Parked

by Danielle Svetcov

  Jeanne Ann, I think my last note blew away. Meet me at Greenery, 9:40, today. —Cal

  I wait an hour. Only pelicans show.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Why won’t your mom fill out the work form?” I ask Jeanne Ann, tripping into the intersection alongside her. She’s lugging two canvas totes bulging with books. I’ve been waiting all morning for her to exit the van. I was prepared to wait all summer.

  Her expression is weird, like there’s something in her mouth that she’s trying to grind into dust.

  She stops mid-crosswalk. I stop mid-crosswalk.

  “Are you going to spit on me? You look like you’re going to spit on me,” I say.

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Maybe aim thataway,” I say, indicating her other side. “But take the job application forms. I can help you fill them out.” I shake the paperwork.

  She ignores my offer, clomping ahead.

  “Those bags look heavy,” I say. We’ve begun to climb.

  She moves the bags to her left shoulder, away from me.

  At the top of the hill, she lets the bags fall to the ground and curls over them, wheezing. Finally she speaks. “Don’t come in.” She holds out a hand. “Promise.”

  We’re standing in front of a used-book store.

  A bell rings as Jeanne Ann enters. I watch the transaction through the window, sitting on the neighboring stoop.

  When she’s done—the doorbell rings again—she exits with a fistful of cash and sagging, empty totes.

  “Your mom make you do that?” I say. Jeanne Ann’s frozen on the sidewalk, staring at the traffic whizzing by. I really don’t like her mom.

  “She doesn’t know. I’m buying us more time.”

  Oh.

  She inches closer, then lowers herself to the stoop beside me. Faint music comes from the falafel place next door.

  I want to say something but can’t think of what.

  Her royal chin falls to her chest. Then she folds in half, cheek to knees, and closes her eyes.

  JUNE 24

  Jeanne Ann

  Turns out, we are not burying bodies for Sandy today. We’re hocking his smoothies at a farmers’ market.

  “The keys to upselling . . .” Sandy begins his speech and does not stop, even when our eyes drift sideways. He’s really stepped into his role: Chairman of the Homeless.

  It’s six a.m., Sunday, dark. My eyeballs hurt. We’re standing beneath four posts and a flimsy sheet. The market is held in the Greenery parking lot. Sandy’s paying us to set up smoothies, sell smoothies, and clean up smoothies. He says it’s a fund-raiser for his upcoming road trip. I wonder if his wife knows, the one I’m not supposed to know about. I wonder if she’s aware he’ll be taking off soon with his “best mate.”

  Mom glances down at me, exhales something that sounds a lot like defeat, then shrugs like she knew this was the gig all along and simply didn’t care.

  Around us, farmers unload boxes of fruits and vegetables from the beds of dented pickup trucks. They look as dirty as we look, and as tired, but they’ve done something—work—to earn their appearance, and they will shower later.

  I reach for the paperback in my back pocket and remember, too late, that it’s not there.

  “Last points of order,” Sandy says, raising his voice. “Keep those smiles tight and keep your eyes peeled for a group of matrons in matching blue hats and shirts. They will require VIP treatment.”

  I adjust my seat on the crate. “Why?”

  “Long story. Big misunderstanding. We should put our best feet forward.”

  “You pick their pockets or something?”

  Sandy grins, cocks his head and blinks rapidly, mock-innocent. I’ll take it as confirmation. I roll my eyes for Mom, but she’s gazing at a bunch of men in white chef coats, pawing cucumbers one stall over.

  “Jeanne Ann, help me here.” Sandy taps my elbow. I squeeze the wad of cash in the front pocket of my overalls. I’m never taking off these overalls—they are our bank. Another reason never to bathe. When we finish here, we will have more than one hundred dollars: about forty from the mystery person who keeps leaving money under our windshield wipers—I think it’s probably Cal because who else could it be?—forty from Sandy, and sixty-two fifty from my books. That’s two bucks per hardback and seventy-five cents per paperback. Sixty-two fifty in exchange for a whole life of scavenging and collecting and repairing and alphabetizing . . . The used-book store owner said I wouldn’t earn more for my books anywhere else in the city. He said books don’t retain their original value once they’ve been read. I told him that didn’t make any sense. I told the salesman that books should increase in value once they’ve been read a whole bunch. At the library, the most-read books are the most beloved. He said that was “an economic theory for romantics.”

