She walked to the shelf and lifted the bin. “Look at all these fabulous creatures!” she exclaimed. “Oh my goodness! There’s a horse, and a chicken, and a pig. Will anyone help me play with these, or do I have to play all alone?”
Tasaundra and Na’Shell hurried over. “I’m the baby sheep,” Tasaundra said. “Miss Volunteer, do I get to be the baby sheep?”
“You was the baby sheep before,” Na’Shell said.
“But I called it.”
“But you already was the baby sheep.”
“Na’Shell, be the baby chicks,” I said while I pulled the markers from the drawer beneath the sink. “There are two baby chicks.”
“Then I want to be the baby chicks!” Tasaundra yelled.
I passed paper to Mikhail and Orlean and Dewey and to the boy whose name I hadn’t been able to remember upstairs but remembered now: It was Meshaun. The paper came from the shelter’s administrative office, with graphs on the back, or information about welfare studies from 1994. Everything the kids played with was somehow second-rate—the markers were dried out, the coloring books were already colored in, the wooden puzzles were gnawed on and had pieces missing. When the boys made paper airplanes, you could see the graphs or the typed words where the wings folded up.
“And what have we here?” I heard Alaina say. “If this is a panda bear, we’re living on a very unusual farm indeed. And an alligator? My heavens—perhaps the farm has a little bayou in the back.”
I feared that if I looked at her, she’d make some conspiratorial gesture, like winking. I wanted to say, Shut up and play with the kids.
This was when Karen arrived, holding Derek’s hand. “Sorry I’m late.” Seeing Alaina, she added, “I’m Karen.”
Alaina stood and extended her arm and, unlike me, Karen took it. “I’m Alaina, and I’m finding that this is quite the exotic farm here at New Day House.”
“Hey, Derek,” I said. “Want to come make a picture?”
As I lifted him onto my lap, he reached for the black marker and said, “I’ma draw me a sword.” I loved Derek’s husky voice, how surprising it was in a child.
The drawing and farm animals lasted for about ten minutes. Then the kids built a walled town out of blocks, then Orlean knocked it over and Na’Shell began crying, then we played “Mother, May I?” until they all started cheating, and then they chased each other around the playroom and shouted and Mikhail flicked the lights on and off, which he or someone else always did whenever things became unbearably exciting. At eight, after we’d cleaned up, Karen and Alaina headed into the hall with most of the kids. I washed my hands while Na’Shell stood by the sink, watching me. She motioned to her elbow. “Why you do it all the way up here?”
“To be thorough,” I said. “Do you know what thorough means? It means being very careful.” When I’d dried my hands and arms with a paper towel, I used my knuckle to flick off the light switches.
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?” Our last activity of the night had been making paper jewelry, and Na’Shell passed her mother a purple bracelet.
“Good news,” Karen said. “Alaina offered us a ride.” Unless it was raining, Karen and I walked home together. The shelter was a few blocks east of Dupont Circle—interestingly, the building it occupied was probably worth a fortune—and Karen and I both lived about two miles away, in Cleveland Park.
“I’m fine walking,” I said. The thought of being inside Alaina’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,” Alaina said. “I live in Bethesda, so you’re on my way.”
I didn’t know how to refuse a second time.
Alaina’s car was a two-door, and I sat in back. As she 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,” Alaina said. “But we didn’t have children, which was probably a blessing in disguise.”
I had noticed earlier that Alaina 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 cheerfully.
This was a slightly shocking comment. At the volunteer training almost a year earlier, it had appeared that the majority of people there were unmarried women nearing the age when they’d be too old to have children. This fact was so obvious that it seemed unnecessary to discuss it out loud. Plus, it made me nervous, because 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? One of the reasons I liked Karen was that she was the first woman I’d met in my short adulthood who wasn’t married but seemed completely unconcerned about it; she was like proof of something.
We were driving north on Connecticut Avenue, and out the window, it was just starting to get dark. Alaina’s and Karen’s voices were like a discussion between guests on a radio program playing in the background.
“And how about you?” Alaina said.
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.”
Alaina furrowed her brow, as if thinking very hard. “Twenty-four?”
“Twenty-three,” I said.
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 getting school credit for being a volunteer?” Alaina asked.
“No, I’ve graduated.”
“Where do you work?”
Normally, I felt flattered when people asked me questions. With Alaina, I was wary of revealing information. I hesitated, then said, “An environmental organization.”
“What’s it called?”
“It’s on M Street.”
Alaina laughed again. “Does it have a name?”
“The National Conservancy Group.” Before she could ask me another question, I said, “Where do you work?”
“Right now, I’m a free agent. I consult with nonprofits and NGOs on fundraising.”
