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ShelterAuthor(s): BETH ALVARADOSource: The North American Review, Vol. 295, No. 4 (FALL 2010), pp. 33-38Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23055044 .

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NAR

Shelter BETH ALVARADO

Dina was the first child to come to

the shelter. Fifteen, long brown hair

hanging straight down her back, black

eyeliner circling her eyes, she had been

trying not to cry for hours, ever since

her foster mother had announced no

more: no more mud tracked across

white carpeting, no more money stolen

from the bowl in the kitchen, no more

valium missing from the cabinet. Dina and I were sitting on the low rock wall,

waiting for the foster mother to finish

intake with the counselors. We were

waiting for her to leave. I was holding my eighteen-month-old son on my

lap. Dina was staring at her feet. We

were not talking. The foster mother

seemed upset. She doesn't want to

leave you here, I thought to say, but

how would that observation help Dina? So I said nothing.

It was about three feet high, the rock

wall, of black volcanic stone, built in the Depression by the Works Progress

Administration. At one time, this had been a genteel part of Tucson. Just west

of the university, it was an older neigh

borhood, the black stone walls squat

ting in front of the Victorians and California bungalows, but by the 1960s, the neighborhood started slipping

towards seedy. Bars and head-shops

opened in some of the old houses;

hippies and homeless children started

wandering the streets, panhandling from tourists and setting up camp in

the park. By 1976, when the shelter

opened, gentrification had begun:

vintage clothing and used bookstores,

vegetarian and ethnic restaurants,

jewelry and pottery shops. You could

get the future divined via the tarot or the palm of your hand. Young families started moving in. Geraniums, wicker

furniture, and wrought iron sculptures

sprouted on the large front porches.

The smell of roasted garlic joined the

patchouli and marijuana smoke

wafting through the air.

Imagine the first day we saw the

house, the five of us standing there on

the walk. Two men, three women, all of

us in our early to late twenties: the

youngest, 22, is me, toddler balanced

on my right hip. The man next to me

is Fernando, my husband. We have

signed on, in the August heat, 104

degrees easy, to be house-parents for

$6000 a year. The shelter is a revolving

door, a temporary stop for runaways and other lost children, thrown-away children. We will shelter five at a time;

they can each stay for a maximum of

30 days. The director, an ex-nun, and

the two counselors will be on hand

during the day, but the nights are all ours. Maybe I think working here is a

way of giving back. Maybe I have this idea that I can be noble, but what it

means, really, is that as house-parents,

we get room and board, we can take

classes, our son can stay at work with

me, we'll be able to save money. We

are qualified because we are ex

junkies, something that, even at the

time, seemed laughable. Oh, we've also

been through training at Juvenile Court so we are certified, someone has

certified us, although in my heart I

don't feel certified. The first time a kid calls me Ma'am, I look to the right of

me as if I expect to see a grown-up

standing there.

The house, a large California

bungalow, was built around the turn of

the nineteenth century. Two stories, it

had a wide green roof, attic windows,

and a deep front porch with stone

pillars. On this particular August after

noon, from where we stand on the

front walk, we can smell something

ripe, something dead. Inside, we find

clogged toilets, closets fouled by tran

sients, burned campfire circles in the

carpets. Upstairs, a black dog, its belly bloated, legs stiff. Rigor mortis has set

in. The house must be cleaned, soiled

green carpeting stripped from the

floors, floors sanded and sealed, nearly a century of wallpaper scraped from

the walls, walls painted white, ceilings pale blue with donated paint. Kathy, the ex-nun, declares that it will be the

perfect bonding experience. We will

emerge from this cleaning and renova

tion, a team. And we do.

Dina was our first. Her father white,

her mother Mexican—what was the

story? Too much alcohol, maybe drugs.

