Paper Things

by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

  The bus pulls up to the stop by Chloe’s place. I get off and start trudging up the hill. Maybe I’ll even bump into Gage as I’m walking!

  Rather than keeping my head down and looking for pennies, I scan the faces that I pass, hoping to spot Gage. There’s a woman covered in blankets, leaning against the wall of a building. A man with dreadlocks who is shouting loudly, though no one appears to be listening. A bearded man who walks toward me with his hands out. I offer a smile — friendly but not too friendly — and walk faster.

  The door to Chloe’s apartment building feels like home. I push it open and climb the stairs, trying not to notice the smell of pee.

  I knock on the door, ready to reassure Chloe when she sees me standing here without Gage. But even after three knocks, no one answers. It hadn’t occurred to me that Chloe or her roommates might not be home. I turn the doorknob to see if the door is unlocked, but no such luck.

  Now what? Should I wait here for Chloe or one of her roommates to show up — or for Gage to show up, knowing this is where I’d most likely be? But if Gage knows that Chloe isn’t home right now, would he assume I’d know that, too? In that case, where would he think to look for me?

  Briggs’s studio.

  I dash down the stairs. What if he’s already there? Will he leave as soon as he sees that I’m not there? Then where will he look for me? How the heck are we supposed to find each other when neither of us has a phone?

  Holy moly, Gage must be as worried about me right now as I am about him. I fly back down the hill toward the stop for the bus going to the East End.

  The bus stop is spilling over with adults waiting to take the bus out of the city, back to their homes with their bright kitchens and their shiny granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances. I picture them eating with their families at long tables, tables filled with platters of food. Afterward, they’ll help their kids with their homework and the kids will grumble, but they’ll also be glad because they won’t be scared or embarrassed when the teacher comes around to collect their work.

  Even though lots of people are loaded down with briefcases or shopping bags, no one is sitting down at the bus stop. I peer past the crowd and into the bus shelter; a man is curled up on the bench with his back turned toward the crowd. Every so often someone shoots him a grumpy look, and a woman next to me mutters, “Lousy drunk.”

  I take a closer look at the man. He seems familiar to me. Do I know him from the soup kitchen?

  Just then, the man turns over on his back, and suddenly I know exactly who he is. And I know for sure that he’s not drunk, just tired. Bone tired. The kind of tired that comes after a long day of training at Jiffy Lube and pulls you down, even though you’re supposed to be picking up your little sister from Head Start.

  The man sleeping on the bench is Gage.

  The bus pulls up, and I wait until all of the people have boarded before I shake my brother awake.

  Gage is even more distressed than I expected him to be — but not for the reason I expected.

  He looks at his watch. “Shoot, shoot, shoot!” he says, only he doesn’t say shoot. “We’ve got to go! Hurry up!” He looks frantic.

  At first I think he’s still half asleep, convinced we’ve overslept for work and school. But when I start to explain that it’s late afternoon, he interrupts me.

  “I know that, Ari. But we have to be across town in ten minutes!”

  “What for?” I ask, rushing to keep up with his long strides. I wonder if we’ll be crashing with someone new tonight — a friend from Jiffy Lube, maybe. At least it’s not Lighthouse.

  “To see the apartment!”

  I stop. “What?”

  “The two-bedroom apartment. I called this morning from work,” Gage yells over his shoulder. He’s still hurrying along and is already crossing Maple Street. “Let’s go!”

  I run to catch up with him. “We’re going to see an apartment?”

  “Not if you don’t hurry. The landlord said he’d meet us at five. I don’t know how long he’ll wait.”

  I’m practically skipping as we make our way to the bus headed to the East End. I decide not to remind Gage that I was waiting for him in the East End. He still hasn’t put two and two together and realized that he forgot to pick me up from Head Start. And maybe, just maybe, if everything goes right tonight, he’ll be too distracted by happiness to remember.

