Janice Erlbaum - Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Shelter Happens

Loco Parentis

The Babe

Best Years of Your Life

For Judith

Perhaps someday it will be pleasant to remember these times.

VIRGIL

AUTHORS NOTE

This is a work of narrative nonfiction. Names and identifying details have been changed, and some major characters are composites. Dialogue has been re-created, and certain events are presented out of order. I had to leave out a lot of the good stuff. Sorry.

PART ONE

SHELTER
HAPPENS

INTAKE

November 18, 1984

Where do you think youre going?

Forty-seventh Street and Tenth Avenuethats what the lady on the phone told me. The building has a big sign with a cross on it, she said kindly. Well be looking out for you.

I hung up the pay phone and hoisted my book bag. I was fifteen years old, it was ten-thirty on a windy November night, and I was somewhere in Hells Kitchen. Id been marching uptown since Washington Square Park, not knowing where I was going, my hands swollen and tingly from swinging furiously at my sides, my book bag denting my hip with each step.

Yo, where you goin, miss? I could walk with you?

No, pap. I was walking alone tonight. I was going to a shelter, which was on Forty-seventh and Tenth, and I wasnt stopping for anybodynot the hustlers hawking nickel bags, not the Italian homeboys in their tricked-out IROC catcalling me. Not even a break in stride for the two boys passing me, shoving each other and laughing, then yelling, Hey, miss, you dropped something!

Hey, miss!

You miss me yet, Mom? The way you missed Dave so much you just had to take him back? Its only been a few hours, maybe you think Im walking around the neighborhood, burning off some steam, Ill be coming back any minute. Or maybe I went to one of my friends houseswhat were those girls names again?

Pssssst. Over here, girl.

I was on a bad block, a gauntlet of drunks, hookers, and bums, leading nowhere. Id been walking quickly, but now I started really hoofing it, still trying not to out and out run, red-eyed men hissing at me from every shadow. I was almost at the address the lady gave me, but I didnt see the building with the cross. Dont panic, I thought, panicking, faint tears blurring my sight. Maybe its across the street.

Across the street was a rotting industrial plant. Catty-corner was a diner and a church. But right here was a building covered in scaffolding, and a man approaching me from a driveway, asking, Are you looking for someplace?

No, I said quickly, moving away. Im fine.

You sure? Because this is a shelter here.

I stopped, took in the mans blue windbreaker and badge. His face was impassive, but his hand was outstretched.

You need to come on in here tonight?

I sat in a plastic chair and waited. The place looked like places look, I guessed. Linoleum. Windows that probably didnt open. A lot of taped-up construction paper on the walls, memos on bulletin boards. NO HATS OR DO-RAGS INSIDE THANK YOU. PRAYER GROUP 7:30 CHAPEL. Prayer group, I thoughtOh Christ, not Jesus.

An older woman with short gray hair and a black smock came out of her office and nodded at me. A nun. I didnt know any nuns. I thought nuns were spooky. This one appeared human. She looked like a middle-aged gym teacher in a smock.

Come in, she suggested. I rose and followed her.

The entire inside of the nuns office was papered with MISSING posters, ghostly kids smiling down in smudgy, high-contrast black and white. Shameeka Wells, age 16, missing from Brooklyn since September. Ebony Johnson, age 15, missing from the Bronx since July. Ebonys fax had curled and yellowed, but her eyes burned bright from the center of a black splotch. Her picture looked like it had been drawn by a seismograph. Ebony was not smiling.

The nun sat at her desk, engulfed in this cage of missing kids. She looked concerned, and busy.

How are you tonight? she asked.

I was... How was I? Disoriented. In shock. Just two hours ago, I had been heating up some lentil soup at my moms in Brooklyn, thinking Id eat it and maybe read some Edith Wharton before bed. Now here I was at a runaway shelter, staring at a nuns mustache and wondering where I was going to spend the rest of my adolescence.

Im okay, I said.

She nodded and tried to meet my eyes. Is there a reason you came here tonight?

I didnt want to cry, so I kept my eyes averted. I cant live at home anymore.

She nodded again, like she agreed. Can you tell me about it?

I...

Where to start? I was born, and...

My stepfather... hes crazy. Hes... abusive to my mother. And hes creepy. And they have a baby, and he shakes the baby. I winced, thinking about Dave handling baby Jake, panged with guilt over leaving my brother behind.

The nun bobbed her head seriously, like Yes, youre right, that sounds bad. I was heartened to continue.

So... my mom and him fight all the time, and he gets crazy and violent, and she throws him outlike, ten times in the past two years. And every time, its the same. She calls the cops on him, and then she changes the locks, and we go to court to get an order of protection...

The nuns nod knew what was coming next. It knew before I knew. I still couldnt believe it.

And then she takes him back.

She was taking him back. She swore she wasnt going to do it this time, and here she was, doing it again. I told her, after the last time, Thats it. If you take him back this time, Im leaving. She swore to me, Jan, Im not taking him back.

Until tonight. There I was, heating up some soup, and my mother came into the kitchen, and she said we had to talk. And I knew what that meant, so I turned off the soup, went into my room, and got my bag.

And I left.

So here you are, said the nun, like something was settled.

I shook my head yes. I looked her in the eye. Then my eyes welled up again, and I looked at my lap.

I didnt know what else to say. The nun wasnt questioning me, she wasnt jotting down notes. I didnt have to go on with my story, didnt have to back it up with dates and details the way I did in depositions with my mothers endless divorce lawyers. She wasnt asking me for proof that I wasnt lying, or exaggeratingYes, we know your stepfather threatened to hit you, but did he ever actually strike you? She just believed me.

What about your father? Do you have a relationship with him?

Ugh. Another case history, in twenty words or less: Not really. Hes abusive. He hit me when I was a kid. We dont talk anymore. I cant live with him.

Case closed. Any other family youd like us to contact?

No. No grandparents, no aunts. No godparents, no friends families. No friends. Nobody.

Nod. She closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a breath. I got the crazy idea she was saying a prayer for me.

She opened her eyes and said, Were glad you came to us tonight.

The fifth-floor lounge was crowded. Twenty or thirty girls were sitting or lying on thin foam mattresses on the floor of the large rectangular room, some curled up with their jackets over their heads like they were trying to sleep, which clearly wasnt going to happen with the ruckus under way. Two girls argued loudly over the custody of a Walkman; another hollered at her neighbor to move the fuck over before I wreck you, ho.