by Lucia Berlin
Just before light the man and an old woman came in and started to boil water for oatmeal. She let me help her, pointed to sugar and napkins to put in the middle of the lined-up tables.
We all had oatmeal and milk for breakfast. The women looked really bad off, crazy or drunk some of them. Homeless and dirty. We all waited in line to take a shower, by the time it was Jesus and me the water was cold and just one little towel. Then me and Jesus were homeless too. During the day the space was a nursery for children. We could come back at night for soup and a bed. The man was nice. He let me leave my bolsa there so I just took some diapers. I spent the day walking around Eastmont Mall. I went to a park but then I was scared because men came up to me. I walked and walked and the baby was heavy. The second day the little one who had been slapping me showed me or somehow I understood her that you can ride all day on the buses, getting transfers. So I did that because he was too heavy and this way I could sit down and look around or sleep when Jesus did because at night I didn’t sleep. One day I saw where La Clinica was. I decided the next day I’d go there and find somebody there to help me. So I felt better.
The next day though, Jesus started to cry in a different way, like barking. I looked at his hernia and it was pooched way out and hard. I got on the bus right away but still it was long, the bus then BART then another bus. I thought the doctor’s was closed but the nurse was there, she took us to the hospital. We waited a long time but they finally took him to surgery. They said they’d keep him for the night, put me on a cot next to a little box for him. They gave me a ticket to go and eat in the cafeteria. I got a sandwich and a Coke and ice cream, some cookies and fruit for later but I fell asleep it was so good not to be on the floor. When I woke the nurse was there. Jesus was all clean and wrapped in a blue blanket.
“He’s hungry!” she smiled. “We didn’t wake you when he got out of surgery. Everything went fine.”
“Thank you.” Oh, thank God! He was fine! While I fed him I cried and prayed.
“No reason to cry now,” she said. She had brought me a tray with coffee and juice and cereal.
Dr. Fritz came in, not the doctor that did the surgery, the first doctor. He looked at Jesus and nodded, smiled at me, looked over his chart. He lifted the baby’s shirt. There was still a scrape and a bruise on his shoulder. The nurse asked me about it. I told her it had been the kids where I was staying, that I didn’t live there no more.
“He wants you to know that if he sees any more bruises he is going to call CPS. Those are people who might take your baby, or maybe they will just want you to talk to somebody.”
I nodded. I wanted to tell her that I needed to talk to somebody.
* * *
We have had some busy days. Both Dr. Adeiko and Dr. McGee were on vacation so the other doctors were really busy. Several Gypsy patients, which always means the whole family, cousins, uncles, everybody comes. It always makes me laugh (not really laugh, since he doesn’t like any joking or unprofessional behavior), because one thing Dr. Fritz always does when he comes into the room is politely greet the parent, “Good morning.” Or if it’s both, he’ll nod at each and say, “Good morning. Good morning.” And with Gypsy families I suffer not laughing when he squeezes into the room and says, “Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning,” etc. He and Dr. Wilson seem to get a lot of hypospadias babies, which is when male babies have holes on the side of their penises, sometimes several so that when they pee it’s like a sprinkler. Anyway, one Gypsy baby called Rocky Stereo had it but Dr. Fritz fixed it. The whole family, about a dozen adults and some children, had come for the post-op and were all shaking his hand. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Worse than his good mornings! It was sweet and funny and I started to say something later, but he glared. He never discusses patients. None of them do, actually. Except Dr. Rook, but only rarely.
I don’t even know the original diagnosis for Reina. She is fourteen now. She comes in with her mother, two sisters, and a brother. They push her in a huge stroller-wheelchair her father made. The sisters are twelve and fifteen, the boy is eight, all beautiful children, lively and funny. When I get in the room they have her propped on the exam table. She is naked. Except for the feeding button her body is flawless, satin smooth. Her breasts have grown. You can’t see the hooflike growth she has instead of teeth, her exquisite lips are parted and bright red. Emerald green eyes with long black lashes. Her sisters have given her a shaggy punk cut, a ruby stud in her nose, painted a butterfly tattoo on her thigh. Elena is polishing her toenails while Tony arranges her arms behind her head. He is the strongest, the one who helps me hold her upper torso while her sisters hold her legs. But right now she lies there like Manet’s Olympia, breathtakingly pure and lovely. Dr. Rook stops short like I did, just to look at her. “God, she is beautiful,” she says.
