October 2009 Archives

Halloween had been my favorite holiday ever since I could remember. Even as a preschooler who lived and breathed games of pretend, I looked forward to Halloween, whose transformative properties didn't just allow me to play at Indiana Jones or mermaids or zombies, but to become them. At four I walked around as a hobo (which had proved a little more prophetic than I would have hoped), at five I donned a fedora and carried a miniature bullwhip, and at six I smeared flour and ketchup across my face and ripped my pajamas to go staggering around the neighborhood, to the delight of those children who could appreciate my antics.

This Halloween I hadn't a penny to my name, and no materials I could use to dress up as anything but a bum. I rather thought I was getting too old for it, anyway; there comes a point at which the adults who answer the door with their buckets of candy start looking at you skeptically, and then, a year or so later, questioning you: How old are you? What are you supposed to be, again? Their disbelief would ruin your escape, and I had no wish to see more of my illusions shattered.

There was no reason I couldn't enjoy the atmosphere, though, and I went for a walk in the dark. In truth tonight did not differ dramatically from any other evening in late October, but the arbitrary human invention of dates lent it a delicious festiveness that I was only too keen to enjoy.

I suspect that any major city participates in Halloween, but the extra-eclectic, free-spirit population here embraced the holiday perhaps a bit more enthusiastically. Of the adults who were on the street, a number of them were in elaborate costumes - witches, zombies, vampires, on their way to dinners and parties and bars. In the spirit of the holiday, I finished off my last, stolen Snickers - I would have to scrounge for more MUNI change in the morning - and walked up the street towards the Transamerica Building. The waxing gibbous moon hung punctured on top of it. On a half-full stomach, in the moonlit street, I was content. Maybe even happy. I stuck my hands in my pockets and continued to walk, sure that no one could harm me, unequivocally convinced of my own safety.

I was about to lose my innocence, however, in yet another way.

I did not find Costco that day, nor did I try for the rest of the week. Instead I haunted the Financial District, eating tuna and Spam sandwiches until I thought I might die for want of an vegetable; and then I found a Chinese grocery store that sold fruit and gorged myself on cheap bananas, a pound for a quarter, and crisp red apples, which were only a little dearer. 

If someone had asked, I would have been hard-pressed to explain exactly what was the matter, but it was this: My seconds-long taste of home was fresh in my mouth. Without noticing it, I had banished "home" to that place reserved for dreams and for memories whose authenticity can't be trusted. I had been here for a month, maybe (what day was it, again?), and the place I had grown up had become little more than part of a movie I might have seen, once. The very act of dialing the number I knew off by heart, and of hearing my mother's voice and her impatience, brought reality back. My children's games seemed so ridiculous in comparison.

Graham disappeared as thought he'd never been thought up, and I spent my time surviving. Clearly I couldn't afford the nicer things - showers at the YMCA, taking food for granted - and I spent my time innovating. Of particular use was watching the city wildlife. Its raccoons, its pigeons, its red-masked parakeets and its feral cats were all in the same situation as me, with the added benefit of not having to participate in human society - just adapt to it. I watched a pigeon bathe in a puddle and thought of it as I washed myself in the sink in the parking garage bathroom that night, and saw an opossum dig through the trash, an option I'd had filed in the back of my head for awhile. I didn't have the stomach to try it.

In many ways, I felt like the urban wildlife I'd seen, and I suppose that "feral" was a word that could be used to describe me. It was a word that could be used to describe my hair, as well, and the general state of my feet. The mornings were cold, and two, three, four pairs of socks sometimes weren't enough, but during the day I would go without any socks at all because they wore out too quickly on the rough pavement. My feet, on the other hand, were beginning to grow used to their freedom, and I developed irritating calluses on my toes that at first I picked at and then left alone when their use became apparent to me.  My hair was a bird's nest of tangles that I would pick out in the evening hours before the mirror, and was always a mess no matter what I did with it.

Of course, all this meant that my appearance was becoming more distinctive. On Friday afternoon I stood scratching my calf with a toenail, waiting for the elevator to arrive. I had noticed my shirt beginning to carry an odor and intended to visit the parking garage below, where I'd stashed my extra clothes. A woman called out just as the doors were closing, and I flung out an arm to push them open so she could be admitted.

It was the first time I had ever stolen anything. My heart pounded as I walked past the theft detectors, sure that I would be found out, arrested and sent to a juvenile prison. (It had not occurred to me that the very act of running away was sufficient grounds for a holiday at the California Youth Authority.) Despite the confidence of my imaginary companion, I was shaking with adrenalin that I couldn't afford to spend; when I crashed through the bushes to the sidewalk and was out of sight, I took off running, south down Market Street, and didn't stop until I was out of breath.