  Sandy sets me in front of the display cooler to pick out the dirty ice. I do as ordered while stealing glances at Greenery. The lights are on inside. I can see someone pulling down chairs.

  “I could use some signage, next,” Sandy says, handing me a Sharpie, paper, and tape. I consider a few signs I’d like to hold up:

  Lost!

  Girl, 12. Workhorse mom, 31.

  Last seen “getting by” in Chicago.

  Hire her!

  Mother, cook, loyal friend.

  Can fry, grill, and boil. Cheap labor.

  Daughter tags along.

  Map needed: out of this situation.

  In any language!

  Sandy suggests a simple: SMOOTHIES FOR SALE, $8 PER BOTTLE FOR A LEANER, HAPPIER YOU.

  I write it. I am being paid for cooperation.

  * * *

  • • •

  Customers, it turns out, are awful. They pay with money soaked in joggers’ sweat. They ask for two-for-one deals when none is offered. They hold up a line to complain about a “funny aftertaste.”

  You’ve got to eat something to get an aftertaste!—I want to scream. I’d give anything for an aftertaste right now. Hunger is like a rug burn on the inside.

  The matrons in blue pass by with their noses turned up. They move as a pack, glare, but do not stop. Their T-shirts read: MARINA BEAUTIFICATION COMMITTEE. These are the people who want us gone. That is more than a “misunderstanding,” I think, turning my own glare on Sandy. I look both ways and hurl a small ice cube in their path.

  “Jeanne Ann!” Sandy sees and scurries over. “You and your mother are not built for sales!” I can tell he wants to say more. He looks sincerely upset, like I’ve tarnished his reputation as an upstanding homeless citizen. I feel heat rising from my toes, and a few seconds later a cackle escapes my throat, a sound I don’t even recognize as me. Sandy stares, then insists I take a short break. “Here, wear this,” he says, taping a new paper sign to my shoulder: IT’S GONNA BE OKAY.

  Now I’m standing in front of Greenery, light-headed, with a dry mouth. I don’t think the fruit and bread and peanut butter I’ve been living on are reaching my joints. I feel brittle, like a piece of chalk.

  “Hi,” I say. To Cal. At the counter.

  “Hi,” he says, and immediately begins stabbing holes in perfectly good pastries and throwing them in a box for me.

  “Stop,” I say.

  “Why?” He holds up the box; it’s nearly full.

  “I can’t take it.”

  “Why?”

  I groan. “Can’t you just be normal?” I feel bad instantly, but I also mean it. I want something normal so badly.

  He twists his face up for a second, grabs his sketchbook out of his smock, and whacks it against the counter a few times. I think I’ve offended him, but then he looks right at me. “I don’t know. I thought so?” A wall of hair falls across his face as he looks down. “But now my mom makes me wear this jacket and she’s sending me to the scho
ol of quote-unquote hard knocks.”

  “The school of . . . ?”

  Cal grabs the box, tapes it shut, and pushes it across the counter to me. He shakes his hair out of his eyes, beams at me, and says, “This is as normal as I get.”

  And maybe it’s because of this that I say yes when he offers to show me his new school.

  JUNE 24

  Cal

  58 DAYS TILL SCHOOL STARTS!

  At the fence surrounding the building, we come to a hard stop. It’s early afternoon. Warm. Below us: faded basketball-court lines, rusty hoops, puddles that’ve been breeding mosquitoes since the Paleolithic era.

  “This is the ‘school of hard knocks’?” Jeanne Ann laughs pretty hard. “This is just a public school, Cal.” She has a nice laugh. “It’s paaaaradiiiise.” She stretches the word. “Look over there—a dark corner where you’ll soon be mugged for your milk money. Ha!”