Maybe jail. The old litany. Before the foster mother, Dina had lived with her mother and her nana downtown in a

crumbling row house built in the 1800s. Late at night, someone would

tap on the window and the mother

would disappear for weeks and then

Dina would disappear from school or

show up late, tired, stoned, smelling of

cheap wine. Oh, oh, they said, the nana is too old. She's been seriously ill. Look at her, her long white braid, knotted

legs, feet shuffling in slippers. Dina is

asking for help. That's what acting out

is, the counselors tell us, a cry for help.

Tiny and dark skinned, black eyes, her mother deported back to El

Salvador, Veronica was next. She lived

with an old couple she called Nana

and Tata in a small white house in the

roughest part of town. A worker from

Juvie dropped her off. Domestic

violence. She had been accused of

hitting the old lady, of threats. Veronica carried a sock full of change

so she could make phone calls, one

after another from the pay phone at

the back of the house. To her

boyfriend, Dina whispered. He's old. Has a car. Es un negro. He wants her to

run away again. To meet him at the

Spanish Well. The Spanish Well? A bar down on 6th Avenue. Where the

hookers hang out.

My memories of this time are, of

course, spotty. At least one hundred

kids came through those doors and I

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remember these first ones more clearly,

these first ones before everything

began to blur. Kenny, for instance, a

handsome kid with dark curly hair and a big grin. Is he the one who starts

calling our Miguelito, Michael?

Michael, Michael Motorcycle. Trish, blonde bangs falling in her eyes. She's the one who won't bathe, has been on

the road for weeks, hitching rides with truckers. She smells, keeps her hair in

her eyes, and no, she fucking is not

interested in talking about it, thank

you. Body odor has become her first

line of defense. Paul, the red head, cut

his father down when he found him

hanging in the basement. Paul, on

suicide watch, does not want to go to a

boys' home in Phoenix. Kenny, too, is

there for protection. His life has been

threatened. Why don't they call the

police?

Don't ask any questions. Wake up the

kids. Make breakfast. Throw the windows and doors open, put on the

radio, Peter Frampton, Aerosmith,

Lynyrd Skynyrd. Help the kids with chores. Sweep, mop, wipe down coun

ters. Bathrooms. No one wants to clean

bathrooms. Watch the baby, oh the

girls all love to watch baby Michael and he loves the girls. Wash the clothes

in the washer out back. Hang every

thing on the line. Watch it so the tran

sients don't steal anything. They are

that quick. Morning group. Try not to

be the ambulance rescuing everyone.

Woo-ooo, woo-ooo, woo-ooo, Louis,

the counselor says, here comes the

ambulance. Make lunch. Go to the Y.

Swim. Play basketball. Put Michael down for a nap. Afternoon group. Do

the grocery shopping. Make dinner.

Play pool on the donated pool table.

Watch TV? Okay, for one hour. When the hot water heater goes out, heat big

pans of water on the stove for dishes

and baths. When it's cold, make a fire in the fireplace and roast marshmal

lows. Tell ghost stories. Set traps for

the mice. Bed checks. Answer the door

at midnight. Do intake.

When the children come, they are

sullen, they are angry. Their hearts are

crying: I don't get it. Why me? Why am I the—oh, just fill in the blank

although it doesn't appear on any intake form—the rejected one, the

betrayed, the abandoned, the raped, the

bruised, the fucked up, the worthless,

the loser, the stupid idiot, the ugly one, the one no one will listen to, the one

no one wants or loves or cares about...

Actually, they never ask. Their hearts

aren't crying. They're in a state of

cosmic shock, chronic numbness.

Their outrage is on hold. You mean

things could have been different? Life isn't like this for everyone? They sit on the couch. Middle of the night, middle of the day, doesn't matter. They are like

cats, still inside, watching, eyes tracking everything that moves,

muscles tensed, tails twitching. It's a

matter of survival. It's dangerous to get

attached, to open up, to confide.

Everyone must first be measured.

Everyone is found lacking.

Michael, who isn't a baby any longer but is not yet two, is still the center of

his own world. He has fat moon cheeks

and dark eyes and soft feathery hair.

