Streetlights (1)
Annie Van Dalsem

 

   Thursday morning I was awakened by a clap of thunder. Unusual in Berkeley, and nothing short of annoying when you're sleeping in a doorway. I wanted to pull covers over my head in the worst way.

     My name is Helen Flaherty. I'm 34, single, and homeless. How I arrived to be sleeping in a doorway is a long story. But four months ago I was more or less involved in my beige sort of life, living in an apartment on Cedar Street, which refused to respond to personal touches and epitomized the word cheerless. I was dutifully showing up every morning at my job at the Haste Street Neighborhood Clinic. Even my car was beige. Mornings like this when I'm doing the huddling thing I try to Pollyanna myself into thinking who would want a beige life, anyway. But I was cold, dammit, and I wanted a coffee.

     "Helena, mi azucena!" I roused myself out of my increasingly self-pitying reverie, and smiled up at Alex, the Chilean owner of the pawn shop whose steps I was hunkered down on, shifting out of his way as he went to unlock the door. I have no idea why he doesn't mind my sleeping in his doorway, even seeming genuinely glad to see me every morning. He's about 50, tall, with rather striking hawkish features offset by an incongruous set of dimples. I've never seen him out of sorts, not even the first time he literally stumbled over me. He was ushering me in now, chattering and chirping as always. Alex really does chirp.

     "You on Prozac, Alejandro?" I grumped at him, plopping myself down into a chair. He snorted at that, plugging in the coffeemaker, fussing over my hair which he insisted was wet, and turning on the heater. Maybe I'm the daughter he never had, in spite of the fact he has three of them.

     "So, campesinita, what's on the agenda for today?" he asked, handing me a steaming mug of coffee, saints be praised. I took it from him, gratefully sipping it. Actually, I was gulping it down with something akin to desperation.

     "Dunno, really. Thought maybe I'd get a manicure," I mumbled into the mug. "Don't call me a little peasant. And anyway, how does someone from Chile know how to use a phrase like 'agenda for today' ?"

     "No sarcasm, bella, or I won't give you what's in this box," he grinned, handing me the telltale pink box from heaven. I tried not to grab for a bearclaw, tried to show some decorum, failed dismally. For a few moments I was totally immersed in lard, sugar and total bliss.

   "I'm not bella. My hair is matted and I smell skanky," I finally muttered in between chomps. "Yeah, I know. I need to do something. Just not today. It's raining, after all."

   "Mija, you say that even when the sun's shining," Alex remonstrated, unable to hide the dimples. "You're my project, you know. Don't fail me now." He hoisted himself up off his battered desk, brushing crumbs from his jeans, and licking flecks of sugar off his moustache. Raising his hands above his head he gave his inevitable let's-jumpstart-this-day stretch. Such enthusiasm was tiring me. I wonder how he keeps his head above water. Business seems slow at best, but Alex treats every workday as if he's just placed a bet on a sure-win horse at the track.

    Alex has never asked me how I ended up this way. I would tell him if he asked, I think. I don't really tell much of anything to anyone anymore. But Alex..I would tell Alex.

    
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     The rain had let up, so I said good-bye to Alex, thanked him for the coffee and donuts, making a token protest when he urged the rest of the Winchell's box on me. I started walking up Telegraph, with a vague idea of using the shower at the YMCA. Needless to say, I don't have a membership there, but my friend Yvonne works there part time, and for the bribe of a cruller or two, she bends the rules for me. Yvonne had actually been my mother's friend, but since my mother died nine years ago, she'd become protective of me, which I found touching. Even more so since I'd taken the nosedive three months ago. I was relieved to see her at the front desk. She was on the phone, and waved at me, beaming at the box I held out to her. Yvonne is 74, with short grey no-nonsense hair, and a remarkably unlined skin. Her susceptibility to donut bribes shows in her rounded little body. I love her dearly. She's a widow with two grown children, and doesn't understand why I don't move in with her until I 'get back on my feet.' I don't know how to tell her that I don't have any feet to get back on anymore. I don't like having people worry about me. It makes me feel guilty and responsible somehow.
 
      "Hey hon, is that for me?" she asked, covering the mouthpiece. I felt unreasonably glad to see her, and had to resist an impulse to reach across her desk and hug her. The fact that I wasn't sure when I'd last taken taken a shower helped me refrain somewhat. In that vein, I pointed to the showers with a question on my face. She nodded, reaching under her desk for what she calls her "Helen Bag." I took it, murmuring my thanks, placed the donut box on her desk, and skulked over to the showers. I never used to skulk.

