You Are Here (3 page)

Chapter 6

Thirty-Five Days Before

W
e spent the night in Mom’s car, which was filled with as many of our things from home as we could stuff in the SUV. The rest, like furniture and knickknacks, as much as we could carry, got thrown into a storage facility paid for with the rest of the cash from Mom’s purse.

Around midnight we started driving from hotel to hotel like zombies but Mom’s credit cards kept getting denied. She tried the American Express, then the shiny Visa, even a bank debit card. They were all declined.

Exhausted, we pulled into a parking lot so bright it might as well have been morning already. It was the kind of lot where the grocery store never closed. “We’ll be okay here,” Mom said, forcing cheeriness into her tone, her fingers dragging through her hair. She secured all of the doors with the automatic door lock but all the car doors were already locked. “I just need some time to think this through,” she said to no one in particular. “I’ll figure this out.”

I looked across the seat to the back, where Jack was seated. He was wedged like a book between pillows and bags of clothes and a box of Grandma’s china, as much of our lives as we could stuff inside the car, which, in comparison to the five-bedroom home that we left behind, was not much.

The glare from the parking lot lights cast a ghostly yellow glow across Jack’s face. He hadn’t said a word in the last hour, which was unusual for him. We locked eyes. I tried to be the Big Sister and flash him a brave smile but the muscles around my mouth were frozen. I was just as confused and numb and frightened as he was. This was almost as bad as watching Dad exhale his final breath.

Getting kicked out of our own home? Having to leave behind all of our stuff? My guitar? Most of my clothes? My cowboy hat collection? All of the animal figurines I’d collected and lined up on top of my bedroom dresser? Photos of Dad? This kind of insanity didn’t happen to us. It happened to other people. What had my family done wrong? Why were we sitting in a parking lot in the middle of the night with no place to go?

Instead of using words, I extended my hand across the seat. Jack reached for it and threaded his fingers through mine. His hand trembled, so I squeezed it. He nodded at me, just once, and then dropped his hand from mine.

I pressed my nose to the window, closed my eyes and breathed out a sigh that fogged the glass. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think about what Dad would have said at a time like this. Even as he lay dying in the hospice from pancreatic cancer during the last few weeks of his life, Dad’s glass was always half-full, except for the last two days, when he went into a coma and I never heard his beautiful voice again. Before the coma, I held his emaciated hand and he told me in a raspy voice, “No matter how bad life gets, Jenn, it’s always worse someplace else. Remember that. Remember to always think of one good thing when you need it most. It’ll help you survive the bad times.” And then he squeezed my hand. It was only a whisper of a squeeze by that time.

How I missed my father. How I missed him now. So I tried, really tried, to think of that one good thing. It was the closest I’d get to having him there with us.

Then my eyes popped open and I stared through the foggy glass at the parking lot.

Good thing we were having a warm winter. That was it. That was my one good thing.

At least we wouldn’t freeze in Mom’s car. I drew the letters D-A-D on the window with my forefinger before exhaling one final breath over the letters to hold them there, if only for a few more seconds.

Yeah, we were warm, mostly. But that was the only good thing. Life outside our foggy windows pretty much sucked.

Chapter 7

Thirty Days Before

“I
wish we had relatives like normal people,” Jack said. We’d spent the past five days at an emergency shelter in downtown Phoenix. Mom said we were lucky to get beds in the shelter, especially at this time of year when the temperatures could dip into the forties in the desert. And there was that word again:
lucky.
Was Mom trying to channel Dad, too? I was grateful for the shelter, yeah, but lucky? I wasn’t feeling the luck. It would be easier if I did.

I was existing on almost no sleep, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t get used to the new smells at the shelter. The blankets on my cot smelled like wet socks. When the windows darkened, the cavernous room would fill up with women and children and their garbage bags stuffed with clothes and whatever else they were allowed to carry. Jack would return to his cot on the floor above us since there were no more beds on the “family floor.” I missed my little brother.

“I’m not a genie, Jack. I can’t make people appear who could offer us a place to stay. Believe me, I wish I could.” Mom squeezed her eyes shut when she realized she’d snapped at Jack. I could count the number of times on one hand that she had done so in his entire life. In the next instant, she spread her arms, inviting Jack to sit beside her on the cot, but Mom’s purse was slung over her shoulder and resting across her chest like an appendage. Since we’d moved into the shelter, it had never left her body. The woman on the cot closest to us was folding pants and shirts into a pile on her bed but by the way her eyelids flickered, I could tell she was totally eavesdropping, which wasn’t hard to do when the cots were spaced less than two feet apart.

