Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  My head throbbed. A dangerous sort of tunnel vision was setting in, all sense of time and space collapsing. It was the way I’d felt in those first fragile weeks when my children were newborns, hot and oceanic in their wailing, and I stumbled around the kitchen seeing only what was directly in front of me, thinking in monotone: Put milk in pan. Put pan on stove.

  A shower. A meal. A bed. That’s what Celia said I could expect. A shower. A meal. A bed. If I could only just sleep…

  A young man at a table in the vestibule—who didn’t look any older than Austin—did they let teenagers work in homeless shelters?—sat taking down names in a ledger. I watched as each person stepped forward. Another worker took their belongings and handed them a numbered tag in return as if for a coat-check. “Gentlemen, you know the rules,” she announced. “If you don’t want to check your belongings, you cannot stay. It’s as simple as that. Safety and security first.”

  I could not believe I was going to stay here—that it had come to this—and when I reached the check-in table, I found myself glancing around wildly and waiting for some MTV game-show host to announce, “You’ve been punked!” Then, perhaps even more insanely, I found myself growing panicked that someone would see me here—someone I knew from back home—my friend Ann-Marie from high school—or the women in my book club. Heather Mickleberg. Or Colleen Lundstedt. Or my children! I felt paralyzed with shame.

  “This isn’t really me here at all. You know, I’m actually the mother of two teenagers,” I heard myself announcing. “And a kitchenware saleswoman! I actually live in a nice Michigan suburb. I even have a dog—a Labradoodle! Who doesn’t even shed! I’m in a book club, for fuck’s sake!”

  The staffer regarded me as if I were a package of explosives that needed to be handled with extreme delicacy. “O-kay, ma’am,” he said. “But you’re still not allowed to bring reading materials inside here. Everything except your wallet, you have to check.”

  In a large, high-ceilinged dormitory, metal beds were lined up as if it were an army hospital. The gray-haired woman and I appeared to be the only women; we were shown to two beds at the very end of the hall that the staffers hastily sectioned off with two movable partitions. The makeshift walls would do nothing to keep out the smell or the noise from the larger room—or, for that matter, the other “inmates,” as I began to think of us all almost immediately—but I supposed I should be grateful for even a small modicum of privacy. My roommate and I were each handed a blanket, a fresh set of bed linens, a towel, and a tiny toothbrush and toothpaste travel kit sealed in a plastic wrapper reading ADA of Greater Memphis 2007. Keep smiling! Which reminded me of Joey, of course, and made me burn again with shame.

  Each bed had a bare mattress and a pillow. “They call this place ‘the homeless Hilton,’ my roommate announced in a voice like a coffee grinder. “Glad you’re here with me, sister. They won’t let women stay unless there’re at least two of us.” As she set about making her bed, she kept mumbling to herself. Even though our cubicle was not fully enclosed, it quickly filled with the stench of her, a sour gaminess mingled with rotting fruit. Then I saw why. As she began removing layer upon layer of sweaters, bits of horded food wrapped in Saran wrap fell out onto the floor. “Let me know if you need extra provisions,” she said from beneath her tangle of hair. “They like to starve you in these places. Keep you docile.”

  After that, we tacitly ignored each other as we busied ourselves preparing our beds until it was time to shower. We were led down a hallway to an industrial bathroom with a big, communal concrete-block shower area. Shampoo/body wash was provided in dispensers bolted to the wall, one of which had been ripped nearly completely from its rivets and now dangled like a large, grubby white tooth on the last thread of its root.

  “You ladies have ten minutes to wash up and do your business,” the staffer announced without quite making eye contact with us.

  The shower was large enough that the other woman and I could each claim our own corners and pretend to ignore the other’s naked, filthy, collapsing flesh. But the concrete floor stank faintly of urine and chlorine—and the water—which I was hoping would come as a relief, a salve—was tepid at first and quickly graduated to cold. We’d each been instructed to keep our clothes where we could see them, and as soon as we were “clean,” we yanked the thin towels around us and bolted back out to the dressing area clutching our stuff, our belongings wettening against our arms.