“When did she start to menstruate?” she asks.
I hadn’t noticed the Tampax string among the jet-black silken hairs. The mother says it is her first time. Without irony she says,
“She is a woman now.”
She is in danger now, I think.
“Okay, hold her down,” Dr. Rook says. The mother grabs her waist, the girls her legs, Tony and I hold her arms. She fights violently against us but Dr. Rook at last gets the old button out and puts in a new one.
She was the last patient of the day. I’m cleaning the room, putting fresh paper on the table when Dr. Rook comes back in. She says, “I’m so grateful for my Nicholas.”
I smile and say, “And I for my Nicholas.” She’s talking about her six-month-old baby, I’m talking about my six-year-old grandson.
“Good night,” we say and then she goes over to the hospital.
I go home and make a sandwich, turn on an A’s game. Dave Stewart pitching against Nolan Ryan. It has gone into ten innings when the phone rings. Dr. Fritz. He’s at the ER, wants me to come. “What is it?”
“Amelia, remember her? There are people who can speak Spanish, but I want you to talk to her.”
Amelia was in the doctor’s room at the ER. She had been sedated, stared even more blankly than usual. And the baby? He leads me to a bed behind a curtain.
Jesus is dead. His neck was broken. There are bruises on his arms. The police are on the way, but Dr. Fritz wants me to talk to her calmly first, see if I can find out what happened.
“Amelia? Remember me?”
“Sí. Cómo no? How are you? Can I see him, mijito Jesus?”
“In a minute. First I need for you to tell me what happened.”
It took a while to figure out that she had been riding around on buses in the daytime, spending the nights in a homeless shelter. When she got there tonight two of the younger women took all her money from where she had it pinned inside her clothes. They hit her and kicked her, then left. The man who runs the place didn’t understand Spanish and didn’t know what she was saying. He kept telling her to be quiet, put his fingers up to his mouth to tell her to be quiet, to keep the baby quiet. Then later the women came back. They were drunk and it was dark and other people were trying to sleep, but Jesus kept crying. Amelia had no money at all now and didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t think. The two women came. One slapped her and the other one took Jesus, but Amelia grabbed him back. The man came and the women went to lie down. Jesus kept crying.
“I couldn’t think about what to do. I shook him to make him be quiet so I could think about what to do.”
I held her tiny hands in mine. “Was he crying when you shook him?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then he stopped crying.”
“Amelia. Do you know that Jesus is dead?”
“Yes, I know. Lo sé.” And then in English she said, “Fuck a duck. I’m sorry.”
502
502 was the clue for 1-Across in this morning’s Times. Easy. That’s the police code for Driving While Intoxicated, so I wrote in DWI. Wrong. I guess all those Connecticu
t commuters knew you were supposed to put in Roman numerals. I had a few moments of panic, as I always do when memories of my drinking days come up. But since I moved to Boulder I have learned to do deep breathing and meditation, which never fail to calm me.
I’m glad I got sober before I moved to Boulder. This is the first place I ever lived that didn’t have a liquor store on every corner. They don’t even sell alcohol in Safeway here and of course never on Sundays. They just have a few liquor stores mostly on the outskirts of town, so if you’re some poor wino with the shakes and it’s snowing, Lord have mercy. The liquor stores are gigantic Target-size nightmares. You could die from DTs just trying to find the Jim Beam aisle.
The best town is Albuquerque, where the liquor stores have drive-through windows, so you don’t even have to get out of your pajamas. They don’t sell on Sundays either though. So if I didn’t plan ahead there was always the problem of who in the world could I drop in on who wouldn’t offer a wine cooler.