     Thankfully, there was noone in the women's locker room when I tentatively opened the door. I moved quickly to a shower stall, taking the waterproof bag with me. Yvonne, bless her heart, fills the bag with soap, shampoo, razor, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste and a hairbrush. Even adds Swiss Ives vanilla conditioner, my favorite. There are decent people in this world. It felt liberating to strip off my clothes, which were beginning to smell stale, to say the least. I took them into the shower with me, scrubbing them with the soap and wringing them out before I started on myself. I put them into a Hefty bag, figuring I'd find a way to dry them later. I keep a second set of clean clothes and underwear in my dufflebag. A blanket, sweatshirt, tiny flashlight, notebook and pen, and my mother's last Christmas card to me complete the sum total of my worldly possessions. I travel light.

     I stood under the hot spray, imagining that I was suspended in time, that everything was condensed into this moment, this shower stall. I shampooed and conditioned my hair, shaved my legs and underarms, and almost began to feel like a human being. I closed my eyes and envisioned that on the other side of the stall was a bedroom..my bedroom...with my framed Monet prints on the wall, and my collection of leprechauns on the dresser. The water was beginning to run cool, so I stepped out, and briskly dried myself off with the paper-thin YMCA towels. I put on clean underwear, jeans and T-shirt. Grateful that the room was still empty, I found a blow dryer and used it on my newly-soaped clothes until I heard sounds outside, heralding an incoming bunch of aerobicized women. I shoved the clothes into the Hefty bag, and back into my dufflebag, and zipped it up, turning the dryer onto my hair, as the women entered. Lord, that dufflebag was going to be mildewy in no time if I didn't figure out a way to get to the laundromat. Yvonne would be elated if I accepted quarters from her for the dryer, but there was no way I was going to impose on her generosity any more than I had to. I could swallow my pride in the interests of personal hygiene, but that was as far as I would let myself go.

     I flashed back to eight years ago, when I'd gone into the restroom at the university after watching a dance production.There had been a naked woman in there, washing something in the sink, oblivious to everyone around her. I'd felt horrified at the time. But there had been this glimmer of curious intrigue trying to worm its way into my consciousness. Here was this woman surviving..simply surviving. Finding a restroom to wash her clothes in, naked to the world and not giving a damn. No car insurance, no phone bills, no W-2 forms, just she and her clothes and the sink. I gave myself a mental shake, coming back to the present, glancing down to make sure I was dressed, and left the locker room. I passed Yvonne, mouthing my thank yous, as she was again on the phone. She rolled her eyes and made trigger-pulling gestures at the receiver. Apparently she'd never gotten rid of the original caller. I grinned at her and blew her a kiss, placing the Helen Bag on her desk. I'd been tempted to keep the hairbrush; Yvonne wouldn't mind. But then she'd replace it for next time, and I just didn't want her to do that for me.

     As I opened the door to go out, an athletic-looking young woman breezed in, with long blonde hair tied back and with that I'm-here-now-but-I-have-to-be-somewhere-else-soon look on her face. A weird feeling of envy mixed with panic went through me. I couldn't remember what it was like to have be somewhere else. I started heading back down Telegraph Ave, annoyed that this day was having way too much introspection involved in it. Maybe I would go hunt down Nell, who hangs out on the corner of Telegraph and Ashby with her shopping cart. I sometimes swear to myself that the day I find myself with a shopping cart is the day I put a gun to my head.

     Nell is ok, though. I met her two months ago, when I was dying for a cigarette, and lo and behold, there she was, puffing away. She'd smiled at me with all eight of her remaining teeth and held the cigarette out to me in that psychic way fellow smokers have, even homeless ones. There must have been a time when I worried about germs, or felt repulsed at the thought of even sharing a Chap-Stick, but I wasted no time taking a drag off her Marlboro. I had rummaged in my bag for something to give her in return, finding only a pack of matches I'd found on the hood of a parked car. She'd been perfectly happy with the matches, and liked the fact that our names were similar..cackling that we could be Nell and Hell. I'd thought she was about 70 but she's only 57. Her hair..what there is of it..stands out in thin white tufts under a crocheted rainbow-colored hat which she proudly told me she made herself back in 1974. She's painfully thin, wheezes constantly, and I wonder if she's dying.

     With those cheerful thoughts in mind, I was worried when I didn't see her at her usual spot. Lung cancer took my mother, my mother who liked to concoct protein shakes and have Vegetarian Night three nights a week. My mother, whose only experience with a cigarette was the day we went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and had one of those old-time photos done eighteen years ago. She had posed as a saloon girl, displaying a shapely leg, with a stogie hanging out of her mouth. The day after she died I went out and bought my first pack of cigarettes and smoked them all within three hours. For a while after that, I realized I was childishly sticking out my tongue every time I reached for one. Now I just smoke them, whenever I can get them. Thinking of Nell, I sent up a silent prayer to the cosmos, or fate, or God, or whatever it is out there. My relationship with the Almighty Something is wary right now, at best.

