Roxy’s Story (3 page)

After lunch, we went for a walk in Central Park. He was going to go on to his apartment
to work on a research paper. I asked him if he wanted company later.

“Later? When later?”

“I don’t care. You tell me,” I said.

“It’s Sunday. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“I never let something like that interfere with my happiness,” I said.

He smiled, now far more relaxed. I could see he was intrigued with me, and for now,
that was enough for me.

“I’m not much of a cook, but I’m good at putting out a ready-to-eat chicken with some
vegetables.”

“I’m always ready to eat,” I said. “And other things.”

“Other things?”

“You’ll figure it out. You seem smart.”

He smiled and gave me his address. “Six-thirty?”

“Fine,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips, then hurried away. When I looked
back, he was still standing there looking after me, glancing at the book I had swiped
for him and then back at me as if he couldn’t believe that what had just happened
was real.

That was one of those nights when my father nearly took off my head, but I endured
the pain and continued seeing Steve on and off during the next two weeks. As it turned
out, he didn’t just have limited romantic experiences. He was a virgin. That ended
fast. I was able to spend that night later at his place because one of the girls at
my school covered for me in exchange for an iPod I had lifted. She really wasn’t much
of a friend, not that any of them were.
Mon père
was on a short business trip, so I was able to pull it off.

I did begin to really like being with Steve, but I still couldn’t see a long relationship
with him. To his credit, he never got too emotional, never said “I love you” or even
something like “I really like you, Roxy.” Maybe he realized how little that mattered
to me. We just had a thing. In fact, I told him he made love like someone brushing
his teeth.

“What’s that mean?” he asked.

“You do it like it’s simply something that has to be done. You’re afraid of cavities.”

He thought a moment, missed the point, and shrugged. By now, he had decided not to
take anything I did or said seriously, anyway. It was as if he went in and out of
a dream when we were together. I really questioned whether he thought about me the
day after or pushed me aside for fear he might miss an important point in political
science class.

However, the night my father threw me out, I went directly to Steve’s apartment. After
I had packed, I stopped to look in on Emmie for a long moment. There was a good chance
I wouldn’t see her again for some time, maybe ever. I wondered how she would react
to that. We weren’t very close. There were just too many years between us, and my
father did his best to keep me from doing too much with her without either my mother
or him around. I could count on my fingers how many times I had taken her somewhere
in the city without one of them. I wasn’t to be trusted.

She didn’t stir. She looked like a little doll some other girl had tucked into her
bed. I thought her teddy bear was looking at me suspiciously. I touched her hair softly
so as not to wake her, whispered good-bye, and then descended the stairs. Mama came
to the door of the living room. She looked out at me standing there with my suitcase
and shook her head. She seemed unable to speak. It was hard for me, too, but I managed.

“Have a good life,” I told her, and walked out.

It was overcast and dreary, but even if it weren’t, the street never looked as dark
or as empty to me, even though there were people walking on both sides and the traffic
was heavy. I did feel a little dazed, but I wasn’t hesitant. I walked with determination
to the corner and hailed a taxi to take me to Steve’s apartment building. When he
opened the door and saw me standing there with a suitcase, he looked about as amazed
as anyone possibly could.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m here.”

“With a suitcase? For how long?”

“As long as you’ll let me stay,” I said.

His amazement changed quickly to a look of worry. “Er . . . I could get into trouble
if you were here more than a night. You are underage, Roxy. You’re not quite eighteen.
You know I know the truth.” He shook his head and put up his hands. “Look, I’m not
ready or able to do something like this,” he said. “What did you do, run away from
home?”

“Sorta,” I said.

He shook his head. “Go home, Roxy. This is a mistake that you’ll regret.”

“I guess it is,” I said. “Too bad,” I told him, and left him standing there in his
doorway looking quite relieved.

I took the elevator down, walked through the small lobby, and stepped back into the
street.

And that’s how it all began.

I had learned about a neighborhood on the Lower West Side where runaways who still
had a little money hung out. I had read about it in a newspaper article written by
someone who was on the Pulitzer Prize short list for doing a series about “America’s
Forgotten Children.” It intrigued me, and maybe, tucked way back in my brain in one
of those secret places we all keep our fears and nightmares, I envisioned myself going
there and checking into one of those roach nests because the cost was so minimal and
no one who operated one cared who you were, how old you were, or if you lived or died
that day. You could make up any name for yourself. The only identification you needed
was a fifty-dollar bill.

It was late April, and despite the threat of rain, I suppose I could have survived
sleeping in some discarded old car or under a bridge somewhere, but at least at this
excuse for a hotel, I could have some sense of safety once I locked the door of the
room.

Just as I had read, when I arrived at one of these places (they always had names beyond
reality, like
Paradise Hotel), the man behind the small, battered dark-wood desk was uninterested
in me and only brightened a bit when I produced a fifty-dollar bill. I had a feeling
he wasn’t as old as he looked, despite his very thin, cheaply dyed black hair and
a face that looked like crinkled cellophane. He had a jaw I thought might have been
squeezed with a pair of pliers while he was growing up. Deep lines rippled across
his forehead. He coughed like someone suffering with emphysema, explained by an ashtray
full of smoked-down thin cigars on the counter. He gave me a key to a room on the
third floor and told me the only rule was no smoking in the room, which he said meant
no smoking anything. Then he sat back again and closed his eyes as if I had interrupted
an enjoyable dream he was having.

