Breaking Night

by Liz Murray

  She laughed in my face. “Yeah? Well, I got Ms. Yale coming in here next. So why don’t you get on to your meetin’ with Haaar-vud!”

  Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I stormed out. That’s okay, I thought, pushing open the double doors and exiting that miserable office. That’s okay, because despite my caseworker’s disbelief, I did have an interview with a Harvard alumnus that afternoon. In fact, my schedule that day was packed; I had what I thought would have been a routine appointment to have my welfare approved, a college interview in midtown Manhattan, and then my New York Times interview. Because I was trying to minimize any absences from school, I packed all of these appointments into the same long day, which I hoped would go smoothly—a one-two-three day: welfare, Harvard, New York Times. Welfare, as it turned out, would be the only thing that did not go well that day.

  I met the alumnus in his office at a law firm in the East Fifties. Even now, the interview is a blur of politeness and standard questions about school, what I wanted to do with my life, and my education and career goals. I just remember riding down the elevator after the interview believing that it had gone well, opening my journal, and double-checking my next stop, 229 West Forty-third Street.

  After coming in out of the freezing rain, I made my way through security, found the elevators, and was directed to a tiny room where the scholarship finalists were gathered. I found a seat and immediately took in my surroundings. Two very nervous-looking high school students sat with their parents on the couch in the airless room. Someone paced; a mother kept rubbing her daughter’s shoulders. Copies of The New York Times were stacked on a small table.

  I understood the importance of winning a scholarship, but not the importance of winning this scholarship, not really. I knew that without, at least, a partial scholarship, I would not be able to go to a top college. Top colleges provided the most options, which is what I was seeking. Harvard tuition was incredible and I could not afford a turkey sandwich at the moment, so I understood that I needed college funding. But what I did not get was the significance that came with being awarded a scholarship from the Times. Never, not once, had I seen anyone I knew personally reading The New York Times. I simply had no frame of reference for how influential a newspaper it was. In my neighborhood, if people read the paper at all, they read the New York Post or the New York Daily News. The only people I’d ever seen read the thicker, larger New York Times were professional people, people who looked highly functional, usually on the train. Certainly I had never read it before. So the pacing, obvious anxiety, and near hyperventilating one guy was doing was all lost on me. My ignorance left me blessedly unaware of just how important this was. And by now, with my experience at Prep and with how it was becoming easier to talk to people, I wasn’t too nervous. In fact, after the long day it felt good to be somewhere warm, and I even relaxed into my chair.

  Sitting in this small, windowless waiting area, for what I thought of as my third meeting of the day, my eyes landed on a table of refreshments. Bottles of water were lined up in factorylike perfect rows, alongside a tray of croissants, bagels, and muffins. A cheerful woman with a pretty smile and thin dreadlocks named Sheila was our host, checking in finalists to get us ready for the big interview. She encouraged me to help myself. “Please, sweetie, no one’s touched a thing, we’ll end up throwing them out. Please, the whole tray is up for grabs.”

  That was all I needed to hear. When they called my name and she turned around to walk out ahead of me, I quickly stuffed doughnuts and muffins into my bag. She said I could help myself; besides, they were throwing them out anyway.

  I walked into a conference room with a long oak table in the center, around which sat twelve or so women and men dressed in business attire. There was an empty seat at the end of the table clearly meant for me. I approached it.

  My hands still had sugar on them from the doughnuts. “Sorry, give me one second,” I said as I took a tissue from a box that was sitting on the table. I sat as I wiped my hands. Twelve sets of eyes stared at me, taking me in.

  I knew the interview would be about my essay. They’d asked: Describe an obstacle you have overcome. Since I was eighteen by then and couldn’t be forced into the custody of Child Welfare, I had written my New York Times essay about being homeless. I held nothing back.

  In the interview, I shared even more than what I’d written. I told them—these writers, editors, people in business suits, with expensive-looking bracelets and bow ties—about Ma and Daddy; about University Avenue; Ma selling the Thanksgiving turkey. I told them about surviving on the generosity of friends and sleeping in stairwells. I told them about not eating every day and getting meals at places like The Door. The room fell quiet. One man with a red tie and glasses leaned forward on the large conference room table and broke the silence.

  “Liz . . . is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” he asked.

  I was stumped. Obviously I was supposed to say something impressive, a thoughtful something that would have them believe I deserved this.

  “Well, I need the scholarship” was the first thing that came to mind. “I just really need it.” Everyone laughed. Had I thought of something more complex and impressive sounding, I would have said that instead, but it was the one simple truth that came to mind.

  Someone said it was nice to meet me. Several people shook my hand.

  A reporter named Randy took me upstairs to a cafeteria where Times employees ate their lunch every day. Everyone was walking around in business clothing, ID cards dangling from their waists or key chains. He sat across from me, a white man in his thirties, in a blue button-down shirt and a tie. He was friendly enough, and he bought me lunch.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t in the official interview, Liz,” he said, clicking his pen. “Can you tell me how you became homeless? And why your parents couldn’t take care of you?”

