Finding Alice (14 page)

“They’re not so bad,” says Dweeb as he takes a puff of his cigarette. “They’re just trying to help.”

“I don’t need
that
kind of help.” I pull my hood over my head and begin to walk faster. These two guys are starting to bug me, and Amelia is making me want to scream.

“What kind of help do you need?” he asks as he quickens his pace.

I stop now and glare at him. “Who says I
need
help?”

Now Amelia stamps off, and Tweedle Dumb actually begins to snicker like I’ve said something pretty funny. It’s the first time I’ve seen him do anything besides frown and scowl at me, and this makes me curious.

“What’s
your
problem?” I ask as I peer straight into his face.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and, rolling his eyes, just shrugs as if he couldn’t care less.

“What’s with him anyway?” I demand from Tweedle Dweeb. “He’s so quiet that it’s creeping me out.”

Then Tweedle Dumb cusses, but his voice is kind of high pitched and strange sounding. Kind of like a little girl’s. I try not to laugh.
Now I understand why he doesn’t say much. I decide not to mention it as I start walking toward the river. I keep telling myself that maybe these guys are okay, just mixed up, kind of like me. Naturally, Amelia doesn’t agree. It looks like she’s ditching me at the moment anyway, but maybe that’s okay since I don’t have to listen to her scream.

We go back down to the park again. There’s an interesting mix of people there now. Some look like regular people just out for a Sunday stroll, but many look like us, homeless and sort of lost. I wonder what makes one person fall into one group and another fall into a completely different one. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I notice that Tweedle Dweeb has his arm around Tweedle Dumb, confirming my earlier suspicion about their relationship.

“You guys a couple?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Tweedle Dweeb drops his cigarette butt and grinds it into the sidewalk with his heel.

I look Tweedle Dumb in the eyes and say, “Hey, don’t worry about me. I had no intention of coming between you two.”

He grins, and I think maybe we’re all okay now. Weird, but okay.

chapter
SEVENTEEN

Tangled Mess

F
or the next several days—how many I may never know—I stay close to Tweedle Dweeb and Tweedle Dumb. They don’t even seem to mind. Well, maybe Dumb does a little, but as usual he keeps his thoughts to himself. I feel moderately safe with these guys and am impressed with their basic understanding of street life in the city. They know how to survive, where to sleep, where to go for handouts, and when. I’ve discovered that
when
is always important. Just the same, it’s not long before Amelia is dogging my heels again, telling me to lose these losers. I wonder who she thinks she is to be talking about losers. I get fed up and even tell her to go away and leave me alone.

After all, Tweedle Dumb even managed to scrounge up a long wool coat for me. That’s more than Amelia’s ever done. My coat is army green and thick and scratchy. It trails nearly to my feet, but I can wrap it around me like a blanket at night, and it helps keep out the damp and cold. These guys also know the driest and warmest places to sleep, like a covered balcony at an apartment complex or dry spots beneath overpasses. They’ve even shown me how to pad my body with crunched-up newspapers for insulation.

For a few days it doesn’t seem too terribly awful being homeless. That’s what I am now, and I’m not ashamed to say it out loud.
Homeless
. Naturally, we stay on the move a lot, but that actually helps us to keep warm. At first I tried to think of it as playing a game, but I have to admit it’s getting old. And worse than that, it’s getting more and more scary. The danger seems to increase daily. It doesn’t help matters that Amelia keeps warning that it’s time to go. “Get away from these guys,” she keeps telling me, “before it’s too late.”

“What do you mean?” I’ve asked.

“They’re going to get you,” she warns. “They’re not really your friends.”

So now I’m not sure that I can trust these two guys anymore. I’m not sure which is more frightening—staying with them and taking the risk that they have really turned against me and will take advantage of me, or going out on my own with only Amelia and the other voices I am beginning to hear again for company. I run these confusing thoughts through my mind constantly, but I am a dog chasing its own tail. I can never pin anything down. Nothing makes complete sense.

I am anxious and nervous most of the time now, and my ability to function is as thin as a butterfly wing. Sleeping is becoming more and more difficult. My mind races in all directions at the same time, and sometimes I cannot breathe. Every nighttime noise—each siren or tire skid or slammed-down garbage can lid—makes my heart leap out of my chest.