  “In the other shelter I usually go to,” my roommate grunted, scratching her wet scalp, yanking on her pants, “some of the workers there pay the supervisor to watch us ladies in the shower. Then, they film us,” she said, nodding, her eyes growing wide and frantic. “For the government. And the New World Order.”

  After showering, we were led to the cafeteria. I was so hungry at that point, it felt as if my body itself were dissolving. We squeezed in beside each other on benches at low wooden tables like children at summer camp. We were a noisy, smelly bunch with wet hair and ramshackle teeth and pitted skin and sunken eyes, faces laden with resignation and bitter humor. As I looked around, the wind went out of me. So this was where I had landed. Just the night before, I’d been having sex with Zack; the night before that, I’d been eating noodles with Brenda and Eli; a week before that, I’d been a housewife and sales rep in Troy, Michigan, with a doofus-y dentist husband. There was such a thin, fragile membrane between worlds. I suddenly thought of my daughter at four. What happens to the soap bubbles, Mom, when they go down the drain? Her tearfulness had been wiser than I could know. Yet, mostly, all I could focus on were hot dogs. I could smell them boiling in the cafeteria, along with tomato soup.

  Before we were allowed to line up for dinner, however, a man stood up on a chair and raised his hands in a “V” to silence us. “My friends, my friends,” he bellowed.

  A great, collective groan rippled across the dining room.

  “My friends, before you partake, I want you to take a minute—take a minute, if you will—to reflect upon our God, our one and only true Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has made possible not only this meal you are about to receive, but the spiritual substance being offered to your soul—”

  Somewhere to my right, I heard somebody whisper, “Man, just give us the fuckin’ food, will you?” And another: “Fool. Sit down. Fool, why you be preachin’ to a bunch of empty stomachs?” And another: “Blasphemers. Children of Satan. Can’t say a prayer before your goddamn hot dogs?”

  The man on the chair continued, “For you are all being given good news here tonight, my friends. Now, I know you are downtrodden. I, too, have had a hard life. Abuse. Addiction. I, too, have sinned. I, too, was once homeless. I, too, was once plagued by the drugs and the alcohol, and the sexual perversities that dominate the lives of people on the streets—”

  On the streets? I thought. Hell. Come check out suburban Michigan.

  “I, too, once, did not feel the full, awesome light of Christ’s love. But the book of Luke, 4:18, says, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor—’”

  I dropped my head in my hands. I’d been secular to the core—married a Catholic, even—but never, in my life, had I felt like such a Jew. At that moment, I longed to talk to my father so badly, it winded me. His Elvis obsession: It was not some fugue of mental illness, I realized. Rather, it was born from a feeling of intense aloneness and vulnerability. For if Elvis Presley actually had some connection to Judaism, it meant that we Jews were included in the bigger heart of America. We were not aberrations or outsiders or as wholly forsaken by the world as I felt now.

  As the group prayer went on, I sat at the table alone with my God, my gratitude, and my shame. Only after the weak chorus of “Praise Jesus” and “amen” were we allowed to proceed to the serving line for tomato soup. And white bread. And hot dogs.

  Per regulation, the dormitory went dark at 9 p.m. Yet the air crackled with grunts, cries, sniffles, coughs, snorts, farts, murmurs, whispers, be
lches, rantings, squeals, wheezes, grumbles, snores. Each time I rolled over and flipped my thin pillow to the other side in the hope of finding that one elusive patch of cool, the bed frame squeaked; I could feel the corsetry of wires and springs through the mattress. Steeped in misery and a wild, animal panic (that must be triggered by finding oneself in a strange bed in a strange setting and surrounded by actual strangers) I blinked at the partition and began to shiver.

  Eventually I did fall into an obliterating sleep, my body contorted and leaden, emitting a yeastiness, my mouth leaking spindles of drool on the sawdusty pillow. A ribbon was being sewn up my right leg slowly, lingeringly, a thick, wet line, satiny and warm. Just as it was registering, I heard a vicious, animal hiss. A thud. “Don’t you dare do that!” a woman shrieked. “You get the hell away.” Jerking upright, I saw a form hunched near the foot of my bed, hands splayed to the sky, a figure clobbering him repeatedly, her hand rising and hammering. I could not shout. Could not move.

