“Sure. Everything is fine!” C reassured her. “Has anyone been hassling you here?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “We don’t usually get back here until seven. The manager leaves at five.”
“Oh,” said C, “this is my friend, Richard. And this is his dog, Willow.” Willow had already scooted inside, and the boys were petting her.
The woman stepped forward and wrapped me in a hug. “Glad to meet you, Richard. I’m Dorothea.” Then she turned to the boys. “Boys, say hello to Mister Richard.” To me she said, “This is Elijah, and this is Dustin. My two boys.”
Dorothea was a large woman, with big arms sticking out from the sleeves of her print dress. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, held there by bobby pins.
Three sleeping bags were rolled out on a large piece of soiled foam rubber by one wall; clothes were folded neatly on top of cardboard boxes. A tarp covered something along the back wall.
An extension cord hung from a fixture in the ceiling that allowed for a plug and a light bulb. The cord looped down to two hot plates sitting on a small wooden table along the wall. One plate held a pan and the other a pot. Something was cooking. I walked over and sniffed. It smelled delicious.
Elijah noticed my interest. “We’re having s’ghetti,” he said, smiling.
“That’s spaghetti!” his mother corrected. “Spah-get-ee.” She said it one syllable at a time. “Now you say it,” she instructed her son.
“S’ghetti!” he said.
Dorothea laughed. “Oh, you’ll get it someday.”
“We were just getting ready for dinner,” she said, reaching for a spoon to stir the sauce. “I have plenty ...” Her voice trailed off invitingly.
“Sure, I’ll have a bite,” C replied, politely.
“Richard?” Dorothea asked.
“It smells great,” I replied. “But only if you really have plenty. We already had dinner.”
“We have plenty,” she assured us. “The boys eat like birds, and I made a lot.” She went to work finishing dinner preparations. She poured water from a plastic jug into the pot and turned on the burner. Then she took a loaf of French bread out of its foil sleeve and began slicing it. She hummed as she went about her tasks.
Dustin and Elijah stood close to their mother. Dustin was restless, rocking back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Both were skinny as rails; Elijah wore blue jeans with a red T-shirt, and Dustin had on blue jeans with a yellow T-shirt. Dustin inched closer to Dorothea and put his arms around her leg.
“You boys have to give me some room, now, while I’m a-cookin’,” she said, shooing them away.
C knew the boys needed something to do. “Dorothea and the boys have been gracious enough to stay here and guard my drums,” he said, looking at me and then the boys.
“Your drums?” I asked. “What drums?”
“Play your drums!” Elijah said.
“Yeah, play the drums!” Dustin joined in.
C stepped to the back of the storage unit and pulled an old tarp off a full set of drums and cymbals. There was a bass drum, a pedal, two snare drums, and a drummer’s stool. He tossed the tarp in the corner as Elijah and Dustin rushed over.
“You don’t know how hard it is to keep those boys away from that drum set,” Dorothea said.
C picked up the drumsticks lying on top of the snare drum and then sat down on the stool. “I picked these up on my way here from Portland. A drummer I met at the Salvation Army sold them to me. He was down on his luck and needed money for a bus ticket back to Michigan. I had them in the Armadillo for a while, but they were taking up all my living space. I got this storage space and thankfully bumped into Dorothea and the boys—and here we all are.”
“Thank the Lord I met C,” Dorothea said, snapping a handful of spaghetti in half and dropping it in the pot of now boiling water.
“Play something, C,” begged Elijah. He was standing beside C with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Okay,” C replied, hitting the big cymbal with his stick, making it clash. “Oh, what can I play that you boys know?” C rubbed his beard. “How about the Grateful Dead’s Casey Jones? ‘Trouble ahead, trouble behind...’”
The boys looked puzzled. “How about a rap song, C?” Dustin asked.
C took a deep breath, rubbing his chin again. “Okay, then.” He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and reached out his sticks to strike the drum. Da-dump, da-dump.... The sound echoed off the ceiling.
Dustin is my man. He’s got the plan
to give the world all he can.
