“It was made from wooden pallets, the kind people use to move goods from trucks to warehouses. The pallets were stood up like walls, and there were some carpet scraps on the floor. We had some furniture. I remember the folding chairs, a wooden bookcase, and a table. My dad attached a piece of wood to one of the pallets, near the top, and my mom used it as a shelf for stuff.”
“Where did you sleep?”
“Next to the bookcase was a sheet attached to more pallets and big pieces of paneling. The sheet hung like a curtain, and behind it we had a pile of blankets and old clothes. I spent most of my time there. If I sat on the other side, I could see more people in the tunnel through the slats in the pallets, but my mom didn’t want anyone to see me. A few people knew I was there, but my mom always reminded them not to talk about me. I think she was afraid someone would take me away if they knew I was there. When she and Dad would leave for a while, I had to stay behind the curtain and be quiet. I wasn’t allowed to have a light on, and there were always rats.”
I shudder.
“Damn,” Casey says. “That’s...awful.”
“They scared me, but my dad just laughed about them. Told me to catch them, and he’d cook them up, but I didn’t want them near me.”
“Did you...did you actually...?”
“Eat them? I guess so. I don’t really remember, but we never had much food. We had a bit more when my dad was around, but he disappeared before my mom did. Just went out one day and didn’t come back. My mom took care of me by herself after that, but she wasn’t much of a...well, a caregiver, I guess. She’d give me some food if she had it, but she never did any normal mom stuff. She didn’t read to me or play with me. She wanted me to be quiet all the time. She used a lot of drugs, and then she’d fall asleep. When she woke up, she’d leave to get more, and I was supposed to stay in the back, away from everyone else. Usually she wasn’t gone too long. She always managed to find more drugs, and sometimes she’d bring back something to eat. Usually Mamaw shared her food with me.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Not really. She just told us to call her that. She was a kind lady, and I thought she was a hundred years old, but now I have to assume she wasn’t more than late in her fifties. Homeless people don’t live that long, you know. She was one of the few people who knew I was there, and she’d come talk to me when my mom wasn’t around. She said she was kicked out of her apartment after her husband and son died. They were in a fire or something. I think she’d lived down there the longest. She was nice, though. I remember that. She’d always share what she had with everyone else, especially me. I was the only kid down there except for Roger. He was older though—a teenager. He didn’t have any parents, so Mamaw helped him, too.
“One day, my mom left soon after I woke up, saying she’d be back soon. I crawled in the back and waited, but it seemed like she was gone a long time. Mamaw came and talked to me while she got high, but then she left, too. I fell asleep, but when I woke up, Mom still wasn’t back. I was hungry, but I was too scared to leave my spot. I got in a lot of trouble if I wandered out. My dad would hit me—hard. Even though he wasn’t around by then, I never knew if he was going to come back or not, so I stayed put. Eventually, Mamaw came back again. She gave me part of a sandwich and asked how long my mom had been gone, but I didn’t know.”
“But she was using drugs, too?
“Seemed like everyone there had glass pipes. When I was outside the curtain, I could see them all lighting pipes near the burning barrel. As soon as someone got back from outside, they’d start smoking them. My parents did, too. They smoked them all the time. I didn’t know what crack cocaine was then, but I do now.”
“Is that what happened to them? Did they overdose?”
“Don’t know. I guess I kinda assume they did. Without any way of identifying who they were, they might have just ended up as John and Jane Does in some morgue. All I know for sure is that I never saw either of them again.”
“What happened when your mother didn’t return?”
“Mamaw kept coming back and giving me a bit of food or water. She said she’d gone looking but didn’t find my mother anywhere. I don’t know for sure, but I think she might have been the one to tell the police that people were down there. At least, they showed up soon after, and Mamaw wasn’t around when they did.”
“The police raided the tunnels?”
“Yeah. People were yelling and screaming about being kicked out of their homes. The police told them they couldn’t stay there and people were there to help. I was hiding and just hoping no one would find me. I didn’t know what the police were or why they were throwing everyone out. When they did find me, I screamed and cried. They tried to catch me, but I kept squirming away from them. I couldn’t really understand a lot of what they were saying—they used words I’d never heard before. Eventually, someone threw one of the blankets over me and pulled me out. It was a lady in a uniform, but not the same one as the police officers. I think she might have been a paramedic or something like that. She held me on her lap until I calmed down a little. She’s the one who took me outside.”
I let out a long, shuddering breath.
“You’re doing great, Roc.” Casey runs her hand over my head. “You really are.”
“Thanks.” I let out another breath and keep going. “It was bright and sunny outside. A perfect summer day, I guess, but I’d never seen such bright light. The heat from the sun...well, it scared me. I started screaming again, and that’s all I remember. I think they must have sedated me at that point. I woke up in a hospital.”
“That probably scared you even more.”
“It did. I didn’t know where I was, and I had no concept of a hospital or doctors. There was a needle sticking out of my arm. That scared me the most. I saw someone in the tunnel like that once—just slumped over wit
h a needle in his arm. My dad helped another man drag him away. I screamed, yanked it out, and then I was bleeding. People came in, shouting at me. I was sedated again. Someone came in and opened the blinds on the window, and I thought my eyes were going to burn out of my head, so I screamed, ripped out the IV, and hid.
“Some people in uniforms came in while I was under a cart full of equipment. They kept asking me to tell them my name and the names of my parents, but all I knew was that they called me Rock. My parents were ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ as far as I knew, but people kept asking me for their names. They came in day after day, asking me to try to remember, but I don’t think it was a matter of not remembering—I don’t think I ever heard them use actual names. We didn’t exactly have conversations around a dinner table. So, I would freak out again. I’d grab the blankets off the hospital bed and cover myself up in the corner. They hauled me out and sedated me again. Every time I woke up, I flipped, and the whole thing started all over again.”
“Wow. Just...wow. I don’t know what else to say. You had to have been terrified. You were seven years old?”
“About that, I guess. No one knew for sure, but that’s what they decided.”
“Wait...so you don’t even know how old you are? What’s your birthdate?”
“May first,” I reply. “That’s the birthday they gave me once doctors decided I must have been born in the spring. I don’t really know. They had to guess since I was so small.”