  I’m glad she’s having fun at my expense, but being here is making me queasy. It seemed like a good idea a half hour ago. This is what Mom wants for me? “I think I smell blood,” I say.

  It’s only three blocks from home, but Jeanne Ann and I took twenty minutes to climb the hill, me dragging my feet the whole way.

  A banner hangs over the front entrance of the building:

  58 DAYS TILL SCHOOL STARTS!

  Marina Pacific Middle School Mixer

  June 30, 4–6 p.m.

  Meet teachers and future B.F.F.’s.

  Return for tours and registration: July 5, 1–5 p.m.

  “That’s soon,” I say. I take a deep breath. “We can go together.” I cut my eyes to her.

  Jeanne Ann punches me in the arm.

  “Warming you up for seventh grade,” she says with a grim smile.

  “This is terrible.”

  “Nah. You just need a book and an angry resting face,” she says. “You’ll be fine.” She smiles for real. “‘School of hard knocks.’” She bursts out laughing again. It really is a great laugh.

  But I feel my guts drop to my knees. At Point Academy, I spent recess in a flower garden, drawing. When it rained, the principal piped big-band numbers through the school PA and taught us to swing dance.

  “See that corner over there,” she says, “where the two buildings meet, near the shrub, sorta by the window? That’s where I’d stash myself at recess and lunch, if I were you. Avoid the foot traffic. Gets some radiant heat from the building in winter. Shade in summer. Invisible except from up here.”

  “You found that spot fast.”

  “A lifetime of scouting for the best place to read in a crowd.” She smiles but has her arms crossed now, hands tucked tight in her armpits.

  “You’ll do great here,” I say.

  “I won’t be here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you need an address to go to school, Cal, and I don’t have one.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.

  I glance at her profile, her royal chin. “But you would want to go here if you could?”

  She brings her shoulder to her ear like, I could take it or leave it. I don’t believe that for a second.

  “We could read together at lunch,” I say, eyes on the yard again.

  She turns her back and falls against the fence, making it rattle, and stares across the street.

  “Or I could draw, and you could read,” I continue, speeding up. “We’ll have a book club. I’ll draw my book critiques. You can write yours.”

  She pushes her heel into the fence. She’s squinting at me through one eye.

  “Dune. That’ll be our first lunchtime book pick,” I say. I read it last year for school; I’ve sketched a ton of characters from it.

  She shakes her head. Then her chin drops and she stares at something near her feet that I can’t see. “Dune is pretty great,” she says, kicking at the invisible thing. “Survival against all odds.”

  I nod, pleased.

  “I sold it,” she says.

  JUNE 25

  Jeanne Ann

  Got job. 555-8990, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. $10/hr or $400 week. Less than minimum wage, but I won’t complain. Yet. Now, just need some time. —Mom

  P.S. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. And wash up. And please change clothes. We’ll do laundry with first proceeds.

  P.P.S. Your books? All of them? You didn’t need to do that. I wish you hadn’t done that.

  This is all I see of Mom for the next few days, scribbled on the back of a pink receipt, laid on a pillow that smells like unwashed hair. She’s gone before I wake up, home after dark. Just like Chicago . . . but totally different.

  Also, I don’t think she really has a job.

  Cal cranes for a view of the note over my shoulder. I crumple it up, shove it in a pocket, then reconsider and hand it to him. He keeps showing up. I don’t think it’s right, his nosiness, but he’s a minor aggravation compared to the rest of my aggravations.

  We’re sitting with our backs against the Carrot’s bum tire, knees bent, looking out to sea. It’s morning but the moon is still up, admiring itself in the bay’s big watery mirror. “The bay”—that’s what Cal calls it. The shed with the phantom bacon scent is on the edge of our sightline. The doors to it are open, and a woman has just exited carrying a shovel.