     Since there was no sign of Nell, I decided to put my energies to getting my clothes dried. I could walk down to the Civic Center, and scan the fountain there. Sometimes people throw pennies in there, sometimes nickels and dimes. I suppose I should feel guilty for the times I've waded in there and fished out anything glinting silver, but I don't. I'd have to wait for nightfall to actually retrieve the coins, though. For a moment the thought of being arrested and being inside for a night was oddly appealing. But I would miss my morning coffee klatches with Alex, and I didn't relish the thought of being strip-searched. Even I have my limits. I figured I could at least scope out the fountain now. Wasn't like my dance card was filled at the moment with a whir of activity. I have to admit that sometimes I fish out the pennies as well. Pennies pay as well as anything else for a burrito, and there are days when standing in line at the Brethren Rescue Mission makes me squirm. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, I snorted to myself. Then it dawned on me that I wasn't ever actually particularly mighty in the first place.

-----------------------------------------------
     In typical April fashion, the sun had come out by the time I reached the Civic Center. In keeping with the general theme of the day, the fountain was deserted, which pleased me no end. I meandered around it, doing arithmetic in my head as I counted the coins. Anyone walking by would be surprised that this youngish homeless woman had a degree in math from UC Berkeley. Sure comes in handy when you're calculating if you can get a bean burrito and dry your pair of jeans all in the same day. I decided to throw caution to the winds and assume there weren't members of Berkeley's finest lurking in the hydrangea bushes. I sat down on the rim surrounding the fountain, swirling my hands in the water, pretending to look lost in thought. I should really do this when it's pouring rain, I realized to myself. Who's going to be nutty enough to hang out at the fountain during a deluge aside from me?

      I felt a peculiar adrenaline rush as my hand went deeper, scooping up 4 pennies. This was like the night in the dormitory long ago when a bunch of us discovered that if you smacked the ice cream sandwich machine in just the right way, you didn't have to pay for them, and they would come tumbling out on the strength of one good smack. None of us had been all that fond of ice cream sandwiches, but the giddy sense of getting something for nothing had temporarily turned us from reasonably law-abiding college students into a pack of giggling hyenas, reveling in our thievery, as we sat on the lobby floor, eating the purloined ice creams until we felt communal insulin shock setting in.

     I glanced around the courtyard, wondering if my luck was going to hold. The place still seemed deserted, so what the hell. I'd go for broke. I could see a dime and two nickels not far from where my hand was swooshing about. Heck, that was 15 minutes of clothes-drying time right there. Remember the mildew, Helen, I urged myself. And reached out and under and grabbed. I dropped the wet coins into my pocket. There was no stopping me. "We're Bonnie and Clyde. We rob banks." I wasn't sure if I'd said that aloud. Maybe this was the beginning of a long, slow, descent into madness. Maybe I'd end up spending the night in a holding cell. Maybe I just wanted a burrito.

     I looked up at the sky, trying to gauge if it was close to noon, when the courtyard was likely to fill up with people on lunch breaks. I'd become pretty good at telling time that way. No Rolexes on this peasant. I figured I had about another hour. I got up and walked around the fountain, every now and then dipping my hands into the water and scooping up a handful of pennies. Halleluia, there was a Susan B. Anthony dollar in there, right smack in the middle. Strip-search be damned, I was going in. I swung my leg over the side and waded in, trying to look impulsive and impish in case anyone was around. Just a local nutcase going for a dip. I was practically panting as my fingers closed around the dollar. I waded out, grabbed my dufflebag, and took off running, the soaked cuffs of my jeans clammy against my bare ankles. So much for being furtive.

     The public library was two buildings down, and I made a beeline for it, pushing open the door, and heading for the restroom. I went into a stall and sat down on the toilet, fishing the coins out of my jeans. I seemed to be spending a lot of time in stalls today. The coins added up to $1.64. A memory of how I used to be annoyed at loose change clinking around in the bottom of my purse made me snort. Ok, Alex, I thought to myself. Here's the agenda for today. I now have a sense of purpose. I'm going to go dry my clothes. While I was at it, I'd better throw my soaked sneakers in there, too, though I didn't like the thought of my feet padding around on the grimy laundromat floor. Funny how the occasional shower can bring out a streak of fastidiousness.

     I left the library and headed for the Launderland three blocks down, my feet making squelching sounds in my sneakers. My stomach was starting to rumble, and I half regretted leaving the donuts with Yvonne. Doing some calculations I figured I could get my bean burrito and a milk at the Taco Bell across from the laundromat, and have enough left over to at least semi-dry my clothes, though the sneakers were going to be iffy. But my feet were starting to sound more flatulent with every step. I'd have to forego the milk and use the water fountain in the laundromat to buy extra drying time.