Da-dump, clash.
His brother, Elijah, is always there
and he’s willin’ to share.
Clash, da-dump, da-dump.
They’re learn’ to read and write
and never fight
and they hug their mother really tight.
Da-dump, da-dump.
Burma Shave.
Dorothea burst out laughing as C hit the cymbals and pounded the bass drum with his foot pedal.
Elijah had a question written all over his face. “What’s Bur—burma Shave?” he asked.
C smiled. “I thought you might ask that,” he replied. “Years ago, rappers used to put up signs along the side of the road. Usually five or six signs made up a simple poem, and the last sign always said Burma Shave—to punctuate the message and sell the shaving cream called Burma Shave.”
“Oh,” Elijah replied, still mystified. “Play some more.”
“Okay,” C said, now thoroughly into his musical debut. “Here’s one you might know.” He raised his foot and then lowered it to begin the next song. “It’s called ‘The Hokey-Pokey.’”
Dorothea paused in her stirring of the spaghetti sauce, dipped her finger in for a temperature test, and quickly put the spoon down.
“Wait a minute, C,” she said. “Come here, boys; you, too, Richard.”
We all walked toward her. “Now, join hands,” she said. And we all did.
Then C began his song, striking the snare drum lightly. “You put your right foot in,” he began, and Dorothea put her right foot forward and nodded for the boys to do the same. “You put your right foot out.” She continued to model the movements. “You put your right foot in and you shake it all about.” Da-dump, da-dump.
The boys and I followed Dorothea’s lead as we did the dance. “You do the Hokey-Pokey and you turn yourself around,” Dorothea began to sing with C, “that’s what it’s all about.”
We did the left foot, the right hand, the left hand, and the whole self to the rhythm of C’s drumming.
“Oh, my goodness!” Dorothea exclaimed, placing her left hand on her chest. “All that dancing just wore me out.”
Elijah blurted, “Let’s do it again!”
“No, it’s time for dinner, boys. Fill the pan and wash your hands.”
“Okay, mama,” replied Dustin. He took a small metal pan from along the wall and filled it with water from the plastic milk jug. He washed his hands and Elijah did the same, while their mother got five paper plates from a box below the little table on which she was cooking. The boys stood beside her as she handed them each a plate. Then she dipped a big spoon into the pot and pulled out the pasta for Elijah’s plate and repeated the process for Dustin.
“Hold them out straight, boys,” she said, as she ladled a spoon of sauce onto each of the piles of pasta. She then stuck a white plastic fork into each pile and said, “Take those plates to our guests, boys. And then come back for yours.” The boys walked quickly over to serve us our dinner. “Don’t drop them,” she warned.
“Oh, I forgot the bread,” Dorothea added, pulling two pieces of French bread off the loaf. Elijah and Dustin delivered our bread and hurried back for their own plates.
C used the swiveling stool from his drum set as a seat, and I sat down on the edge of one of the sleeping bags. I twisted my fork in the spaghetti and carefully guided it to my mouth. “Excellent!” I said.
“Thank you,”
Dorothea responded. “It’s Paul Newman’s sauce.”
“Four star, definitely,” C said.
“Fine casual dining in an out-of-the-way location,” I added.
“An intimate location,” C corrected me.
“Yes. Yes, that’s better,” I said.
“Where the specialty of the house is ‘S’ghetti,’” C said
Dorothea chuckled as she listened to the banter, serving up dinner for her sons.
C lifted an abundant forkful of food to his mouth and dropped half of it in his lap. He scraped it up and aimed for his mouth again. “How’s the job going at the motel?” he asked Dorothea, as he wiped some of the sauce off his pants and licked the fingers clean.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she said. “I get the boys up and we get dressed, and they catch the bus for school in front of the Catholic Church, and then I get the bus across town to the Howard Johnson. That bus stops a lot, so it takes about an hour.
“Check-out time is eleven at the motel, so I’m busy cleaning the rooms and changing sheets from then till four. It’s mostly navy boys who stay there, and whew, those guys are messy.” She shook her head.