He runs around with his hands tucked

into the bib of his OshKosh B'Gosh! overalls. He hoots. He knows exactly 32 words. He is never afraid. He will throw the ball to anyone. Stop right in

front of them, lean back from the

waist, the way that toddlers do, big plastic ball between his outstretched arms, and shout before shoving it

through the air. He is the only one who can be trusted.

On the night Veronica runs, the

house is blazing with lights from every window. Anyone passing by would see,

so clearly, there has been, is, an emer

gency. Fernando, Kenny, Paul and Trish

set out on foot, their long legs

stretching, their voices calling. Up and down the streets, over to the park where the street people hang out, up and down the dark side streets and

alleys. Dina and I can hear them. We

are sitting on the back porch with

Michael, our toes in the powdery dust,

we are waiting in case Veronica comes

home. Then we decide to walk along Fourth Ave., past the bars and closed

shops, down to the Dairy Queen

where, Dina tells me now, sobbing, half

an hour too late, Veronica was

supposed to meet el negro.

Dina carries Michael in her arms. We are both barefoot, wearing, prob

ably, shorts and tank tops, our long hair hanging down our backs. Dina's

mascara smeared below her eyes.

Maybe we both look like junkies, like

runaways. I feel something close to

love, a tenderness for her, but how can

I tell you who she is? She has to be a

character for you to remember her.

What quirky things does she say? Does she tilt her head before speaking? Are her eyes a special shade of brown? Is

her patience with Michael endearing? Does her weakness for getting high

engender sympathy? But maybe she

has been too marked by abandonment

to be anything but timid. She will

disappear and allow me to project on

to her, blank canvas that she is at

fifteen, any characteristics I want. She

is as willing as a puppy to do anything for love.

Sammy loves the cockatiel. It flew in

the open window, landed on his

shoulder, its white wings opening and

settling, opening and settling. Sammy plays pool with the bird perched next to his ear where his dark hair curls. He's fourteen and likes women, likes to

pinch a pretty girl on the butt, likes to show us how he can disco. He pulls a

creased photo from his wallet, there he

is, a skinny Puerto Rican kid standing with his arm around a plump white

woman. She sure be ugly, Paul says. What you be, a red-haired nigger? Sammy says, kiss my ass. Every time.

Trish puts on eye shadow for Kenny.

Leaning forward over the sink, trying not to squint as the cigarette smoke

floats up between her and her image in

the mirror, she smoothes the powder over her eyelid with her forefinger. Eye

shadow, bright blue, sometimes teal,

then, midnight blue mascara. Mascara

in Spanish means mask, I tell her, mas

cara, more face. Just because you don't

wear any, she says.

Later, she leans back against the pool

table, a seductress from an old after

noon movie. How would I make this

shot, she asks Kenny, tilting her head so her bangs fall away from her eyes.

Kenny, our little dope pusher, says, bat

those baby blues. Is this how you hold the stick, she asks. I can show her how

to hold the stick, Sammy says, elbowing Paul. His left eye wanders. His cockatiel has flown away. He is lonely.

The pool table takes up all the space in the room with the fireplace. Perhaps it used to be the parlor, perhaps a baby

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grand stood next to the front window so

you could look at the mountains and

trees, at people passing on the sidewalk,

while you played. Now you have to be

careful when you make a side shot that

the back of the cue doesn't go through

the side window, the window that looks

out on the desert elm and the apart

ment next door. All night, shadowy

figures go in and out of that apartment.

They could be selling drugs or offering sanctuary. We aren't sure. One night a

man with one leg, his other cut off at

the hip, was running from the street to

the apartment, leaping on the one leg, it

stretched out and he landed, it stretched

out again, he landed, like an image from

a dream or a movie. Kenny saw him,

too, this look on his face like wonder.

Kenny, here for protection because one

night during a drug deal gone bad, he

saw them throw a blanket over this guy's

head and then shoot him.