  It’s weird how something from when you were little will pop back up again later in life. I remember being in the car — it must have been with Janna, since Mama didn’t drive — stopped at a light and looking out the window at a row of houses, all connected. Each house had its own tiny fenced-in backyard. There wasn’t much grass in each yard; it was mostly dirt that had been dug up by plastic shovels, bent spoons, or paws. Some of the yards had little hibachi grills, and most were scattered with plastic toys — toppled Big Wheels and baby dolls lying facedown in the dirt.

  “I’d like to live there,” I’d said.

  “In public housing?” Gage had asked.

  “It looks like fun,” I’d said. “Everyone’s together.”

  It’s those very same houses that we’re coming up to now. The houses aren’t in the part of the East End where Janna lives (outside loop with views of the harbor) or where Sasha lives (tiny inside streets near the shops). Instead, they’re down near the warehouses. Warehouses that used to be factories, according to Gage, but now just store stuff.

  “Remember when I used to want to live here?” I ask my brother, now that I’ve caught up.

  He’s looking at a slip of paper. “We’re not in these units,” he says. “We’re across the street.”

  I look up at a gray building that looks less like apartments and more like offices for the warehouses. It has a flat roof and rectangular windows.

  Gage and I have just gone in through the glass front door and are trying to make sense of the numbers on the mailboxes when an older man comes up the steps behind us.

  “Gage?” he asks.

  It’s the landlord. Gage shakes his hand, introduces me, and apologizes for being late.

  “Not to worry,” the man says. “These things happen.” He leads us back outside and around the corner of the building. “The apartment has its own entrance,” he says as we follow him down a small stairway. Our apartment is in the basement.

  The landlord opens the door, and after my eyes adjust to the dimness, I can see that this is the apartment in the pictures, only it looks smaller, more cellar-ish in person. I expected the apartment to be empty, waiting for us to move in, but it looks like someone still lives here.

  As Gage and the man walk around, talking about the price of heat and electricity, I try to picture the two of us all moved in. On the orange counter is an old toaster oven and a monkey cookie jar. I wonder if the people who live here bought the cookie jar at the One Stop Party Shop. If so, maybe Briggs can get me one just like it. I’ll fill it with peanut-butter cookies like the ones that Janna and I used to make. It was always my job to make crisscrosses across the top of the cookies with a fork. “Only two crisscrosses,” Janna would say. When I’d ask why, she’d say, “Just because.”

  Instead of there being a cabinet below the sink, a brightly colored cloth hangs down to hide the stuff that’s under there. I want to peek, but I don’t want to be nosy.

  Instead, I go look at the two bedrooms, trying to guess which one will be mine. I can tell from the furniture and decorations that an adult sleeps in one of the rooms and a boy and his baby sister in the other. The rooms look to be about the same size, but for whatever reason, I picture myself in the kids’ bedroom. I imagine my bed pressed against one wall, which would leave room for a desk along the wall by the door. Maybe we could find a cheap desk on craigslist or somewhere. It doesn’t have to be fancy — just someplace quiet for me to do homework.

  Now I can’t help myself: I decide to be nosy after all and look inside the closet. There isn’t a bar inside the small closet for hanging clothes
— just hooks against the back and the sides. But there is a bookshelf in the closet, where clothes have been folded and stuffed in. I bet Gage could put up a bar, though, if I asked him. Janna would want me to hang my uniforms on actual hangers, not on hooks. Besides, if I can hang some of my clothes on a bar, then I can use the bookshelf to set up my Paper Things. I’ll have room for all three stories, and the top can be a rooftop terrace instead of a backyard. I’ll be able to play Paper Things anytime I want, and no one will have to step around them. If I have Sasha over and don’t want her to see them, I can just shut my closet door.

  “Yeah, I think this will work,” I hear Gage say, and I bounce up and down in my new room. I can’t believe that we will have a place — our very own place — to come home to every night.

  “Do you have the voucher?” the landlord asks. I stand next to Gage so I can hear all the details.

  “Voucher?”

  “From the Housing Authority.”

  I can tell that my brother is confused. He’s pausing so the man will say more and he won’t look ignorant.