     I ordered my burrito, taking extra napkins from the dispenser. You never know when they might come in handy. The total came to $.69, so I used the pennies, nickels, and dimes, and asked for four quarters for my silver dollar, and a paper cup. These requests were met with a long-suffering sigh as they were handed over. Some people.

     Nobody paid attention when I took off my shoes and threw them into the dryer at Launderland, placing a Taco Bell napkin under each foot as I removed them. I dumped the contents of my wet Hefty bag into the dryer, and put in two quarters, ignoring the hand-written Dry No Rubberized Articles sign on the peeling wall. I walked with my foot napkins over to one of the plastic orange chairs against the wall, and sat down to eat my burrito. An exhausted-looking black woman was standing in front of one of the dryers with a baby on her hip, who was alternately mashing crackers into his mouth and crying. The woman was staring into the glass door as if she could will the clothes to dry faster. I didn't blame her. I wasn't overly thrilled about spending time here, either. There's a forlorness to all laundromats, maybe because most people there know they'll have to be back. Unless they're one of the lucky ones whose own appliances are temporarily out of order. I munched my burrito while these philosophical nuggets went through my head, and thought about how nice it would be to carry around a second set of dry clothes again. It gives me a feeling of security. Call me easily pleased.

     There were scattered newspapers over the chairs, so I finished my burrito, filled my freebie paper cup with water from the drinking fountain, and picked up a front page. I used to get involuntary shudders at the thought of reading a newspaper someone had left. I always envisioned they'd just finished reading it on the toilet. Now I don't care. I also don't much care what's going on in the world anymore, but I was stuck here, and getting bored. I skimmed the headlines, wondering why oil prices and upcoming elections always seemed to be deemed as earth-shattering news. Like it made a big diff, I thought sourly. I found the local East Bay section and skimmed that. There was an article about a shelter for pets. Each animal had his or her own little room, with a television and room service. The writer went on to say that the pets' rooms should be opened to the homeless at night. I've never stayed in a shelter. I refuse to. But the thought of curling up on a carpeted floor next to a dog while we watched Flipper reruns seemed infinitely appealing. Nell told me that every time she stays in a shelter, she loses half of her treasured shopping cart possessions. She'd had a bracelet made of multi-colored beads that a street vendor on Telegraph had given her once because he liked her toothless smile, and because it would match her crocheted hat. That got taken right off her arm while she slept in the 66th Street Shelter. I toyed with the idea of fishing enough pennies out of the fountain to replace it for her, but it wouldn't be the same.

     I tossed the paper aside, and decided it was time to get out of there. The woman was still staring at the dryer, absently handing crackers to her fussing baby. I wondered if she was ever tempted to sit him down on the floor, and walk out. A snuffling noise behind me made me turn around. A stunted, chihuahua-looking dog had scampered in, and was sniffing the floor. Better him than me. A gurgling noise erupted suddenly from the mewling baby, and I turned to see his chubby, soggy face wreathed in smiles as he cooed at the hideous mongrel. Even his mom managed to crack a small smile at his reaction. Maybe it was moments like that that kept her from hightailing it. I grinned at the baby, momentarily wondering if maybe I have a biological clock inside me after all. It's never manifested itself much to date. Sort of a moot point, I guess, when one is walking on napkins to retrieve sneakers soaked during a petty crime.

     I stuffed the fairly-dry clothes in my dufflebag, and put on my sneakers, ignoring the fact that they were hot on the outside and still uncomfortably damp on the inside. I threw away my Taco Bell slippers and took off, with no clear idea of where I was heading for now. The sky was now looking overcast, and I silently thanked the heavens for the fact that the doorway to Alex's pawn shop is well-enclosed, almost like a small porch. As I stood on the corner, waiting for the light to change, and trying to distract myself from my wet feet, I found myself remembering the events that led up to landing on Alex's doorstep. I don't usually think about that.

-----------------------------

     I guess it started about 3 months ago, the morning I took a pair of scissors to my driver's license. Or maybe that was the end. I'd gone out the previous night for a rare beer with my co-workers. Terry, the receptionist, had launched into one of her diatribes against the office manager, Fay. Fay was a thin, olive-skinned brunette about 6 years my junior. For some reason I had decided that Fay used to be grossly obese. I would watch her at the Friday pizza office lunches, pushing her slice around on her plate, taking miniscule bites, and keeping that odd open-mouthed smile on her face the whole time. I was convinced that she ran into the ladies' room after these weekly ordeals and stuck a finger down her throat.

 

 

Go to part:2  3  4  5 

 

 

Copyright © 2000 Annie Van Dalsem
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"