I ended up staying with Mrs. Murphy until I turned eighteen, through to graduation and some months after while I saved money. She helped me find out about programs and resources and things, and got me appointments with social workers and nuns. She introduced me to a girl—a young woman, I guess—Alicia, who had also lived with Mrs. Murphy, years ago. Now Alicia has her own apartment that she shares with two roommates, not that far from my old neighborhood. I’m closer to her than I am to anyone.
Nothing against Mrs. Murphy. We got along good. Life at her house was very quiet. She liked routines and peace and predictability—they worked for her like medication, she said. My routines and my birds, she’d say. They sort of worked the same for me. I told her about how I had tried, with little things—the way I arranged my room at home, my cigarettes—to create my own sense of peace, but the way life with my family was, those things hardly made even a small, peaceful dent.
“Oh, I can imagine,” Mrs. Murphy said. “You were swimming upstream, that’s for sure.”
You’re going to have enough shit to shovel your way out of down the line was how Uncle Ivan had put it that night in the hallway.
Though we didn’t talk talk, the way I do with Alicia or even the way I used to with Mr. Bergstrom, I did tell Mrs. Murphy some things. And I learned from watching her and how she made a calm life. But Alicia understands my life without needing any explanation. And she helped me find a tiny studio apartment the way she did, through the same church where Mr. Bergstrom and Mrs. Murphy go. Catholics are really organized.
Right now I’m learning how to do a budget. I’m only supposed to spend a certain percent of my money on groceries, and I have food stamps to help, too, but I like to keep my refrigerator and cupboards as full as I can. I skimp on the heat and electricity, keeping the thermostat at 52 and not turning on any lights until the sun goes all the way down. I can always put on another sweatshirt if I’m cold.
I wanted to live on one of the islands. I asked Alicia if she thought they could find me a place there but she said it’s way too expensive for what I make now, and especially with my job being in the city, it’s not a realistic option. That’s fine. Maybe someday.
I’m taking a few classes at the community college. My heart’s not in it that much, because I still have no idea what I want to do with my future other than picturing myself on an island, near water. Mostly I want to work and keep saving, because one thing I want to do is take a bus to Idaho to see Uncle Ivan and meet my baby cousin.
My job is thirty-two hours a week at a bakery that mostly does doughnuts. I go before dawn and tie on my apron and drink two cups of coffee to shake off sleep. I bake and frost, bake and frost, bake and frost, then work the register a little, too.
Dixie comes in sometimes and I give her my employee discount, with permission from my boss. I know what Dixie likes: the sunflower banana muffin. Or if we’re out of that, a double-chocolate doughnut. She dyed her hair lighter blond recently and cut it short, and last time she came in she had a new tattoo on her wrist, a tiny mermaid, like the one Mom has near her collarbone. I wonder what Mom thinks of it, and of her hair, but I haven’t asked Dixie, and when I talk to Mom we stick to the basics of how I’m doing and haven’t figured out how to say much more.
Talking to Dad was almost easy—telling him, that time on the phone, that he should have been better, and then I felt free of him, like I could see him or not see him again and I’d be all right. With Mom it’s different. Because sometimes she was good at being a mom. Those years when Roxanne was her best friend and they were going to meetings together . . . it really wasn’t that bad. Like the camping trip. Or dancing around the living room together. That’s what makes it harder with her. I don’t expect anything from my dad but I think I still want something from my mom. Alicia says dealing with people that were sometimes good to you in the midst of being bad is like digging through piles of dog shit with your bare hands to find a couple of tiny nuggets of gold and no one wants to do that.
I kept smoking after the Haciendas ran out, which surprised me because I didn’t think I was hooked. Mrs. Murphy didn’t let me smoke at her house, but I’d find a little time between school and the library, and when I moved out I could do what I wanted. I still kept it to one a day. There are two left in my current pack—one for today, one for tomorrow. Then I’m quitting because it’s expensive and unhealthy. I’d taken the Haciendas because they were my dad’s and I wanted something of his. I’d wanted to be closer to some part of myself that’s connected to him.
Now I’ve decided the cigarettes don’t bring me closer to anything but my own nasty breath and a future case of lung cancer.
My manager at the bakery, Raúl, took forever to say my name right, Gem and not Jim. When I first started, I didn’t even realize he’d been talking to me when I heard Jim. After I got more comfortable at work I told him, “It’s Gem. With an ‘e.’” And he said, “I know. That’s what I’m saying. Jim.” A lot of people say it like that, and I used to never correct them. I feel different now, about my name. Honestly I’d thought about changing it after everything happened, like my parents changed theirs when they were around my age, like Kip had changed hers. Something easy to say, something anonymous. Like Mary. Mary Smith. Mrs. Murphy said, “Oh no, no. Don’t do that. You’ve got a good name. It’s unusual and it means something.” I’d never felt like it fit, I told her. I was too plain for it and not what my parents imagined when they gave it to me. “You might change your mind about that someday,” she said.
Raúl is maybe forty-five or something, and big, and there are always sweat stains in the pits of his green bakery polo. My first couple of days at work, I was scared of him because his voice is loud and he doesn’t smile a lot. But the other people on my shift—Jeff, Annie—kept saying stuff like Oh, that’s just how he is, and teasing him, and telling me not to worry. Slowly I realized that, along with Mr. Bergstrom, Raúl is really one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
“Hey, Gem, you were supposed to clock out ten minutes ago,” he says now.
“I know. I’m meeting a friend and there’s not time to go home in between, so I thought I’d stay.”
“Clock out and get a doughnut and let’s go sit down.”
I take a buttermilk bar and put it in a bag, and Raúl and I sit at a corner table, him half-supervising Jeff.
“You’re not going to eat that?” he asks, pointing to my bag.
“Not right now.”
“So, who’s this friend you’re meeting?” Raúl leans heavily on his elbows, rocking the table toward him. “I thought we were your only friends. Right, Jeff?”
Jeff, from behind the counter, shrugs. “I guess she can have other friends.”
I like how they tease me. Once I figured out they weren’t making fun of me, that teasing is how they relate, it helped me feel like I belong.