Breaking Night

by Liz Murray

  The one saving grace was that Carlos ceased trying to be physical with me; instead, coming in at dawn those cold January mornings, he kicked off his snow-covered boots and pulled a blanket over himself on the floor. This was both a relief and unnerving for me, because if we didn’t speak and we weren’t sleeping with each other, what was holding us together at all? And yet my memory stubbornly recalled intense brown eyes gazing at me affectionately and his heartbeat as I slept on his chest. Carlos had once been a source of comfort and of love. He’d cared for Ma, just the way he said he’d cared for his own dad when AIDS took hold. It was hard to be angry at him after all we’d been through, but it wasn’t hard to be afraid.

  After too many awkward nights of silence and too many disappearances, I risked a couple of questions. One night I used my most timid voice to ask, gingerly, “So where are you headed? Can I come with you? . . . Can we go get Sam?”

  I didn’t have Oscar’s number, and everywhere I called, none of our friends had heard from Sam. I was worried. I was also sick of eating our half-rotten leftovers and watching the window, unsure of whether he’d return. Something had to change. Carlos responded to my questions with a sneer, his jaw slack, a hateful look in his eyes. But we hadn’t eaten all day, and unless I pressed him, I might not eat for yet another. I didn’t want him to leave without me.

  Very gently, I asked again, “Carlos, did you hear me? Can I come with you?” My heart pounded.

  Slowly he walked toward me, then he moved very quickly, his arm cocked back. Wham! His fist came flying past my head and split the wall’s wooden paneling on impact. I screamed. He pulled back his huge fist again, as though readying to punch me in the face. I flinched and raised my arms protectively. Looking me up and down with his fist held high, he laughed. “Stupid,” he muttered before walking to the bathroom. I was shaking; I curled up against the headboard and didn’t dare say another word. Never before had he threatened violence.

  But maybe that wasn’t true. Carlos had a silent way of establishing control, ensuring that you just knew not to press him. He was muttering to himself in front of the sink, slamming objects down in the bathroom. I did not dare move or speak. For what felt like forever, I watched Carlos through the mirror as he gelled his hair back, perfected his goatee with a disposable razor, put on his gold rings, and finally stuffed the gun in his belt and his drugs back into the zipper pocket of his army fatigues. He slipped out into the cold, silently.

  “Cops Charge Beau in Stab,” read the January 13 headline in the New York Daily News. The write-up was more factual than sentimental. It stated plainly that the woman “had been stabbed about the body and her throat was cut; she was left to die on the motel room floor.” It was a single incident of violence against a woman, perpetrated by her boyfriend, in a city where things like this happened all the time. In fact, boyfriend-perpetrated stabbings were not even new at what the paper called this “hot-sheet” motel, at which drug dealing, police raids, and violence against women was the norm.

  But I didn’t have to wait for the news report to learn about the stabbing; I had only to lift my curtain. At the time, I had been watching the news on television while Carlos was out. At first, it didn’t completely sink in: a reporter talking in front of some motel, delivering a story about the gruesome murder of a woman at a dive on the New England Thruway. The motel maid discovered the body, which at that very moment was being wheeled silently into an ambulance behind the wide-eyed reporter. It could have been an episode of Daddy’s favorite show, Law & Order. Instead, it was a real murder—right outside my window. Rosa Morilla, age thirty-nine, mother of five, had bled out on the floor of her room in the Holiday Motel, just three doors down from my room. I jumped up to look out the window, lifted the curtain, and saw the reporter. It was like having two different TV sets to watch, with two different camera angles. I looked back and forth between the television and out my window to see the same view: Ms. Morilla in a body bag, the ambulance doors slammed, the reporter’s blinding portable light shining on her overly made-up face.

  I shut everything off, light and TV, and crawled under the blankets. Through the dark, I listened to the police radios crackling, the dozens of footsteps crunching snow, the maids speaking frantically in Spanish. “No,” I spoke to the empty room. “Goddamnit.” Just a few hours later, you could have never guessed it happened. With the reporter long gone, the police packed up and departed, the whole motel was back to business as usual, as though Rosa Morilla never existed. As though she was not the mother of five children; as if she had not been someone’s daughter or sister; as if she didn’t even matter.