"You did good," he said.

I took one of the candy bars out of my pocket and peeled the wrapper back, but I replaced it before I could take a bite. I didn't want to deal with the karmic double-whammy of having my cake and eating it too - no pun intended - so I pretended like it wasn't there. Instead I sat down on a bench and enjoyed a few slices of bread all by themselves.

The trip back to Clay Street was a long one, and if I hadn't been down to my last dollar and change, I would have taken the MUNI back and saved my feet. As it was they were beginning to be sore, and not just fatigued - they felt raw and sensitive, though my soles were far too black to see any redness. I trudged on, consuming my groceries as I went, and spent the evening sitting on the stairs at the park while my friend lounged in a tree.

He had a name by the end of the evening.

No one ever called me pretty, not even my mother. Anyone who felt compelled to comment on my appearance always said that I had "an unconventional beauty," which, as I got older, I figured out was a polite way of saying that I was ugly, but at least had the good grace to be somewhat striking. I might be pretty, I'd often thought, if I just had dark eyelashes and covered up the freckles - they were everywhere - and maybe got some brown streaks in my hair, but there was nothing to balance out the monotone of my complexion. Even my eyes were light, hazel and dull. Plenty of people, curiously, forgot my name, but none of them ever forgot my face.

That might have served me well were I a business professional, but since my freedom depended on staying anonymous, it made life difficult. Bumming quarters and dollar bills was not, I found, especially sustainable. It occurred to me that while there were hundreds of thousands of people in the city, it would only take a day or two for some of them to notice me out there, asking for change for the MUNI, every day, and how long before some good Samaritan or an annoyed shop owner called the police? And unless I had exceptionally good luck, taking a break wouldn't be an option. I considered going from corner to corner, counting on people to stay within a few blocks of their workplaces, but it still seemed too risky. It would have to be Plan B.

"Excuse me. Excuse me, ma'am."

I fell into step with a well-dressed woman who had just emerged from the Chevron Tower. She glanced at me, put her cell phone to her ear and looked away pointedly. I slowed down and watched her walk on, and then picked another victim on his way toward me.

"Excuse me, sir!" I had to jog to catch up. "Sir! My mom -" He kept walking, taking great long strides, briefcase in hand. Frustrated, affronted, I stopped. I had been at it for the better part of an hour and had had limited success - fifty cents, seventy-five cents in change. My first donation had been a dollar, enough to buy a cheeseburger at the McDonald's up the street, and I had waited in line impatiently, given the crumpled bill to the woman behind the counter and eaten the cheeseburger in three bites. It had been my first meal in three days, but it wasn't enough.

After I'd left the laundromat on Tuesday, I went to the park and sat down to wait for Bill. I hadn't forgiven his crime of imperfection, but he was the closest thing to a friend I had, and I thought that maybe he would feel sorry for me, and take care of me. I sat in a corner of the high concrete platform and tried to savor the post-crying calm.

I had a mess to think myself out of, and it was a tough one. There was food everywhere in the city; the problem was how to get to it. You had to be nicely dressed, or have money or be able to pass for a member of a group somewhere, and I was just a teenager in jeans and a shirt, with wet socks and a black garbage bag of damp clothes. I couldn't be someone else if I tried. I started to cry again, but pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and shut my eyes until the feeling passed.

Turning my thoughts to happier things wasn't easy. I kept drifting back to the horrible injustice of it all. It wasn't fair. I had taken the initiative and left; I had planned for weeks, I wasn't a kid, for God's sake, I could take care of myself. Except this incident proved, clearly, that I could not. I dragged the garbage bag into my lap and hugged it.

I sat for hours, but Bill never came. By this time it had been almost a day since I'd eaten, and no sign of food in sight. I walked around the streets, trailing my garbage bag, looking down on the ground for dropped pennies, until it was safe to go back to the garage.

Monday ended with a sigh, and when it was getting close to midnight by the clock tower, I stopped looking for a phone, and turned around and went back to the garage on Clay Street, over the rough cobblestones and past the newsstands. Just in case, I stopped and bought another paper to look over before I turned in. I wasn't in it.

My anticipation of what would happen when I found a telephone kept me awake for most of the night. I made up fanciful scenarios: She would cry, of course, and somehow she'd get me money for a bus ticket and I would come home. Or she would shout at me and tell me how stupid I'd been and how much she missed me. Or how sorry she was. Her remorse was far from certain, however, and I couldn't keep myself from exploring the possibility that she would say no. Maybe I had ruined whatever chance I'd had to live in a somewhat normal household and graduate high school and go on to college.