Kenny begins thumping the floor

with the cue stick whenever Trish is

shooting, drapes his arm over Dina's

shoulders, whispers to her. Check it

out, he says, studying the look on

Trish's face. Is she jealous? Can he read

her? Sammy fiddles with the radio,

Frampton, Boz Scaggs, salsa, static,

starts talking about how he dances, like

this, and grabs Trish. She pulls away. He rubs up against Dina's butt while

she's leaning over to make a shot.

In the kitchen, I tell him. Now. You

can't go around touching the girls like

that.

One eye wanders to the left as if his

attention is divided. He runs up the

stairs, climbs out the window and sits

on the roof, on the steepest part of the

roof. He is smoking, looking out over

Fourth Avenue, the trees and shops

and street people. He flicks his ciga

rette out in a red arc.

Sammy was kicked out of the last

group home for molesting a younger

child. (Is this something I didn't

consider? Putting my own child in

danger?) Louis, the counselor, leans

back in his chair, and clucks his tongue

against his partial plate. That's DES for

you. Just dropped him off. Tires

smoking. He makes a cuckoo sign with

his finger and grins. Sammy's a quart

low, he says.

DES, CPS, the police, all those

government agencies. If they couldn't

drop them here, where would they take

them? Juvie. Lock-up. Detention. But

sometimes, I think, maybe that's where

they should take them.

A quart low. Two quarts low.

Running on empty. Screws loose.

That's how we talk. Christine, the

other counselor, says humor is a form

of self-defense. Watch out for trans

ference. You don't want to get

attached.

I won't get attached, this is what I

tell myself, and this is why. There are a

few things that always seem true about

me. One, in moments of crisis, I never

break down. At times when others

might be emotional, I swallow. I

choose not to feel but to observe. I

tamp things down. The other is my

ability to give myself over to fantasy, to

love the fictions, the details of other

people's lives, to have intense relation

ships for days or weeks or months and

then to let go completely. For instance,

when people die or go away, there

might be a few moments where a hole

opens in my heart, a few days or weeks

where I feel them hovering just over

my right shoulder, but soon, I don't

even miss them. I can't imagine their

faces except as they appear in photo

graphs. This is not to say I won't later,

sometimes, over the years, think of the

kids from the shelter or check the obit

uaries. I will. Two walls of the office are glass, the

fan swirls the smoke from the coun

selors' cigarettes, shafts of morning

light slice through the tamaracks. This

is the first I've heard of molestation

and Sammy has been with us for three

days, a long weekend. The screen door

slaps shut as the kids take out the

garbage, hang the throw rugs on the

line. I get up and go inside, pull Fernando into the pantry and whisper

the news. Goes with the territory, he

says. Good thing we do bed checks, he

says. Michael, chair pulled up to the

sink, is helping Dina wash dishes. 1

take him back out to the meeting with

me. A red toy truck. Michael plays with

a red toy truck at my feet.

Angela has been meeting her

stepfather in motel rooms. In the

morning staffing, in the room with

two walls of glass, with smoke

swirling, I am told this story. Two or

three details and a whole life opens up.

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Publisher: University of Northern Iowa, 1222 West 27th Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614-9990

Editor: Grant Tracey, North American Review, 1222 West 27th Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50614-0516

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But how much is memory and how

much invention? Was her name

Angela? Did her mother bring her or

did she come in on her own? She was a

tall girl with long reddish hair, ordi

nary in the way many girls are. There

was a younger sister. Is this why she

told? Is this why the mother brought her? Finally listened?

When did it start? She could have been six, she could have been ten,

fourteen. Sometimes it's not rape,

sometimes it's seduction. This is what

Christine says in the meeting. Sometimes the girl... but what was

the rest of the sentence?... is willing? Needs him? Wants him? But it's always a betrayal, I say. Isn't it? Oh, yes, she

says. Yes. And it may not stop. Even

now that she's told. And that's another

betrayal.

