****NAMES CHANGED TO PROTECT PORTLAND'S STREET KIDS****
It's a really big day for me. It's my first time returning to my beloved college campus. My first home in Oregon; my first family. I don't know how the day will play out but I can't help but get my hopes up. If I could just get back into school all of this would be over. I'd be put in housing. I could get my job back. I could get my life back. I'd be me again.
I straighten my hair before I leave shelter. As soon as I get to #1 I'm rushed to go back to Bernard's office and we leave immediately. I do my makeup in the car and super glue on fake nails stolen from the dollar store. Bernard looks at me like I'm crazy and keeps telling me, "Oh don't poke yourself in the eye. There's bumps," as I apply my eyeliner. He asks how much it costs to get your nails done in a salon on how long they last. When I answer him he's bewildered by this knowledge. I don't know what he'll do if he ever has teenage daughters.
We go through drive through on the way and he gets me a diet coke. I'm not supposed to be drinking anything carbonated and definitely not out of a straw but I figure my tooth is so fucked up anyways why should it matter anymore?
I direct him to the campus without a problem. I can't even get from shelter to the day program without getting lost half the time but I don't even have to think about how to get to school. I could walk there in my sleep. I get the same feeling once we're on the campus that I do when I go to my hometown. It's home to me. I know everything and everyone on that campus. The president of the college knows my name. I know almost too much about the campus.
Staff in the program don't understand why I want to return to a school where I have to pay $700 to get in when it's so far out of my way but everything on the campus screams home to me. It's a big part of my life, a part of my history of how Oregon became my home state. I'm not ready to leave it yet. Being back on campus just reassures this more. All I want to do is walk around and enjoy the places I know and love.
We have to wait thirty minutes for the student accounts people to come talk to us. When we do the guy is less than polite and helpful. When I try to explain the situation he keeps cutting me off until I finally cut him off from cutting me off and snap, "Listen to me." This makes Bernard laugh. The guy refuses to offer any assistance and says I must resubmit a form that I've already submitted and been rejected from. He says my only option to get back in for fall term is to pay the $735 out right.
Obviously if I had $735 I wouldn't be homeless right now. This rains on my parade. I want to be back in school more than anything. It would instantly drop me back into my old life that I miss so much. I could get my job back on the paper. I'd be okay. Okay isn't going to happen today though. I am not going to get to register for my classes, no matter how badly I want to. No matter how badly I deserve to.
This makes me want to cry and have another melt down. I miss school so much. More than even realized before I stepped foot on this campus. We get back in the car and I stare at the window looking at the campus, blinking hard. This isn't fair. It just isn't fair. I was forced to drop out because I had surgery and my teacher wasn't willing to allow me to make up the work. It's not my fault my ovary flipped out on me. I never asked for that to happen.
I push the injustices of it all down. I can't let myself dwell on that sort of thing. Once you start thinking that life isn't fair your whole world starts to fall apart. I can't let myself think that way. I don't want to live thinking the world is out to get me. I bite my lip and push it down.
"M," Bernard says, "We'll get you back in school. Why don't you just switch to PCC? Maybe you'll like their journalism program better."
I almost want to laugh at the idea that their paper might be better. For one thing, we smash PCC in competitions. For another, it takes a lot of time and effort to build the rapport that I have with CCC's community. I know everyone's name, everyone's story and I can get them all to tell me their secrets. Most of all though the newspaper on CCC is my family. It's the first family I ever made when I moved to Portland and I'm sure as hell not cutting ties with it to go to another paper.
Bernard doesn't understand this though and just says, "We'll talk about this when you're in a better space." I just roll my eyes and go back to looking out the window. "M, I'm going to get you back into school. It's going to happen. I promise. We're not going to give this up we just have to work the process."
I don't have time for "working the process"; I need to re-enroll now. I need my life back. I want it so badly. Probably more than I have wanted anything through this entire homelessness. Maybe more than I've ever wanted anything.
Bernard had grabbed a class schedule when we were at the campus. When we get out of the car I dump it in the trash. I feel like it's taunting me. I go to the library to get work accomplished, though that means I just end up watching one of my favorite comedies, Charlie Bartlette.
Savior Man texts me and says I can come over. I leave that second and get on the max. I steal two phone cards for my new pay as you go phone. Then I go to Winco to buy groceries but for the second time in a row I can't find my ebt card when I was in the check out line. I'm pretty humiliated by this but I ditch the groceries. (again).
Savior Man picks me up and I try to use the phone codes but they don't work since they were run through the scanner. I figure that's an easy enough fix though. I can probably get someone to scan it for me by batting my eyes, saying I lost my receipt and pulling down my cleavage. Worst case scenario I can buy a card and use the receipt from that one to get my card activated.
Savior Man and I talk about the frustrations about me not being let back into school. "It's dysfunctional but it's our dysfunctional family," he says. Hearing exactly what I'm feeling in someone else's mouth gives me all the more resolve. I will get in for fall term. I will find a way. I don't know how yet but I will do it.
I snuggle with Spencer whenever he will let me even though he really is a little bastard now. We get him high with cat nip. I think the only way I might be able to get my cat to love me again is to bribe him with drugs. I leave when it's close to eight. I decide to stop by the Fred Meyer at shelter to buy phone minutes. While I'm on my way I decide to do something I might regret later. I call my mother.
See, every now and then my mother will decide she wants to be a parent. I have a haunch that right now might be one of those times. It's only ever happened once in my entire life but that one time she did send me money. Maybe it's only happened once but that doesn't mean it's totally impossible for it to happen twice. I explain the situation with the school. She says she'll see if she can come up with part of the money and maybe my uncle or other family will come up with the rest. All I need is $735 and I will never be homeless again.
I go to Fred Meyer and buy a phone card. I decide it'll just be easier if I have a receipt to use to get the other cards activated. I put the minutes on my phone then go into shelter. Dinner tonight is beans with hot dogs cut up in it. At least it's not lasagna. I get a bowl and sit down with some of the kids. One of them is a boy I've yet to have a conversation with yet. "What's up? Never talked to you before. Tell me your story." I demand.
"That's not a way to ask for a story." he tells me.
"That's M's way two of the other guys say."
He moved here from Chicago. He kind of glosses over the details of how he became homeless but the rest of his family is Orthodox Jewish. He didn't want to go the religious route though, "Jewish kids don't really have a childhood. They spend so much time having to learn Hebrew and then they still have to learn Spanish and English in school." I think he has a valid point.
He tells me TJ Max is having a job fair tomorrow and are looking to hire people from the day program. I decide that I will be checking them out tomorrow. They are looking to hire one hundred people to get a new store started. I go to bed after updating my resume thinking about how I can throw myself together for a job interview overnight.
--mm
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