  Sitting there with him, I jammed warm macaroni and cheese and chicken into my mouth and gulped down delicious sweet apple juice. My head was buzzing with excitement at the warm meal and the attention of this reporter. I was thrilled to be inside a real office building full of professional people, like the ones I’d seen on TV. After everything I’d been through in the last few years and everything I’d been through on that day alone, it was surprisingly easy to talk to this guy. I told him everything, too. I told him about growing up watching my parents get high, about losing Ma, about the motels, and even about my morning in the welfare office.

  Years later, I’ve often reflected on how blessed I was to have no real understanding of how difficult that day was supposed to be. Had I known how difficult it was supposed to be to interview with Harvard or The New York Times; had anyone told me that those were hard, nearly impossible, things to do, then I may have never done them. But I didn’t know enough about the world to analyze the likelihood of my success; I had only the commitment to actually show up and do it. In the years ahead of me, I learned that the world is actually filled with people ready to tell you how likely something is, and what it means to be realistic. But what I have also learned is that no one, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it.

  When we were done talking, for the second time that day, I got into an elevator feeling that I had taken a step forward. I saw my track runner bounding top speed, one more hurdle behind her.

  The following Friday, the phone in our apartment rang. I was actually startled to hear it, because I expected it to be cut off by then. For weeks we’d been getting these disconnection notices for the phone and the lights. In fact, I was certain we had only a couple more weeks left before we would lose everything, including the apartment. I had already planned out the bag I would pack.

  “May I speak to Elizabeth Murray, please?” a very professional-sounding voice said when I picked up.

  “This is Liz.”

  “I am Roger Lehecka from the New York Times Scholarship Program. . . . I am just calling to tell you that you are one of the six students chosen to be awarded the New York T
imes Scholarship!”

  Whirlwind. That’s the word that comes to mind when I think of how to describe my life after winning the scholarship. A floodgate had opened, and I had no way of knowing that my life would simply never be the same. If I had no real understanding of it before, I very quickly learned about the influence of The New York Times.

  The six scholarship winners were called back to the Times to be photographed the week after we had been notified. Lisa came along with me. We were seated with the other winners and their parents back in that tiny airless room. Lisa was adorable, with the way she kept looking at everything around the office, holding in laughter.

  “Where are we?” she said, giggling. “This is so funny.”

  “I know,” I said, giggling too. We both played it cool and sat there quietly amazed.

  I was photographed once with the group, and then once alone. For that second picture, I was taken up the elevator to a high floor in The New York Times building, to one of the libraries. Being among those stacks of books reminded me of all the times Daddy had taken me to the library when we lived on University Avenue. The photographer had me sit on a large windowsill, the sun illuminating the room from behind me. As his camera clicked away, I wondered what Daddy would say when he saw it. I wondered if somehow Ma could see me, too.

  It really did not dawn on me until the day that the article hit newsstands, featuring the six winners on the cover of the Metro Section (next to an article about Bill and Hillary Clinton), that the entire world would see it. Everyone, including my teachers at Prep, was going to know my whole situation. Part of me was worried that they would think differently about me. The truth turned out to be quite the opposite. Perry was proud, all my teachers were. But everyone expressed concern over how I was going to pay my rent and remain stable. And my teachers weren’t the only ones.

  I’d mentioned my high school in the Times interview. That created something I never anticipated, what I eventually came to call the Angel Brigade. People I did not know began showing up at Prep to meet me, to hug me, to give me encouraging words, clothing, food, and care packages. They came to help me, and they asked for nothing in return.

  Mail came flooding in. People sent cards with smiling pictures of their families, invitations to visit them in their homes across America. They sent books. One man, learning about my situation, got his friends together and reached out to several people in our community, and they paid what Lisa, Sam, and I owed in back rent. People we did not know paid our back rent, they kept on our lights, and they filled up our fridge.

  I never slept another night on the streets, ever again.

  What was most moving about all of this unexpected generosity was the spirit in which people helped. It was something in their moods and in their general being when they showed up at my school, how they were smiling, looking me right in the eyes, asking in every way what I needed. One lady in her late forties, wearing a yellow dress, showed up in front of my school around the time we finished. April got me from the back office and when I came out front, this woman looked nervous, clutching her necklace and fidgeting; she stepped forward to introduce herself.

  “I’m Teressa. Terry . . . First of all, I want to apologize to you,” she said, standing on the sidewalk on Nineteenth Street. I was confused; I had never laid eyes on her before. She continued, “I’ve had the article about you on my fridge for weeks. Since I didn’t have any money to help you out, I thought I couldn’t do anything for you at all. And then last night, I was doing my daughter’s laundry, and I thought, how silly of me, maybe you had laundry I could do for you. I mean, your parents, someone, should be helping you with these things while you’re busy with school.” I stared at her in disbelief. She asked again, “Well, do you? Do you have some laundry?”

