Breaking Night

by Liz Murray

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Murray,” he said, shaking Daddy’s hand. Daddy smiled a complacent smile, obviously uncomfortable.

  “Finnerty, actually,” Daddy corrected. “Liz’s mother and I were never married. It was the seventies, you know. She was spirited and all—actually she was completely crazy.” He laughed. I cringed. Vince didn’t bat an eye; he only smiled at Daddy. “Call me Peter,” Daddy said.

  He was so nervous, it was making me nervous. What would I do if we couldn’t pull this off? Where would I go if we blew my one chance? I stared at Vince in search of any sign of suspicion. “Okay,” I intervened, clapping my hands together. “Let’s get this moving, then. I don’t mean to rush, it’s just that I don’t want to hold up my dad or anything. You know, with work and all.”

  Even though his hands were trembling, Daddy managed to sign the same neat, jagged signature I’d seen him apply to absent notes and welfare documents my whole life. He muttered to himself and kept pushing his tongue around in his cheek.

  “Hmmm, okay. Good, great. Perfect,” he kept saying. “Good, got it.”

  My eyes were fixed on Vince, my heart pounding. I tried to look calm and cheerful. “Address?” Vince asked, with his fingertips perched onto a computer keyboard.

  I looked over at Daddy. His eyes were trained on the ceiling and he was rubbing his hand on his forehead to jog his memory. “Nine thirty three—” he began, butchering Bobby’s address.

  “Two six four! Two six four, Daddy!” I quickly interrupted. “See what happens when you don’t get enough sleep!” I patted Daddy’s hand, my smile nervous. “He works too much,” I said to Vince, shaking my head to fake lighthearted disapproval. “Two hundred sixty-four East 202nd Street,” I finished for him. I gave Vince the phone number, too. Now I was shaking. We almost blew it. But I finally relaxed as I saw the meeting come to an end when Vince stood and reached out for Daddy to shake his hand again. Daddy gave Vince a smile familiar to me from our meetings with social workers.

  “Well, okay then. Welcome to Prep, Liz,” Vince said, suddenly turning to me. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, hoping Daddy wouldn’t say another word. “Next thing you should do is see April for another appointment to come back and get your schedule drawn up for the fall.”

  I smiled and thanked Vince. The moment he retreated into his office, I ushered Daddy toward the door. On our way out of Prep I had to talk Daddy out of stealing a copy of Time magazine from the office.

  Back on Nineteenth Street, I walked Daddy to the train. We’d visited for less than forty-five minutes. Standing in front of the station entrance, I watched Daddy fidget, strapping and unstrapping a Velcro flap that tightened his closed umbrella. He didn’t make eye contact with me, but kept looking past me, from the umbrella and then into the train station.

  “Well, I hope that did it, Liz. Sorry if I messed up in there. I think it worked out anyway. . . . Do you think you’ll actually go to school this time?” His question stabbed doubt at me, mocked my assurance.

  “Yes. I know I will,” I said, with more certainty than I expected from myself. I’d borrowed some of Bobby’s clothing for the day, baggy, but still clean. I had designed a cover story about my life for Daddy, too. On our few recent phone calls, I’d told him I lived at Bobby’s house permanently now, and that I was fine. He didn’t ask questions, and I hoped it would stay that way. What I was avoiding, in every way possible, was for him to know what I was really going through. Because if he found out, I knew it would hurt him. Then he’d be living in a shelter and worrying about me, too. Then I’d worry about him worrying about me, and what good would that do either of us? Better to have him believe I was okay.

  “Well, that’s good you’re really going this time,” he said. “Good to know. I think you might actually do that then. That’s good. . . . Yeah, Lizzy, maybe you’ll go all the way now.” Coming from Daddy, it was a real compliment.

  “That’s the idea,” I said, smiling at him.

  He took out a napkin to blow his nose and I saw by its insignia that he’d taken it from McDonald’s. Daddy had been doing that since I was a kid, dipping into fast food places, raiding their supplies.

