Every Waking Moment (8 page)

Streams from Desert Gardens

scene 15

Wide shot of Chaplain Calhoun in the empty chapel, hands folded. A cappella voices singing a hymn underneath.

Wide shot of Calhoun with residents, sitting in dining hall.

Handheld shots following Calhoun down the hallway, stepping into a room. Voice-over continues.

Being content is not a lack of ambition. It’s being able to rest and relax and know your worth doesn’t come from what others think of you or even what
you
think of you.

Tight shot of Calhoun.

The last weekend of his life, the family got together and took him to his favorite place, a cottage in the mountains. They all got in the hot tub and he sat there next to his wife and children. He could barely talk by then, but he whispered to her, “If I die tomorrow, I’ll die a happy man.”

And he did. The very next day he slipped away.

That’s what we’re longing for, no matter how old. That moment when we look around and can truly say, “I’m okay with this. No matter what happens, I’m more than okay. I accept it and I embrace it.”

That’s what I try to help the people here do. And the funny thing is, they’ve helped me more than I’ve helped them.

Fade to black.

TREHA RODE HER BICYCLE
in the dark, wishing she knew which hospital Dr. Crenshaw was in. She hadn’t asked and was sure they wouldn’t let her see him if she found him. They only let family members visit people in the hospital. That’s what she had heard. She imagined what it would be like, him lying there with tubes and machines hooked to him, and her gently touching him and waking him. Maybe tomorrow she would ask Mrs. Howard.

She wound her way home and pushed her bike up the stairs, into her one-bedroom apartment, and sat, listening to the bugs skitter among dirty dishes. The air-conditioning had stopped working the week before and simply blew tepid air. The only relief at night was to open the front door, which was not a good idea on this street.

She opened the freezer and ran her hand over the ice caking the walls. Like the surface of the moon. There was nothing there but an empty ice cube tray, so she left the door open. Some people ran their oven in the winter to warm themselves, or so she had read, so why couldn’t she cool her kitchen like this?

She stuck her head inside, breathing in the frigid air and letting it out to see her breath like in the movies where people walked in the moonlight. Maybe this was what it felt like in a morgue. When the blood stopped, did the skin get this cold?

There wasn’t much in the refrigerator. Sliced cheese. A few eggs and wilted kale and flaccid carrots. She wasn’t hungry anyway.

The events of the day roiled like thunderheads and her fingers typed on ice and her eyes moved. She could feel it building, something inside.

If she had checked on Dr. Crenshaw earlier instead of just standing around, she might have saved him.

She turned to her unmade bed in the next room, her cover gnarled like a snake. Behind it was the closet with empty hangers, skeletal in appearance, dangling over the full hamper. She needed to change scrubs but none were clean.

She glanced at the corner, the books on the shelf she had assembled herself. There were some from the library, a few she couldn’t return because they meant so much, and some she had bought at Goodwill or the thrift store. Books were friends and pages were scenes of lives she would never experience except through paragraphs. Letters and white space that deciphered life. Riddles and romance and mysteries of the heart. She picked one and put it under her arm, then grabbed the hamper. At least the Laundromat was air-conditioned.

Treha jammed her clothes into a mesh bag and put the book inside, then pulled the drawstring tight and slung it over her shoulder. She closed the freezer and rummaged in a kitchen drawer for spare change, coming up with enough quarters for the washer and dryer. She hoped.

The laundry was awkward, so she left her bike. She locked the door and carried the sack to the decaying stairs. Concrete that was new in the 1980s was now cracked and brittle.

Halfway down the steps, she heard the familiar click and pop of gum in a child’s mouth and caught the aroma of lemon
as strong as furniture polish. Lightning Lemonade. Bubblicious mixed with the heat of the evening, and she stopped, wondering if she might avoid him.

“Is that you, Miss Treha?” came the voice. High-pitched but tinged with oncoming hormones.

Treha descended and peered between the stairs, yellow light bleeding through and marsupial eyes watching her. She took a deep breath.

“Going to the Laundromat?” the boy said.

“How did you guess?”

The boy laughed and bounced into the light, hands and arms hanging on everything he could touch, leaning and twisting in the night.

“You’re funny,” the boy said. “I knowed you was going to the Laundromat as soon as I heard you come out. Sure came home late tonight.”

He pulled a high-intensity flashlight from a pocket and nearly blinded her when he clicked it on.

“Turn that off. Where did you get that?”

