thank you, miss,” she said in such a soft, vulnerable voice that I wanted to draw her to me, to protect her, to do better by her than I had done by my own daughter.

  “I’ve got a couple of pieces of Kentucky Fried.” I tapped my blue canvas satchel. “We can share them. They don’t like us bringing food in, but …” I said, hunching my shoulders and inhaling deeply. Now, I know cabbage when I smell it. And somebody’s go
t pizza. You wouldn’t think anyone could hide a whole pizza on her person and still want to eat it.

  “You know, almost anyplace is better for you to be than here, honey.… My daughter came here—without my knowledge or my permission—to add real-life experience to a term paper on homelessness.… She never, she never came home again,” I said. She put her hand on my shoulder, wanting to comfort me now. “Can’t you go somewhere else? To a friend’s house? Home?” I said. She dropped her hand from my shoulder, detached herself. “How about your grandparents’ then?” No response, no reconnection. “You don’t want to come back here after tonight. I’ll take you to a nicer place up on Georgia Avenue, but I’m not sure they’ll let you stay, you’re so young.… How old are you?”

  “I’m … eighteen.” She lifted her taut little face to convince me, I guess. She was not used to lying. And she probably wasn’t even fifteen.

  Ms. Bennett, the director of A Woman’s Place, appeared outside the doorway. “Okay, ladies, we can go into your rooms now. Remember to keep them neat, and remember only ten to a room and one to a bed. Put your belongings close to or under your beds. There is plenty of hot water tonight, ladies, and we can provide soap.” She really had a way with the word “ladies.” She made it sound like something you definitely didn’t want to be and hoped your momma wasn’t. A bottom-heavy, nondescript woman, with a sallow complexion and a drippy Jheri-Kurl, Ms. Bennett took pleasure in putting us ladies in our place without being overtly disrespectful or unkind. She would probably genuinely be hurt to know that the women here hated her—not because she was in charge or even because she liked being in charge so much, but because she never let them forget that they were in shelter, not at home.

  When we got to Room 7, I shoved Rachel in and steered her toward the last cot on the left, the one next to the wall. I had planned to take the second one, to serve as a buffer for her, but she put her bag down on that one and stared at the wall.

  “Please, ma’am, you take the last one,” she said, her tiny voice shaking, so I did. She still wasn’t sure she could trust me.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine why she was scared and distrustful, especially since someone had just recently tattooed her little body with bruises.

  After devouring a chicken leg but insisting that she was not hungry enough to eat the second piece, Rachel sat at the foot of her cot, holding an expensive overnight bag on her lap, and rested her head on it. It was after ten-thirty and she was exhausted.

  “You can lie down. The sheets are always clean on in-take day. Just push your bag under the cot and don’t bother unpacking anything. We’re getting you out of here tomorrow, and you’re not coming back,” I said.

  Rachel looked at me more directly than she had in the three or four hours since in-take. My eyes—easy to water anyway—hurt to look at her bloodshot, runny right eye. But I held the gaze, not wanting to break contact in any form. Suddenly, she put her hand over her eye, as if to protect me from its sight, and slid around the foot of her cot, closer to me.

  “Can I put my bag between our beds instead of on the other side, miss?” she said tentatively.

  “Sure. Hand it to me. And, please call me Gloria.” Her navy bag was genuine leather, nice soft leather, and the initials on the name tag were not RJ.

  “Why are you here, Miss Gloria? You don’t seem like you should be,” she said, again averting her eyes. The eye contact thing is not easily learned after a lifetime, no matter how brief, of looking away.

  “Baby, nobody should be here. Nobody. But shh … things happen sometimes.” I had almost cussed. And to a child. Six months ago, I’d confined my cussin’ to a very occasional “asshole.” It is hard to wander around in the real world and not to utter “asshole” occasionally. I continued, “This is supposed to be a … a … safety net.”

  “But you really don’t seem like you’d be here. You don’t even talk like most of the people.”

  “First of all, young lady,” I said, smiling and playfully, “you haven’t really talked to anyone here but me—and me just barely.”

  She smiled, a shy little-girl smile.

  “And, if you listen hard enough, you’ll hear lots of different kinds of people, here for lots of different reasons. Some people have gotten used to being here, but nobody really wants to be here. This isn’t anyone’s dream of home. It is a temporary shelter, Rachel, that’s all. And speaking of people who do not belong here …”

  She turned away from me, rudely and without apology.

  Well, a little attitude here. Just enough attitude was good.

  She took off her shoes and climbed onto the cot. Just before she pulled the covers up around her ears, I leaned over to whisper, “If you need to get up to go to the bathroom, let me know. I’ll go with you, the halls aren’t safe for you. Okay?”