  “So things, are they all right at the shelter, going good and all?” I asked, leading him in my question. Maybe I didn’t want all the information about his life either; maybe I was protecting myself from worrying about him, too.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I, uh, get my three squares there. It’s air-conditioned. They treat me well. Can’t complain. Hey, Lizzy, do you have any money? Maybe for tokens or lunch?” I’d borrowed ten dollars from Bobby that morning. I had eight left. I removed what I needed to take the subway back to the Bronx and gave the rest to him.

  “Hey thanks,” Daddy said. It felt good to be helpful to him again.

  “No problem. I have some money saved, it’s no big deal,” I lied.

  I walked him downstairs into the train station and we hugged good-bye, exchanging promises to talk and meet up more often. He didn’t stay at the turnstiles and wait for the train with me. Instead, he said good-bye and walked away far down the platform to wait. When he passed a pay phone, he stuck his fingers inside to search for loose change.

  I was scheduled to begin high school in September; it was May now. I would use the months ahead to prepare; I had four years to make up. The next thing I had to do, in order to complete my registration in Prep, was return to JFK, my old high school, and get my official transcript.

  Having seen Prep, JFK looked absolutely massive in comparison. I passed through metal detectors to enter the building. No one looked at me. Students were everywhere, thousands of them. It felt like a bus station. Taking the number 1 train back to Prep later that day, I sat down and ripped open the manila envelope. Columns of failing grades—45, 60, 50—were everywhere. It was unnerving, reading row after row of flunking marks. I felt like a mess, a big walking train wreck. The experience of talking about my grades (having been lectured by adults so many times) versus actually seeing my transcripts was night and day. Transcripts were a real thing, a tangible expression of what I had and had not done with my life, and a road map of what still had to be done. Looking at my academic disaster, I could see that I had a mountain ahead of me to climb.

  Then, very suddenly, sitting on the train gazing at the JFK stationery, it dawned on me—my Prep transcripts were still completely blank. I literally had nothing, no grades, zip on my Prep transcripts yet. I could start fresh.

  The thought of a clean slate was thrilling, especially after looking at the mess I had created. With all the things that had been difficult, it was one blessing to count on, the knowledge that what I did from this moment on didn’t have to depend on what I had done before. Back on Nineteenth Street, I asked April to give me a copy of my blank Prep transcripts, which was a simple printout of my name on Prep stationery and rows of blank columns waiting to be filled by my future grades. The JFK ones I handed in to April and never looked at again. The blank ones I kept with me at all times. They were a reminder that I was, day by day, writing my future. Sleeping in a hallway around Bedford Park later that week, I took out my blank transcripts and filled in the grades I wanted, making neat little columns of A’s. If I could picture it—if I could take out these transcripts and look at them—then it was almost as if the A’s had already happened. Day by day, I was just catching up with what was already real. My future A’s, in my heart, had already occurred. Now I just had to get to them.

  A memory of Ma helped me decide this. The only papers I’d ever seen that were as “official” looking as transcripts were Ma’s short stack of documents to verify qualification for welfare. Ma’s caseworkers were always so difficult, so technical with us. And the walls of those depressing welfare offices, for some reason, were always painted puke green, a color made uglier by the harsh fluorescent lights and the iron bars on the large windows. There were so many people waiting in those offices—dozens, hundreds. When the hard little seats filled up, people sat o
n windowsills or on the floor; they stood or they paced.

  Ma, Lisa, and I would wait for hours, too, one of dozens of other families all nervously checking and rechecking their own short stack of vital documents. When it was finally our turn, what I can remember most about being hoisted onto Ma’s lap is the bizarre interaction between Ma and her caseworker. It did not matter what Ma was saying. All that the caseworker focused on were Ma’s documents. Birth certificates, notarized letters, doctors’ notes to verify mental illness, our lease. Ma’s actual words, and particularly Ma herself, were invisible to this woman, a woman who had the power to give or take away our food, rent, and safety. All that it boiled down to was this: either we had the exact documents required for approval, or we did not. There was no in between. And even if we were missing only something small, like a second set of copies or one of Ma’s doctors’ notes, a single error could make all of our effort—the document gathering, the travel, and the hours of waiting—irrelevant. One missing or invalid document and our file was shut, tossed. They called “next,” and we had to come back another day to start from scratch. All because the documents were either correct or they weren’t, period.

