“Let’s see how tough she is now,” he might mutter with a smile of smug satisfaction.
I think I managed to fall asleep for the rest of my first night merely out of spite. Whenever I began to feel sorry for myself, I forced myself to envision my father’s red, enraged face and his confidence that I would return and plead for mercy and forgiveness, writing promises in blood. I was as strong and as stubborn as he was, however, and I was determined to have him cry “uncle” before I ever did.
During that first night and the days that passed afterward, I harbored the belief, perhaps more accurately called the hope, that somehow, someway, my mother would come looking for me, find me, and convince me that my father regretted throwing me out on the street. I actually looked for her on street corners, in nearby stores and restaurants, and in the hotel lobby, even though there was no way she could possibly know I was in this place or in this neighborhood. I tried to imagine her running around in a panic, asking strangers if they had seen me. I even envisioned her putting pictures of me on walls and utility poles, with desperate pleas for anyone who had seen me to call her. Maybe she would hock some of her best jewelry and put up a reward.
Whenever a policeman on the street looked at me, I stared back, expecting him to come rushing over, demanding to know if I was Roxy Wilcox. Perhaps by now, my picture had been given to all of the police in the city. But most of the time, the officer I saw would look right through me or just turn away, uninterested in the sight of just another runaway teenager, with so many more serious problems to face.
After the first few days, the reality hardened. I realized that Papa would resist reporting me to the police or permitting Mama to do so this soon. He would be too embarrassed at work if his colleagues found out, and if the police brought me home, he wouldn’t feel victorious at all. He’d have to accept me without my surrendering, and he would have to assume most of the blame for an underage girl being thrown out onto the streets. I was still weeks away from being eighteen.
At first, I had no idea what I was going to do or how long I would remain where I was. I suppose anyone who has been thrown out of her home or has run away begins by thinking of other relatives to go to. Going to my father’s family would probably be worse than going home. For all I knew, my grandfather would have me court-martialed and put in some military brig to scrub floors and wash dishes for years.
Rushing off to Mama’s family in France loomed as a possibility, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew I had to get more money together for such a trip. Perhaps more important, I knew how everyone there would react. They’d want me to go home immediately, and my uncles and aunts would force me onto the next flight back to the States. Relatives provided no hope, no option. I had no friends close enough to trust or concerned enough with my welfare to offer me any assistance here, either. Realizing that brought home the reality of who I was and how I had lived my life until now.
I would probably be the first to admit that I was too bitter, too selfish, and too distrusting to form any solid relationships with other girls. By now, most of them knew how their parents would feel about their being too friendly with me, even though I could see that so many wanted to be. They thought I could teach them things none of their other friends could, and there was the attraction to someone or something dangerous. However, I was the quintessential bad influence who, if I didn’t get them to be as bad as I was, would do something wrong when they were with me that would get them into trouble, anyway. It was the old guilt-by-association thing. I might as well be carrying a fatal disease. Maybe I was. Even my teachers had begun to avoid contact with me recently, choosing to pretend I was invisible until I did something they couldn’t ignore.
Only Mr. Wheeler made any real effort to save me. He said he could tell from the way I wrote that I was far brighter than my grades revealed.
“You could do something with your life,” he said. “You could be proud of yourself, Roxy.”
“Who says I’m not?” I fired back at him.
He smiled, his soft gray-blue eyes twinkling with that irony he could express and see in what others said or did. “You hate yourself, Roxy,” he replied softly. “Others might fall for your act, but don’t try to cover it up with that false bravado when you’re talking to me. Remember your Macbeth. ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know.’ ”
I didn’t spit something smart or nasty back at him. I could see how unhappy he was for me and how much he hated telling me that.
“Stop fighting everyone who wants to help you,” he added. “Get that chip off your shoulder before it’s too late.”
I didn’t want to continue the conversation. He was the only one who could bring me to tears, and if there was one thing I never wanted to do, it was cry for myself or give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me do it, especially at school. My father had taught me that much. Good soldiers don’t whine. They grin and bear it. What was I living as in my father’s house if not a good soldier? I thought. Soldier up!
For the first few days at the roach hotel, I was comfortable deceiving and lying to myself, telling myself that I would be just fine on my own. I had enough money to get by eating at inexpensive restaurants for a while, and I had enough clothing. I walked around with this Pollyanna belief that somehow, someway, something would happen that would provide me with some sort of future in which I wouldn’t be dependent on my parents ever again.
But as my money began to diminish and wandering about the city lost its novelty, I could feel myself beginning to despair and began to sense a growing desperation festering beneath my breasts. Sometimes I felt hot and flushed, and sometimes I just felt numb. Returning at night to my dingy room only reinforced this growing depression and melancholy. How low had I sunk? Where could I go from here? Had I lost my senses? Had my pride blinded me to reality? I didn’t want to answer any of those questions.
