This Is Not Chick Lit

by Elizabeth Merrick

  “To be extra clean,” I said. When I’d dried my hands and forearms with a paper towel, I picked her up and she flicked the light switch. Upstairs, the kids had dispersed. Na’Shell’s mom, who had a skinny body and skinny eyebrows and pink eye shadow and enormous gold hoop earrings and who looked no older than fifteen, was waiting in the entry hall. I didn’t know her name, or the names of any of the mothers. “Come here, baby,” she said to Na’Shell. “What you got there?” Our last activity of the night had been making paper jewelry, and Na’Shell passed her mother a purple bracelet.

  “Good news,” Karen said. “Elsa offered to give us a ride.” Karen and I always walked home together. The shelter was a few blocks east of Dupont Circle—weirdly, the building it occupied was probably worth a fortune—and Karen and I both lived about a mile away in Cleveland Park.

  “I’m fine walking,” I said. The thought of being inside Elsa’s car was distinctly unappealing. There were probably long, dry hairs on the seats, and old coffee cups with the imprint of her lipstick.

  “Don’t be a silly goose,” Elsa said. “I live in Bethesda, so you’re on my way.”

  I didn’t know how to refuse a second time. Her car was a two-door, and I sat in back. As Elsa pulled out of the parking lot behind the shelter, Karen said, “They’re hell-raisers, huh? Have any kids yourself?”

  “As a matter of fact, I just went through a divorce,” Elsa said. “But we didn’t have children, which was probably a blessing in disguise.”

  I had noticed earlier that Elsa wasn’t wearing a wedding ring; it surprised me that she’d ever been married.

  “I’m sorry,” Karen said.

  “I’m taking it day by day—that old cliché. What about you?”

  “Card-carrying spinster,” Karen said, and laughed.

  This was a slightly shocking comment. At the volunteer training almost a year earlier, it had seemed that the majority of people there were unmarried women who probably wanted children and who were nearing the age when they’d be too old to have them. This fact was so obvious that it seemed unnecessary to ever discuss it. Plus, it made me nervous, because what I wondered was, was this the time in my own life before I found someone to love and had a family and looked back longingly on my youthful freedom? Or was it the beginning of what my life would be like forever? We were driving north on Connecticut Avenue, and out the window it was just starting to get dark. Elsa’s and Karen’s voices were like a discussion between guests on a radio program playing in the background.

  “And how about you?” Elsa asked.

  The car was silent for several seconds before I realized she was talking to me. “I don’t have any kids,” I said.

  “Are you married?”

  In the rearview mirror, we made eye contact.

  “No,” I said.

  “Frances is a baby,” Karen said. “Guess how old she is.”

  Elsa furrowed her eyebrows, as if thinking very hard. “Twenty-four?”

  “Close,” I said. “Twenty-three.”

  Karen turned around. “You’re twenty-three? I thought you were twenty-two.”

  “I was,” I said. “But then I had a birthday.”

  I hadn’t been making a joke, but they both laughed.

  “Are you, like, getting school credit for being a volunteer?” Elsa asked.

  “No, I’ve graduated.”

  “Where do you work?”

  Normally, I felt flattered when people asked me questions. With Elsa, I was wary of revealing information. I hesitated, then said, “A graphic-design firm.”

  “That sounds glamorous.”

  “It’s not.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Artisan Design.”

  “Okay.” Elsa nodded. “I think I’ve heard of them.”

  I doubted she had. The firm was three years old and had only six full-time staff members. Before she could ask me another question, I said, “Where do you work?”

  “Right now, I’m freelancing from home. I’ve cut back on my hours lately, but what I do is I help nonprofits and NGOs with fund-raising.”

  Right, I thought. You’re unemployed.

  “Like a consultant?” Karen said.

  “Yep.” Elsa grinned. “Answering to no one.”

  You’re so unemployed, I thought.