He nodded across the street. “Liquor store.” It came out “licka stow.”

“And where did you get the money, Gavroche?”

He pointed it at the ground and turned it off, his face fully in the yellow streetlight. Ten years old. Maybe eleven. Round head, the size of a basketball. Hershey-colored skin. Short hair, down to the very nub of the scalp, and teeth so white they flashed like a beacon. He wasn’t from Arizona; she knew that. He talked with anyone who would pay attention and it was clear he was too trusting.

“My name ain’t Gavroche. Why do you call me that?”

She didn’t answer.

“You shouldn’t come out here without a flashlight, Miss Treha. You never know what’s gonna be crawling around in the desert
 
—that’s what my daddy said. It’s almost October, but critters are still out.”

“This is the city.”

“Just because there’s concrete don’t mean things can’t crawl. I heard snakes like to lay on the slabs at night to get warm. I’ll go with you.”

“Stay here and wait for your mother.”

“She don’t get off till eleven. Plus, my daddy said you should never let a lady go out alone after dark. If he was here, he’d walk you to the Laundromat. I know he would.”

Treha kept walking, hoping the indifference would discourage him.

“My name’s not Gavroche; it’s Du’Relle. You know that, Miss Treha. Why you call me that?” He had the flashlight on and was moving it back and forth in front of them on the sidewalk, jiggling it so much it made her head hurt.

“Because you remind me of him.”

“He somebody you know?”

“No, he’s a character in a book.”

“Oh, I get it. The book in the laundry bag?”

“No, from another book. You wouldn’t know it.”

“Try me. I mighta read it. My mama reads to me at night sometimes late after she gets home. If I can stay awake.”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t know the book.”

“Well, what’s he like? Is he handsome? Does he turn into a superhero?”

“It’s not that kind of story.”

“That’s what I want to be when I grow up. Captain America. But not the Hulk. I mean, I’d be okay with smashing stuff, but
I don’t think I’d want to split my pants every time I had to save the world. I don’t see how he keeps his pants on if he grows that big, do you? Your underwear probably wouldn’t come off because there’s elastic in it, but I guess you can’t show superheroes in their underwear in a comic book or parents will boycott it.”

They were silent for half a block, Du’Relle smacking the gum. Finally he said, “What kind of story is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The one with Gavroche. Is it the kind where there’s animals? Because my teacher read one to us last year about this boy and he saved up his money for a long time and sent it off and there were these two dogs that came on a train he taught to chase rabbits and coons and it was a sad ending
 
—I won’t spoil it, but I just about bawled my eyes out.”

“
Where the Red Fern Grows
.”

“That’s it! You read it? Man, that was the saddest book I ever heard. But it felt kinda good at the same time, you know? Like you was hunting all night with the boy in the story or sleeping in the woods. I guess you have to wade through the sad parts to see what happens, but I swear if I woulda wrote that, I’d have stopped before . . . you know, the blood and guts.”

He walked with his arms out like he was flying a plane through the crosswalk.

“I wonder if those dogs went to heaven. Do you think animals go to heaven?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I know you don’t
know
because who can know something like that for sure? I’m asking you what you think.”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You can guess. Like a baseball game. Who’s going to win the World Series? You have to guess. That’s half the fun, don’t
you think? And then finding out the answer and whether or not you was right.”

“Questions that don’t have an answer aren’t worth asking.”

“Really? So how do you know that?”

She didn’t answer.

“Okay then, what about people? Do people go to heaven when they die?”

She stopped and turned. “Can we talk about something else?”

He stared at her as if trying to read the words that hung in the air. “Sure, I’ll talk about whatever you want. How about that story with the fellow you get me mixed up with? What was his name again?”

“Gavroche.”

“Yeah, Gavroche. Is that a sad story?”

She walked a few more steps before she answered. “I’m not in the mood to talk tonight, Du’Relle.”

“Something bad happen at the old folks’ home? Did somebody die? No wonder you don’t want to talk about heaven.”

“My friend Dr. Crenshaw was taken to the hospital.”

“He’s like your best friend there, isn’t he?”

She nodded.

“That’s too bad. Sometimes old people get sick and hang on and on, like my grandmamma
 
—she was in her eighties and had the ’beaties, and they’d take her to the hospital in an ambulance and then she’d come home and go back. That was when we lived in North Carolina, before we moved here. She had to have her foot cut off and then she up and died.”

