The Girl's Guide to Homelessness

by Brianna Karp

  Dennis and I navigated the posh, exclusive neighborhoods of Los Angeles before pulling up in front of the mansion containing my new best friend. I had already decided to rename Dre—he would be called Fezzik, after the gentle giant character in The Princess Bride. Fezzik seemed to approve. Barbara welcomed us into her home, and the dog bounded into the room as though he were on a trampoline, nearly knocking us over in his exuberance.

  “He…needs a little work, obviously,” Barbara said, shoving him off her. “We’ve been working with him on training. But he’s still a puppy and has a ways to go.”

  I didn’t care. I adored my new 104-pound puppy.

  Fezzik would reach 160 pounds or more at maturity. Yet, as he grew, and as I worked with him on training, he mellowed. He would jump up less and less, although he remained as excited as ever to see me return home from work. Settled into my cottage, he would nestle at my feet on the hardwood floors nightly, despite the fluffy bed I had set up for him on the other side of the room, drool pooling around his monstrous, bubbling dewflaps as he snored loud enough to wake the dead. Fezzik wanted to be where I was, and that was fine with me. I took him to the Costa Mesa dog park often, where he cultivated a fan club. Initially slightly emaciated at adoption, he filled out quickly and became a stunning, glossy, blue-gray beast. Men on the street admired him, but from a distance, giving him a wide berth. Fezzik rarely growled, but he was alert around strange men. His tail would slowly stop wagging and he would fixate on them with his beady yellow eyes before letting out a deep and menacing-sounding bark that reverberated throughout your very bones. Eventually, he would overcome his fear of strange men (I assumed it was rooted in some unknown past experience), but in the beginning, he was very protective of me, which comforted me in an odd way. I was a woman living alone. But nobody would fuck with me as long as Fezzik was around. He sensed my shy awkwardness at navigating the outside world and he was more than pleased to guide me through it.

  So wrapped up was I in my new life that I failed to take particularly seriously the rumors of trouble for the auto industry in early 2008. This was Kelley Blue Book’s bread and butter, but I wasn’t worried. The company had been stable for over eighty years and had just begun a major collaboration with Carfinder.com. Surely things were peachy keen. While sorting through confidential documents in employee files, I stumbled across three or four layoff notices in May, but shrugged them off as isolated cases. At company meetings, the president and CFO shared revenue stats and assured us that KBB was doing just fine, hale and healthy as ever.

  Which is why it came as a shock when Liz called me into her office in early July 2008 to lay me off. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The night before, I had attended my first Angels game with Dennis. I had just bought a BlackBerry Curve and marveled at this tiny palm-sized gadget that could do practically anything, short of cooking breakfast. I used the $300 phone to snap photos of the two of us—grinning happily at the baseball game, me in a red-and-white baseball cap with a rally monkey hanging around my neck—now ensconced in my cubicle. Life was beautiful, fantastic.

  “Bri…,” Liz began, and I knew by her face that something was very, very wrong. “The company…has not been doing so well lately. And that means that we have to make some changes around here. We’ve looked at the structure of the company in depth, and we’re being forced to eliminate 260 out of the current 500 positions.”

  Two hundred sixty? That’s more than half! I thought in shock. I still didn’t quite get it, though. How horrible for all those people! What will they do? Where will they go? Liz looked uncomfortable and then continued. “I’ve already spoken to Kailea and Sandhya in the HR department, and now you…” My face crumpled like paper as the impact of what she meant hit me. I sobbed as if my best friend were dying. Liz reached out and grasped my hand, tears filling her eyes.

  “I am so, so sorry, Bri. Truly. And I want you to know that this is not because you were a bad worker. You have the ability and the willingness to constantly try anything and everything to succeed. And I have the feeling that perhaps in the future our paths may cross again.”

  I nodded, vainly attempting to get a grip and suppress my spastic snuffles. I was ashamed that I couldn’t handle this in a more adult manner. I hadn’t heard a peep from Kailea or Sandhya. Then I realized, Oh my god, Sandhya just had another baby.

