Before and After

Being in Powell's is like finally finding a pigeon fountain when you need a drink after being on your feet for hours on a hot day. It's like finally finding a private place to drop a duce you've been holding for two days because you don't want to stink out shelter. Powell's is where I feel the same freshness and potential as a brand new notebook. The books stacked to the ceiling make me feel hidden, safe. I'd sleep there if they'd let me. Being surrounded by books makes me feel hopeful.

Writers tend to live tortured lives. Especially the ones with Pulitzer prizes and Oprah stickers. Yet, the ones that sit on the bookshelves are the ones who came out on top. The ones who survived when they shouldn't have. The ones who were where I am before they received those "best selling" stickers. They are my hope.

Once, I let my mother read some of my writing about what it was like growing up. She told me what I wrote was full of lies but followed that statement up with, "I always knew you'd be famous one day." I know it is childish to cling to the hope of being on a bookshelf someday but if I didn't I would not survive.

People often say that when shit hit the fan in their lives that their world was torn into two halves: before and after. This was not the case for me. I was so young there was no before. If I had to cut everything up into before and after there would be so many pieces I would never be able to sort them.

I've only ever seen one glimpse of "before." When I went to Atlanta to visit my maternal family my uncle brought me a box of family photos to sort through. As I glazed over pictures of relatives I never knew I found a photo that made me stop dead in my tracks. It's a photo of a miniature me, maybe four years old. I'm on the beach in a blue and white swimsuit with lace around the middle. I am running away from the tide that is nipping at my heels. My curly hair is flying behind me, picked up by the wind. I have a giant grin on my face. It is before. Before everything fell apart. It is before my mother married that monster. I didn't know then the things I know now about the evils of money and men.

It couldn't have been much later that he entered the scene but in other photos from that day you could never tell. My mother stands in one photo with her jeans rolled up to her mid calf with a pull over sweatshirt on. Her arms are cross against her chest and she's skinny. Healthy. My brother stands in the tide in a Tasmanian Devil shirt with his arms stretched wide as if the wind might pick him up and make him fly. I am in mid step towards my mother but looking back towards my brother. I can't see my mother's expression as her back is to the the camera but it's the three of us together not torn apart yet. My brother and I are both smiling.

My uncle says I was a happy baby. I was always small and carefree. I believed Jesus carried a magic wand that spit out love and happiness and world peace. I wanted to be an Academy award winning actress and veterinarian. I don't know this little girl; the one from before. I would like to but I know I never will. She is long since dead.

Kitten Lady says all the time that she doesn't know how someone like me could be homeless. It's simple really. When you don't have any family to fall back on you have nowhere to go when you become sick. One little mistake ruins your entire world, everything you've worked for.

All it took was for my body to form one little cyst. Only 3 centimeters in diameter. Three centimeters is all it took for everything to come crashing down because there was no home for me to go back to and get help. There was nowhere to turn.

It doesn't matter how lenient employers or teachers are. You can't make up three and a half weeks. You just can't. Especially in the journalism field. So what happens? You end up homeless with no before to go back to.

--mm