And lately I am covered with bugs. I awake in the night trying to swat and push them away from me, but they are crawling under my skin now. Amelia told me that the two Tweedles planted them on
me when I dozed off for a few minutes the other night. I suspect she is right.

She also said they are both sick and tired of me now and they want to get rid of me. I hear them whispering about me when they think I’m asleep. I think they are planning to drown me in the river this very night. So I lie as stiff as a board next to Tweedle Dweeb. My eyes are shut, and my heart is racing. Amelia says I should get up and run, but I think that maybe it’s better to just play possum and slip away when no one is looking. I wonder if I will ever be able to sleep again.

I finally sense that morning is nearly here. I can see the dull gray light through my eyelids. It’s the color of raw squid. It seems the Tweedles have not drowned me yet. I am not sure whether I am relieved or disappointed. Maybe I will make my escape today. But when I finally open my eyes, they are nowhere to be seen.

I am surprised and feel slightly betrayed that they have gone like that, even though I had planned to do the same thing. Still, I keep a careful watch, worried that they are hiding behind the trash cans and ready to pounce on me at any moment. I can’t believe how I trusted them. I’m sure they knew what they were doing right from the beginning. How easily I am duped.

My limbs are stiff with cold and damp when I get up. I peer at the trash cans to make sure no one is hiding back there, then I remove the layers of wadded-up newspapers from beneath my coat. My hands are black from the newsprint and so many other things. Every day I long to go wash them, to be clean, and sometimes I get the chance but not usually. It’s amazing how quickly the working people learn to recognize us so they can shoo us away from their rest
rooms. I swat away the bugs that are crawling up my arms, on my face, and I long for a very hot shower.

Sometimes I’ve been able to sneak into a restaurant during the peak business hours, when people are too busy to notice, and use their rest room. I clean up as best I can in the small sinks, but I know how they hate for me to do that. I’ve even been thrown out on occasion. If only they knew how it feels to be this dirty and unable to get and stay clean, perhaps they would be a bit kinder.

I decide to trudge down to the public rest room at the other end of the park. The water is icy cold there, and they are usually out of soap and paper towels, but it’s better than nothing. But for some reason I am unable to walk on the sidewalk today. I think it’s all those cracks. They look like they could split open if there were to be an earthquake. And I know that could happen. Mount Hood is really a volcano and could go off at any time. So I decide to walk through the grass, which is soggy and wet from last night’s rain. It isn’t long before my thin canvas tennis shoes are soaked clear through to my filthy and threadbare cotton socks. I listen as my shoes make this
squish-squish-squish
sound. I am sure it is loud enough to draw the attention of anyone who happens to be awake right now. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot make my shoes be quiet. It is all very unnerving.

When I reach the public bathrooms, I discover they are locked. I can’t remember them being locked before, and I wonder if someone has done this just to aggravate me. I glance around, looking for the culprit, but only see a guy in a navy jogging suit and striped running shoes. Yet as I examine him more closely, I can tell he’s suspicious. Amelia tells me that he’s really an impostor who’s posing as a
jogger. The man bends over, pretending to stretch out his calves, but I can see him eyeing me. I see the tiny earplug wire that protrudes from his left ear, and I know for certain that he’s wearing some kind of a radio or listening device. So I turn away and walk quickly in the other direction.

Squish, squish, squish
. I cannot escape that noise.

“Your shoes are giving you away,” Amelia says. “They’re making too much noise. You need to get rid of them.”

Finally, in desperation, I remove the disruptive shoes and stuff them down into a trash receptacle. Then I run like a cat in my stocking feet. When I finally turn to look back, I don’t see the spy anywhere. I am out of breath, and my feet are numb with cold. But at least I lost him. For now anyway.

I go over to a big grate that the Tweedles introduced me to a while back. Thankfully, no one else is there yet. It blows out warm air, and I attempt to thaw my feet on it, but then I notice a couple of businesswomen waiting for the mass transit, or what we call the MAX. They are pointing at me and whispering. I think they must be connected to the jogger somehow, so I move away from the warm air. My socks are still soggy.