  Liz went on to explain the layoff process. I would receive a generous severance bonus of six weeks’ pay. My last day would be in two weeks, but they were willing to allow me to take those two weeks off with pay in addition to my severance. The other employees had opted to accept this offer. I felt awkward about the arrangement, though. Who would do my work? I wanted to know. Who would finish the projects in my inbox? I took pride in my work. I didn’t want to leave a mess for somebody else to fix. It was the most bewildering thing—my main fear was who would get stuck cleaning up after me. I left work and drove to Dennis’s house, bawling, in need of consolation.

  I came into work the next two days. I ground my fingers to nubs, boxing up my beloved collage, returning my cubicle to its bland, standard grayness and methodically completing the tasks in my inbox. I would learn that I was the only employee who had offered to stay the remaining two weeks. On the second day, one of the HR managers called me into her office.

  “You don’t have to stay the two weeks.”

  “I know. But I need to finish my stuff.”

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “You need to start worrying about yourself, Bri. You’ve always worried about everybody else around here. Now you need to think about you. It’s hard out there right now, and it may get much worse very soon. Use those two free weeks to look for another job. Nobody here will think any less of you if you leave your tasks unfinished and take the time off.”

  She was right. I knew she was right. But dammit, couldn’t she understand the hurt, the shame of having failed? I may have lost my job, but I couldn’t fail. I had to prove my work ethic to myself as well as to the company that had laid me off. I had to prove that I didn’t deserve to be laid off. So I did the only thing that I could do. I agreed to leave at the end of the day and accepted the severance check that she cut for me. Then I stayed hours past five o’clock, finishing the final scraps of work on my plate, bolting out the back door through the lunchroom, one last look back at my beloved desk, an empty slate.

  Chapter Four

  Having lost my job, my thoughts shifted, focused on continuing to make the $1,500 rent payments on my cottage. This is Orange County, after all; $1,500 is quite decent, even for an apartment, much less a little house.

  I filed for unemployment benefits and was approved for the maximum—$450 a week. I suppose there should have been some consolation in knowing that I was receiving the same amount in unemployment benefits as, say, a laid-off CEO. But there wasn’t. The total monthly amount was barely enough to cover my rent, let alone utilities, a hungry dog and a horse.

  Yes, a horse.

  Growing up, I had been fascinated with horses. I wanted one more than anything, or at least to take riding lessons. My mother refused. Horses were dangerous and expensive, she told me. I was allowed to ride a bombproof old trail horse once, on a family vacation to the rural mountain town of Ramona. I would not sit atop a horse for many more years after that, until one day in my early twenties, when I impulsively picked up the phone and called Kelly, a horse trainer in Santiago Canyon.

  Kelly was a tiny, short-haired, spunky ball of pure energy and devout Christian platitudes. She was also a damn good rider and understood horses innately. She worked tirelessly with me on my riding skills. Her horse, Mystery, was a pleasant little Paint, still green but placid and eager to please. I reveled in my newfound hobby, reclaiming for myself some fanciful, impractical childhood wish.

  One day, I showed up at the riding ring to be greeted not by chocolate-brown Mystery, but by a galloping, stocky, muscled mare, Lucy, named for Lucille Ball. Lucy was a flaming red dun American Quarter Horse.
Solid and compact, she was clearly a highly intelligent and responsive horse, well-trained, but I would come to learn that she had a stubborn streak a mile wide. She was Kelly’s other horse, had been boarded at a separate ranch and was being reboarded with Mystery.

  “I thought you were ready to start on Lucy,” Kelly greeted me. “She’s a little more advanced than Mystery and, who knows, I may even sell her to you some day.”

  I watched Lucy canter around the ring. She kept one ear swiveled in my direction, watching me out of the corner of her eye. She looked suspicious.

  “Um, you know, she’s cute and all, but I’m kind of set on a draft. Some big-butted Shire or Percheron with a back like a cushy couch. Slow and docile,” I qualified.

  “Well, those drafts, they sure do eat a lot.” I knew this, but damn if I cared. I had a decent salary; I could afford a little bit of extra feed, when I was finally ready to buy a horse.