A child, Christine says, is her feel

ings. The most essential, most

authentic self to a child is the way she feels and so if she's told to deny her

feelings, if she's told they don't matter, to be quiet, then she gets the message that she doesn't matter. She disappears. Or there's a disconnect between mind

and body and, if there's a disconnect, if the body is not the self, then what does

it matter? You can do anything to the

body, then. You can stick needles in it.

You can prostitute it. You can deprive it of food, burn it with your cigarette,

give your step-father sexual access. You

can drown it in alcohol. I don't want to get attached, but I

want to watch, which makes me, what?

A voyeur? Someone consumed with

other people's sadness? But maybe it's

because when I was their age, I wasn't

conscious. I was anesthetized. I

couldn't watch myself, connect with

myself—I remember looking at my own arm once, the marks and small

bruises from doing heroin, and

thinking, this is my arm? I am inside this body?—and so now, maybe, I think that in watching them I will learn something about myself. And

there is a way in which I can't differ entiate, especially with the girls. I know how it feels to be them. Or I

think I know how it feels to be them. The counselor says they can't

identify their feelings; they don't know if they are "sad" or "angry" or

"confused." They don't know how to

name it, we have to help them name

it, and I think, I don't know how to

name it.

Dina lets Michael fill the tub with

the hose, it's a round pewter washtub,

and she's put it outside in the backyard

I wonder if she can smell the alcohol oozing from

my pores... if she thinks I'm a bad mother.

on the one patch of grass. They wash

Michael's doll's hair, pour the water from a yellow margarine bowl over the

suds. I am sitting on the stoop in my sleeveless leotard and gauze skirt, my hair just washed, skirt pulled up between my thighs. The light glints off

my calves giving them a golden sheen.

Dina braids my hair while it is still

damp. So it will have waves when it's

dry, she says. Her fingers brushing my

temples. I watch Michael through

feathery eyelashes, my eyes squinted

against the sun. There is a kind of halo on the water, it's hot, my skin

reddening, white imprints of my fingers on Dina's arm, on Michael's

shoulder, on my inner thigh. The desert sun, even in October, purifies.

Inside, in the cool dark house, they are

playing pool, the click of the balls, the hum of their voices, music drifting out

of an upstairs window. Dina has to go to a group home soon. They have

found a placement for her. I tell her,

someday, when I'm finished working here, I want to adopt you. I mean it.

Absolutely.

Dina never tells me anything about

herself. I wonder if it's because she thinks I can't possibly understand, that I am so different from her. But I know

how it feels to want to be numb, to

want someone to listen, to want

someone to love you. I know how it

feels to be a small speck of yourself, to

will yourself into invisibility. Without words, I feel like I know how it is to be her, but in retrospect, I'm not sure she

felt that way at all.

Dina's nana lives downtown in the

historic district. Barrio Viejo. In an old adobe house on Main, one of those

that are built on to each other, the

high narrow windows and doorways,

corrugated tin roofs. We walk down

streets shaded and quiet, past old

houses, some look abandoned,

boarded up windows, sagging wooden

porches. The old corner grocery, no

longer a grocery, has sheets across the

windows. Past a house with white lacy curtains, the porch railing lined with ferns and succulents, geraniums

flaming on a green windowsill. All of this in the shadow of the high rises

downtown, their glass and steel and

glint of the sun. This house, Dina

gestures to the cracked stucco of a

house set back from the street, its plas tered walls white behind a dark profu sion of plants, agave leaves unfurling out of the shadows like long tongues, the junkies live here, she says, and then we're at her nana's.