Even so, I’d lie there at night, forbidding myself even to think of going home and begging for mercy, despite how many times I actually set out to do so, leaping off the rotten bed and charging toward the door. I never opened it. I stood staring at the doorknob and then retreated when I imagined the expression on Papa’s face coming back at me in wave after wave, his angry smile rippling through my eyes and into my brain.
Even after hearing someone try to open my door at night, something that would surely terrify any other girl, I remained determined and stubborn. I was confident that I could deal with anything unpleasant. Where did I get the fortitude? Was it from my father? Should I be grateful to him for that, at least? Could I ever admit to being grateful to him for anything? Just thinking about it made me even more miserable. I was there because of him, and I could survive there because of him, but I didn’t want either, not really.
To feel better about all this, I tried to call up images of my parents suffering. Surely they were both up all night thinking about me out on the cold, indifferent streets. Perhaps they feared that I had already been mugged, raped, or murdered. Now that time had passed, days had gone by, and I had not come home with my tail between my legs, my mother surely had become more frantic. She was crying, pleading every day, maybe even demanding that my father do something. Maybe they were at the stage where they weren’t talking to each other, and every time Emmie asked about me, my mother would just break into hysterics, driving my father out of the house. He was suffering, I told myself. He had to be. He could put on his act, pretend to be strong and indifferent, but he was tossing and turning when he went to bed, maybe even taking sleeping pills, and all day, he was regretting his rage, regretting what he had done. I convinced myself that his bitterness was eating him up inside.
Convincing myself of all this did make me feel better for a short while, but the stench of the room, the ugly sounds from outside, the crying I heard frequently coming through the walls from other rooms, and the sight of other, far more lost young girls already down some path of drugs and prostitution, their complexions blotchy, their necks dirty, their eyes full of fear and
dread, sickened me and filled me with new despair.
Was I looking at my immediate future? I couldn’t get over the growing feeling that I was somehow dwindling and disappearing. I would soon lose my name, and one day, I would look into the smoky, cracked mirror in the rusty bathroom and be unable to recognize myself. The girl looking back at me wasn’t the girl with stubborn pride anymore. She was a shadow of who she had been, a corpse on the prowl.
This really was a hotel for the dead, I thought. I had crossed over into Hades. The people living in it didn’t realize who and what they had become. Soon I could be one of them, moving like people in a chain gang, drudging their way through the muck of their own making. They struggled to get up the stairs and to their rooms—or tombs, I should say. Some of them vomited, moaned, and sobbed along the way. Who else but the mythical Charon would want to own and operate such a graveyard?
Most of the time, there was that elderly, sick-looking man at the desk in the very small lobby, but occasionally, a young man with reddish-brown hair was there. He had a pockmarked face and slightly orange lips. Maybe he brushed some lipstick on them. As skinny as someone who had been near starvation for a week, he sat on a stool, with his small, feminine shoulders turned inward as he hovered over a checkerboard, apparently playing his right hand against his left like someone with a multiple-personality syndrome, both hands with the long, dirty fingernails of someone who had been scratching his way out of a grave. The first few times I saw him, he barely looked back at me, but one time, for some reason, he sat back and smiled, revealing two rows of nearly corn-yellow teeth.
“My grandfather told me to watch for you today,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Pappy Morris. He owns the joint.” He shrugged. “Someday it will be mine. My father ain’t around no more. We don’t know where he went. My mother left about ten years ago with a cable television salesman.”
“Terrific,” I said. “You gave me your biography in less than a minute.”
I started to go up to my room.
“Hold up.”
I paused and looked back. “What do you want? Is there some sort of discount for guests who endure more than two nights here or something?”
He smiled and shook his head. “You’re different. Gramps is right.”
“Really? How am I different?”
“You’re clean, and so far, you’ve stayed clean.”
“Excuse me?”
“What the hell are you doing here and still clean?”
“It isn’t easy, considering the shower has water the color of a penny, and the warmest it gets is cold.”
He shrugged, illustrating how low his concern for the residents of the hotel could go. “So why are you slumming?”
“Slumming?” I looked around, pretending to be shocked. “I thought this was the Plaza.”
His laugh was more like someone gasping through clenched teeth and shuddering. “You know, if you need work or want to make more money, I know someone who’d put you at the top of his list. You just kick back ten percent to me. You know, like a manager or something.”
“What sort of work?”
“You know. Work?” He smiled lecherously and turned his upper body like a flirtatious teenage girl. “The work the other girls who live here do.”
“Oh. I see. Well, it’s work to you,” I said dryly, realizing what he meant. “To me, it sounds like digging in the garbage.”
He lost his smile. “I’m just trying to be of some help.”
“Yeah. That was exactly what the hangman used to say.”
“Huh?”
“Thanks. I don’t need work. I’m independently wealthy and here only to complete a major financial deal,” I said, and headed for the rickety stairway again.
The elevator still had an out-of-order sign on it. Actually, it looked as if it had been out of use for as long as the building had stood. Despite my sarcasm and defiance in the lobby, when I entered my hovel of a room, I felt myself sink into an even deeper sense of defeat and depression. The creep downstairs was right. Really, what was I doing there? The only thing that had happened was the creep downstairs offering to become my pimp.