The Laundromat was ahead in a strip mall flanked by a secondhand furniture store and a Walgreens. The light from the Laundromat bathed the parking lot, and moths flew in
formation, covering the windows. Every time the door opened, a swarm flew inside.

“You’re going to miss that old man, aren’t you, Miss Treha?”

She stopped. His eyes were as big as saucers. Pleading for something she couldn’t give. Something she didn’t have herself.

“He’s not gone yet.”

“Right. Well, I can talk to you about stuff if you want.”

Only he didn’t say
stuf
f
; he said another word. “Don’t use that kind of language.”

“Sorry, Miss Treha; I didn’t mean to cuss. I just thought maybe I could give you some of the riddles like he did. I remember you told me about him playing games with you and s
 
—” He stopped himself. “And stuff like that.”

They walked across the parking lot.

“I got one. The letters is
S-G-U-R-D
.”

“You can’t just spell it backward; it has to be mixed up. Spelling it backward makes it too easy.”

Treha grabbed her book and turned the bag upside down into the first empty washing machine. She liked to be at the front, where she could see everything, especially this time of night. Three women folded clothes at tables around the room. A disheveled man with a Diamondbacks hat and red shorts read a newspaper next to the Coke machine by the restrooms.

The boy watched her dump the clothes. “Aren’t you going to put any soap in? It won’t get clean unless you use soap. That’s what my mama says.”

“I can’t
 
—the soap hurts.”

“That’s the first time I ever heard of soap hurting a person. What does it do to you?”

“Rashes. Bumps on the skin. And it itches.”

She put the quarters in the slots and water sprayed. Just as
she started to close the lid, she saw a piece of paper sticking out of a pocket and remembered Dr. Crenshaw’s letter. She grabbed the wet envelope and put it on the table to dry, then found a plastic chair and sat with her book.

“What’s that?”

“A letter I forgot to mail.”

Du’Relle ambled back to the vending machines and explored the circumference of the room before returning and pulling himself up on the table. He swung his legs, black matchsticks. He wore no socks, just dirty tennis shoes with the emblem of some animal whose ears and face had worn off long ago. There was a hole at the end of the right shoe, where his big toe stuck through. The shoelaces were a broken, distant memory.

“People say when you get older, you’re supposed to get closer to God, you know? Because you have less time to live, I guess. I don’t think you get close to God just because you get old. That’s like saying everybody who’s a kid has fun all the time. That ain’t true. They’s plenty of old people meaner than snakes. And they’s teenagers who want to know about God. Those folks that come by and take me to church in they little bus
 
—that fellow who drives it ain’t much older than you and he does it. So thinking about God doesn’t have anything to do with your age, that’s what I think.”

“I didn’t know you went to church.”

“Yeah, every Sunday the little bus comes. Mama works Sundays, so I go by myself. And then Wednesday nights they have this thing where you memorize Bible verses and play games and . . . stuff. The people are nice and they usually have cookies . . .”

He stopped midsentence and glanced behind him. Treha followed his gaze out the window and saw three hooded figures.

“Huh-oh, this don’t look good.” Du’Relle jumped down
from the table. “We should get out of here and come back when your clothes are done.”

She patted the plastic chair beside her. “Sit.”

“Miss Treha, you don’t understand. These guys are
 
—”

She focused on him like a laser and clenched her teeth. “Sit.”

The boys entered the Laundromat and something else came with them. A presence? A feeling? Treha stared at her book, cross-legged in the chair, and Du’Relle stared at the floor.

The three were loud, laughing and snickering. The leader was the shortest of the three, squat and built like a bowling ball with his pants sagging. Her peripheral vision caught his glance and then the man looked at the other women. Then came cursing and more laughter as they walked toward the restroom. The man with the newspaper held it higher, blocking his view.

The three entered the restroom, but one exited again, skinny, with cornrows in his hair and his hands under his armpits. Waiting his turn like a hanging bag of bones, with the shifting eyes and feet that showed a child with a full bladder. Scared and trying to act tough and hardened when he simply had to go to the bathroom.

Bowling Ball exited along with the other, who kept his hoodie pulled tight. Cornrows quickly disappeared into the bathroom.

Bowling Ball walked to the front and stopped near Treha. “Hey, little lady. I’ve seen you before. You live around here?”

Treha didn’t speak, didn’t look up.

“That can’t be your kid; he doesn’t look a thing like you. You babysitting?”