  Once a week, every week, she stopped by the school in her silver minivan and picked up and dropped off my clean, folded clothing, true to her word. She even added a bag of cookies most weeks. “I can’t do much, Liz, but I know I can do that,” she said. So while I was studying for my eleven classes, Teressa—Terry—did my laundry.

  There are countless ways in which people appeared out of nowhere and supported me. When it first started happening, I didn’t trust it. I didn’t believe that anyone who wasn’t my family or my close tribe of friends would be willing to help just because they’d read about me in the paper. I most certainly did not think that “those people,” the people I had judged as “separate” from myself, would want to help someone like me. But they did. They just gave and asked for nothing back. And in doing this, they knocked every brick out of my wall. For the first time I could really see there was no difference between myself and others; we were all just people. Just as there was no real difference between people who accomplished their goals and me, as long as I was willing to do the work and able to have some help along the way.

  My favorite thing that I received was a hand-stitched quilt from a lady named Debbie Fike. Attached to the beautiful quilt was a small note that read, “It gets cold in those dorms. May you warm yourself knowing that people care about you.”

  I wanted Harvard. Badly. When I received a letter, not accepting me but telling me that I had been wait-listed, I put on a brave front and looked on the bright side. It wasn’t a rejection, so there was still a chance that I could get in. So many things in my life had changed just because I had been given a chance—I had done great at Prep, had won the New York Times Scholarship, and had my Angel Brigade. Going to Harvard could still be another thing on that list. But underneath the positive face I wore, part of me wondered if, after all I had come through, my luck had just run out. Was this dream simply too much to ask for?

  The uncertainty frightened me. I refused to leave anything to chance, so I decided not to take this wait-listed thing lying down. Phone calls were made and letters were written on my behalf. I even managed to land a second interview and everyone pitched in to help me get ready. The staff at Prep called on New Visions, a New York–based group that helps alternative high schools like ours; they sent over a representative to take me shopping at Banana Republic so that I would have something professional to wear. Lisa and I were like two little kids in the store, laughing, tearing things off of racks, holding up clothing high for each other to see. She helped me pick out a long black skirt and dainty long-sleeved sweater. They bought me some real dress shoes too.

  The second interview, like my first, went well, and things felt promising. But afterward, I still wasn’t sure what would happen. I was told to expect a letter to arrive, telling me my fate. So, I waited.

  Those last few weeks of high school became all about the mailman and what size envelope he would bring me. According to my teachers, a large envelope meant good news, an acceptance letter or packet stuffed with pages of orientation material and calendar dates transporting me back to those stately redbrick buildings in New England. But a small envelope, that would mean bad news, a single sheet of paper whose formal statement of rejection would appear on letterhead stamped by the crimson crest that is Harvard University’s logo. That crest had appeared everywhere for me in the last few months, in my countless Internet searches, on the application materials that I labored over in empty offices of my high school, in my dreams.

  Over the past several months, Harvard had become my mind’s single focus. It had started out reasonably enough, with research on admission statistics, course offerings, and campus life. These inquiries, I decided, were understandable, given my status as a hopeful applicant. But being on the wait-list, the standard four-month window of time between application and answer had dragged out into six agonizing months, and that’s when my fascination deteriorated into admittedly pointless and obsessive fact-finding.

  For instance, who knew that during the Revolutionary War, cannonballs had been dropped right out of dormitory windows, causing huge dents in the Harvard Yard sidewalk? Also, occurring inside Harvard Yard twice a year is an event called the “Primal Scream,” which is a ritual that takes place a
t exactly midnight on the night before final exams. Students gather in the yard to relieve their exam stress by running at least one lap around the yard, completely naked—even in the winter. The most compelling moment in my research was the day I used the Internet to map out the miles—almost two hundred exactly—between Harvard Yard and my doorstep.

  Those days I spent scouring the Internet for needless information felt like progress to me. I couldn’t just wait it out; I had to feel like I was doing something. It felt better reading the same information over and over than it did just sitting there.

  For this very same reason, I absolutely lived for my trips to the mailbox. Each day I walked briskly from the D train on Bedford Park to my apartment building, where I jammed my key into the mailbox, eager for news. But for weeks I found nothing. During those moments, I couldn’t help but feel like Ma on check day, impatient, unable to put myself at ease, pacing my apartment, as though pacing would bring the mail any sooner. As though anything I was doing in New York City would have an impact on the decision of a committee all the way in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  This pressure I put on myself was familiar to me. My whole life felt as though it had been packed with situations shaped just like this: Something crucial was at stake, the outcome could go either way, and it was up to me to change it—like those nights on University Avenue when Ma and Daddy placed themselves in danger, leaving the house at all hours of the night, while I waited by the window ready to dial 911. Would my one emergency phone call be the difference between my parents’ injury and well-being? And when I was starving as a kid, what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten a job? Who would have fed me if I hadn’t fed myself? And now, wait-listed at Harvard, faced with agonizing uncertainty, the same questions persisted: What would I do about it?