Can't Get There from Here

  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.

  “I’m HIV positive, lady,” 2Moro shot back. “Plenty else gonna kill me before cigarettes.”

  “Can I drink there?” Maggot asked.

  “No drugs or alcohol allowed,” said the male flashlight. His voice was harsher now.

  “So there is something you want,” Maggot concluded. “You’ll give us food and a bed, but only if we live by your rules.”

  “It’s only fair,” said the female flashlight.

  “What’s fair about it?” 2Moro asked. “Who you to tell us how to live?”

  “Cigarettes and alcohol are bad for you,” said the female flashlight.

  “Look, I don’t really care if you want to smoke and drink,” the male flashlight added. “But if we allow that at the project, the state will take away our funding.”

  “So we have to live by the state’s rules?” Maggot said. “Javohl! Heil Hitler! We love you, Saddam. Raise your red flags, comrades! The state rules!”

  “We’re only looking out for your safety and welfare,” the female flashlight said. “The longer you stay on the street, the better the chance you’ll die before the age of thirty.”

  “Thirty?” Maggot laughed. “Forget it. I won’t live past eighteen.”

  “Do you know that every day fourteen children are buried in unmarked graves because no one knows who they are?” the woman asked. “Do you want to be one of them? You could die and no one would ever know. Your parents would never know. Do you really want that?”

  “Sounds okay to me,” said 2Moro.

  “Yeah,” agreed Maggot. “What makes you think our parents even care?”

  “Of course they do,” said the female flashlight.

  “Then why did my parents tell me to get out and never come back?” Jewel asked.

  “My mom don’t want me back,” added Rainbow. “Not unless I can get her drugs or money.”

  “Blaming your parents for your crappy lives isn’t going to help,” the male flashlight said. “You have to help yourselves. We’re offering the first step. We’ll get you off the street and cleaned up.”

  “And then what?” OG asked.

  “Then it’s nine to five,” Maggot said. “The status quo. God, Mom, apple pie, and the good old American capitalist patriarchal society.”

  “You’d rather stay here?” the female flashlight asked in disbelief.

  “Why not?” answered Rainbow. “If this is what it takes to be free and do what we want and come and go as we please without a bunch of goody-two-shoe grown-ups telling us what we can and ca
n’t do.”

  It got quiet. The sounds of the city crept back into the room. The man and woman lowered their flashlights so that the beams lit the floor. A crushed beer can here. An empty ramen noodle packet there. 2Moro puffed on her cigarette and the ember glowed red in the dim light.

  “Thanks for stopping by.” OG waved like he expected the flashlight people to give up and go away.

  “The temperature’s supposed to drop below freezing tonight and then down into the teens by the end of the week,” the male flashlight said. “It’s going to get awful cold in here.”

  “Thanks for the weather forecast,” said Maggot.

  “You’d really rather live like this?” the woman flashlight asked again.

  “Hey, remember that song about freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose?” OG asked, then went into another spasm of coughing.

  “You realize some of you may not be alive by this time next year?” the male flashlight asked.

  “Is that a promise?” Maggot asked.

  With a loud sigh, the male flashlight turned to the female. “Let’s go.”

  The female flashlight had one last thing to say. “I know it’s hard for you to talk to us with your friends around, but you can always come by yourself and they won’t know. Remember, it’s the Youth Housing Project on St. Marks Place.”

  The flashlights turned away and went back down the stairs. The room went dark. Then small flames burst on as 2Moro began to relight the candles.

  “Someday I’m going to live in a penthouse,” Jewel said. “And I’ll go find those two and invite them up for a drink.”

  FIVE

  It got colder. I saw a lady fall on the icy sidewalk. Coffee froze solid if you left it overnight in a cup. My stomach hurt. There was stuff at the drugstore to make it feel better, but it cost money. With a piece of cardboard from the garbage and a pen from the street I made a sign:

  MONY 4 EGS AN CRAONS

  I stood on the sidewalk outside the food store and showed the sign to the people who came out carrying bags of groceries, but they all stared at my face, then the sign, then frowned and kept walking. Jewel came by wearing a short black jacket and a tight black skirt and boots.

  “What’s that supposed to say, Maybe?” he asked.

  “Money for eggs and crayons.”

  Jewel laughed. “Oh, my dear, you are priceless! Do you have anything to write with?”

  I still had the pen I found. Jewel took it and changed my sign. “There. That’s better. Didn’t they teach you to spell in school?”

  “What school?” I asked.

  “You never went to school?”

  “Here and there, but never for long.”

  A man came out of the store carrying a white plastic shopping bag in each hand. He looked at me and my sign. “Eggs, huh?” He put down the bags and took out four eggs. Then a lady came out and gave me some, too.

  Now I needed crayons. I crossed out the eggs part of my sign and stood outside a store that sold newspapers and candy and postcards. A woman came out with two little kids. She had smooth blond hair and wore a long blue coat with brown fur at the collar and the ends of the sleeves. The kids were blond with matching pink barrettes in their hair. They wore matching denim jackets over matching white sweaters.

  One of the kids pointed at me. “Mommy, look.”

  The woman put her hands on their shoulders and tried to steer them away. “Come on, let’s go this way.”

  But the kids didn’t want to go.

  “What’s wrong with her face?” one asked.

  “What does she want?” asked the other.

