Can't Get There from Here (3 page)

Tears’s eyes went wide. “Stepfather. How did you know?”

“Happens all the time. So what’d he do? Start beating you?”

Tears shook her head. “He touched me. Mom would go to work and he put his hands inside my clothes. Said if I told her he’d say I asked him to do it.”

“So you left?”

Tears’s eyes got watery. “One day when Brent wasn’t around I told her what he was doing. She didn’t believe me. Said if it was true then I musta wanted him to do it. Then she called me a lot of names. I couldn’t believe it.”

“So you ran away?”

Tears shook her head again. The tears left streaks on her face. “I was scared. Didn’t know where to go so I stayed. Only then it got worse. I guess Brent found out I told my mom and that she didn’t believe me. So then he figured he could do anything he wanted. That’s when I left.”

“No aunts or uncles?” Rainbow asked.

“I got grandparents.”

“Where?”

“In Hundred. But my grandpa got this disease. I think it’s called Harkinson’s or something. Makes him shake all over. So he can’t feed himself or get dressed. My grandma has to take care of him. I asked my mom if I could go live with them, but she said no, they already got enough problems without me around.”

A boxy white truck pulled up. It had a picture of a fish on the side. The driver got out. He had a beard, but he wasn’t old. He was thin and wore a red baseball cap, a blue plaid shirt, jeans, and scuffed brown cowboy boots.

“Spare some change?” I asked as he crossed the sidewalk toward the Good Life.

He stopped and stared at me. People always stared the first time they saw me. “Why? So you can buy dope?”

I shook my head. “No, sir. Coffee and doughnuts.”

He raised an eyebrow and went into the deli.

“My ears hurt it’s so cold. Can’t we go somewhere?” Tears put her hands over her ears to warm them.

“Where?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe we could find an unlocked car.”

“No way,” I warned her. “They find you in their car, they beat the crap out of you.”

“Then what about—”

“Hush,” I said, sensing something.

“What?”

“Someone’s coming,” I said.

Tears looked down the sidewalk. Except for the streetlights it was dark and empty. “Where?”

If you lived on the street long enough you could sense things in the night before you saw them. A moment later a man appeared down the sidewalk. The leather soles of his shoes scraped lightly against the ground. He was wearing a long dark coat. His slacks were pressed to a sharp crease and his black hair was combed neatly back. Could have been just another person out late at night, but he wasn’t. That’s what you sensed. When they were looking for something.

He stopped in front of us and his eyes fixed on 2Moro. She pushed herself away from the wall, and crushed her cigarette with the toe of her shoe. The man started to walk back the way he came, and she followed him into the dark not saying good-bye to us.

“I’m never gonna do that,” Tears said. “Don’t care how cold or hungry I get.”

A siren wailed somewhere in the dark. In a building across the street, a light went on. Through the window I watched a bald man in a blue bathrobe pull open a refrigerator door and look inside.

“So what about you?” Tears asked me. “What are you doing here?”

“My mom told me to go.”

“Why?”

“She drank up all the food money. I was the oldest and she said she couldn’t afford to keep me around anymore. Said I was the biggest so I had to go.” It was worse than that. Way worse. But I didn’t like to talk about it because then I had to remember.

“How come your skin’s like that?” Tears asked.

My skin was a blotchy patchwork of dark and light color, like a dog with a brown and white face. A doctor told my mom it wasn’t a disease; it was a “condition.” The color in your skin is called pigment, and the pigment in my skin is light brown. But I also have big patches where there’s no pigment and the skin is whitish pink. If you think hard you might remember once seeing someone who looked like me.

“It’s just the way I was born,” I said.

“Did you get into trouble a lot?” Tears asked next.

“Where?”

“With your mom.”

“I tried to be good, but she was always mad at me anyway. Said I forgot to do this or I shouldn’t have done that. She wanted me to take care of the little ones. Feed ’em and clean ’em and stuff.”

“Didn’t you go to school?”

“I was supposed to, but most of the time we were too busy moving from one place to the next, and she needed me to stay home to look after the kids. You ever take care of little kids?”

Tears shook her head.

“It’s a pain. They don’t stay still or do what they’re told.”

“How many were there?” Tears asked.

“She got four besides me. All littler.”

