I would like to tell you that I got my mom to a nearby hospital, that she was taken care of expeditiously and with loving care. I would like to say that I sat by her side and nursed her back to health, holding her hand and patting her while whispering encouraging words. I would like to think that I was that kind of person. I really would. But that’s not what happened next. What I did was something I am not proud of. I will regret my actions for the rest of my life. But I was seventeen. I was afraid. I was tired of my life. I hated my mom, but I didn’t want her to die on me.
I got the car started and accelerated onto the freeway. I had been on enough freeways and passed enough towns to know that hospitals were clearly marked when you got near them. So, I drove to the first hospital sign, took the exit, followed the blue and white signs and found an emergency room. I went inside and told them that my mom had been rolled at a truck stop, was passed out, and I was afraid she was dying. They told me I had some paperwork to fill out, but first I needed to get her out of the car. They sent an orderly out with a gurney and wheeled her in. As the doors closed in front of me, I stood biting my thumb in the dark parking lot watching them wheel her away.
I needed to catch my breath, so I walked around the parking lot trying to think of what to do next. I didn’t know how to fill out hospital forms. I didn’t even know exactly how old Mom was. I was in a panic. I made myself stop. I stood staring at the sign above the admittance door. It was made up of red light bulbs, and the ones at the end were burned out. Late at night in the dark parking lot, the sign read “EMERGE.” I thought about Mom and how she always read meaning into the most insignificant things in order to make herself feel OK about decisions she made. And then I turned around, walked calmly to the car and drove away.
Yep, that’s what I did. Had to journal about it for several weeks too. I couldn’t really worry too much about her though, because by the end of the night I was three towns away. I went into a convenience store’s restroom and washed my face. I stood with my hands on the sink and took a good look at myself in the mirror. I was not proud of myself, but I was sure I could take care of myself, after all, wasn’t that pretty much all I’d ever done? Along with the guilt, I had a glimmer of hope. It was the ignorant hope of all the young that things would work out just fine. I had a life to live. I had a car. I had all the money that my mom had stolen and hid away in her not so secret places in the car.
I was free. Mom was in good hands, so I let that worry go as only a teenager could.
I knew it would be several days at best before she was awake and aware enough to know that she was alone. Then it would be longer still for her to figure out I had the car. Knowing her, she had no title on it. I didn’t worry too much about her reporting it stolen, though I wouldn’t put it past her. The first action in my new life was to find a place to live. My mother’s method of hooking up with a man and then using his place was not an option for me. I had very little money, so I knew I had to figure something out in a hurry. In the meantime, I slept in the car. That grew old fast, since the mosquitoes were sure to attack if I left the windows down, and the heat was enough to kill me if I left them up. Being miserable will light a fire under you. I started looking for a job within three days.
My first applications were ignored, but a run-down corner market was desperate enough to give me a chance. There they taught me to use a register and sell lottery tickets, but my main job was to keep the items on the shelves stacked neatly and to clean the toilets. I’d never been in a men’s restroom before and was shocked to see my first one. I never cared for dirt, but that bathroom was beyond dirt. It was filth. Management lucked out with me, because I kept that place clean and tidy the whole time I worked there. Tim, my supervisor, loved the fact that I was a neat-nick. He gave me all the clean-up jobs. I volunteered for the late shift, because that meant I was left alone to lock up at the end of my shift. I began locking myself in the women’s restroom at night to sleep. I knew it was clean, because I cleaned it, and it was cool and mosquito free. The store closed when the bars closed, at 2 am, so no one ever came in to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I even purchased one of those floats you blow up and use in a swimming pool to sleep on. I blew it up each night and let the air out each morning. It was actually comfortable. Better than the car where I could never stretch out fully.
My secret seemed safe too. Why would anyone suspect such a thing was going on? There was an air conditioning vent in there, so I was comfortable. I had an alarm on my phone, and when it beeped, I’d get up and take a sort of spit bath before getting out of the store an hour before opening time. I almost got caught one morning when I overslept, so I bought a little wind up travel alarm and had it as well as my cell phone to make sure I got up in time. In exchange for the place to stay, I let Tim, the manager, get away with giving me the dirty jobs. He had a mean sense of humor and made fun of me every chance he got.
“Emma, can you get the lead out and go clean the john?” he’d say, smirking. He had this voice that reminded me of a dog I’d watched in a cartoon as a kid. It was like a snicker. Sometimes he called me Popeye and wanted to know if I wanted a spinach salad for lunch. He couldn’t imagine that anyone would be smart enough to get his joke, so he’d finish with, “Get it? Spinach? Popeye the cartoon?”
I stood it as long as I could. I really did. But one day, I had the mop in my hand, and he made one too many stupid comments to me. I took the mop handle in a firm grip and pushed the dirty strands of the other end into his chest. Before he knew it, I had him backed against a wall.
“Don’t ever mess with me again,” I said through gritted teeth, “or I will ram this mop into you where the sun never shines.” And I finished with, “Get it?”
Of course, he fired me.
I was back to sleeping in the car. My birthday rolled around with the usual lack of enthusiasm. At least I didn’t have anyone around that knew it was a special day and ignored it. Life moved on. My next job was at a laundromat. This one worked for me, because all I had to do was clean up after the slobs that used the machines, and, of course, keep the bathroom clean and stocked. It was a great gig for me. I worked the morning shift. The place was open twenty-four hours, so I couldn’t always sleep in the bathroom. Monday and Tuesday nights are pretty boring at laundromats, though, so I did lock myself in on those nights after the last person left. Sometimes that would be close to 3:00 am, but stretching out was worth it.
After sleeping in the car or the john, depending on the weather and bugs, I would use the sink in the women’s like I’d done at the convenience store to get ready for the day. I had my routine down. Since I had the keys to all the supplies, I used the pink liquid soap for my shampoo, and the hand dryer got my short hair dry in minutes. I saved money on gasoline by leaving my car in the parking lot most of the time. It felt safe enough there, with the lights from inside lighting up the front row of parking spaces. I even made friends with a co-worker, Consuelo. She was a short woman with the best hair ever. It was cut in a wedge and was thick and healthy. I wanted her hair so bad. Every morning, when I used the hand dryer to get my red hair dry enough to get by, I would think of her hair and wish it were mine. I went so far as to ask her who cut hers, but I didn’t want to spend the money on a haircut until I saved enough to get a small apartment.
Consuelo loved people. Everyone that walked into the laundromat got a greeting from her. She would even help some of her favorites fold their clothes, and they would gossip and kid around. She made work seem more like play. I had never thought of it that way. I tried to adopt her attitude, but it still felt like work to me. One night, she left her phone in the office accidentally and found me sleeping in the car. To say she was shocked would be a vast understatement. She demanded that I come home with her that very night. I have to admit her couch was soft and quiet in comparison to my improvised blow up mattress. I loved it that I could roll over and nothing squeaked or leaked air.
The woman was related to half of the people in town, and she had a huge heart. I became her project. In a few days, she found an apartment managed by her uncle’s brother-in-law and talked him into letting me rent without a down payment. She assured him that I was gainfully employed. I remember laughing at that statement. I may have been gainfully employed, but I hadn’t gained any savings in my time there. The place was a little bit run down, but I never saw a roach in it, it had a carport to park under and a swimming pool in the complex, so I thought it was heaven.