Outside the house, there are

remnants of a barbed wire fence,

cactus the size of trees. On the front

porch, in coffee cans, succulents with

pink flowers grow, portulaca. A palm cross is tacked to the front door. Her

nana opens the door and stands for a

minute, allowing her eyes to adjust, the

room dark and cool behind her. She is an old Mexican woman, stooped, frail,

white hair escaping in wisps from a loose braid. Nana, Dina says. The wall

of the doorjamb is as thick as I can reach with my hand outstretched. The

rough plaster is cracking. Inside it's cool, saguaro ribs in the high ceilings. Dina's nana takes her face in both of

her hands and looks at her. In the

living room, over the old sofa, the Last

Supper is painted on velvet.

Her nana leads us to the sofa. Your

mother, Dina, she says in Spanish, she

came by last week to see how you're

doing. Dina lifts Michael to her lap. They say I have to go to a group home,

Nana.

The cords snake along the wall.

Across the way, a high bed in the lone bedroom, rag rug on the floor, mended

quilt, where all three of them slept, nana, mother, daughter. Dina growing

up here, someone tapping on the

window at night, her mother rolling over in bed, holding the curtain back, go away. The light flashes through the

high windows, sweeps along the curve

of wall and ceiling as his car passes, the

cold air coming up through the holes

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in the floor. Her mother, then, leaves

in the daytime for work, at night to go with her boyfriend. Her mother sits on

the floor in her robe, doing her nails,

holding her cigarette, just so, while her nails dry. Dina unwinds the pink sponge rollers from her hair and lets

them fall in a soft pile on the floor.

Boyfriendz, Dina says as we climb into the car. Plural. She plays with the

radio, punches it from station to

station, turns it off. But why can't I live

with my nana? She's better now. You

saw her. It isn't up to me, I say. You

know why, I say. But I'm thinking, what has Dina done that I didn't do at

her age? Is she any more lost than I

was? Why take her from her grand

mother? She turns her face to the blur

of shops as we drive down Speedway.

Okay, she says, so I messed up. I won't

do it again.

I take Michael to visit Dina at the

group home. She's been there for two

weeks and so now she can have visi

tors. It's very clean and new, not at all

like our runaway shelter. It's corporate,

funded by insurance, not grants. The

furniture matches. All of the other

girls are white. Even though Dina's half white and looks white, she's not really.

Her accent is noticeable here. She is

the only ward of the state, the only

charity case, in other words. The other

girls are here because their parents

have sent them, because they have

insurance that will cover behavioral or

mental or substance abuse problems.

One girl is staying here while her

parents tour Europe. The counselor,

who is wearing a dress and nylons and

heels, tells me this, in Dina's presence, as soon as she greets us at the door.

Perhaps she wants to make sure Dina

is properly grateful.

She leads us to a room with gold

shag carpeting, gold brocade on the

couch where Michael and I perch next

to Dina as if we are suitors awaiting

interrogation. Reminds me of the

Holiday Inn, 1 whisper to Dina,

motioning towards the painting on the

wall, towards the plastic plant in the

plastic gold and white planter. She

doesn't smile. I realize she's never been

to a Holiday Inn. She is in trouble for

smoking. Can she go out for a soda? Dina isn't allowed to leave, yet, except

to go to school. The counselor smiles,

pats Dina on the shoulder. Those are

the rules. Same for everyone, Dina, you know that. She sits on a stool at the

breakfast bar and pretends to read her

newspaper.

Dina shrugs at my questions. She

looks over at the counselor, rolls her

eyes, and shrugs. Nothing more. Dina,

I say, try to make the best of it. You

can't come back to the shelter. I wish

you could. .. I know she wants to.

We've become a kind of home to her.

She'd already been with us for two

thirty-day stays. We broke the rules for

her, but I know they can't do it again.

It's not for long, I tell her. Maybe you'll

like the other girls if you talk to them.

Maybe they'll find you another foster

mother. Maybe... This sidelong look. Still that thick makeup, a black line all around her eyes.

My mother is slicing sourdough

bread, thin, and spreading it with butter and garlic. She has come home

to her house, where Michael and I are

hanging out, to join us for lunch. It is

our day off. (Last night, our night off.