  “The rent on this apartment is subsidized. In order to live here, you have to have proof from the Housing Authority that your income falls below a certain level.”

  “Can’t I just tell you what I make?” says Gage. “Or get my boss to write something? Trust me, it’s low. Really low.” He laughs, and so does the man.

  “Yeah, I get you,” says the landlord. “But the city has to make sure. I can’t just rent this one out from under the people who have completed the paperwork and are still waiting for housing.”

  Gage’s face shutters, like it used to do when Janna started in on him about something or other. I can tell that he’s done listening, that he’s given up hope.

  “Where do we go to get the voucher?” I ask.

  “The Housing Authority. But don’t get your hopes up,” he says to me. “It will take days, maybe even weeks, for you to qualify. Folks have been looking at this apartment since seven this morning; it’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

  So now we’re back on the streets, and once again I’m running in my flapping shoe, trying to keep up with my brother.

  “Let’s go to the Housing Authority right now!” I shout.

  “It’s closed, Ari!” he yells back to me like I don’t know anything. “It’s closed, and even if it were open, I don’t know what I have to take there to prove that I make crap.”

  “Can’t you just give them your boss’s phone number? He’ll tell them what you make.”

  “I just got the job; it’s probably not even considered steady work yet. And what will I write when they ask for our current address?”

  My mind starts working on possible answers — Janna’s address or maybe Chloe’s or Briggs’s? Surely the Housing Authority people wouldn’t follow up to verify that we lived there, right? But I don’t make any suggestions. No idea will be the right one. No words will make Gage feel better. Not right now.

  Eventually Gage’s pace slows, and I catch up and walk by his side. I can tell that he’s thinking. I want him to think out loud, but that isn’t his style. Finally he turns to me and says in a voice much kinder than the one he’s been using since we left the apartment, “You must have been scared when I didn’t pick you up at Head Start.”

  I shrug like it was no big deal, but tears sting my eyes. Now I’m the tired one. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of the unfamiliar. Tired of trying to figure things out. For a few moments I want to be five years old again. I want someone to plunk me in front of a Disney movie and ask, “Would you like apple juice or grape?”

  “I’m so sorry, Ari,” he says, and puts his arm around me. “So sorry. God, what if you hadn’t found me? I messed up big time.” He stops and turns me toward him. “Forgive me?”

  “Maybe,” I say, and he squeezes me against his side. “I need to call Carol,” I add.

  “I’ve been going back and forth in my head all day, but now I’m sure of it: we have to get a phone,” he says.

  What I want to say is Talk to Janna. Tell her that we don’t really have an apartment. Maybe she’ll reactivate your phone. But I don’t. Instead I say, “Phones are très expensive.”

  “Not all of them,” says Gage. “There are pay-as-you-go phones. Besides, a phone is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. You need to be able to reach me. My boss needs to be able to reach me.”

  And Chloe, I think but don’t say out loud. Something tells me Chloe’s patience would run out altogether if she couldn’t reach Gage when she wanted to. I start to ask Gage where he’ll get the money, but I already know. The money will have to come from the first and last months’ rent savings. Just an hour ago, it felt like we were so close to getting an apartment; now it feels like a lifetime away.

  We ride the bus all the way out to Walmart, where it takes Gage forever to choose a phone. The pretty salesclerk tries to sell him a more expensive model — a phone with a data plan or a phone with flashy features. Gage keeps repeating the same thing: “I want the cheapest phone you have, and I want to keep my old number.” The salesclerk doesn’t think that keeping his number will be possible, but it’s obvious that she likes Gage, and in the end — and after a ridiculously long call to our new telephone company — she finds a way.

  Still, I can tell when we go to checkout and Gage pulls fifty dollars from his wallet that he feels anything but glad. I’ve often heard the expression two steps forward, one step back. Now I know what it means. That’s what it’s like trying to live on our own. Or maybe two steps forward and ten steps back.

  I don’t ask where we’re sleeping tonight. I don’t have to. When Gage is feeling beaten down, we stay away from friends. Being with friends who have jobs and apartments, he says, makes him feel like a loser.