Jack reached for Mom’s hand, patting it, comforting her, as though he were forty instead of fourteen. In that split second, I saw Dad in the angle of his expression and my jaw quivered. It was bad enough that Jack had to sleep in another room with the other older boys and men. “I know, Mom,” Jack said. “I’m sorry. I’m just...I’m just not sleeping very well here.” In a smaller voice, he added, “I miss my own room.” Like Mom, he had dark circles beneath his eyes. They looked like purple bruises against his pale face but were just the result of sleep deprivation, which was what all three of us were experiencing. It was a wonder that anything intelligible spilled out of our mouths. To boot, we were wearing the same clothes—and underwear—from three days ago and mine were starting to stick to my skin in ways that I didn’t want to think about. Most of our clothes were still in bags in the back of Mom’s car, currently parked in the dirt lot behind the three-story shelter, with the gas gauge hovering above
E.

Mom exhaled. “It’s just temporary.” She opened her palm. “All of this is just temporary. Just until I can get us back on our feet again.” Then her gaze darted between us and the gray office door at the opposite side of the room. We were waiting to meet with one of the shelter’s family counselors to find out about a transitional facility not far from here.

I didn’t like the sounds of that.
Transitional?
Facility?
It sounded as if we were one step from prison or something. As though we’d stolen a car or robbed a bank instead of lost our house and our pride. The only thing I wanted to hear was that we could transition back home, transition to our own living room and bedrooms and family photos on the wall that Mom hung just about everywhere, where the kitchen always smelled like cinnamon. Not like old socks and strangers.

“What about any of your friends from work, Mom?” I lowered my voice, my eyes lifting to the lady behind Mom. She kept folding and refolding the same pair of jeans. “Do you think we could stay with any of them? You know, just for a few days?”

Mom shook her head and widened her eyes the moment the words left my mouth. “I couldn’t. It would be too...” She paused to inhale. Then she swallowed, as if she wanted to swallow her words. “Too embarrassing.” She covered her mouth with her hand and her eyebrows squeezed together in a tight line. I wished Mom would let out everything that she kept bottled up inside and just freak out, right in the middle of this gigantic room where everything echoed, so that we could get it all out in the open and then really begin to start over again. Until then we were all just pretending, pretending that we were lucky to be in this room, to have these cots. Pretending that everything would be okay and trying to force that glass-is-half-full attitude instead of taking that glass and throwing it against the wall and watching it smash into a million pieces. Because everything was a million miles from okay. Until those men showed up with their badges and drills at our house, I hadn’t realized how bad it had become. Or had I? Had I seen the signs and pretended them away?

But I kind of knew what Mom meant. I supposed I could have called some of my friends from school, like Olivia and Britta and Elise, but they were more like acquaintances than best friends, people with whom I shared English classes and study halls and the occasional cafeteria table. Finn was the only one I would have thought about calling but after seeing him and Nobody, I would rather take my chances, stripped naked, in the middle of the desert. No. I’d rather take my chances with a rattlesnake than Will Finnigan ever again.

“Whitman family?” called out a voice from across the room. A woman with spiky short black hair wearing a pencil jean skirt and brown blazer stood in the opened doorway to an office with a white-and-black nameplate beside it. She smiled at us when we turned and then waved us over. “I can meet with you now.”

Chapter 8

Twenty-Nine Days and Twelve Hours Before

“P
lease, call me Ann,” the lady with the spiky black hair told us in what felt like a “we’re all in this together, so let’s drop the formalities” virtual-group-hug kind of greeting. She had a friendly but no-nonsense air about her. Even though Jack and I never called adults by their first names, Ann didn’t look like an
oldie
—Jack’s terminology, not mine. Mid-twenties, maybe?

After a few awkward moments of hand-shaking and greetings, we sat on three folding chairs in front of a gray metal desk littered with folders and framed photos. Mom sat between Jack and me. Our shoulders rubbed together and the stiffness in Mom’s back never left.

I prayed Ann could give us some answers, some hope, but seriously, I didn’t know which questions we should be asking. Everything seemed so insurmountable. With every passing day, we’d lost pieces of our lives, chiseled and drilled away bit by painful bit. During the past week, it was as if the three of us had gotten sucked into a blender and we couldn’t reach the surface. Worse, we didn’t know how.

Along with a college diploma from the University of Arizona, Ann’s office walls were covered with silver-framed photos of groups of happy people, some building houses with long pieces of yellow wood, everybody carrying a hammer or saw, wearing matching red baseball caps. Other photos had people seated at picnic tables at a park, like big extended families, while others showed people planting trees and flowers. Everyone had a purpose. Everyone was smiling, some were even laughing, and I had to wonder, what was so fun or funny? There was nothing funny about this mostly gray office and the warehouselike room outside. My hands reached for the armrests and gripped them.