  Turns out people could just vanish. I couldn’t help but sit there and think about the woman who’d been murdered a few feet from my room. How had she gotten there, in a seedy motel room with a violent man who claimed he loved her? And was I really any different?

  Maybe originally I had loved Carlos, and I wanted the future he said we would have together. I’d wanted him to have his inheritance and a place of his own. I’d wanted to love him the way he’d never been loved. But that future dimmed a long time ago. And now I stayed because I was afraid of him and felt stuck without him. I thought I needed him.

  I couldn’t help but wonder, What if it had been Carlos and me instead of Rosa and her boyfriend? What if it had been my name the reporter uttered? Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Murray allegedly murdered at the hands of her boyfriend, eighteen-year-old drug dealer . . . I imagined what it would do to Daddy, Lisa, Sam, and Bobby—all the people I loved—if my life ended like that.

  The hotel maid took pity and gave me a couple of quarters. I used them to dial Jamie. “I need your help. Can you talk to your mom and see if I can come stay with you? I need to leave, now.”

  Jamie’s apartment was one stop in a series of different friends’ homes, patches of refuge as I carved out what was next, this time alone. Jamie had a fierce argument with her mom, and I was granted one week’s stay. I’ll never forget Jamie’s kindness—how she didn’t even question me, just helped any way she could, like family. She borrowed cab money from her mom, washed my clothes while I took a steaming hot shower, made us tuna-fish sandwiches with the crusts cut off and hot bowls of chicken soup. On the futon with her at night we fell asleep side by side, clean and warm. Carlos was far away from me, and I felt safe. If it were her choice, I could have stayed longer. But none of my friends had their own places, so it was all about whose place, on which night. And it was all up in the air from here on.

  I bounced around aimlessly from one home to another those first few weeks. Sam called to reach me at Bobby’s a few times, but I kept missing her. She was safe, in a group home on 241st Street. When I dialed the number she’d left, a girl named Lilah picked up and took a message.

  “Naw, Sam ain’t here, she out. You wanna leave a message or sumthin’?”

  “Tell her it’s Liz, and I’m at Bobby’s tonight if she wants to call me back. Sam is the Puerto Rican girl with short blue hair. Please make sure she gets the message.”

  “I know who she is,” the girl blurted. “I’m her best friend!”

  She hung up. Sam had moved on . . . out of nowhere, she was gone, too. It was really going to be just me for now, figuring it out.

  Once, in the middle of the night, I had to leave Fief’s house when his mom and dad got into an argument. Bobby didn’t mind the late-night surprise; he actually seemed very happy to see me. When I popped in on him, he’d already dressed for bed, in shorts made from cut-up jeans and a faded T-shirt bearing the McDonald’s logo, only it read MARIJUANA instead, right beneath the golden arches. Seeing the way his warm eyes brightened the moment he opened the door, I realized only then how much I really missed him—missed Bedford Park, the group, and our hangouts. I had stopped a few people outside to ask for money and I brought Chinese food, careful not to come empty-handed.

  “Pork fried rice with no vegetables and chicken with broccoli, no broccoli, just the way you like it,” I said first thing,
lifting the bag up high, in the hallway.

  He smiled that half smirk, pressing a finger to his lips, while he led me inside the warm, dimly lit apartment. His mother was getting her last few hours’ sleep before her early-morning shift at the hospital. The cat, a gray tiger-striped, was rummaging through the kitchen trash pail. A drawing of his little sister’s, a butterfly colored purple and yellow all jagged and outside of the lines, was magnetized to the fridge.