“Okay, boys, here’s some bread,” she said, putting a piece of bread on each of their plates. “Now go sit down and eat all your dinner.” The boys found seats on their sleeping bags, and Willow sat down between them. She began making eye contact for a possible handout.
“There are three Filipino women and me,” Dorothea said, continuing about the motel. “They’ve got us on a timer to get the rooms cleaned as fast as possible. I got twenty-five hours last week, which was good. But they don’t get much business. They got two hundred rooms, but they’re lucky to fill fifty most nights. The rumor is it’s going to close. That’s what the girls say. If I have a good week, I bring home a hundred and ten or twenty with tips, and that goes fast with food to buy, my medicine, and bus fares.
“But we got it better than some people. There was a family staying at the motel last week—a man and a woman and two kids. Some church put them up for three nights. They were always there. They didn’t have any money to go any place. They had some canned stuff from the food bank—ravioli and stuff. The father was handicapped... kinda slow, if you know what I mean.”
Dorothea took a bite of her spaghetti and looked at her boys. “Elijah, you’ve got spaghetti sauce all over your face.” She reached for a roll of paper towels and handed a couple of sheets to him. “Wipe your mouth. Here’s some for you too, Dustin,” she added. C didn’t escape her attention either. “C, don’t wipe your mouth on your shirt!” Dorothea laughed as she tossed the roll of paper towels to him. C peeled off a piece and then handed the roll to me.
“I felt so bad for them,” Dorothea said. On the day they had to leave, she said she could tell by the look in their eyes that they had no place to go. The church had run out of money for the room. “The girls took up a collection, and we gave them our tips. Twenty bucks is all we had,” she said.
Dorothea, who had been standing as she ate and talked, finally sat down next to the boys on the sleeping bag. “Oh, it feels good to get off my feet,” she said. Willow moved over beside the lady and looked at her plate. “What’s the dog’s name?” she asked.
“Willow,” I said. “I call her the Wonder Dog.”
“We had a little dog back in Mississippi where I grew up,” Dorothea said. “His name was Shorty, and he was the meanest little son of a gun.” The miles and the years showed in her eyes when she laughed. Then she pulled out a piece of spaghetti and offered it to Willow. “Here you are, Wonder Dog,” she said. Willow gobbled up the treat.
“We need a dog, Mommy,” Elijah interjected.
“Oh, heavens,” said Dorothea. “We can barely feed ourselves right now.” She looked at C and added, “Someday, maybe. Someday when we get a home again—a home with a fenced yard so the dog can be outside in the grass and be safe.”
“How’s it coming on that housing list?” C asked.
“You mean with the Housing Authority?” Dorothea laughed and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “We were number 5,700 two months ago, and we’re number 5,700 now! They told me it was going to be a year or two for us to get to the top of the list.”
“A year or two?” C sounded incredulous.
“I went into the office just last week again, after work, and they said they couldn’t tell me anymore where I was on the list,” Dorothea said. “They told me they have a new policy in place. They said I could look up my position online at home anytime. Heck, I don’t have no computer to go online. I don’t have no phone. I don’t even have no home.”
It was the first hint of despair I had heard in her voice, and I sensed that she worked very hard to keep her attitude up for the boys.
I saw Elijah looking at me, seeming to question my place in his world.
“How old are you now, Elijah?” I asked, responding to his gaze.
“Nine,” he answered. “Nine years old.”
“How do you like school?”
“Good.”
“And what’s your favorite subject?”
Elijah lifted his head and then lowered it quickly to punctuate his answer. “Geography!”
“Why geography?” I asked.
“I want to be like Harry Potter,” he said, nodding his chin again to accentuate the word. “I want to ride a big train and go to a big castle. I would become a great wizard!”
“So, your mother has been reading Harry Potter to you,” C commented.
“C gave us that book,” Dorothea told me.
“I want to go to England, Russia, Africa, and—uh, uh—China,” Elijah said.
“You have big dreams,” his mother said.