For a moment, I imagined I had been talking to Charon, the mythical ferryman of Hades,
the Greek version of hell, who carried the souls of the dead across the rivers Styx
and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead, because
coming to this hotel made me feel I had come to the land of the dead. I smiled to
myself, imagining how proud of me Mr. Wheeler would be for remembering that lesson
in mythology, but the truth was that despite the act I put on, I was very attentive
in his English class.

The elevator was out of order, so I headed for the narrow stairway. The railing was
loose and rattled, and the steps groaned even under my mere one hundred and twelve
pounds. When I turned onto the third
floor, I heard some loud music and laughter coming from the first room on the right.
Fortunately, my room was four doors away, and I heard nothing from behind any of those
doors at the moment. The entire hallway reeked of stale beer and cigarettes. There
were no windows, no opportunity for any odor to escape or be diminished. It was as
if every ugly scent was layered upon every other and now seeped through the walls.

Because the frame of my room’s door was warped, I had to jerk it open after inserting
the key, and for a few seconds, I stood in the doorway debating whether to just turn
and run out or go in. I felt as if I were about to dive into a cesspool.

I swallowed hard and entered, searching for a light switch. The small ceiling light
fixture had a bulb a size or two too small, probably placed there deliberately so
that the room’s new inhabitant couldn’t see just how run-down the floors and walls
were or how many roaches were building their own suburb. I felt my whole body cringe
as if they were already crawling up and over my ankles, joyfully and excitedly making
their way to get under my bra and into my heart. I saw that wallpaper was peeled off
in spots as if someone suffering from agoraphobia had been scratching at it.

Being afraid to go outside in this neighborhood was understandable. The streets looked
as if they last were cleaned around the time of the Civil War. When I had turned onto
the block, I had the feeling that someone literally could die on the sidewalk and
be unnoticed. What a contrast to our immaculate block on the Upper East Side.

The room, despite what the man at the desk forbade, reeked of cigarettes. The rug
was worn down, revealing the wood beneath it in most places. I was afraid to look
under the bed. Maybe the last person who stayed here had died under there. I had no
doubt something had died under it. There was only a four-drawer dark brown dresser
and a wooden folding chair beside it, both badly scratched, the dresser actually with
a hole in one side. Of course, there was no television, radio, clock, heat, or air-conditioning.

The bed frame was plain, and the narrow mattress, in which some ugly, crawly thing
was surely hatching, was covered by sheets that were gray and stained yellow. It looked
as if there were some lipstick stains, too. At least, I hoped it was only lipstick.
I peeled off the stringy blue wool blanket, the bottom of which was torn as if someone
had slashed it with a sharp knife. Instead of the pillow, without a pillowcase, I
decided to use my soft backpack. I knew that if I slept, I would have to sleep in
my clothes. There were two small windows, one so stuck in place it was probably never
closed, which on second thought was a good thing. At least there was some ventilation.
The other window opened and closed. Neither had any curtains or blinds, so there was
no way to keep out the morning light.

For a while, I just sat on the bed thinking. It was only natural for me to have some
second thoughts and regrets, especially in a place like this, but every time I imagined
myself running home to kowtow and plead for forgiveness, I felt sicker. No, I had
to endure this, I told myself. I could just hear my father telling me
that this was a five-star hotel compared with what soldiers had to endure in boot
camp. “Soldier up!” was one of his favorite expressions whenever I complained about
anything. Usually, that was just what I did. I soldiered up.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t until nearly four in the morning that the sounds from the
street below diminished and I was able to get some sleep. Until then, I could hear
people screaming and cursing, car horns sounding, loud laughter, someone breaking
bottles, and, occasionally, someone crying just below my window.

What a contrast this was with my beautiful bedroom at home, with its king-size canopy
bed and thick pink rug. Mama was a bit of a fanatic when it came to cleanliness and
neatness. Papa had been brought up in military housing, so everything in its place
with spit and polish was standard and expected operating procedure. I was confident
that despite Papa’s comparisons with a hard army life and meeting the challenge, neither
Mama nor he would permit a stray dog to sleep in a place like this room. However,
all I could imagine at the moment was Papa hoping that I would end up in just such
a room.

“Let’s see how tough she is now,” he might mutter with a smile of smug satisfaction.

I think I managed to fall asleep for the rest of my first night merely out of spite.
Whenever I began to feel sorry for myself, I forced myself to envision my father’s
red, enraged face and his confidence that I would return and plead for mercy and forgiveness,
writing promises in blood. I was as strong and as stubborn as he was, however, and
I was determined to have him cry “uncle” before I ever did.

During that first night and the days that passed afterward, I harbored the belief,
perhaps more accurately called the hope, that somehow, someway, my mother would come
looking for me, find me, and convince me that my father regretted throwing me out
on the street. I actually looked for her on street corners, in nearby stores and restaurants,
and in the hotel lobby, even though there was no way she could possibly know I was
in this place or in this neighborhood. I tried to imagine her running around in a
panic, asking strangers if they had seen me. I even envisioned her putting pictures
of me on walls and utility poles, with desperate pleas for anyone who had seen me
to call her. Maybe she would hock some of her best jewelry and put up a reward.

Whenever a policeman on the street looked at me, I stared back, expecting him to come
rushing over, demanding to know if I was Roxy Wilcox. Perhaps by now, my picture had
been given to all of the police in the city. But most of the time, the officer I saw
would look right through me or just turn away, uninterested in the sight of just another
runaway teenager, with so many more serious problems to face.