“I got a call this morning from Cheryl Sesnon from the Jubilee Women’s Center in Seattle?” Ann said it like a question. “I understand that the two of you attended college together?”

Mom inched to the edge of her chair. “Yes, Cheryl and I were roommates.” She swallowed. “I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t...” Mom’s voice caught. “I don’t have anyone.... There’s nowhere else to go. I called her the day we found ourselves here. I hoped she could give me some direction on what to do. I figured that if anyone would know, Cheryl would.” Mom’s voice began to wobble. “This is our first time... I just don’t know what to do.”

“Totally understandable.” Ann leaned forward and extended her hand, reaching for Mom’s. Watching Mom’s fingers tremble, I wanted to wrap Mom in my arms, not just hold her hand. “And it’s okay, Elaine.” She squeezed Mom’s hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

Okay.
Nothing felt okay. These were just more words. Could we depend on them? I turned to Mom. She looked as though she wanted to believe Ann but couldn’t quite go there yet. Her lower lip quivered and her eyes turned glassy. I swallowed back the growing peach pit in my throat, watching my beautiful mother suffering, struggling, begging for a solution with her eyes. She had been the strong one in our family for so long and now she looked as though she were drowning right before my eyes. I wished that I could take her and Jack out of here. I wished that we could get back in our car and keep driving. Drive someplace far from here. I didn’t care where. Maybe somewhere where we didn’t know anybody and could start all over.

“Well, you’re certainly free to go to Seattle and work with Cheryl but we have a similar facility here in Phoenix. Do you have family in Seattle?”

“No,” Mom said.

Ann leaned back.

“I don’t think my car would make it to Seattle,” Mom said. “It needs new brakes. And the kids.” She paused, looking at Jack and me with watery eyes. “Well, the kids have missed a week of school already because I failed to... Well, because I failed. Because of me.” The day we moved into the shelter, Mom had called the school secretaries for my high school and Jack’s middle school and explained that we had to take an unscheduled vacation and would return next week.

Ann’s forehead lowered. “You did not fail, Elaine. The unexpected happens sometimes, you know?”

Mom swallowed a sob. “I know a little something about the unexpected.”

Ann squeezed Mom’s hand again, this time with both of hers like a sandwich. “I understand it’s been tough for you these last two years. Cheryl mentioned your husband. And your mother.” She paused. “I am so very sorry, Elaine. You’ve endured so much loss.” Ann’s gaze turned to Jack and me but I had to lower my eyes. Another second and I’d be crying, too, and I barely knew this woman. I didn’t like to talk about Dad with strangers.

“I’m not a grief counselor, but if you don’t mind my saying, I believe you’re still grieving.” Ann’s gaze settled on Mom. “Especially you, Elaine.” She paused. “It’s easy to be forgetful when you’re grieving, even forget those things that you believe most people wouldn’t. Like paying a mortgage.”

Mom cracked a smile but it wasn’t a smile at all. I knew her fake smile and she hated pity. “I just can’t believe I lost my children’s home. I saw all the notices from the state and the mortgage company. And then the late notices from the assessor’s office. It all became...” She paused for a breath. “It became too much, especially after it wouldn’t sell. We’d used up all of our savings. And then it became too easy to simply ignore everything, especially when I couldn’t pay all of the other bills, either. What did it matter paying a mortgage if I couldn’t afford all of the other bills that go along with it? It’s foolish thinking and makes no sense, I know.” Mom looked from me to Jack. Tears began to spill onto her cheeks. Her voice caught. “I’m so sorry, kids.”

“It’s not your fault, Mom,” I said quickly, my own voice cracking like hers.

“Yeah,” Jack added.

Mom’s teeth gritted. “It is very much my fault. I am your mother. I am supposed to take care of you, and now because of me we are...” She paused to inhale, her nostrils flaring. She blew out the word. “Homeless.”

The word sucked the oxygen from the room. It was as if the ceiling and the walls drew closer around us, shrinking the room. How I hated that word.

Mom’s head dropped into her hands as Ann pushed forward a ready box of tissues. Jack took one and blew his nose. I was still fighting back my own tears, watching Mom’s shoulders shake with frustration and shame, something I’d never seen before.

I swallowed back my tears, watching Mom sob openly before my eyes. Softly, I laid a hand on her back and felt heat radiating to my fingertips. Mom’s body shook beneath my hand. One of us had to keep it together in this room, in this place with strangers and photos of people we didn’t know. One of us had to stay strong and now it was my turn.

“Well, the good news is that you have employment,” Ann said when there was a pause in Mom’s sobbing. Though not for long.