Even though I had been sober for years before I moved here I had trouble at first. Whenever I looked in the rearview mirror I’d go “Oh no,” but it was just the ski racks everybody has on their cars. I have never actually even seen a police car in pursuit or seen anyone being arrested. I have seen policemen in shorts at the mall, eating Ben & Jerry’s frozen yogurt, and a SWAT team in a pickup truck. Six men in camouflage with big tranquilizer rifles, chasing a baby bear down the middle of Mapleton.
This must be the healthiest town in the country. There is no drinking at frat parties or football games. No one smokes or eats red meat or glazed doughnuts. You can walk alone at night, leave your doors unlocked. There are no gangs here and no racism. There aren’t many races, actually.
That dumb 502. All these memories came flooding into my head, in spite of the breathing. The first day of my job at U——, the Safeway problem, the incident at San Anselmo, the scene with A——.
Everything is fine now. I love my job and the people I work with. I have good friends. I live in a beautiful apartment just beneath Mount Sanitas. Today a western tanager sat on a branch in my backyard. My cat Cosmo was asleep in the sun so he didn’t chase it. I am deeply grateful for my life today.
So God forgive me if I confess that once in a while I get a diabolical urge to, well, mess it all up. I can’t believe I’d even have this thought, after all those years of misery. Officer Wong either taking me to jail or to detox.
The Polite One, we all called Wong. We called all the other ones pigs, which would never have applied to Officer Wong, who was very nice, really. Methodical and formal. There were never any of the usual physical interchanges between you and him like with the others. He never slammed you against the car or twisted the cuffs into your wrist. You stood there for hours as he painstakingly wrote up his ticket and read you your rights. When he cuffed you he said, “Permit me,” and “Watch your head” when you got into the car.
He was diligent and honest, an exceptional member of the Oakland police force. We were lucky to have him in our neighborhood. I am really sorry now about that one incident. One of the steps of AA is to make amends with people you have wronged. I think I have made most of the amends I could. I owe Officer Wong one. I wronged Wong for sure.
Back then I lived in Oakland, in that big turquoise apartment on the corner of Alcatraz and Telegraph. Right above Alcatel Liquors, just down from the White Horse, across the street from the 7-Eleven. Good location.
The 7-Eleven was sort of a gathering place for old winos. Although, unlike them, I went to work every day, they ran into me in liquor stores on weekends. Lines at the Black and White that opened at six a.m. Late-night haggling with the Pakistani sadist who worked at the 7-Eleven.
They were all friendly with me. “How ya been, Miss Lu?” Sometimes they asked me for money, which I always gave them, and several times when I had lost my job, I asked them. The group of them changed as they went to jails, hospitals, death. The regulars were Ace, Mo, Little Ripple, and The Champ. These four old black guys would spend their mornings at the 7-Eleven and their afternoons snoozing or drinking in a faded aqua Chevrolet Corvair parked in Ace’s yard. His wife Clara wouldn’t let them smoke or drink in the house. Winter and summer, rain or shine, the four would be in that car. Sleeping like little kids on car trips, heads on folded hands, or looking straight ahead as if they were on a Sunday drive, commenting on everybody who drove or walked by, passing around a bottle of port.
When I’d come up the street from the bus stop I’d holler out, “How’s it going?” “Jes’ fine!” Mo would say. “I got my wine!” And Ace would say, “I feel so well, got my muscatel!” They’d ask about my boss, that fool Dr. B.
“Just quit that ol’ job! Get yourself on SSI where you belong! You come sit with us, sister, pass the time in comfort, don’t need no job!”
Once Mo said I didn’t look so good, maybe I needed detox.
“Detox?” The Champ scoffed. “Never detox. Retox! That’s the ticket!”
The Champ was short and fat, wore a shiny blue suit, a clean white shirt, and a porkpie hat. He had a gold watch with a chain and he always had a cigar. The other three all wore plaid shirts, overalls, and A’s baseball hats.