  Silence was my answer.

  The lights—one bulb at each end of the room—went out. The darkness was followed by Ms. Bennett’s announcement: “Lights out, ladies. It is eleven o’clock.” I guess she thought we wouldn’t realize the dim rooms had grown darker without being told so. We were homeless, not stupid. “Good night … ladies.” Bitch.

  Five minutes after lights-out, I was always ready to leave A Woman’s Place, but I still had business here.

  A big macho-stepping roach hopped from the wall onto my cot. I felt it hit the thin bowel-brown cover, then take off pimping toward my face. I snatched the cover over my head and tucked in for the night. I’d keep an ear out for Rachel, but I’d have to provide undercover surveillance.

  Dreams are strange when your life becomes dreamlike, nightmarishly so, hard to believe it’s yours. Eighteen months ago, I had a husband who loved me and whom I loved back. Robert was my best friend, my best everything. Six months ago, I had a daughter I adored, funny and full of attitude.

  Glass shattered, maybe in my dream. I was a heavy sleeper, but the sound yanked me back into the real world.

  I listened for more glass to break, trying to tell where the sound was coming from. Room 7 was quiet, except for the requisite snorer.

  I tapped the inside of my cover, hoping to frighten combat-ready creatures off before sticking my head out, and threw the cover back. According to my watch, it was four-thirty. Thank God for glow-in-the-dark stuff.

  I glanced over at Rachel’s cot. It was empty.

  “What-do-you-mean, evidently she’s not here!” I screamed. “Evidently, you don’t—”

  “Look, we don’t usually have to tie you down to keep you in. People want to get in, not sneak out. Did you check the bathroom?” a white man-child trying to grow dreadlocks said. He sat behind the guard’s desk guarding his tape player and off-beat grooving to Bob Marley.

  “I-am-not-stupid,” I said. I sounded calm, reasonable, bracing myself against rising anger and fear. “Of course I checked the bathroom. I have checked the entire second floor, I’d check the whole building if I had access. So, what the hell are you going to do? Right now, what are you going to do? A young girl’s missing.”

  He threw his hands up and patted, pulsed the air. Well he wasn’t quite the idiot I first thought he was; he didn’t pat me. “Calm down, lady. Just calm down. Do you know it’s only five o’clock?”

  “I am calm, as calm as I’m going to get until the staff get their lazy butts up and start looking for Rachel.” I reached across the desk to feel for a phone, and he jumped from his chair into the wall. I guess he thought I was about to pat him. “Where-is-the-phone? I’m calling the police.… Please do-not tell me that this is a guard’s desk without a goddamn phone. Sweet Jesus,” I said. I had never used a phone in A Woman’s Place. Amani had, according to our phone records.

  My guess is, the guard wasn’t thinking this such an easy job anymore. Now, I was not the only one in the hallway who was scared.

  “Tell you what, lady, I’ll get somebody in charge, I’m just holding the desk,” he said, with no disrespect on “lady” intended—even this dreadlock, wanna-be Rasta wasn’t going to mes
s with a crazy homeless lady. “Ms. Bennett was on duty last night, so she’s still here. I’ll call her, say, in about an hour, okay?”

  “No, dear, that-will-not-do.” I’m not going to lose another child here. No! Hell-no! “Where’s Ms. Bennett’s room? Third floor, right? You don’t have to call her, I’ll go get her.”

  He came from behind the desk. If he was smart, he was leaving. All six feet of him.

  “Don’t get in my way, honey. You’re somebody’s baby, I-don’t-want-to-hurt-you.” He headed for the front door. They’d probably have to hire another guard.

  I spun around at the sound of a raspy, mirth-filled voice. “Yeah, wake her fat ass up. Now!” Five or six women, all unfamiliar, stood near the stairwell from the second floor. I wasn’t sure who had spoken.

  A short, stout woman with a beautiful gray-blue kente cloth scarf wrapped around her head walked over to me. Like most of the other women, she was fully dressed except for shoes. “Now, what you ’bout to wake Ms. Bennett from her beauty sleep for?” She asked, but they clearly didn’t really care, as long as I kicked ass when I found her.

  “A young girl who came in with me today is missing. She’s just a child, fourteen or fifteen, maybe not that old.”

  “They don’t have no business letting them young ones in here anyway. Ain’t even legal. And it ain’t good for them, in here with all kinds of folks. You know what I mean. They got other places for them to go,” she said. “I didn’t know what was wrong, but I sure done called the police. They’ll come when they get ready to, though, I shoulda said somebody was dead, somebody white.” The Amen Choir of five formed an assenting semicircle around her.