Bipolarland, Texas part 3

 

1

How did I get in here? Let me think. I'm walking down the street. I'm happy. I’d just got my welfare check. It was time for a spending spree. Then I would hit the food bank, then go to the library and work more on my novel I was writing in Google Docs, then I wanted to draw the remodeling plan for my kitchen, looking on the net for unique things to decorate my apartment with. When the library closed, I was going to call Jakub and probably, hopefully, have a nice five-hour chat, then I would use my grandma’s credit card that I just stole (please God don’t let me get caught; make her just cancel it and them not do an investigation as to who used it!) to order and pay for all the stuff I would buy for my apartment. It will be sent to a post office box I got with someone else’s ID card that I found on the pavement in the middle of an intersection. (The girl looked like me, so it’d have been a waste not to use it.) Oh, and my dress too; I need to get that sparkly blue satin one with a strap over just one shoulder, the one that ends about an inch above my knees. Modest enough for the mock UN meeting my brother invited me to with his political discussion group, but not long and ancient-looking where you have to worry whether it covers your ankles or not or if it would drag in the dirt or get stepped on.

But for now, just enjoy the scenery. No stress, no mess. Enjoy the interesting people. The homeless man sleeping in the empty parking space. The recently-homeless runaway teenage girl dressed up in a complicated punk costume, begging for change as she holds out her empty plastic margarine container, flinching when a stern-faced woman in her sixties wearing a business suit, walking along with her chest puffed out, tells her to go home and apologize to her parents, and take her punishment like she should.

What an insensitive thing to say! What a horrible, awful thing to say to a girl who could have come from a home where she was abused. But I don’t get upset. I never even start to feel upset. I think, How can I help her? Always staying positive.

I could ask her to dinner with me. Just a girls’ night out, where we can chat. Maybe later on we can go shopping together too. I wonder if she has stuff hidden somewhere. I wonder how many outfits she has, if she even has enough to make a load of laundry. I wonder if all her outfits are as cool and interesting as the one she’s wearing right now. Her hair is fluorescent yellow and fluorescent green and fluorescent pink, her shirt black with a white biohazard symbol, her belt made of split rings, her skirt a black and white zebra skin pattern, and over a pair of fluorescent orange leggings that go right down to a pair of black hiking boots that have “loser” and “antisocial” and “nutjob” and “shithead” and “bum” and “freeloader” and “below average IQ” written on them in white fabric paint. Her neon green sweatshirt is tied around her waist, but I can still see the split-ring belt, which, now that I can see better, I can see that it has, dangling from it, a few soda can pull tabs, plastic rings that are part of the seal you break when you turn the lid on a new jug of milk, nails, a coil of gray metal wire, a few padlocks and their keys, and a combination lock that she probably used in school before she ran away.

It’s the same lock I used in high school, shaped like a ball, advertised in teen magazines, only hers is bright blue and mine is bright purple.

Good… an excuse to make conversation and meet her.

“Hey, I had that lock in school, only mine was purple!”

There; it’s out of my mouth. No time to contemplate whether that sounded wierd or not. You did your best.

The girl grunts. Continues to look up and down the street for someone to run to with her empty margarine container.

I say, “You don’t have to do that.”

“Look, I’m not selling my ass. If you’re recruiting me for the brothel, just get out of here.”

So she has a sense of humor, even if it's boring.

“No; I’m not from the brothel; I just want to take you for something to—“

She turns, stops rattling her bowl of coins at people, finally looks me straight in the face. She says, “What do you want?”

“I want to help you, because you’re homeless and probably hungry.” I know better than to try to smile or offer a fake one. I just look at her with my charming genuine innocence, with my expression that says I’m happy and would be even happier if I could help this girl.

She looks embarrassed now. She probably prefers to just stand here collecting pennies and nickels and dimes and the odd quarter from people who will never see her again, people she doesn’t have to worry about being embarrassed around. But I’m one of those people that wants to be her friend, and she doesn’t want a friend who’s richer than her, superior to her. She wants friends who are homeless like her, someone she can feel comfortable talking to about how crappy life is.

“You can tell me anything at all,” I say, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. I can’t believe I’m not just turning around and running home. I can’t believe that I believe I can do this. But I can’t believe I can do this.

She seems to be wondering what to do. She’s squirming inside and trying to hide it by standing stiller than one would normally stand. She doesn’t want to show she’s nervous, because being nervous is impolite. It’s like you’re showing you’re scared of someone who wants to help you. I recognize my social anxiety traits in her. And I’m flattered that she’s actually feeling intimidated by me. And I’m relieved that she’s got social anxiety, because someone who doesn’t and feels and knows they’re the one in control scares me shitless. But I feel bad that she has to feel this way to protect her feelings, locking them away in a lockbox. It’s not exactly a comfortable or shame-free way to live.

She needs some firm action, some solid proof that I can be her friend and that she can talk to me like she talks to her street friends. So I grab her by the arm and pull, nodding in the direction of the nicest, most expensive-looking restaurant I can see on this street, hoping to God that she doesn’t knife me or something but then thinking if I died now at least I would die doing a good deed. “I want to hear about your life on the street,” I say. “Maybe I’ll write an article about it.”

And she comes with me.

She actually comes with me.

The restaurant is awash in light, heat, movement, hope, life. The utensils are gold, or at least gold-plated. The china dishes are so white and shiny they seem to give off light. There’s a warm brightness emanating from the orangey-golden-brown paneling on the walls. The carpet is thick and soft and clean. Aside from the overhead lights and the lamps positioned every few feet on the walls, a light fixture hangs over each table. This is good. I like lights. I love light.

“I’m Sarah,” she says with a shy tone and a shy smile. I thought I would have to introduce myself first. So maybe it won’t take so long to break the ice after all.

“I’m Anne-Marie. Kornek. Anne-Marie Kornek. And you can tell me anything.”