  How was this different from my high school transcripts? It wasn’t. I thought, if one day, maybe just maybe I wanted to go to college, some person in a suit in a very different kind of office would open my file, read my documents, and either I would have the qualifications, or I wouldn’t. Yes or no, and nothing in between. And if I didn’t, my file would be shut and they would call “next.” I would be out of luck. Some things in life, I’d learned, were nonnegotiable. Documents as official as these transcripts were big, they were my yes or no, they were my options. They were my ticket. Now I was going to think of everything I did at Prep inside the framework of my transcripts—and that turned out to mean everything.

  Later, there would be times when I did not want to go to school. I wanted to sleep on Fief’s floor and not get up. Bobby and Jamie were hanging out, walking around the Village. People were cutting school, and I was missing all the fun. There would be times I did not want to sit in a chair all day long while the fresh air was outside and I was missing out. But all I had to do was think of my transcripts, and I would go to school, on time, every day, for the first time in my life. Either I would have the qualifications or I wouldn’t—and besides, my friends weren’t going to pay my rent.

  Chapter 11

  The Visit(or)

  WAITRESS-MIDTOWN

  Part-time server wanted for busy midtown coffee & sandwich shop, “can-do attitude” a must, long hours required.

  BABYSITTER & HOUSEKEEPER

  Upper East Side family seeking female-only applicants, good with house chores and patient with children, must be flexible, and must speak English!

  PEN IN HAND, I COMBED THROUGH THE CLASSIFIED ADS AS I SAT IN the health clinic waiting room of a local youth organization called The Door. I’d been thumbing through The Village Voice for days. My focus was on finding food, work, health services, and tutoring. My limits were being underage (I wouldn’t turn seventeen until September), with the status of runaway. My fear was that I’d attract the attention of Child Welfare and get sent back to the group home, so I did everything I could not to call attention to myself, as I mined the city for resources. Through word of mouth, mostly, I found some good leads. The Door was one of the best things that could have happened to me.

  On Broome Street in lower Manhattan, The Door is in a three-story building and is dedicated completely to meeting young people’s needs. You just had to be under twenty-one, which was perfect—no questions asked. Frequently, I left The Door with pantry packs bursting with food: Cheerios, peanut butter, raisins, and bread. I’d slip these supplies into my backpack and walk around Manhattan collecting applications for employment in convenience stores, gas stations, and retail outlets. Five days a week at 5:30 p.m., The Door served free hot meals on the second floor. After long tiresome days spent in search of work, I made it a regular thing to stop by The Door for dinner. This way I didn’t have to steal from C-Town as much. Instead, I’d sit down, anonymous in the crowd of young people at the cafeteria-style tables, eat my chicken and mashed potatoes, and review my job options.

  On a weekday afternoon, I sat in The Door’s waiting area, thumbing through the classifieds. The paper offered all kinds of positions, but mostly ones for people with experience and education—I had neither. So I searched for ads that emphasized words like ambitious, hard-working, and flexible. The ad for a non-profit environmental agency called New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) stood out:

  “Do you care about the environment? Do you like working with people? Are you passionate about making a difference? Then NYPIRG may be the right place for you. Call to schedule your interview to canvass for a cause today. . . . Remember, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem!”

  Earn from $350-$500* a week making the world a better place!

  No prior experience required.

  *salary commission-based.

  I didn’t know what the word commission meant, but I could really use $350 to $500 a week. I ripped the ad from The Village Voice and shoved it into my back pocket.