  “That’s good, right?” he says, handing the note back. After the farmers’ market, Mom told me she’d do “whatever it takes” to get us out of the van. It was what I wanted to hear, but if she’s not willing to sling falafel or “julienne” vegetables or roll out pie dough, what does “do whatever it takes” actually mean?

  “I wonder what restaurant it is,” he says.

  “It’s probably not a restaurant.”

  “How do you know? That’s what she is, right—a cook?”

  “So?” I wish he’d change the subject.

  He leans away like he’s read my thoughts, then unzips his backpack. He extracts a brown paper bag with a grease spot on the bottom and holds it out. “They’re still warm.”

  I peek. Donuts. Jeez. I feel a little bad now, ignoring his notes from earlier in the week. But sometimes he’s like waking up to too much sunlight.

  “And milk. Here.”

  “Are they from Greenery?” I ask.

  “These? No. These are made with lard.”

  I grab the bag and plunge my hand inside, clamp onto a donut. Is it possible for intestines to cry? I will never spend my book money on something this decadent.

  “You’re welcome,” he says, looking satisfied with himself. It’s annoying. We stare at the Golden Gate Bridge, the parts of it that aren’t hidden in a gray gauze of fog. Two of my neighbors—the ones always studying at the picnic tables—scoot by with matching caddies filled with soap, toothpaste, washcloths—a bathroom run. They’ve each brought a textbook along and are reading while they walk.

  I hold the donut in front of my face, inhale it, then slide it back into the bag. I can’t do it. I want to eat it. But . . . We have a full jar of peanut butter. And Sandy’s supplemental grub . . . And I did some figures this morning. If I take a spoonful of peanut butter at nine a.m., eleven a.m., two p.m., five p.m., and nine p.m., I can make a jar last for seven days. I don’t actually need Cal’s donuts.

  Cal watches me let go of the donut but doesn’t say anything.

  “These smell like Chicago.” I hold up the bag.

  “Yeah?”

  “My mom worked a swing shift on Saturdays and would bring home donuts on Sunday mornings. We’d eat them together. And then she’d go to bed.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Read. Solitaire. Library. Library. Library. Sometimes I’d sit on our stoop and watch people.”

  He follows my hand as I reach into the donut bag again.

  “You wa
nt to go back, don’t you?”

  I flick at a grain of donut sugar-dust. “Anything would be better than this.”

  We both scan the scene. Does he see what I see? The guy two vans down who dotes on his grocery cart, filled to the brim with tin cans and fastened with a bike lock to his cracked fender? Sandy refers to him as Mr. Rews—Retired Without Savings. Or the guy in the yellow raincoat, the Where’s Waldo? of the block, popping up from behind shrubs and waving hello, always to a person just behind me, who, when I turn to look, isn’t there. At the Chicago library we talked about people like this—like us now—all the time, how they smelled and what was safe to say or do around them. Most just wanted a place to sit, but some had that desperate edge, that destroyed look. Our orders were to “stand clear” of those people. They were unpredictable.

  Cal grabs the door handle above his head and pulls himself to standing. I’m left staring at his sandals; he’s wearing them with orange socks. I guess it’s better than all brown—or beige, as Cal insists. When I look up, he’s shaded his eyes and pressed them to our window.

  “Can I see inside?”

  Is this what the donuts were for—a bribe, so I’d give him a close-up of my pathetic home?

  “Would that satisfy your curiosity?” I say. It sounds mean. I want it to. Now I’m extra glad I didn’t taste the donuts.

  “No. Yes. It’s all right. Forget it.”

  I shrug and stalk around to the back. The closer we get to the doors, the more I don’t want to open them.

  Sandy exits his van just then, followed by the bandana lady and her buckets. They pass by without raising their heads, deep in conversation.

  The donut bag tears where I’m holding it too tightly. A donut falls out.

  They. Are. All. So. Infuriating. Sandy, who always seems to know where he’s going. Cal, who finds us all so interesting—I fling open our back doors.

  “Ow,” Cal says. “Ouuuuuuch.”

  “Crapinade.” The door handle has hit him on the chin on its bounce-back.