  “Climb on into the ring. I’m going to go grab the saddle,” she called as she clambered up a dirt dune toward the tack shed.

  I stooped and crawled between the horizontal railings, leaning against the bars and watching Lucy galloping. She didn’t slow down for nuzzling and scratches, as Mystery would have. She sped up, passing me four times on her mad sprint around the pen. She passed as close as she could each time, seemingly testing how near she could get before I freaked out and bailed from the ring. I held my ground. Kelly wouldn’t have sent me into the ring with a dangerous horse, right?

  That was when Lucy passed by me for a fifth time and, without slowing a whit, took methodical aim and kicked me.

  It was so fast and unexpected that I wasn’t quite sure it had happened. The kick was light, aimed to warn and not to hurt, and landed on my hip like the lazy swatting of a fly. I was flabbergasted.

  The little bitch.

  From then on, it was personal. Goddammit, I was going to show this horse she couldn’t just go around kicking me.

  All in all, Lucy was an obedient horse. She knew her commands, knew what every slight pressure on the reins and stirrups meant. Occasionally, though, she would get a bug up her butt. Kelly assured me that this was typical mare behavior. On one occasion, Kelly sent me on a gallop up the trails near the stable. Having galloped to the tree she wanted, I turned around and assumed that I was to head back. All hell broke loose, however, when Lucy’s return gallop broke into a full-on, all-out bolt, as if she were trying to take us both to hell. Screaming, I yanked on the reins harder and harder, begging, “Whoa! Whoa! Fucking WHOA!” At the last moment, Kelly turned her own horse into Lucy’s path, blocking her, and Lucy pulled back. I, however, kept going, soaring magnificently heels-over-helmeted-head through the air and landing with a blunt thump on my side in the dirt below, where Lucy, still in the process of stopping, trampled on my leg and then backed up, realizing her error.

  The wind knocked out of me, I moaned on the ground, clutching myself and feeling for broken bones. Kelly looked down at me, serene, from atop Mystery’s back.

  “Yeah, sorry, I probably should have told you—you never gallop a horse homeward. They get all excited, thinking, ‘Woohoo, I’m about to get fed!’ and then they bolt for home and you can’t control them. Always walk a horse home.” She dismounted.

  “Get up.”

  “Just a second…I can’t…it hurts. Just give me a second.” I tried to force air into my lungs. Everything was excruciating.

  “No, Bri. Get. Up.”

  I rolled over and staggered to my feet. My right leg protested in pain. I rolled up my pants leg. I was bruised from hip to ankle, with a couple of lovely hoofprints as a bonus.

  “Get back on her.”

  Clearly, she was insane. “Yeah, about that…think I’ll just walk back beside you guys.” I made as if to grab Lucy’s reins.

  “Nope. Get back in the saddle. You know what they say: When you fall off a horse…”

  So I put my leg in the stirrup and almost cried at the pain in my hip socket as I pulled myself up onto Lucy’s back again. She stood stock-still. We walked back to the stable.

  I don’t know whether it was coincidence or what, but I never had a problem with Lucy again. After that, she began to warm to me considerably, and in perhaps the strangest twist of fate of all, I found myself her owner soon after, when Kelly gave her to me as a gift.

  I’m sorry, Lucy. I stroked her red nose, textured and soft as crushed velvet, and stared into her brown eyes, whimpering out my goodbye. I simply couldn’t afford to keep her. I didn’t know if or when I’d have another job that could help pay for her board, food, tack—any of it. I didn’t know how I’d ended up loving her so much, but I knew that she deserved someone who could take care of her.

  I thought back on the many days I had spent exercising her in the turnout pen, riding her up the street to O’Neill National Park, watching her toss her head and strut, showing off to the other horses that would show up at the public ring. All fiery impudence and heart. I remembered her meekly padding along under Dennis on his first and only attempt at riding her around the pen, seemingly sensing his complete and utter terror, taking tiny, mincing steps as if to assure him that she wouldn’t hurt him for anything. I had wrapped my arms around Lucy’s sinewy neck and cried over more than one disappointment or broken heart, as she stoically munched on her alfalfa hay. She understood then. I convinced myself that she did.