“Do you miss them?”

“One or two. I’m the only one who’s all mixed up colors.” And the only one with a scar on her back from being burned with a hot iron.

The door to the Good Life swung open and the truck driver with the red baseball cap came out. He was carrying a gray cardboard tray with four white paper cups filled with coffee and a white paper bag of doughnuts neatly folded over at the top.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked, counting only Rainbow, Tears, and me.

“She had to go somewhere,” I answered.

“Well, here you go.” He handed me the tray and bag and turned toward the truck.

“That’s it?” I asked. “You don’t want anything in return?”

He stopped. “You gonna listen if I tell you to go home to your parents?”

Tears and me didn’t answer. The truck driver touched the brim of his cap. “I’ll look for you the next time I come by. That is, if any of you are still here.”

The building had dull sheets of metal
where the windows once were and a black metal door locked with a chain across it. Scaffolding rose up the front and a big blue Dumpster sat at the curb. During the day workmen were fixing it up. At night the building was empty. We stood in the rain while OG pulled a metal sheet off a window. It was dark inside and the steady downpour outside sounded like tambourines. We lit candles in a big room on the second floor. The air inside was damp and chilled, but at least we were dry. From other rooms we dragged in an old mattress, some broken chairs, and an upside-down pail to sit on. Here and there patches of yellow wallpaper clung to the walls, and Maggot covered them with black spray-painted signs of anarchy, a circle with a capital A inside, and his tag, CLASS WAR, in big black letters.

Rainbow lay on the mattress, wrapped in a tattered pink baby quilt she’d found in the garbage. The quilt had bunny rabbits on it, and white stuffing leaked out of rips. Rainbow’s eyes were closed. I sat on the corner of the mattress and watched a candle’s flickering light dance on her soft, pale skin. A few strands of blond hair fell across her eyes. Rainbow was the only kid I knew
whose blond hair was real. I thought she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.

In another corner, 2Moro and Jewel were on their knees in front of a big shard of broken mirror propped against the wall. Small bunches of candles on the floor provided light. It looked kind of religious. Like in a church. All together, the candles made enough light to cast huge, hulking shadows of 2Moro and Jewel against the far wall.

Under her patchwork jacket 2Moro was wearing a tight purple tank top, a short black leather skirt, fishnet stockings, and leather boots. Her bright red hair stood up straight. Next to her Jewel patted rouge onto his dark cheeks. He’d dyed his hair Manic Panic Purple and the highlights shined in the candlelight. He wore a long black leather coat and under it black pants and a white shirt.

“You finished with the eyeliner?” he asked 2Moro.

“Almost,” she answered.

“Don’t be a hog,” he said.

“Go put on lipstick,” 2Moro told him.

“First I want to wait to see how the eyeliner looks,” Jewel said.

“Then you gonna have to wait,” said 2Moro.

“Did you take your pills today?” he asked. Every day 2Moro was supposed to take eight pills for her HIV.

“Get lost.”

“The doctor at the clinic said if you don’t take those pills, it’s going to turn into AIDS.”

2Moro rolled her eyes and ignored him.

Jewel’s cell phone rang. He reached into his small black leather handbag and took it out. “Hello?” he answered in a singsong voice. “Oh, hi, Suzy. I’m home getting ready for tonight. What? She’s on TV right now? Oh, God, I’d love to see her, but my little brother’s watching and he’s such a monster. Another TV? Oh, sure, we’ve got lots of them, but you know, that means going to a whole other floor and this house is just too big. So you’ll tell me all about it when I see you at the club, okay? Great. Your number’s in my Palm Pilot, silly. See you later. Ciao!”

Jewel snapped the cell phone shut. He had no Palm Pilot. Or little brother. Or TV. Or house. No one knew where he got the cell phone. Maybe from some rich club kid who couldn’t be bothered to report it missing.

On the mattress Rainbow had opened her eyes and propped her head on her hand. The tattered sleeve of her leather jacket slid down to her elbow. Her forearm was covered with long thin scars and scabs where she’d cut herself. “Who was that you were lying to?” she asked with a yawn.

“Oh, look who came out of her trance,” Jewel said. “That was Suzy Herman, my new love.”

“How many TVs does
she
have?” Rainbow asked.