I walk over by the fancy hotel with the big green awning. It has a red carpet right out on the sidewalk. You can always count on this to be a dry spot. Not good for sleeping because the fancy doormen will shoo you away—even in the middle of the night when no one is coming or going. But sometimes you can stop here just to stay dry for a minute or two during a bad downpour. Occasionally, the wealthy people staying at this hotel have actually handed me a bit of money, usually just loose change or sometimes a dollar on a good day.

I suppose that was my first experience with panhandling or sp’anging, which is street slang for “spare changing,” even though I wasn’t actually trying to do so at the time. But after that little success, Tweedle Dweeb encouraged me to go for it. He said that I looked like just the kind of person that people might feel sorry for, and I guess it was true. As it turned out, I could usually make more than both of them put together when we got serious and decided to spend an afternoon sp’anging in the ritzy shopping district. But I never did like doing it. The money always felt dirty, and I worried about getting in trouble with the police and being taken back to Forest Hills.

Fortunately, it’s early enough today that the doorman is still inside. I rub my feet on the dry red carpet and hope they will get warm before I am sent away. My arms are folded across my front, and my head is down. I find that if I keep my head low and my eyes downward, kind of like an ostrich, the world is much safer. Only you can’t stay that way very long before someone comes along and disrupts your peace.

“Beat it, kid,” says the doorman as he pushes out one of those big brass carts piled high with matching luggage of various shapes and sizes. I stare at the luggage in fascination and wonder how one or two people could possibly travel with all of that stuff. I wonder what could be inside—

“Scram!” he yells as he waves at the taxi across the street, and like a little mouse I scurry away.

I head up toward the shopping area, looking over my shoulders as I go. Amelia warns me that someone is watching me now, possibly even trailing me. But every time I look back, the person is out of sight. Finally, I duck into the doorway of a vacant building and just wait.
My heart pounds, and my stomach growls simultaneously, almost like music, but not a happy song. I peek around the corner to see.

There, walking down the street toward me, is old Betty Grable. She has a wobbly-wheeled grocery cart today and is diligently checking out the trash can on the corner. I watch her closely, just to make sure she’s not really the one chasing me. But she doesn’t even seem to notice me. Still, it could be an act. How can I know for sure?

Finally I step out into full view and just stand there in the middle of the sidewalk. She glances over at me, then frowns when she notices my stocking feet. She shakes her head, walking on past me as if I am some sort of disgusting person, as if she’s embarrassed to be seen anywhere near the likes of me. This makes me mad, but I have the good sense to keep my mouth shut. At least I think I do.

More and more these days I assume I am thinking something only to discover that I am actually saying the words out loud. This is especially true when I am telling the other voices to leave me alone. I used to think the other voices were much worse than Amelia’s, but I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t know the names of the other voices, and I have yet to see them face to face, but I recognize them by the varied tones of their voices. I think there are about three of them, but sometimes it’s confusing when they’re all yelling at once. It can sound like a dozen or more. They say horrible, unrepeatable things, using profanity I’ve heard and some I haven’t. Sometimes I can hear Amelia yelling and screaming right along with them, and I am certain she wants to kill me. That’s when I decide I can’t trust her anymore. But then she’ll surprise me by acting all nice and friendly. She’ll tell me she’s been sent to take care of me and that she has a plan for my life—if only I will obey her. But it’s hard to do, especially when she’s acting
so controlling and bossy. Sometimes I just wish she would leave for good. But despite her numerous threats, she always comes back.

I look back down the street again, certain that someone—even if it isn’t Betty—is following me. I can feel it in my gut, and Amelia swears that I’m not wrong. Then I see him. He’s dressed in a business suit, with a tan raincoat slung over his arm—a clever disguise. I wonder what he’s hiding under that raincoat. He sees me see him, and I’m sure he quickens his pace, and that’s when Amelia says we must run again. She pushes me into the busy street, and we both dash between cars as horns honk in anger. The morning traffic is beginning to flow, and patience is virtually nonexistent. Then we cut through an alley and down a side street and on and on until I’m sure we have lost him. Finally I stop and hold my aching sides.