Eight vodka gimlets: two to relax, two

to stop worrying about Dina, then four

to stop seeing Trish in the cabs with

truckers and Angela and her stepfather

in the hotel room. I poked my cheek

with my fingertip to make sure I was

comfortably numb.) Michael and I

have come over with baskets of

laundry, but maybe, I tell him, if the

water is warm enough, we'll go for a

swim. For sure, we'll walk up to the

park. The park, where I can push him

on the swings and catch him at the end

of the slide and we can feel like a

regular mother and child on an

outing—although, for him, a regular

day, a normal day, must now include

several teenagers who sometimes need

as much attention as he does. (Where

is Fernando? I have no memory.

Perhaps gone to his second job or to a

class he's taking in social work.) My mother places the bread under the

broiler, adds a few leaves of basil from

her garden, large slices of tomato, thin

slices of Havarti cheese and then under

the broiler again until the cheese is just

curving down over the tomato, just

bubbling from the heat, the bubbles

edged brown. I squeeze tangerines for

juice, we sit at a card table in the

square of light that falls through the

sliding glass door of the family room.

(I know, at this moment, that Angela's mother is taking her to a clinic to see

about an abortion. It is her stepfather's

child but, chances are, the mother still

won't leave him.) The lawn outside is

still greenish, a resident family of quail scurries beneath the orange tree.

Michael is lying on his stomach

watching cartoons. He wants a choco

late long john. How about cream of

wheat? Or a cheese sandwich? He

makes a face. I close my eyes and feel

the sun on my back. Contrary to

popular opinion, I tell my mother,

cheese sandwiches are great for break

fast. After we eat, she kisses Michael

goodbye and then me, on the forehead,

her lipstick waxy and perfumed. (I wonder if she can smell the alcohol

oozing from my pores; I wonder if she

thinks I am a bad mother.) Her heels

click across the linoleum. Michael

climbs up on my lap and I wrap one

arm around him, feel his solid weight against my chest, rest my chin on his

head. You smell like a puppy, I tell him.

Veronica calls. She's had a baby boy.

South Tucson, the air in winter is thin

and clear, laced with the smell of

burning mesquite. Veronica answers

the door with the bundle, which is named LeRoi Jr. Teenaged girls always

name their boy babies after the father

even when the father is nowhere to be

found, so LeRoi Jr. he is, light-skinned, plump lips a smooth petal pink. His hair nappy, not that dark shock of hair that Indian and Mexican babies often

have, his eyes a wide milky blue that will change to brown. Veronica gazes at

him. She seems calmer, no longer

jiggling a sock full of change. The house is clean, clean, the concrete

floors, cold, tiled here and there, where

the tile hasn't been worn away, with

scraps of mismatched linoleum. All is

swept bare. La Virgen de Guadalupe on

the white wall. Her nana shuffles out

of her room in old slippers and a robe.

Veronica hands me the baby. The nana

sits at the small wooden table,

smoothes the oilcloth with her thin

brown fingers while Veronica scram

bles beans and eggs for her. Heats

coffee, a tortilla. The baby sleeps on

my legs, his soft breathing and curled

fingers. Can I believe that having the

Fall 2010 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 37

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baby has, will transform her? For me,

even pregnancy was transformative. I

quit doing drugs, quit smoking, came

to see my body as essential because his

body depended on it, and so I believe transformation is possible. When he

was born, even my relationship to the

world shifted. In becoming a mother, I

became an adult. But I was twenty. It

wasn't easy. Veronica is sixteen. I had a

husband, a mother, a mother-in-law,

sisters, and sisters-in-law. Veronica is

on her own here. Her nana needs her

as much as the baby does and being needed too much can become a kind

of claustrophobia. This is why she

called, maybe, maybe she needs help, is afraid of what will happen. Needs air.