  NYPIRG became my summer job, and the job of dozens of students on summer break from college. As the youngest and worst-dressed person in the room, I was worried that I wouldn’t get hired, but everyone got hired. Apparently your organization can do that if the only pay that employees receive is a percentage of the money they raise. So I learned the meaning of commission. Your salary was a percentage of what you earned. If you didn’t raise anything, you didn’t make anything. If you raised a lot, you made a lot. I had to wonder, how hard was it to raise money?

  It was possible to make a living at this job, a woman named Nicole, a veteran of NYPIRG, assured us during orientation. The small downtown conference room was packed with college students who looked like they were making identical hobo-chic fashion statements: white people experimenting with dreadlocks, hemp jewelry, and T-shirts emblazoned with a variety of social causes. Bleeding-heart private school students dressed like casual slobs, with holes in their expensive clothing—their efforts to look hobo-poor were painfully obvious to me. That worked out fine on my end, being that I was probably the closest thing in the room to a real hobo. Most of them had money; I could tell by their Urban Outfitters bags, expensive jewelry, and high-end mountain shoes and Birkenstocks. But if they liked to project their interpretation of poverty in their personal style, that was okay with me.

  Nicole explained how the job would work. Five days a week, following an afternoon briefing on their latest environmental campaign progress, NYPIRG would pack all of us canvassers (as we were called) eight at a time into vans, and drive us to key fund-raising areas in New York State. Our job was to knock on doors and engage everyday citizens in NYPIRG’s fight against cancer, which was linked to indiscriminate spraying of pesticides in residential neighborhoods, according to a research study that Nicole waved around throughout her spiel. NYPIRG was busy lobbying to pass something called the Neighborhood Notification Bill. As canvassers, we would stand on people’s doorsteps and hold their attention while we repeated what we’d learned at each afternoon briefing. Then we’d invite them to join us in the fight against cancer with “membership,” which meant we asked them for money. Our paycheck was a percentage of what we raised. We were given copies of the key research study on our way out the door, along with individual clipboards and temporary IDs.

  In the van, northbound on the Henry Hudson Parkway, I was sure I’d made a mistake in being there. We each practiced what was called our “rap”; I was by far the worst.

  “Hi, um, my name is Liz, um . . . I’m from the New York Public Institute of Research. I mean, Research of Public Interest . . . I’m here to fight cancer with you . . . um?”

  The others were so much better than me. The girl next to me, Anna from Scarsdale, was polished on her very first run: “I want to invit
e you to join our campaign to combat the effects of these toxic chemicals. Together, we have to stand up as a community.”

  I was struck by how perfect and put-together she looked with her expensive pearl earrings and canvas bag, and by the way she strung words together, compared to my fumbling speech. It was intimidating. And what was that word? Combat? Wasn’t that the brand name of the stuff we used to kill roaches on University? Obviously, from the way she used it, it must have another meaning. I took out my journal and began keeping a list of words I overheard from my coworkers.

  Each of them spoke eloquently, expressing themselves using confident body language and rich vocabulary. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them, especially this one guy named Ken.

  I both liked and felt incredibly uncomfortable around Ken. He was nothing like the guys from my neighborhood, and he made me nervous. Ken was clean-cut and wholesome. He was also gorgeous. He had shaggy, sandy-blond hair and mint-colored eyes, like green ice with flecks of gold in them. He was tall, and his skin was a golden olive that contrasted with the bright white Human Equality T-shirt he wore. On summer break from Brown University, Ken was recently single, out of a long-term relationship, I’d overheard him telling Anna.

  Somehow, we ended up seated next to each other in the van and were told by our field manager, Shen, to practice our “rap” together. Underneath my black Korn T-shirt and thick black jeans, I was sweating heavily, pulling my hair back into a ponytail so I had something to do with my hands. Ken went right after I did, and he stumbled on his words, too, but managed to be compelling anyway. “Good job,” I said with more enthusiasm than I had intended. My face flushed red with embarrassment. “Thanks,” Ken said, smiling sincerely. He also blushed a bit when he fumbled his words, and laughed at himself. I tried, but could not stop looking his way.