C looked at me. “Richard, have you ever been to any of those places?”
“I have,” I said. “I’ve been to England, Africa, and China, but not Russia.
“Wow,” said Elijah. His eyes were wide with wonder.
“How about you, Dustin?” I asked. “What’s your favorite subject?”
The younger boy clenched his lips together and hunched at the shoulders before looking at his mother.
“Dustin is a little shy,” she explained. “He’s not quite eight yet. What do you like about school?” she prodded.
“Lunch,” he said, eliciting a laugh from all of us.
“What’s so good?” C asked.
“Ummm... toasted cheese sandwiches and—um, pickles.” He broke into a wide smile, followed by a giggle.
The conversation lulled as we all got serious about eating.
In the quiet, I mused. How and why, I wondered, did this mother with two children end up living in a storage unit? With half the hotel and motel rooms in town empty every night and twenty or thirty empty buildings within five or ten minutes of here, why was there no room for them? C and I were—well, we were street people. C seemed to like his life. And I—well, I’d had a lot, and I’d lost a lot. But I had ridden the big trains from Rome to Venice, stayed in the turret room of the Castle de Mercure outside Avignon in France, and known dreams and fantasies to come true.
I had no dreams now. There was no magical feeling. And if there were a wizard, I would wish him to appear and wave his wand over me and ease me into a peaceful sleep, forever—never to return.
But Dustin? Dustin still had dreams—dreams fostered by his mother’s reading by the beam of a flashlight in a cold, dark storage unit. He wanted to travel to Hogwarts and stand beside Harry Potter and learn the excitement of using human powers for the common good, for love and community. Maybe together Dustin and Harry could wave their magic wands so children would not ever again have to live in storage units like this.
Dorothea took another strand of spaghetti and held it out for Willow. “I’ve got some dessert tonight,” she said, pushing herself up from the floor. “Do you want the rest of this, pretty girl?” she asked, looking at Willow and holding out her plate. “Oh, is that okay?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said.
So she put the paper plate on the floor, and Willow began licking up the meat sauce. Dorothea walked over to a paper bag near the door and reached down to pull out a package. “Butterscotch pudding!” she exclaimed, holding up small containers of the pudding. She returned, handing one to each of us. “You are going to have to use your forks,” she said. “I am all out of plastic spoons.”
I looked at the smile on her face and the love in her eyes. I marveled at her ability to make a home for herself and her family here in unit number 33. And I wondered how much longer she was going to be able to hold it together living here, where most people stash the stuff they don’t need or want or cherish any longer.
“Dustin?” Dorothea’s voice got my attention. “Do you have to go?”
We all looked at the boy, who was now holding both hands in front of his pants and squeezing his legs together. He nodded. “Can you hold it just a little while longer?” she asked. He nodded again.
“We had better get down to the 76 station on the corner,” Dorothea said.
“I can get you down there in the van,” I said.
“Great.” Dorothea smiled her appreciation. “Grab your toothbrushes, boys,” she said to them. “We might as well get ready for bed.”
The boys scurried to get their toothbrushes out of their school backpacks and put them in their jeans pockets.
“You can put your plates in this paper bag,” Dorothea said, picking up a bag and handing it to C. We quickly tossed in our plates and forks. “We will take that along and toss the trash in the dumpster at the 76. They have been pretty good to us down there, letting us get cleaned up and use the bathroom.”
Dorothea quickly unplugged the hot plates and grabbed two washcloths and stuffed them in a large purse that she tossed over her shoulder. It was with a sense of urgency that we all piled into the van and drove as quickly as possible to the 76 station.
“We’ve got to get cleaned up and then get back to read Harry Potter, say our prayers, and get to sleep so we’re ready for school and work in the morning,” Dorothea said, as we pulled into the filling station. I came to a stop and turned off the engine. “Thank you for coming by,” she said. She and the boys stepped out of the van. “Dustin, you had better get to the bathroom!” He dashed into the building, with Elijah right behind.
Breakfast at Sally's Page 31