  After Elsa had dropped Karen off and I’d climbed into the front seat, I could not help thinking—I was now alone in an enclosed space with Elsa—that perhaps she was genuinely unbalanced. But if she were violent, I thought, she’d be violent in an insane rather than a criminal way. She wouldn’t want to rob me; she’d just want to do something bizarre and pointless, like cutting off my thumb. Neither of us spoke, and in the silence, I imagined her making some creepy, telling remark: Do you ever feel like your eyes are really, really itchy and you just want to scrape at them with a fork?

  But when she spoke, what she said was, “It’s great that you’re volunteering at your age. That’s really admirable.”

  I was almost disappointed. “The kids are fun,” I said.

  “Oh, I just want to gobble them up. You know who’s especially sweet is, who’s the little boy with the long eyelashes?”

  The question made my ears seize up like when you hear an unexpected noise. “I’m not sure who you’re thinking of,” I said. “But you can just stop here. At the next corner, by that supermarket.” It suddenly seemed imperative that Elsa not know where I live.

  “I’ll wait if you’re picking up stuff. I remember what it’s like to carry groceries on foot.”

  “My apartment isn’t far,” I said. She hadn’t yet come to a complete stop, but I’d opened the door and had one leg hanging out. “Thanks for the ride,” I added, and slammed the door.

  Without turning around, I could tell that she had not driven off. Go, I thought. Get out of here. What was she waiting for? The supermarket door opened automatically, and just before it shut behind me, I finally heard her pull away. For a few minutes, I peered out the door at the street, making sure she didn’t pass by again. Then I walked back out empty-handed.

  At this time in my life, I spent the weekends running errands; during the week, I was often so exhausted after work that I’d go to bed at eight-thirty or quarter to nine. Then on Saturdays and Sundays, I’d hurry up and down Connecticut, to the Laundromat and the supermarket and CVS.

  Sometimes I’d pass couples eating brunch at the outdoor cafés or inside restaurants with doors that opened onto the sidewalk, and when I looked at them (I tried not to stare, but rarely did any of them look back anyway) I felt a confusion bordering on hostility. Flirting with a guy in a dark bar, at night, when you’d both been drinking—I understood the appeal. But to sit across the table from each other in the daylight, to watch each other’s jaws working over pancakes and scrambled eggs, seemed embarrassing and impossible. The compromises you’d made would be so apparent, I thought, this other person before you with their patches of dry skin and protruding nose hairs and the drop of syrup on their chin and the way they spit when they talked and the boring cheerful complaints you’d make to each other about traffic or current events while the horrible sun hung over you. I could see how during the night people preferred the reassurance of another body in their bed, but in the day wouldn’t you just rather be alone, both of you, so you could go back to your apartment and sit on the toilet for a while, or take a nap without someone’s sweaty arm around you? Or maybe you’d just want to sit on your couch and balance your checkbook and not hear another person breathing while they read the newspaper five feet away and looked over every ten or fifteen minutes so that you had to smile back—about nothing!—and periodically utter a term of endearment.

  As I ran errands, I’d wear soccer shorts from high school and T-shirts that I’d have perspired through in the back; passing by the cafés, I’d feel hulking and monstrous, and sometimes, to calm down, I would count. I always started with my right hand, one number for each finger except my pinky: thumb, one; index finge
r, two; middle finger, three; third finger, four. Then I’d go to the left hand, then back to the right. I knew this wasn’t the most normal thing in the world, but I thought the fact that I didn’t count high was a good sign. Triple digits, double digits even—then I might have worried for myself, but staying under five felt manageable. Anyway, it was like hiccups; after a few blocks, I’d realize that while I’d been thinking of something else, the impulse to count had gone away.

  The following week, as soon as I entered the shelter, Elsa jumped up from the hall bench holding a grocery bag and, proffering each item for my inspection, withdrew a box of markers, a packet of construction paper, two vials of glitter, a tube of glue, and finally, a carton of tiny American flags whose poles were made of toothpicks. “The kids can make Uncle Sam hats,” she said. “For the Fourth of July.”