I don't know what time I fell asleep. I woke late, to the sound of cars entering the garage, and quickly gathered my things and left my corner. A man saw me leaving and we met eyes. I couldn't read his expression, but I stared at him, unblinking, until he looked away.

I had counted on hunger and cold and sleepless nights to some extent, but I hadn't considered loneliness. In some small part I was used to it. I didn't know how to relate to the other kids at school; they just seemed so childish, with their projects and their pretend games, and I would stand off to the side, wondering how a tree branch could ever be a horse and why you would want to ride one, anyway. I was forever playing the wrong way. Being a loner all my life had somewhat steeled me against the solitude of homelessness, but late at night, I couldn't help feeling that some indistinct and cavernous hole had suddenly opened up in my life.

At the time I would have been hard-pressed to say what that hole was, but like the human body has a way of craving the nutrients it needs to sustain itself, so does the human psyche. And so I started looking.

I found Bill in the back of Ferry Park the next day, sitting on the steps leading up to the catwalk that crossed Davis Street. He was eating a sandwich from a brown paper bag. I stood watching him for a few minutes, hesitant to approach him; the events of last Tuesday evening were still fresh in my mind and I didn't know how I felt about him. The attraction of some company proved stronger, though, and in the end I walked up to him.

"Bill," I said.

I didn't see Bill for a few days, and that suited me fine. I was done with people like him, though I couldn't help wondering what had happened. Probably the same old sob story, I thought, and gave a little involuntary shudder of revulsion. What must it feel like to have no hope?

I hadn't thought to buy a coffee on my way - the building was no more than two minutes' walk from where I slept each night - and I didn't dare leave my post in case I missed my chance to make a few dollars. I would have welcomed something to warm my hands and my stomach.

This early there was almost no one present. A van had pulled up earlier and parked, and three people had gotten out to unload it, so quickly and efficiently that I didn't have time to offer my services. I was after the dumpy woman anyway, the one who had shown me the herbs. I admit that my interest wasn't entirely culinary; I figured I could support myself on a few five-dollar jobs a week (though I hadn't had the discipline to put this into practice), and what better place to start than the one I had already identified?

Her van rolled up at a quarter after seven. By the time she got out I was waiting at the back doors. She studied me with an expression I couldn't read and then opened them wide. Next to the vegetables were five or six big plastic tables - the components of her stand, I realized - and without speaking to me she pulled one of them out and unfolded the legs. I grabbed the side of another and pulled without success. We quickly settled into an assembly line of sorts: She removed the tables, I set them up in an U shape, and when we were done we began to work on the boxes of food, I removing them, and she arranging them in an aesthetically-pleasing manner on the table. "The scale," she said shortly, and I found it and brought it.

The five dollars was gone within days, though I tried to be careful with it. I hadn't yet developed a solid understanding of budgeting, or of how to stretch a dollar; I attempted to buy cheap food, and make it last, but when cheap food means candy bars, it has a way of disappearing more quickly than you intend. At that point, I hadn't suffered real hunger - that would come later - so the hunger pangs were nothing but an inconvenience to be suffered. I knew where my next meal was coming from. And the wad of cash in my sock grew ever lighter.

But like most people under the age of thirty, I saw the future as some indistinct, far-off point that I would get to eventually, and I didn't feel any real pressure to plan the way. I had time. The money wouldn't really run out, and if it did, I'd have acquired the knowledge necessary to obtain more of it. It was that simple. I wandered around the city during the day and slept in the parking garage at night, and slid slowly toward indigence.

Years later, I read that people in 17th-century Europe would go a month or more without bathing, and I couldn't understand how they could stand it. Eleven days and I was swimming in my own filth, unwilling to touch my hair or my body, unable to stick my nose beneath my jacket at night to keep warm. I was filthy. The baths in the toilet at Starbucks - which I was still frequenting despite having moved several blocks away - weren't doing enough, and the people on the morning shift, I thought, were beginning to suspect what was really going on. I was going to lose even that.

Early on Saturday morning I turned down a new street and by chance, I noticed four unobtrusive, elegant letters on a black awning jutting from a brick building: YMCA.

I stared at it. And then I went in.

Abandonment was every teenager's guilty fantasy, one I had suffered in a fit of self-righteous anger on several occasions, but I didn't know what to do with the real thing. It hurt more than I thought it would, but I couldn't figure out why this upset me more than the myriad other things that had happened that made it seem like nothing more than a footnote. So I shoved it aside. I had a city to explore and my own survival to attend to, and that was more important than a fact of life that I couldn't change.