  The streets are getting darker. Headlights glare in my eyes. Tonight we’re headed for the shelter.

  Technically, we’re not allowed to stay at Lighthouse. First of all, you’re supposed to be between twelve and twenty years old, so I don’t qualify. Second of all, you’re supposed to fill out paperwork when you check in, just like at the family shelter. But West doesn’t make us register. He sneaks us into Lighthouse, which is not a lighthouse at all but an old-looking, three-story white-and-brown apartment house. The offices and kitchen are on the first floor. The second floor is the boys’ floor, and the third floor is the girls’. Each floor holds up to eight kids, for a total of sixteen people per night. But West usually slips us into a little first-floor storage room, where we sleep on mats on the floor.

  You would think that staying hidden downstairs would keep our stuff safer, but you’d be wrong. Kids are always raiding the downstairs rooms, looking for anything to take with them. So the first time when Gage and I left to use the bathrooms, stuff was taken. Now we know to leave the storage room one at a time. Fortunately, I can lock the door from the inside when Gage is gone.

  We haven’t had dinner, but we are on our way to Lighthouse anyway; West only works until eight and it must be getting close to that now.

  About half a block away from Lighthouse, we stop in front of a parking garage so that Gage can call West. Only, for whatever reason, West doesn’t answer. Gage tries again. Nothing.

  “What’s tonight?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “West should be working.”

  Sleet starts to fall. I pull up my hood. My toes, especially the ones in the flappy shoe, are numb. I jump up and down to wake them back up. I’m hungry, but I don’t say so. I wonder what the snack will be at Lighthouse tonight. I might ask West if he can grab me two shares before he leaves. That will make Gage mad, but I don’t care; I was so busy making snowflakes that I hardly ate anything at Head Start.

  “Arianna!” a man’s voice calls from across the street.

  I look around to see who might be calling me. For a moment, I’m convinced that this has something to do with West, that we’re in trouble for trying to sneak into Lighthouse, though I know that’s crazy.

  And then I
see who it is. Reggie, the airplane man, waves to me from across the street. Amelia is with him and she wags her tail when she sees me.

  How lucky is this? “Hey, Reggie!” I call. “I was hoping to see you! I have something for you!”

  Reggie crosses the street, and I try to introduce him to Gage, but Gage is concentrating on his frantic texting.

  In a confetti toss of words, I tell Reggie about his plane, the cupola, Gage’s new job, and Fran’s bike plane, but he notices my teeth chattering and interrupts me to ask where we’re headed. “I could walk with you while you tell me the whole story,” he says.

  “We’re kind of hoping to stay there,” I say, pointing to the shelter. But I can tell from Gage’s eyes that he heard me and he wants me to shut up.

  “Shelter full?” Reggie asks when Gage finally looks up from his phone.

  Gage nods. I wonder what the real story is.

  “Look,” says Reggie, “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I’ve got a place you can stay tonight. It’s not the Taj Mahal, it’s not even Motel Six, but it’s warm.”

  “We appreciate the offer, sir,” Gage starts to say, pulling his wool cap down lower. But Reggie interrupts him.

  “You’d actually be doing me a favor. I’m hoping to stay at the men’s shelter tonight — have a shower and maybe watch a little TV — but they don’t allow dogs. If you could stay at my place and watch Amelia for me, I’d be grateful.”

  I look at Gage with pleading eyes, but he hesitates.

  “It’s pretty modest,” Reggie says apologetically. “There isn’t even a proper bathroom, though I make do with a camping toilet. But it’s dry and warm and no one will bother you.” He goes on to explain that the place he rents is a heated storage unit down on Marginal Way. “I moved all my stuff in when I lost the house,” he says. “It’s a little crowded, but I’ve managed to set it up almost like an apartment.”

  “And you’re not planning to stay there tonight?” Gage asks, sounding almost suspicious. I want to scold him for being so rude, but I remind myself that he doesn’t know Reggie and Amelia like I do. Besides, Gage has never been one for trusting new people.