  In the last week, I had decided that my initial reaction to Elsa had been unfair; she hadn’t done anything that was truly all that strange or offensive. But being in her presence again, I was immediately reminded of a hyper, panting dog with bad breath.

  “Then we’ll have a parade,” she continued. “You know, get in the spirit.”

  “We’re not allowed to take the kids outside.” Not only were we not allowed to take them outside, but if our paths should cross theirs in the normal world—if, say, I saw Tasaundra and her mother at the Judiciary Square Metro stop one day—I was not even supposed to speak to them. I also was not supposed to learn their last names.

  “Inside then,” Elsa said. “We’ll have the first annual super-duper New Day House indoor parade. And I have an idea for next week, too. I was thinking we could do a dress-up kind of thing with old clothes and whatnot. I’ve been cleaning out my basement, and I found some bridesmaid dresses that I’m sure Tasaundra and Na’Shell would think are to die for. So when you go home, look in your closet and see what you have—graduation gowns, Halloween costumes. I’ll swing by the Salvation Army this weekend.”

  I thought of my own half-empty closet. Unlike Elsa, apparently, I actually wore all my clothes.

  “Now that you’re here, I’ll go get the kids,” she said, and I watched as she walked into the dining room and said in a loud, fake-forlorn voice, “I can’t find anyone to play with. Are there any fun boys or girls in here who’ll be my friends?”

  I imagined the mothers scowling at her, though what I heard was the screams of the kids, followed by the squeaks and thuds of their feet as they hurried across the linoleum floor to fling themselves at Elsa. I wondered if she thought that winning them over so quickly was an achievement.

  In the basement—Karen arrived shortly after we’d gone down—the hat making occurred with a few glitches, most notably when Na’Shell spilled the red glitter on the floor, then wept, but it didn’t go as badly as I’d hoped. “Great idea, Elsa,” Karen said.

  Elsa stood. “Okay, everyone,” she said. “Now we’re going on a parade.”

  “I ain’t going on no stupid parade,” Orlean said.

  “I ain’t going on no stupid parade,” Tasaundra echoed.

  “You guys,” I said. “It’s, ‘I’m not going on any stupid parade.’ ”

  “But that’s why you made the hats,” Elsa said. She set a cylinder of blue construction paper on top of her head—of course she had made one for herself—but it didn’t fit, and she had to hold it in place. “Do I look exactly like Lady Liberty?”

  The kids regarded her blankly.

  “We need a leader for the parade, right?” Karen said.

  “Oh!” Derek’s eyes widened. “Miss Volunteer! Pick me!”

  Pretty soon, they all had assigned positions, even Orlean and Tasaundra. They lined up in front of the door in their hats, their chins raised high in the air. As we exited the playroom—I was in the middle, holding Derek’s hand—I heard singing. It was Elsa, I realized, and the song was “America the Beautiful.” And she was really belting it out. Had I only imagined her twittering, inhibited persona from the week before?

  We cut through the dining room, where the only person present was Svetlana, the shelter employee on duty Monday nights, who was either flaky or not fluent in English; if you asked her anything about anything, she would simply shrug. She was sitting at a table doing a crossword puzzle, and she blinked slowly at us as we walked around the periphery of the room. By then, Elsa was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and Mikhail was blowing a kazoo whose origins I was unsure of. From behind her, I looked at Elsa’s awful hair, her cotton sleeveless sweater, which was cream-colored and cabled, and her dry and undefined upper arms.

  Back in the stairwell, I saw that Elsa was not going downstairs; she was going up.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She didn’t stop.

  “Hey.”

  She looked at me over one shoulder.

  “Those are the bedrooms,” I said.

  “So?”

  “I think we should respect their privacy.”