After a few days I thought I had my footing in this strange new city. The nights were still scary and hopeless, but I developed a schedule and established haunts - if, by day four, they could be described as such. In the morning I dozed, shivering, beneath my coat until I absolutely had to get up, and then I went to Starbucks and bought myself breakfast, and I used their bathroom to clean up. On Thursday, fed up with smelling myself and feeling like I couldn't stand it any longer, I choked down my disgust and used paper towels and water from a toilet to rub myself clean. It didn't work very well, but I was able to at least pass a whiff test, and fancied that I looked something like a normal teenager with poor hygiene who was in the city, perhaps, for a school trip. I applied deodorant and then brushed my teeth in the sink and roamed the streets until lunch, and then again until dinner, and bedded down in my spot in the alley. Out of shame and distrust I avoided speaking to other people, choosing instead to be anonymous, some kid on the way home from school or truant on the streets. I felt invisible.

I liked it.

I sat on the steps and hugged my backpack until I saw the full moon rise in the empty space between two buildings across the street. The heaviness in my chest evoked memories of sitting for tests and not having studied, of having forgotten important appointments, of being expected to pull answers out of thin air, things that I should know but didn't. The only difference was that there was more at stake tonight. I didn't have enough imagination to come up with appropriately horrifying scenarios, but the monster is always scarier when you don't know what it looks like.

Maybe it looks like getting picked up by the cops, I thought, and that wasn't so terrifying as it had been when I was on the road. At least if I was arrested for being a runaway I would have someplace safe to sleep.

No ideas had come to me. I would have to get up and keep looking, or else wander around until morning, and I had a realistic idea of my ability to stay awake for another twelve hours. I walked back the way I'd come.

It was easier, in a way, with the streets empty. I would not have been able to turn over and fall asleep midday, but places I had rejected earlier suddenly didn't seem quite so exposed; they had fallen into shadow, but they weren't well-hidden enough for my comfort. I noticed that a few of them were now taken, and reasoned that it would have been a bad choice anyway - if I weren't evicted by their regular occupant, I would be easily spotted and woken by the police, who would see a smaller body than normal.

After another three hours I was near tears with frustration. What had I been thinking? Would it have killed me to stay at home for another four years? Or done some research? I wondered how much youth hostels cost here, but my generous reserve of cash seemed inadequate when considered with regard to lodging; it would buy me maybe a week of sleep, I thought, and that was if no one asked questions. And I didn't know where to find one, anyway. I stopped inside the mouth of a well-lit alley to sit and rest and rub my eyes. They felt red with exhaustion and all I wanted was to close them for a little while.

Farther down the alley, maybe another twenty feet, was a door with no outside handle or lock. It opened inward, and a man, maybe in his 20s, stepped out with two big black garbage bags, which he hurled into a blue dumpster that sat against the opposite wall. On his way back in he spotted me, and I looked away quickly, sure that he was aware of my predicament. But he stepped inside and the door closed behind him, and mercifully, the light went out.

At first, it's easy. It's nothing more than the idea that maybe you can do something about your situation, and you begin turning it over in your head, massaging it, pinching it, pulling it until it begins to take shape. Instead of taking notes in your tenth grade math class, you make a list of what you'll need: Deodorant, toothpaste, changes of underwear, warm clothes. You save and buy yourself a new backpack, a pretty red one, because this one has seen better years - eight of them, in fact - and instead of taking it to school with you, you hide it under your bed. And you begin to fill it.

All the while you tell yourself that it's nothing more than a flight of fancy, but you are building yourself a door, and knowing that you can turn the knob and step out of it if you need to makes your home life easier to bear. You don't know where that door leads. It doesn't matter.

You are in the drug store one evening buying the last of what you'll need to make your escape: a handful of Snickers bars and a jar of peanuts, just in case. Plus some disposable razors. You stand in line and your eyes fall on a rack of postcards that, like most drugstore postcard racks, is occupied by several postcards that have nothing to do with where you are. One of them in particular catches your eye, and you buy that, too.

When you get home, your mother is asleep on the couch. You go into her bedroom and find her purse. She's gotten paid recently; you've been checking without success every night for a week, but tonight you come up with a handful of twenties. God only knows what she's using them for - the rent or something. You shove them in your pocket without counting them, but you think there's maybe two or three hundred dollars in there. She owes you that much, at least.

You get your backpack, the new red one, and you tiptoe out to the living room. You could stop to pull a blanket over your mother but you don't. You just stand there looking at her for a minute, and then you pull the door open and you walk away.