  We unwrapped the food in front of his TV. A taped episode of wrestling had just ended. Beside the screen, a picture of Bobby and his girlfriend, Diane, passionately kissing at a wedding was framed, her shiny, black hair falling over her shoulders. Bobby’s math homework was spread out over his black futon, shapes and various angles stenciled on the white sheets, his answers penned in beside them. Being in a real home instead of wasting away with Carlos in that motel room was like rejoining the land of the living. Looking at Bobby’s papers, his healthy, handsome face, his relationship, it was obvious that the whole thing—society, reality, life—had been going on without me, while I had been spacing out in some morbid fantasyland. Next to him, I felt like a ghostly emanation from limbo.

  “So, wow. How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” I said suspiciously. Sitting there, staring at Bobby’s stable life, the question felt almost rhetorical. Didn’t I look as raggedy as I felt? My clothing was dirty, my hair was greasy and wild.

  “Well, I just mean, I dunno, how are you? I know it’s been rough, with your mom and everything. And it’s been hard, too, Liz . . . not being able to get in touch with you. I wanted to be there for you about everything. So I was just wondering how you’re doing.” His hair was freshly wet from a shower, combed away from his face, and his eyes were earnest, full of concern. Coming from the motel, it was hard not to be defensive. I had to keep in mind that I wasn’t dealing with Carlos; that there were good, sane people in the world.

  “Sorry . . . I’m just tired.” I kept my eyes on the ground, trying not to show my embarrassment. “A lot’s been going on. But I guess you could say that I’m all right.”

  “All right? That it?” he asked, scooping a spoonful of rice into his mouth. His curiosity was sincere. Looking at him, I relaxed and reminded myself that I actually had friends who really loved me. With Bobby, I was safe.

  “Yeah . . . you know right now, that is it. I’m all right.” And I was. Letting go of Carlos had freed me, jolted me out of some slumber. I felt unusually lighthearted. “Tell me how you’ve been.”

  We ate while Bobby played back his old wrestling VHS tape, pausing every so often so he could teach me all the correct names to the moves; Razor’s Edge, the Tombstone, Elbow Drop. But my eyes kept going back to his math homework spread out on the futon. His penmanship, racy and dark-pressed, seemed confident.

  “. . . These are the main guys,” he said, moving his hands around for emphasis. “But ECW—that’s Extreme Championship Wrestling—now they’re for real. When it comes to actual violence—”

  “Bobby,” I interrupted. “What’s high school like?”

  After that night, I finished the rest of the week around the corner, at Fief’s. The week after, I jumped from place to place. It was hard to get a full night’s rest because I often had to sneak in after parents had gone to bed and be out again before they woke up, but I did manage about four hours a night. At Myers’s place, there was this sleeping bag he’d taken camping only once. When he rolled it out for me between his computer table and bed, I took up the only free space in his small, rectangular room.

  Jamie’s mom made rice and beans, and Jamie split her portions in half with me while we played Nine Inch Nails tapes and gossiped about guys or talked about old movies in her kitchen at night. At Bobby’s apartment, I could get the best showers. I savored the fresh smell of his Pantene shampoo, his blue, perfumed bars of Coast soap, and the use of his mom’s tampons and deodorant.

  My friends fed me, or sometimes I panhandled just enough money to get a plate of fries drenched in mozzarella cheese and gravy at Tony’s diner. Tony would let me sit there to eat it, keeping warm for hours. But when there was no one to reach out to, I’d shoplift at C-Town, stealing whatever I could get my hands on. I was bold, fearless, shoving bread, cheese squeeze, and seedless green grapes into my backpack or into the pouch of my hooded sweatshirt. Anything, as long as I could eat enough to make the pains in my stomach go away. This wasn’t the hard part. If I needed something, I could figure out how to get it, the same way I had figured out my needs my whole life. No food at home? Go pack bags at the supermarket, go pump gas. Ma and Daddy too chaotic? Leave. School sucks? Don’t go. Simple. I had always been able to meet my needs. No, the hard part about being on my own turned out to be something else altogether.

  With Sam and Carlos by my side, knocking on doors and living off the help of my friends had been manageable. If I ever felt self-conscious asking for help, I could always tell myself that we were all just being “social,” the three of us were coming over to “visit.” But being homeless alone turned everything upside down. It revealed just how needy I was, and I hated that.