I wondered if this was a euphemism for being unemployed.
“You get to make your own hours, huh?” Karen said. “I envy you.”
“It’s definitely a perk,” Alaina said.
After Alaina 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 Alaina—that perhaps she was genuinely unbalanced. But if she were violent, I thought, she’d be violent in a crazed rather than a criminal way. She wouldn’t rob me; she’d 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.
<
br /> “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. “You can stop here,” I said. “At the corner, by that market.” It suddenly seemed imperative that Alaina not know where I lived.
“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 yet driven off. Go, I thought. Get out of here. What was she waiting for? The market door opened automatically, and just before it shut behind me, I finally heard her pull away. For a few minutes, I peered at the street, making sure she didn’t pass by again. Then I walked out empty-handed.
* * *
—
I’d majored in political science at the University of Kansas and spent the summer after my junior year interning for the congressman from the district in Wichita where I’d grown up. I hadn’t socialized much with the other interns, but I’d liked D.C. enough that I’d returned after graduating; the brick rowhouses reminded me of a city in a movie, and even though this was the late nineties, when crime rates were a lot higher than they are now, it didn’t feel unsafe.
In fact, my postgraduation life bore little resemblance to a movie. During the week, I was often so tired after work that I’d go to bed by eight-thirty. Then on Saturdays and Sundays, I’d hurry up and down Connecticut Avenue, to the laundromat and the market and CVS; because I didn’t have a car, I’d load groceries into my backpack, and it would be so heavy that it would make my shoulders ache. Sometimes I’d pass couples eating brunch at the outdoor cafés or inside restaurants with doors that opened onto the sidewalk, and I’d feel a confusion bordering on hostility. Flirting with a guy in a dark bar, at night, when you’d both been drinking—I understood the enticement. 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 flaky skin and protruding nose hairs and the drop of syrup on their chin before they wiped it and the boring cheerful complaints you’d make to each other about traffic or current events while the horrible sun hung over you. Wouldn’t you rather be alone, so you could go back to your apartment and use the toilet, 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 pinkie: thumb, one; index finger, 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. I might have worried for myself if I’d reached double or triple digits, but staying under five felt manageable. Anyway, counting was like hiccups; after a few blocks, I’d realize that while I’d been thinking of something else, the impulse had gone away.
* * *
—
The following week, as soon as I entered the shelter, Alaina jumped up from the hall bench holding a grocery bag and, offering each item for my inspection, withdrew a box of markers, a packet of construction paper, two vials of glitter, a tube of glue, and a carton of tiny American flags whose poles were 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 Alaina had been unfair; she hadn’t done anything truly strange or offensive. But 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 that, but if our paths crossed with theirs in the world—if, say, I saw Tasaundra and her mother at the Judiciary Square Metro stop—I was not even supposed to speak to them. I also wasn’t supposed to learn their last names.
“Inside, then,” Alaina said. “We’ll have the first annual super-duper New Day House indoor parade. And for next week I was thinking we could do dress-up. I found some of my 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 thought of my half-empty closet. Unlike Alaina, apparently, I actually wore all my clothes.
I then 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 were the screams of the kids, followed by the squeaks and thuds of their feet as they hurried across the linoleum floor. I wondered if Alaina 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 hitches, 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, Alaina,” Karen said.
Alaina stood. “Okay, everyone,” she said. “Parade time.” She set a cylinder of blue construction paper on top of her head—of course she had made one for herself. “Do I look exactly like Lady Liberty?”
The kids regarded her blankly. But pretty soon, they’d all lined up. As we left the playroom—I was in the middle, holding Derek’s hand—I heard singing. It was Alaina, I realized, and the song was “America the Beautiful.” And she was really belting it out. Had I only imagined her jittery, 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 night. She was sitting at a table filling out a form, and she blinked at us as we walked around the periphery of the room. By then, Alaina was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Mikhail was blowing a kazoo whose origins I was unsure of. From behind her, I looked at Alaina’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 Alaina 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.” Alaina 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 the mustache of pale hairs above her lip, 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 should stay down here?” I said.
“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.” Alaina 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 doors. Inside 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 hunched on a bottom bunk, painting her nails, her infant daughter lying next to her. I wondered if the nail polish fumes were bad for the baby, and as I was wondering this, my eyes met Mikhail’s mother’s. Her mouth was pursed contemptuously, and her eyebrows were raised, as if she’d sensed me judging her.
In the second room on the left, two mothers were sleeping. As I passed that doorway, continuing to follow Alaina, 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 for who’d awakened her. In the last room on the right, Alaina found her audience. 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?”
After a pause, 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.
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