“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“You do it like it’s simply something that has to be done. You’re afraid of cavities.”
He thought a moment, missed the point, and shrugged. By now, he had decided not to take anything I did or said seriously, anyway. It was as if he went in and out of a dream when we were together. I really questioned whether he thought about me the day after or pushed me aside for fear he might miss an important point in political science class.
However, the night my father threw me out, I went directly to Steve’s apartment. After I had packed, I stopped to look in on Emmie for a long moment. There was a good chance I wouldn’t see her again for some time, maybe ever. I wondered how she would react to that. We weren’t very close. There were just too many years between us, and my father did his best to keep me from doing too much with her without either my mother or him around. I could count on my fingers how many times I had taken her somewhere in the city without one of them. I wasn’t to be trusted.
She didn’t stir. She looked like a little doll some other girl had tucked into her bed. I thought her teddy bear was looking at me suspiciously. I touched her hair softly so as not to wake her, whispered good-bye, and then descended the stairs. Mama came to the door of the living room. She looked out at me standing there with my suitcase and shook her head. She seemed unable to speak. It was hard for me, too, but I managed.
“Have a good life,” I told her, and walked out.
It was overcast and dreary, but even if it weren’t, the street never looked as dark or as empty to me, even though there were people walking on both sides and the traffic was heavy. I did feel a little dazed, but I wasn’t hesitant. I walked with determination to the corner and hailed a taxi to take me to Steve’s apartment building. When he opened the door and saw me standing there with a suitcase, he looked about as amazed as anyone possibly could.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m here.”
“With a suitcase? For how long?”
“As long as you’ll let me stay,” I said.
His amazement changed quickly to a look of worry. “Er . . . I could get into trouble if you were here more than a night. You are underage, Roxy. You’re not quite eighteen. You know I know the truth.” He shook his head and put up his hands. “Look, I’m not ready or able to do something like this,” he said. “What did you do, run away from home?”
“Sorta,” I said.
He shook his head. “Go home, Roxy. This is a mistake that you’ll regret.”
“I guess it is,” I said. “Too bad,” I told him, and left him standing there in his doorway looking quite relieved.
I took the elevator down, walked through the small lobby, and stepped back into the street.
And that’s how it all began.
1
I had learned about a neighborhood on the Lower West Side where runaways who still had a little money hung out. I had read about it in a newspaper article written by someone who was on the Pulitzer Prize short list for doing a series about “America’s Forgotten Children.” It intrigued me, and maybe, tucked way back in my brain in one of those secret places we all keep our fears and nightmares, I envisioned myself going there and checking into one of those roach nests because the cost was so minimal and no one who operated one cared who you were, how old you were, or if you lived or died that day. You could make up any name for yourself. The only identification you needed was a fifty-dollar bill.
It was late April, and despite the threat of rain, I suppose I could have survived sleeping in some discarded old car or under a bridge somewhere, but at least at this excuse for a hotel, I could have some sense of safety once I locked the door of the room.
Just as I had read, when I arrived at one of these places (they always had names beyond reality, like Paradise Hotel), the man behind the small, battered dark-wood desk was uninterested in me and only brightened a bit when I produced a fifty-dollar bill. I had a feeling he wasn’t as old as he looked, despite his very thin, cheaply dyed black hair and a face that looked like crinkled cellophane. He had a jaw I thought might have been squeezed with a pair of pliers while he was growing up. Deep lines rippled across his forehead. He coughed like someone suffering with emphysema, explained by an ashtray full of smoked-down thin cigars on the counter. He gave me a key to a room on the third floor and told me the only rule was no smoking in the room, which he said meant no smoking anything. Then he sat back again and closed his eyes as if I had interrupted an enjoyable dream he was having.
For a moment, I imagined I had been talking to Charon, the mythical ferryman of Hades, the Greek version of hell, who carried the souls of the dead across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead, because coming to this hotel made me feel I had come to the land of the dead. I smiled to myself, imagining how proud of me Mr. Wheeler would be for remembering that lesson in mythology, but the truth was that despite the act I put on, I was very attentive in his English class.
The elevator was out of order, so I headed for the narrow stairway. The railing was loose and rattled, and the steps groaned even under my mere one hundred and twelve pounds. When I turned onto the third floor, I heard some loud music and laughter coming from the first room on the right. Fortunately, my room was four doors away, and I heard nothing from behind any of those doors at the moment. The entire hallway reeked of stale beer and cigarettes. There were no windows, no opportunity for any odor to escape or be diminished. It was as if every ugly scent was layered upon every other and now seeped through the walls.
Because the frame of my room’s door was warped, I had to jerk it open after inserting the key, and for a few seconds, I stood in the doorway debating whether to just turn and run out or go in. I felt as if I were about to dive into a cesspool.
I swallowed hard and entered, searching for a light switch. The small ceiling light fixture had a bulb a size or two too small, probably placed there deliberately so that the room’s new inhabitant couldn’t see just how run-down the floors and walls were or how many roaches were building their own suburb. I felt my whole body cringe as if they were already crawling up and over my ankles, joyfully and excitedly making their way to get under my bra and into my heart. I saw that wallpaper was peeled off in spots as if someone suffering from agoraphobia had been scratching at it.
Being afraid to go outside in this neighborhood was understandable. The streets looked as if they last were cleaned around the time of the Civil War. When I had turned onto the block, I had the feeling that someone literally could die on the sidewalk and be unnoticed. What a contrast to our immaculate block on the Upper East Side.
The room, despite what the man at the desk forbade, reeked of cigarettes. The rug was worn down, revealing the wood beneath it in most places. I was afraid to look under the bed. Maybe the last person who stayed here had died under there. I had no doubt something had died under it. There was only a four-drawer dark brown dresser and a wooden folding chair beside it, both badly scratched, the dresser actually with a hole in one side. Of course, there was no television, radio, clock, heat, or air-conditioning.
/> The bed frame was plain, and the narrow mattress, in which some ugly, crawly thing was surely hatching, was covered by sheets that were gray and stained yellow. It looked as if there were some lipstick stains, too. At least, I hoped it was only lipstick. I peeled off the stringy blue wool blanket, the bottom of which was torn as if someone had slashed it with a sharp knife. Instead of the pillow, without a pillowcase, I decided to use my soft backpack. I knew that if I slept, I would have to sleep in my clothes. There were two small windows, one so stuck in place it was probably never closed, which on second thought was a good thing. At least there was some ventilation. The other window opened and closed. Neither had any curtains or blinds, so there was no way to keep out the morning light.
For a while, I just sat on the bed thinking. It was only natural for me to have some second thoughts and regrets, especially in a place like this, but every time I imagined myself running home to kowtow and plead for forgiveness, I felt sicker. No, I had to endure this, I told myself. I could just hear my father telling me that this was a five-star hotel compared with what soldiers had to endure in boot camp. “Soldier up!” was one of his favorite expressions whenever I complained about anything. Usually, that was just what I did. I soldiered up.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until nearly four in the morning that the sounds from the street below diminished and I was able to get some sleep. Until then, I could hear people screaming and cursing, car horns sounding, loud laughter, someone breaking bottles, and, occasionally, someone crying just below my window.