  When the alarms rang in the dormitory in the morning, I awoke encrusted. Slowly, I came to. I had survived a night in a homeless shelter. My roommate, though, had vanished, her bed denuded. Blinking groggily around the dormitory, I couldn’t be sure if what I had experienced in the middle of the night was real or a hallucination.

  Sleep had restored me somewhat. Finally, I could think. As soon as Aggie and my suitcase were returned to me, I asked directions to the nearest public library.

  I was already waiting when its doors opened; I was the first person that morning to sign up for one of the free half-hour sessions on the computer. Skype would be infinitely better than calling collect on a pay phone. I’d keep Skyping our landline in Michigan as many times as I needed until Joey answered—I’d leave lengthy messages—I’d batter him verbally into responding. As I clicked onto the turquoise bubble icon, I realized I might even be able to reach Austin, if he ever checked his account. And Ashley. Six hours ahead. I was surprised by how much I sweated as I typed in my password: 5692AAJ. My wedding anniversary and my family’s initials. Same as it ever was.

  As soon as I was logged on, a series of alerts burst up on the screen. Eight, nine, ten of them, pinging so loudly, I got a savage look from the librarian.

  Missed Skype call from Ashley Koczynski.

  Missed Skype call from Ashley Koczynski.

  Missed Skype call from Ashley Koczynski.

  Missed Skype call from Ashley Koczynski.

  Mom, r u there?

  Mom, I need to talk to u.

  Mom, pleez call me ASAP.

  Mom where r u????

  Mom, I need help.

  Mom, Pleez. I’m in SERIOUS trouble.

  And then, one from Austin, posted only nineteen minutes before:

  Mom. R u still in jail?

  The moment I Skyped Austin back, he picked up. My son. Right there on screen, bed-headed and wearing an old phys-ed T-shirt with a chewed-up looking collar. I felt my eyes well up. I kept my video off, however, so he wouldn’t see my bruised face. Or my alarm. “Sweetie. What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Hey Mom. Yeah. Uh. I just got this message from Ashley. It was kinda scary. It said that she was in trouble. But it also said ‘Don’t tell Dad, only Mom,’ so, like, I’m telling you first,” he said anxiously. “Plus, it was a Skype text, not a regular one, which I thought was weird because, we usually just WhatsApp or text. I almost thought it was a joke, but she called me ‘Houston’ which only Ashley ever does.”

  I felt a growing sense of dread. “Can you read it to me?”

  “Okay. Um. Here. She wrote, Houston, I need to reach Mom. ASAP. Am in big trouble. Am not at apt & don’t have my phone & I keep trying to call her & she doesn’t answer. WTF. That’s short for—”

  “I know what that means, Austin.”

  “Then she wrote, Will keep trying to reach mom & you later. BUT DON’T TELL DAD. ONLY MOM. This is in all caps. Then, This is serious. Tell Mom to go on Skype & don’t log off! And then there are some emojis with green faces like she’s sick and like she’s scared and like she’s crying and one of a bed.”

  “Emojis?”

  “So, then I wrote stuff like, Are you okay, are you in the hospital, are you on drugs, etc. But she hasn’t answered.”

  “Austin, where’s your dad? Put your father on.”

  “He’s not here. He had to go in at, like, 8 a.m. today because he has all these root canals.”

  The timer on the public computer said I only had seventeen minutes left. “Okay, sweetie. Here’s the thing. They confiscated my phone. I’m okay, but—”

  “Your phone? Seriously? Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The cops. Outside of Nashville. I’m in Memphis now. But I’m on a public computer. So I’ve only got a few minutes. I need you to be my intermediary, Austin, while I sort out some stuff on this end, okay? I’ll get back online as soon as I can again, but in the meantime, can you keep trying to reach Ashley? Try to find out exactly what’s wrong, what happened, and where she is now. Ask her if there’s a landline where I can maybe call her collect later.”

  “Wait. Hang on. I’m writing this down: in-ter-me-di-ary.”

  “Next, can you give me Dad’s office number? As soon as we log off, I want you to contact him yourself and tell him there’s an emergency, and not to hang up on me whenever I call, okay?”

  “Okay. But I don’t think he will, Mom. I mean, he’s pretty freaked out already.”

  “Wait. So he does know about Ashley?”