  “But look how cute the kids are.” Elsa leaned over and cupped Derek’s chin with one hand. “What a handsome boy you are, Derek,” she crooned. She straightened up and said to me, “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  I looked at her face, and I could see that this wasn’t about challenging me, that in fact, I had nothing to do with it. This really was about the parade; something in the situation had made her giddy in a way I myself had never, ever been—utterly unself-conscious and eager. Her chest rose and fell as if she’d been exercising, she was panting a little, and as she smiled, I could see her big front teeth and gums, I could see her mustache of pale hairs above her lips, her uneven skin, her bright and happy eyes. She was experiencing a moment of profound personal triumph, though nothing was occurring that was remotely profound or triumphant. It was a Monday evening; these were children; and really, underneath it all, weren’t we just killing time, didn’t none of it matter?

  “Karen, don’t you feel like we shouldn’t go upstairs?” I asked.

  “Ehh—I don’t think anyone would mind.”

  I stared between them. I had felt certain that Karen would agree with me.

  “Don’t worry so much.” Elsa punched my shoulder. “It’ll give you wrinkles.”

  The second floor was a corridor with two rooms on either side, like a dorm, but none of the rooms had any doors. Inside the rooms were bunk beds, as many as four in a row; I knew they made the families double up. The first room on the right was empty. I glanced through the doorway on the left and saw Mikhail’s mother slouched on a bottom bunk, leaning against the wall, nursing her daughter. The baby was turning her head so her mouth was not actually clamped around the nipple, and as I glanced away from the huge, pale, veiny breast, my eyes met Mikhail’s mother’s. Her mouth was pursed contemptuously, and her eyebrows were raised, as if to say, So you enjoy looking at my tit? I kept walking.

  In the second room on the left, two mothers were sleeping. As I passed that doorway, continuing to follow Elsa, who was still singing, and Mikhail, who was still playing the kazoo, one of the mothers rolled over, and I hurried by—let her see someone else when she looked out to see who’d awakened her. In the last room on the right, Elsa found the audience she’d been searching for. She knocked ceremoniously on the doorframe.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” she said. “I have with me a group of patriots eager to show you their artistic creations. Will you permit us to enter?”

  A pause followed, and then one woman said, “You want to, you can come in.”

  We filed into the room—there were so many of us that Karen had to remain in the hall—and I saw that Derek’s mother and Orlean’s mother were sitting on the floor with a basket of laundry between them and piles of folded clothes set in stacks on a lower bunk.

  Derek yelled, “Mama!” and tumbled into her lap.

  “Would someone like to say the Pledge of Allegiance?” Elsa looked around at the children. “Who knows the Pledge of Allegiance? ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag…’ ”

  “ ‘…of the United S
tates of America,’ ” Orlean said, but then he didn’t continue; only Elsa did.

  It was excruciating. When she got to the end, the room was silent, and I couldn’t look at the mothers. How loud and earnest we must have seemed to them, how moronically bourgeois, clutching at their children. I started clapping, because I didn’t know what else to do, and then the kids clapped, too.

  It wasn’t just that the mothers intimidated me; it was also that, in a strange way, they inspired my envy. I’d once heard Na’Shell and Dewey’s mother having an argument on the pay phone about buying diapers, and as she yelled and cursed, I couldn’t help but be impressed by her sheer forcefulness. The mothers’ lives were complicated and unwieldy. They had debts and addictions, and most of all, they had children, who had come from having sex, and if sex didn’t always coexist with love, well, at least it did some of the time. Even when they lived in New Day, a place where men were prohibited from entering, love found these women: romantic entanglements, problems you thought about hard while sitting on the front steps smoking. Other people were so unsuccessful in fending off love! Congressmen or senators who had adulterous affairs with their aides, or students I’d known slightly in college, girls who as freshmen declared themselves lesbians and then graduated with boyfriends—to give in to love represented, for them, a capitulation or a betrayal, yet apparently the pull was so strong that they couldn’t resist. That’s what I didn’t understand, how people made the leap from not mattering in each other’s lives to mattering.

  Another thing that impressed me about the mothers was their sexiness. The really big ones like Derek’s mom wore sweatpants and T-shirts, but some of the others who were twenty or thirty pounds overweight dressed in tight, revealing clothes, and they looked good: tank tops and short skirts and no stockings and high-heeled mules, gold necklaces and bracelets and rings.