Great accomplishment, Roxy, I told myself. You showed them. You showed them all.
How much longer could I do this? I had the money to stay for another couple of weeks, but where was it getting me?
This time, I had a great deal of trouble falling asleep. The sounds coming from other rooms began to resemble sounds I might hear in a jungle. Someone was obviously in great pain, someone sounded as if she was pleading for mercy, and someone else was coughing so much I was sure he would crack open his chest and drop his lungs on the floor. Later, someone again tried to open my door, and I had to shout, “Get away! I’m calling the police!”
I fell asleep again, but the nightmares were taking on more vividness. In one, I saw the inhabitants of the hotel coming up the stairs, but they were all just skeletons, their hair, no matter what the color had been, now a stringy ash-gray. The following morning, I rose very early and rushed out of the hotel, stopping only to get coffee in a takeout cup. Most of the time, I walked with my head down, bumping into people, crossing streets against the light, and hearing drivers shout curses at me. I felt myself fleeing and didn’t realize how far I had walked until I saw that I was turning on a familiar street not far from my school. I got there just when most of the students were arriving, but I stepped back behind the corner of a newsstand so as not to be seen.
I didn’t know why I had walked up there, but I stood watching the girls and the guys I knew. Just the sight of them laughing and joking around disturbed me. A few days ago, I either ignored or teased and insulted many of them, but suddenly, I was watching them with envy. How nonchalant and carefree they all seemed to me now. For some of the girls, not catching the eye of a boy they had a crush on would be the worst, most dreadful thing of the day. Others would be jealous of another girl’s clothes or jewelry. What they would do on the weekend was their biggest worry. Not one of them would be concerned about how much money she had in her pockets and her purse, and I couldn’t imagine any of them worrying about where they would sleep that night or if it would be safe and clean.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t prepared to tell myself how good I’d had it just a week ago. I refused to admit that. The truth was, I hated this longing and regret that had come over me while watching them. I winced when the bell rang for everyone to go inside to homeroom. I always hated those bells, hated feeling like a trapped mouse reacting to some stimulus, being in my assigned seat, quiet and attentive. I was confident that most of my teachers would look at my empty chair and be relieved that I wasn’t there. Only Mr. Wheeler would be sincerely upset. He would probably be the only one who would go to the dean to ask why I was absent so many days.
What would my parents tell the school? That I was sick? Would they claim that I had run off? Would anyone in the school bother to call them? Why ruin a good thing? they might think. Would the news of my continued absence trickle down to Emmie’s class, would or one or two of the younger brothers or sisters of girls and guys in my class ask her about me? “What happened to your sister? Is she finally in jail or something?”
Poor Emmie, I thought. How confused and upset she must be. What sort of answers had Mama given her to use or to understand? Did Papa just grunt or say something like “Don’t ask about her. Be happy she’s not here”?
Somehow, I had thought it would be a no-brainer, easy to give it all up, even to give up my family, since we were at each other so much and so often. I had craved this independence. I had wanted this freedom.
Stop whining about it, I told myself. You wanted to be out in the real world and on your own, with no one bossing you around. So now you are. You have what you wanted. So shut up. Soldier up!
I stood there a while longer and then walked away quickly, hoping no one who knew me had seen me. How embarrassing that would be, I thought. Again, without consciously planning it, I
walked in the direction of my house. When I arrived on our street, I stopped, like someone who had been picked up and dropped there, someone totally surprised at where she was and how she had gotten there. I stood looking at the front door and thinking, about Mama mostly. Would she be coming out soon, perhaps to go grocery shopping or do some other errand? I wanted to see her. I waited and waited.
Finally, she did emerge, with Emmie. For some reason, she was either taking her to school late or taking her somewhere else. Emmie looked sad, as if she had been crying. Maybe she had asked about me so much that Papa had exploded at her. Secretly, I hoped that was it. I was tempted to step out and call to them. I might even let Mama talk me into coming back, I thought. But I couldn’t do it, even though I knew Papa was at work and wouldn’t know.
I defied the tears that were forming over my eyes and turned away quickly, now practically jogging down the street, through Central Park, and then into the subway station to go back downtown into the hell I had chosen for some sanctuary. Again and again, I asked myself what I was doing and what I had hoped to accomplish. I had to get hold of myself, get back securely on my feet. The way to do it, I thought, was to get a job and make enough money so I could either leave the city for some other place or at least get into a decent hotel.
So I decided to actively look for work, first in stores advertising for salespeople. I returned to the hotel and changed into my best pantsuit. It was a little wrinkled, but I had to make do. I had a bright red beret that I thought would be a nice added touch. Then I went into the bathroom and did the best I could to make myself look put-together. After only several days in the rat hole, I had already begun to let myself go, not caring about my hair or what I wore and certainly not bothering with any makeup. I was starting to look like the others there. When you started to neglect how you looked, you began to diminish and slowly turn into a ghost, I thought. It put some panic in my chest.