It was not until I emerged onto Hollywood Boulevard that I realized where I was going. I stood in front of our old apartment house, dingy white streaked with rain, water dripping from the bananas and the palms and the glossy oleanders. This was where our plane had crashed. I saw our windows, the ones that Barry had broken. Michael's windows. There was a light on in his apartment.
My heart came to life for a moment, beating with hope as I studied the names by the buzzers, imagining him opening the door, his surprise, he would smell of Johnnie Walker, and the warmth of his apartment, the ceiling crumbling, the piles of Variety, a great movie on the TV, how welcome I'd be. Masaoka, Benoit/Rosnik, P. Henderson. But no McMillan, no Magnussen.
I knew by my disappointment what I had really expected. That we would still be here. That I could go in and find my mother writing a poem, and I could wrap myself in her quilt and this would just be a dream I could tell her about. I was not really a girl one step from homeless, eating scraps off Amelia's plates. In that apartment, my mother had never met Barry Kolker, and prison was something she'd read about in the papers. I would brush her hair, smelling of violets, and swim again in the hot nights. We would rename the stars.
But we were gone. Michael was gone. The door was locked, and the pool was green with algae, its surface pimpled with rain.
I LEANED AGAINST the wall of the lunch court at Hollywood High, fevered and trying not to watch the other kids eat. A girl looked into her lunch bag, made a face, and threw away the offending meal. I was shocked. Of course, she would have a snack waiting when she got home. I wanted to smack her. Then I remembered The Art of Survival. When your plane crashed, you drank radiator water, you clubbed your sled dogs. This was no time to be fastidious.
I walked up to the garbage can and looked inside. I could see her brown paper bag on top of the trash. It stank, they never washed out the cans, but I could do this. I pretended I had dropped something in the garbage, and grabbed the lunch sack. It held a tuna sandwich with pickle relish on buttered white bread. The crusts were cut off. There were carrot sticks and even a can of apple juice fortified with vitamin C.
Compared with clubbing your sled dogs, this was easy. I learned to watch when the bell rang, when everybody threw their lunches away and rushed back to class. I was always tardy fifth period. But my hands didn't shake anymore.
Then one day I got busted. A girl pointed me out to her friend. 'Look at that nasty girl. Eating garbage.' And they all turned to look at me. I could see myself in their eyes, my scarred face, gobbling up a thrown-away yogurt with my finger. I would have stopped going to school, but I wouldn't have known where else to eat.
I found a library where I could safely pass the afternoons, looking at pictures in art books and sketching. I couldn't read anymore, the words wouldn't stay still. They drifted down the page, like roses on wallpaper. I drew samba figures on lined notebook paper, copied Michelangelo's muscular saints and Leonardo's wise Madonnas. I drew a picture of myself eating out of the garbage, furtive, with both hands, like a squirrel, and sent it to my mother. I got a letter back from her cellmate.
Dere Asrid,
You dont know me, I am your mamas roomayt. Your letters make her too sad. Send more chereful things, how youre getten strate A's, homecome queen. Shes here for life. Why make it hardr.
youre frend Lydia Gunman
Why make it harder, Lydia? Because it was her fault I was there. I would spare her nothing.
My mother's reply was more practical. She ordered me to call Children's Services every day and yell my head off until they changed my placement. Her writing was big and dark and emphatic. I could feel her rage, I warmed myself by it. I needed her strength, her fire. 'Don't you let them forget about you,' she said.
But this was not about being forgotten. This was about being in a file cabinet with my name oil it and they closed the door. I was a corpse with a tag on my toe.
As i HAD NO MONEY, I panhandled in the liquor store parking lot and the supermarket, asking men for change so I could call social services. Men always took pity on me. A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. They were nice men who smelled good, men from offices who looked like they'd have been good for a fifty. But I didn't want to start. I knew how it would play. I'd just buy a bunch of food and then be hungry again and also a whore. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.
AMELIA FOUND OUT I'd been asking for a new placement. I cringed on the uncomfortable wooden-edged sofa in the sitting room as she paced back and forth, ranting, her hands cutting the air. 'How dare you tell such outrageous lies about my house! I treat you like my own daughter, and this is how you repay me? With these lies?' The whites of her eyes showed all around the black irises, and spittle accumulated in the corners of her thin lips. 'You don't like my house? I send you to Mac. See how well you eat there. You're lucky I allow you to sit at the table with the other girls, with that hideous face. In Argentina you would not be allowed to walk through the front door.' My face. I felt my scars throb along my jaw.
'What do you know about a noble home? Just a common piece of street garbage. Mother in prison. You know, you stink like garbage. When you come into a room, the girls hold their breath. You soil my home. Your presence insults me. I don't want to look at you.' She turned away, pointed to the polished stairway. 'Go to your room and stay there.'
I stood but hesitated. 'What about dinner?'
She turned on her patent leather heel, and laughed. 'Maybe tomorrow.'
I lay on my bed in the beautiful bedroom smelling of cedar, my stomach clawing inside me like a cat in a sack. During the day, all I wanted to do was sleep, but at night, images of my days returned like a slide show. Did I really smell? Was I garbage, hideous?
I heard Silvana come in, settle on her bed. 'You thought you were something special, eh? Some hot shit. Now you see, you're no better than us. You better shut up, or you'll end up at Mac.' She tossed a dinner roll onto my blanket.
I ate it in two bites. It was so good, I almost cried. 'What's Mac?' I asked.
I heard her exasperated sigh. 'Mac's where they put you when you got no place to go. You won't last a day. They'll eat you for breakfast, white girl.'
'Least they get breakfast,' I said.
Silvana chuckled in the dark.