One Friday I didn’t go to work. I must have been drinking the night before. I don’t know where I had gone in the morning, but I remember coming back and that I had a bottle of Jim Beam. I parked my car behind a van across the street from my building. I went upstairs and fell asleep. I woke to loud knocking on my door.
“Open your door, Ms. Moran. This is Officer Wong.”
I stashed the bottle in the bookcase and opened the door. “Hello, Officer Wong. How can I help you?”
“Do you own a Mazda 626?”
“You know I do, sir.”
“Where is that car, Ms. Moran?”
“Well, it’s not in here.”
“Where did you park the vehicle?”
“Up across from the church.” I couldn’t remember.
“Think again.”
“I can’t remember.”
“Look out the window. What do you see?”
“Nothing. The 7-Eleven. Telephones. Gas tanks.”
“Any parking places?”
“Yeah. Amazing. Two of them! Oh. I parked it there, behind a van.”
“You left the car in neutral, without the parking brake on. When the van left, your vehicle followed it down Alcatraz during rush-hour traffic, proceeded to cross into the other lane, narrowly missing cars, and sped down the sidewalk, almost harming a man, his wife, and a baby in a stroller.”
“Well. Then what?”
“I’m taking you to see then what. Come along.”
“I’ll be right out. I want to wash my face.”
“I’ll stay right here.”
“Please. Some privacy, sir. Wait outside the door.”
I took a big drink of whiskey. Brushed my teeth and combed my hair.
We walked silently down the street. Two long blocks. Damn.
“If you think about it, it’s pretty miraculous that my Mazda didn’t hit anything or hurt anybody. Don’t you think so, Officer Wong? A miracle!”
“Well, it did hit something. It is a miracle that none of the gentlemen were in the car at the time. They got out to watch your Mazda coming down the street.”
My car was nuzzled into the right fender of the Chevy Corvair. The four men were standing there, shaking their heads. Champ puffed on his cigar.
“Thank the Lord you wasn’t in it, sister,” Mo said. “First thing I did, I opened the door and said, ‘Where she be?’”
There was a big dent in the fender and the door of the Chevrolet. My car had a broken bumper and headlight, broken turn-signal light.
Ace was still shaking his head. “Hope you got insurance, Miz Lucille. I got me one classic car here what has some serious damage.”
“Don’t worry, Ace. I got insurance. You bring me an estimate as soon as you can.”
The Champ spoke to the others quie
tly. They tried not to smile but it didn’t work. Ace said, “Just sittin’ here minding our own business and look what happens! Praise the Lord!”
Officer Wong was writing down my license plate numbers and Ace’s license plate numbers.
“Does that car have a motor in it?” he asked Ace.
“This here car is a museum piece. Vintage model. Don’t need no motor.”
“Well, guess I’ll try to back out of here without running into anybody,” I said.
“Not so fast, Ms. Moran,” Officer Wong said. “I need to write up a citation.”
“A citation? Shame on you, Officer!”
“You can’t be writing this lady no ticket. She was asleep at the time of the incident!”
The old guys were crowding around him, making him nervous.
“Well,” he sputtered, “she’s guilty of reckless … reckless…”
“Can’t be reckless driving. She wasn’t driving the car!”
He was trying to think. They were muttering and grumbling. “Shame. Shameful. Innocent taxpayers. Poor thing, on her own and all.”
“I definitely smell alcohol,” Officer Wong said.
“That’s me!” all four of them said at once, exhaling.
“No sir,” Champ said. “If you ain’t doing the D you can’t get the DWI!”
“That’s the truth!”
“Sure enough.”
Officer Wong looked at us with a very discouraged expression. The police radio began squawking. He quickly put his pad into his pocket, turned, and hurried to the squad car, took off with lights and siren.
The insurance check came very soon, sent to me but written out to Horatio Turner. The four men were sitting in the car when I handed the check to Ace. Fifteen hundred dollars.