  Yes, sometimes I could stay over, but not without a cost. It was the little things that got to me. The way I’d hear the smallest whispers over the stove around dinnertime at Bobby’s place; Bobby and his mom, in hushed voices, would debate if there was enough food that particular night to split with me. Or how from the hallway of Jamie’s building, I could hear her arguments with her mom, the knock-down, drag-out battles to get me to stay one more night. Even Fief’s apartment could get tricky, when he disappeared to Yonkers for weeks to see his cousins, and his dad answered the door to tell me he didn’t know when Fief was coming back. They were my friends, but I was something else . . . I was “Need a place to stay, can you spare a plate of food? Do you have another blanket? Mind if I use the shower? Do you have any extra . . . ?” That’s what I was, and I couldn’t stand being that.

  Not only was this not who I wanted to be, but it was also terrifying, because as much as my friends, my new family, were helping me, I had to wonder: When would they stop? At what point would I become too much? When would they start saying no? This couldn’t go on forever. And just the thought of being in dire need and having to, one day, hear my friends flat-out say no to my hunger and my need for shelter—and to turn away from my desperation—well, the thought of that rejection was just too much to deal with. I dreaded that moment of “no” that I sensed was coming. What does it feel like, the moment someone you love turns you down? I didn’t want to find out. So I decided it was better to stop needing so much. It wouldn’t be instant, and it would take some time, but I resolved to never be so needy again.

  And then, this back-against-the-wall situation gave me another piece of clarity: Friends don’t pay your rent. It was a simple and powerful thought. It hit me as I was trying to sleep on Bobby’s futon one night. But as simple as that thought was, it caused a huge shift in my thinking. Friends are great. They are loving, they are supportive, they are fun—but friends don’t pay your rent. I never really had to worry about rent before, but now that I absolutely had to worry, I was trying to grasp the concept of actually getting an apartment and gathering the money for rent when it hit me: everything I had been obsessing about (Carlos, friends, hanging out, thinking about my past)—none of it paid my rent. Paying rent would require something new to focus on.

  After a few weeks of being so dependent on people, I began sleeping a few nights a week on the subway, alone. Into the far corner of the subway car, I appeared just like any other traveler taking public transportation, rocked to sleep by the train’s rhythm, well on my way home. No one had to know. But this wasn’t safe. Sometimes thugs boarded the train, teenage guys in hoods, their pants sagging, barking loud words to one another, dominating the subway car. I’d awoken a few times to their stares, but never anything more. It was luck. So I chose hallways as my main refuge; they were a better bet.

  Th
e top landing of any Bedford Park building’s stairwell felt so much safer. Lying there, flat on a bed of marble, using my backpack for a pillow, whole lives played out beneath me: the smell of food cooking; lovers’ arguments; dishes clanking; TVs blasting at top volume; my old shows, The Simpsons and Jeopardy!; rap music—all carrying me back to University Avenue. Mostly, though, I heard families: children calling out for mothers, husbands speaking their wives’ names, sending me reminders of the way love stretched between a handful of people fills a space, transforms it into a home. I wondered how Lisa was doing at Brick’s. How was she dealing with school when we had just lost Ma? I didn’t have the strength to call her; I knew I just couldn’t handle the questions I was sure she’d ask: “What are you doing out there, Liz? What are you going to do with your life? Are you going back to school?” It was too much to deal with, so I stayed away.

  Many nights, I longed for home. But it occurred to me as I struggled for a feeling of comfort and safety: I have no idea where home is.

  Sometimes, waking up, I didn’t initially recognize where I was. For those first few seconds, it could be University Avenue, the footsteps nearby, Ma and Daddy getting ready to binge for the night. Or Brick’s place, Sam somewhere right within my reach. But when my eyes adjusted, it was always someone else’s personal touches, their family’s noises surrounding me, and their scents in the air. I was at Bobby’s, Fief’s, or one of a few other random places I’d sometimes go, the apartments of friends’ friends.