  I didn’t know whether she understood now. I hoped so.

  Selling my beloved horse lightened my financial load a little, but it did not prove enough to save my cottage. For a couple of months, I struggled to keep afloat. I was drowning, but I kept assuring myself, unconvincingly, that something would come along. I occasionally picked up temporary work through an agency, but never anything that lasted for very long. Nobody was hiring; even the companies that I would take temp assignments at were laying off masses of workers and simply calling in temps to clean up unfinished remnants of projects before cutting the temps loose as well.

  As if in a foggy nightmare, I tried tallying up my finances about twelve different ways. Surely I could make this all work. Except that I couldn’t. I quickly spent my meager savings on rent payments as I frantically searched for more work. And then there was no more money. Only the meager unemployment check, vanishing as quickly as it came, invested in car payments, insurance, gasoline, utilities and Fezzik.

  My mother badgered me to move back in with her and Joe.

  “Oh, god…no. You know we get on so much better when we don’t live together, Mom.”

  It was true. I was able to maintain a casual, even fun friendship with my mother as an independent adult. I was free of her “my house, my rules” mentality when I lived on my own, and she knew it. Although she didn’t necessarily approve of my lifestyle, she was wont to rant about it less, and the opportunity for physical abuse had been stripped from her when I moved out. The occasional mom-daughter thrift store shopping trip or lunch at BJ’s Pizza could even be plenty of fun. At these times, we could laugh with each other, truly enjoy the dry sense of humor that we shared and leave the past, not forgotten, but lying undisturbed, as if shallowly buried underneath a pile of brittle, brown leaves.

  These were the times I saw clearly just how lovely my mom must have been as a young, vivacious kid, beloved by all her friends and classmates, if not by her own mother. It was so easy to say “water under the bridge” when I didn’t have to cohabit in close proximity with my mother’s demons as well as my own.

  Yet, she persisted. Where else would I go? I couldn’t make my rent payments. I would just ruin my already dipping credit if I added an eviction to my record.

  After two months of demurring, I finally called my retired, gray landlord, Dave, and informed him that I had to end my month-to-month tenancy. He was saddened, as he had grown fond of me and even of mistrustful Fezzik, whom he inexplicably adored and had gradually befriended with hot dogs and biscuit treats. Dave had hoped that I would eventually sign a one-or even two-year lease, as he wa
s rarely gifted with single, quiet tenants, but alas, it was not to be.

  “You know, I’ve been doing this a long time, and you’re by far the best tenant I’ve ever had,” he told me, over and over again. “I’ll rent to you again in a heartbeat, if you’re ever able to come back. And if you need a letter of reference, don’t hesitate to call me.”

  I spent a week cleaning out my beautiful little vintage cottage. My parents came over and helped. I shuddered, seeing my baby grand piano, Ingrid (a once-in-a-lifetime FreeCycle gift from a woman who could no longer keep the 1934 relic and thought it was wrong to sell something that had been in her family for generations and brought her so much pleasure), dismantled and packed into a storage van.

  I had taken a few months of piano lessons as a child, but mom cut them short because Molly lost interest, and there was no room for extracurricular activities unless both of us were willing to participate—or, at least, that was the case for me. I suspected that my mom insisted on Moll accompanying me to keep an eye on me, to make sure that I didn’t get too close and friendly with “worldly people.” It was definitely a double standard because she trusted Moll to pursue solo activities. Perhaps she felt that my sister was too goody-goody to dare make friends outside the Organization. My teachers told me that I showed a fair amount of promise and encouraged me to go further. I picked up music and dance very quickly and evidenced a strong, innate love of art and culture—qualities frowned on as frivolous and ungodly by Jehovah’s Witnesses, highly suspect even as mere recreation, much less potential career choices. My artistic aspirations were further hampered because Molly got bored quickly and never stuck with anything very long. I had been pulled out of ballet, jazz and piano in quick succession when Moll quit and, after that, I realized the hopelessness of the situation and gave up on even trying anymore. She went on to attempt guitar, flute, horseback riding, drama and ice skating, dropping out of each one and rapidly hopping onto the next.