  “No. About you being in prison. The only thing he knows about Ashley is that, like, she hasn’t been around school or her apartment. He keeps calling London, but everyone’s saying they haven’t seen her.”

  I felt sicker by the minute. It sounded like my daughter was in an infirmary somewhere. Though I didn’t want my mind to go there, it did: Has she been sexually assaulted? Had an abortion? Why else would she want only me to know, and not her father?

  I hated to get off the line with my son—to see his face freeze then snap into a void when I signed off. But I had to. My mind was reeling. The blaze of adrenaline I felt was a clarifying flame, precise as a laser beam. Joey could be performing oral surgery all day, but I called his office anyway and left a detailed message on his voice mail. Then, I got another idea. I called back and pressed “2” for Arjul’s extension. His calls were always forwarded. He picked up instantly.

  “Dr. Banerjee,” he said in a singsong voice.

  “Arjul, it’s Donna.” He could barely say hello before I launched into explaining the general gist of the situation, that Ashley needed me in London, that I needed to borrow money from him immediately—wired to Memphis—how it would be a personal loan, nothing to do with his business with Joey. He sounded stunned and more than a little dubious. “Donna, you are a good friend. But this is very out of the blue. And you are sounding like you are not quite stable now.”

  “I’m not stable, Arjul. Stable people do not need emergency loans wired to them across the country. You know I’m estranged from Joey at the moment. But you also know me. And our family. And we’re in trouble right now—I can’t fully explain—and I’m running out of options. So you’re the person I thought of.”

  “Yes, it’s just, this is a lot for me to take in so quickly.”

  Suddenly, I saw another call coming in for me over Skype. Ashley.

  “Calling you back, Arjul!” Hanging up, I clicked the “answer” icon for my daughter. A blank screen appeared: no visual.

  “Mom? Mom, are you there?” Her voice was distant and echo-y, as though she were calling from the bottom of a well.

  “Ash? Are you okay? Ashley?”

  The call cut out abruptly with a ping! An icon appeared with the message “Trying to reestablish the connection.” A little circle of digital ball bearings spun around and around. I tried calling back. “C’mon, dammit!”

  A line was forming by the computers. The librarian glanced at me.

  Finally, the call reconnected.

>   “Ashley?”

  “No. I’m sorry. The service is not good here, so I had to walk up to get a signal on my handy,” said a woman with a heavy German accent. “You are Ashley’s mother, yes? Ashley, she cannot get up. She is very sick.”

  “Sick? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She is very weak. She has a very high fever. She is not making much sense.”

  “You mean she’s hallucinating? Oh God. Is she at health services? Has anyone contacted the administration? Her university health plan covers hospitals. Does she need to go to the hospital?”

  “Oh, I am sorry. There are no hospitals here,” said the voice.

  “What? But the school sent us a list of them in London.”

  “Oh, but we are not in England.”

  “What? Where are you? Who are you? Where’s my daughter?”

  “She is with us here. In Greece. We are an anarchist collective.”

  The German woman tried to explain, though it was noisy on both ends and almost impossible to hear. By the time I managed to wrap my head around the basic details, our connection cut out, and I had only twelve minutes left on the computer, $3.68 cents in my Skype account. I called Arjul again, but this time, oddly, he didn’t pick up. Perhaps he was talking to Joey? I needed a plan B, fast. Logging on to my Gmail, I told myself: Don’t think, Donna. Just type. If you do it quickly, it won’t sting as much.

  Dear Colleen, I began, you said that Privileged Kitchen was a family. Well, if that holds true, I hope you’ll regard me as the Prodigal Daughter. As fast as I could, I composed the most abject, groveling, apologetic missive I could think of. As soon as I hit Send, I scrolled through her emails, found her private cell number in one of them, and copied it down. I figured I’d let the apology stand on its own for a little while, then call her personally to “follow up.” Colleen was a smart woman—she was ten years older than I was, a breast-cancer survivor with grown kids and two ex-husbands—and I half expected/hoped that once she heard a truncated version of my story, she’d connect the dots herself and volunteer assistance without my having to explain further or prod. But if not, I’d do what I had to. I would beg outright. Something you always learn in sales: The worst anyone can say is no.