The baby, his head fits in my hand, that's how small his head is, it fits in the palm of my hand. The layer of

flesh is thin, the skin thinner, the soft

spot pulses. Everything about this baby is delicate, especially its skull above the

concrete floor.

Christmas Eve, Dina stumbles out to

the car. Climbs into the backseat next

to Michael. She giggles. Says she took four valium before she realized they were ten milligram tabs instead of five.

Christmas Eve at Fernando's mother's

house, his brothers and sisters sitting around the kitchen table, eating red

meat tamales, nibbling pumpkin pie, then opening presents with their chil

dren in the living room.

In the pictures, later, Michael's

cheeks look ruddy with fever, his eyes glittery. Why didn't I notice? Was I too

preoccupied with Dina? Had I drunk that much wine? Dina. Rubber lady.

Sliding down the arm of Fernando's

mother's couch.

Christmas morning, the light is gray, the oranges on the trees in front of the

group home look fake. Dina sits

hunched against the door of the car. I

don't want to see you again when

you're high, I tell her.

Fine. You won't.

Her face closes, but my heart is

already closed. I am turning away from

her. I am already trying to forget her. I

know, somehow, that I will never see

her again and that in her heart, she

will feel I have abandoned her, one

person in a long line of many. And I

have. There is no other way to think

about it.

The car door creaks under its

own weight, falls shut. The cold air

closes behind her as she walks. The

weak December light, the lumpy

oranges on the trees in front of the

whitewashed wall, the black

wrought iron gate, all those stay immediate and vivid while Dina's face fades and fades.

This is what I will tell myself: the

streets are full of lost children. Even

their mothers abandoned them. Did you think you could be different? Save them?

For how long do you think you will

even remember their names? Dina,

Veronica, Trish, Sammy, Kenny, Paul,

Angela, Curtis (whose older brothers

helped his father beat their mother),

Rosemary, Gabby, Wendy, Brian, Alma

(who loved another girl), Manuela (the girl she loved), JoAnna, Doug, Moira,

Todd (who, like Dina, kept coming back), Jeff (who will pull an empty gun on a cop, suicide by police), and then the girl, the Navajo girl, Barbara?, who

saw ghosts upstairs and was afraid to

fall asleep. There were others, many

more, maybe a hundred others. But that

spring, I will get pregnant and one of

the kids, Jimmy, an eight-year-old pyro maniac, will threaten to kick me in the

belly, in the belly, he says, belly, his

word, and kill your baby. And I will grab him by his armpits and drag him across

the picnic table. Say that again, I tell him, giving him a hard shake and I'll kill you. I mean it. And I know his

history, I know his mother is a prosti tute and that her boyfriends started

blowing pot smoke in his face when he

was two, I know the counselor has just taken him off Ritalin, 1 know the other

kids have been teasing him, and still I mean it. With all my heart and gut, with both arms and both hands and my

teeth, I mean it. If I were another

person, I would divide in two. I would

have a life where I could take care of

this child, these other children, and then

go home and grow basil or something. Clean the kitchen. I would be noble and

calm. But I have only the one life and,

often, within it, I am not calm or

reasonable or understanding. My rage, as I am shaking this child, scares me.

And so I put in our notice and buy a

small house from a Mormon woman

on the northwest side of town. Far

from the shelter. I have decided we

should become exiles. I am tired, I

guess, of being inhabited by others, which is what working with the kids at the shelter feels like. All of these chil dren, their sorrows get lodged in me,

and I cannot dislodge them, not even

from my dreams. When I go to the

grocery store, as I am testing the toma

toes or avocados, complete strangers sometimes tell me their stories. It's as

if I have become a magnet, a recep

tacle, something on my face must

invite them. I am not a storyteller, but

a story-hearer, a sin-eater, and I wish

there were some way to transform

these details into a poem or a song, into sound, pure sound, music, because

then I could open my mouth and their

sorrows would go out into the air, have

a place to resonate that is not inside

of me. □

38 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW Fall 2010

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