“Not just TVs, my dear. Houses. Her parents have an estate in Greenwich, a beach house in East Hampton, and a ski condo in Sun Bird.”

“It’s Snowbird, you dimwit,” Maggot muttered.

“Whatever,” Jewel replied with a huff. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but her father
owns
Vaseline.”

Everyone got quiet. Finally Rainbow said, “In a tube or a jar?”

“The company, you ninny,” Jewel said. “I mean, think about all the Vaseline in the world, and he owns it.”

“I guess that makes him a pretty slick businessman,” Maggot said, and laughed all by himself.

“You are such a bore, Maggot,” Jewel said.

“I’d rather be a bore than a tramp,” Maggot shot back.

“And so crude,” said Jewel. “Anyway, Suzy’s father gave her an apartment and a Mercedes. And, for your information, we are going to get married, and then I’m going to be rich, too.”

“Yeah, right. A white wedding. All the rich and famous invited,” OG grumbled from the corner where he was sitting in a broken chair, rolling a cigarette. I was surprised to hear his voice. It was the first time he spoke since Country Club died.

“What do
you
know?” Jewel stuck his nose in the air.

OG coughed and wheezed. “Look around the room, man. Look at who you’re with. You can’t get there from here.”

“
You
can’t because you’re a smelly, scuzzy crusty,” Jewel said. “
I
can get anywhere I want and be anyone I want.” He picked up a short blue skirt and held it against his hips, then wiggled suggestively. “I have class. We may not have beds but we wear fashionable
threads. Maybe I’ll be a Revlon cover girl.”

“Would Suzy want to marry a girl?” Tears asked.

“No,” answered Jewel. “I’ll be a boy for her.”

“And a cover girl for Revlon,” Maggot snickered.

Outside the rain began to soften. Suddenly we heard voices. Grown up voices. We went quiet and alert like rabbits prick up their ears and birds lift their heads when they sense danger.

“Blow out the candles,” OG whispered.

Jewel and 2Moro put out the candles. The room went dark. Now that the rain had slowed, we could hear the city sounds of car horns and the wheezing of air brakes on buses. We listened. There were bad people in the night. Creeps who liked to hurt kids and watch them suffer or bleed. Psychos who set drunks on fire and watched them burn. Weirdoes who knew that if they killed a homeless kid there was a good chance no one would ever know, and an even better chance that no one would care.

The voices we heard that night sounded official, like teachers or police. Through the doorway we saw the round spot of a flashlight beam strike the wall at the top of the stairs. The voices were clearer now. One was male, the other female.

“Smell the candles?”

“And spray paint. It’s fresh. Someone’s up here.”

“I think there’s a group of them.”

A second flashlight beam joined the first. They reached the second floor landing and the beams swept
into the room where we crouched in the dark. I counted two dark silhouettes in the doorway. Couldn’t see their faces, only that they were both about the same height.

The beams swept over Maggot and Rainbow and Jewel and 2Moro. Tears was hiding somewhere in the shadows or in another room. OG must have tried hard not to cough, because now that they’d found us, he went into a spasm of hacking. When the flashlight beam found me, it stayed longer than on the others, as if the person holding the light couldn’t quite tell what he was seeing. I shielded my eyes.

“What do you want?” Maggot asked.

“We want to give you a warm meal and a safe place to spend the night,” the female flashlight figure answered.

“What do you want in return?” Maggot asked.

“In return for what?” asked the male flashlight.

“Giving us food and a place to sleep.”

“Nothing,” answered the male flashlight figure.

“We’re from the Youth Housing Project,” added the female flashlight.

“That mean I can’t come?” asked OG.

“How old are you?” asked the male flashlight.

“Twenty-two,” OG answered.

“It’s only for kids eighteen and under,” said the female flashlight. “But we can take you to a shelter where you can get medical attention.”

A match burst into light, and 2Moro’s face brightened as she leaned toward the flame with a cigarette
between her lips. The tip glowed red as she inhaled and blew the match out with a stream of smoke. “Can I smoke there?”

“You can smoke outside the facility if you have to,” the female flashlight answered.

“Maybe I
want
to,” 2Moro said.

“Even though it’ll kill you?” the female flashlight asked.