Mom choked. “I’m a Realtor. Not sure if that qualifies for employment. I haven’t sold a house in almost eight months. Nothing is selling these days, not even my own. Not unless you’re willing to give property away.”

“I see,” Ann said, jotting something down on the paper in front of her. “But clearly you have skills.”

Mom’s head lifted. She sniffed. “Yes. And I do have a college degree. I’m good with people.” She paused. “I used to redecorate homes that my husband and I would buy and flip.” Her head tilted in defeat. “Before.” She paused to inhale and, briefly, her eyes closed. “But there’s not much need for interior decorators these days. I mean, with the economy and all.”

“Not necessarily,” Ann said. “I’m sure that many of your skills are transferable. And we may be able to help with retraining.” Ann leaned back in her chair. “Have you heard of A New Start?”

Mom shook her head and blew her nose.

“Well, it’s an organization in Phoenix and modeled after Cheryl’s Jubilee Women’s Center in Seattle. A New Start helps women experiencing poverty to build stable and fulfilling futures. They have an excellent program and resources, everything you’ll need to avoid being homeless.”

Poverty. Homelessness. Another sob kidnapped Mom’s throat. These were the kinds of words that a person could never get used to. Homelessness happened to people you saw on television, in movies, standing on street corners with cardboard signs, on the evening news. Not to us. For years Mom had been donating all of the clothes and toys that Jack and I had outgrown. Several years before Dad got sick, we’d sponsored families for Christmas and Jack and I had gotten to help Mom buy carloads of presents for kids in shelters like this one and secret-Santa drives at the mall, most of whom we’d never meet. Now, when we least expected it, Jack and I were to become those faceless kids. The thought—the idea of it—twisted inside my stomach.

“Believe it or not, Elaine,” Ann said, “there are other people who are dealing with exactly the same issues that you and your children are dealing with. And plenty of them get their lives back on track. I won’t lie to you and say it’s easy but it is doable.”

“But where?” Mom said. “How? I have never been through this before.... I’ve no idea how to begin. It’s all so...so unthinkable. So overwhelming.”

“The people at A New Start can help you. You’d start by meeting with a care manager to see if you qualify for their assistance. If you do, they’ll help you to create a plan to prepare for your future and help you to attain it, if you’re willing.”

“When? What about my kids? But where would we live? I’ve lost our house....”

“No worries.” Ann’s voice stayed reassuring. “A New Start has transitional housing not far from here.”
Transitional.
There was that word again. It sounded...disturbing. We had a home. I’d give my left arm to be back there, to forget the past week had ever happened. Why couldn’t I get that wish? We were good people. My parents had always been generous and kind. They’d worked hard all their lives, always done everything right. Why were these horrible things happening to us? To my mother? And why now when she was so fragile? “Let’s take it one step at a time, Elaine. That’s how you get through a situation like this. One step at a time.”

Mom nodded and sniffed back a new round of tears. Then she grabbed our hands but whether she was trying to assure us or herself, I didn’t know. Maybe a bit of both. Her chin lifted. “Would we qualify?”

“That’s up to the care manager.” Ann paused and collectively we all leaned forward. “But I think, given what you’ve told me, there’s a pretty decent chance.”

I suddenly found my voice. “What about school?”

“I believe A New Start would be able to work with your schools to arrange a taxicab to deliver you and your brother to school each day.”

“But that would cost a fortune!” Mom said.

“The schools can help with the costs. There’s funding—”

My jaw dropped. “I can’t take a taxicab to school,” I interrupted. “I mean, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. But I just can’t.”
It would be too humiliating.
Being dropped off in the front of the school each day in a taxicab? I couldn’t even imagine what the kids at school would think. The whole thing would be so odd. There’d be people staring at me, a ton of questions that I wouldn’t want to answer. “Couldn’t I take the bus?”

Ann’s eyebrows rose. “All the way to Paradise Valley? It could take you hours to get to school, I’m afraid.”

My mind raced. There had to be another way. “What about starting at another school? Something closer to...here. Or wherever we’ll be.”

Mom scoffed. “But your friends, Jenn. Your teachers. Everything you know is at Valley High. And you’re just one year away from graduating.”

I sank lower in my chair. My forehead began to pound. This was all too much. A nightmare. A never-ending nightmare. There were no good answers. Only more Grand Canyon–sized challenges.

“You don’t have to decide right this moment, Jennifer. There’s still time.” She turned back to Mom. “First things first. I’ll arrange for the care manager from A New Start to meet with you here tomorrow morning and then you can decide on the next steps that make the most sense to you.”

One step at a time. First things first. There were a million firsts firing through my head all at once. But what would any of it look like?

I began to chew on my thumbnail, a bad habit I’d broken in grade school.