  “Nothing,” the woman said. “I want you to come.”

  But the kids kept staring. “What does that say?”

  “I need crayons,” I said.

  The kids were so cute. Their mouths became circles. “We have crayons, Mommy!”

  “I want you to come right now,” the woman said sharply. “Do not talk to that person.”

  “Why?” asked one of the kids.

  “Just don’t!” The woman took each kid by the hand and yanked them away.

  I stayed outside the store until a man came out. He was wearing a white shirt and a brown tie, but no jacket. “Go away,” he said.

  “You don’t own the sidewalk,” I said. That was what Maggot always said when they told him to move.

  “You’re hurting my business,” he said. “Customers won’t come in with you standing here.”

  I shrugged like I didn’t care.

  The man went back into the store and came out with a small box of crayons. “Now go away.”

  That’s what I did.

  You have to color the eggs carefully. Crayons get hard when it’s cold, and if you press too much on the shells they break. It was getting dark when I finished coloring them. I went up to the movie theater near Central Park. At night in New York, people stand on lines to get in. They wait in the rain and snow and cold. They talk to their friends and drink coffee. I stood on the sidewalk near the line of people and started to juggle the eggs.

  When I was little, a man who liked my mom taught me to juggle. I don’t remember his name, just that he had brown skin and curly black hair. He said I was a good juggler for my age because I could keep four balls going at once. The people who ran the circus found out and sometimes they dressed me up like a clown and let me juggle in the circus. People would clap and laugh. They liked to see a little kid juggle. My mom liked it because she got extra money when I juggled. She liked me then.

  But I got older and they stopped letting me juggle. Mom said people who came to the circus expected a kid who was twelve to do better tricks than I could do. But it was different outside the movie theater. I didn’t have to be so good. I just had to get people to watch me.

  “I bet you’re wondering which egg will fall and break first,” I said when they were watching. “The red one? The blue? Maybe the yellow or the orange.”

  “Or maybe none of them,” someone in the line called back.

  “What if I do tricks?” I asked, tossing one of the eggs up and catching it behind my back while I juggled the other three in front of me.

  “One of them will probably break,” someone said.

  “Want to bet which one?” I asked.

  “Whichever one we bet on will be the one you let drop,” someone said.

  “Not if you don’t bet me,” I told them. “You bet each other. I just get one of the bets. The winner gets the other two.”

  “So you need four people to bet,” one of them realized. “One for each color.”

  “I’ll bet a dollar on red,” said a man smoking a cigar.

  “I’ll bet on yellow,” said a woman wearing a bright red ski jacket.

  “A dollar’s not much,” I said. “How about making it two?”

  “How do we know it’s not rigged?” asked the man with the cigar. “How do we know you’re not in cahoots with one of the bettors and you’ll split the winnings, too?”

  “Oh, sure, you all hang out with street urchins like me,” I said. Maggot told me to use the word urchin. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it made people laugh.

  “I know how we can tell if it’s rigged,” said the man with the cigar. “Only people who bought a movie ticket can bet. No one’s gonna spend ten bucks on a ticket so they can make four bucks on a bet, right?”

  “Good point,” said the woman in the red ski jacket. She and the man with the cigar held up their tickets. Two more people quickly joined the betting. I started doing harder tricks behind my back and under my leg. Finally, the yellow one broke. The woman in the red ski jacket won. Two of the bettors paid her. The man with the cigar paid me.

  “Let’s do it again,” he said. “This time for five bucks.”

  Except for him, the other bettors were new. I started juggling again with another yellow egg. I always brought two of each color.

  This time the red one broke. The man with the cigar won. Two of the bettors gave him five do
llars, but the man who was supposed to give five to me refused.

  “I think this is a scam,” he said to the man with the cigar. “It’s no coincidence that you suggested we up the bet to five bucks and that’s when you won.”

  “You really think I’m in cahoots with that kid?” The man with the cigar pointed at me.

  “I don’t know, but I’m not paying,” the other man said. The line began to move. People started going into the theater. The man who was supposed to pay me followed the line.

  “Would you give me one of the bets you won?” I asked the man with the cigar.

  “Sorry, kid,” he answered. “You said I’d get two of the bets. That’s what I got. What’s fair is fair.” He went into the theater.

  I still had enough eggs for one more bet so I waited for another line to form. Once again people took the bets. I dropped the last red one and made four dollars for the night.

  I snuck onto the subway back to St. Marks Place wondering if I had enough money for the stomach medicine. People passed in heavy coats and hats. Some even wore scarves. Up ahead a bunch of kids sat on a stoop under a light, smoking and talking. They were mostly wearing black clothes and had tattoos and piercings. I’d seen some of them around before and knew they were mean.

  I decided to cross the street, but then someone called out, “Hey, Maybe.” It was Rainbow. She was one of the kids sitting on the steps. “Come over here, okay?”

  The other kids gave me mean smiles but I went over. A boy with a pointy orange Mohawk muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t hear. The other kids laughed.

  “Where you coming from?” Rainbow asked when I got close. She was chewing gum.

  “The movies.”

  “Oh, yeah, what’d you see?” asked the boy with the orange Mohawk.

  “Nothing. I was juggling.”

  “Maybe does this thing with colored eggs.” Rainbow told the group how I got people to bet and shared in some of the winnings. “So how much did you make?”