A New Day

by Haley Robertson

To this day, I don’t know how I came to live the way that I do. Each day as I observe the hustle and bustle of the city streets of lower Manhattan, I am oblivious to almost everything around me. The constant honking of traffic and snippets of conversation in the distance have somehow faded from my senses and my mind has learned to take in only the most unusual of activity. This is mostly due to the fact that I have been hearing the same continuous conversations for the last twelve years of my life. They are all I know. The same businessmen talking on their cell phones, the same mothers dragging their small children behind them, the same gossiping women drinking expensive coffee’s, the same overworked men chain-smoking cigarettes to avoid their boring nine-to-five desk job, and so on. I have learned to deal with the harsh smell of gasoline, urine, and cigarettes that lingers upon the streets like a hovering cloud that will never disperse. I do not speak to strangers, I do not make eye contact, I do not even acknowledge their existence. Because to me, we live in different worlds.

I tend to spend my days in the park, where the ground is covered in vibrant, green grass and the leaves on the trees rustle with the wind. It is there that I am able to escape the madness of the city. Everything is more peaceful in the park; there are no cars, people are strolling with their dogs on long leashes, couples walk hand in hand down the never-ending cement paths, and there are copious birds. I love birds. I sometimes imagine myself as a bird, spreading my wings and flying freely above the world, singing my words, and making my nest high above the ground in the treetop of my choice.

The saddest part of the day is when the sun goes down. The people go home to their warm apartments, the stores lock up, the streetlights suddenly flicker on, and the birds disappeared. Each night I have to go through this disappointment. I stay in the park until my legs begin to shake from the cold, delaying every minute. But I have to go. I swallow my frustration at the moon for coming so soon, gather my small, withered box of nickels and dimes, and make my way north.

The streetlights are shining bright and the endless number of yellow taxicabs and black town cars are still amuck in the streets when I exit out the large, brass gates of Central Park. I have a mere six blocks to walk, but it goes by fast as the temperature quickly drops. The sidewalks have become dark and empty, making it easier for me to get to my destination, not having to go against the oncoming foot traffic.

I finally reach the corner of 56^th and Harrison, and turn down into the small side street that I call home. I make my way down, carefully keeping in the shadows the whole time. I get to the large dumpster in the middle of the block and crouch to my knees. I sit perfectly still, impulsively holding my breath while I gaze hard in each direction of the street, checking for any movement, or life. When I’m certain the coast is clear, I push the dumpster slightly to the left exposing a small latched panel in the ground. The wood panel lifts easily and I lower myself in, then replace the dumpster and close the latch above my head.

The space is small, but it is better than sleeping on the street. Inside, there lies all of my possessions. On the floor are a few old blankets I found in the park, withered with age. There is also a small tin box, containing matches, a small Swiss-army knife, and a keychain I found that says “I Love New York” in big, gold lettering and the statue of liberty on the back. I took my small, brown moneybox out of the pocket of my coat and place it next to the tin. From the other pocket, I remove an apple and a slice of bread I stole off a vacant plate in an outdoor restaurant. I curl up in my blankets, and try desperately to restore the heat to my body.

I had found the abandoned cellar three years earlier, while wandering the streets looking for entertainment. At the time, I had been sleeping in a large cardboard box three blocks south of Harrison Street. The cellar was an amazing discovery. Despite the darkness and the putrid dumpster smell I was forced to endure, it kept me dry and off the street.

I was holding someone’s hand; it was my grandfather’s. He was the one who took care of me, the only “parent” I’d had. In the dream we walked down an ashy road of dried mud. The earth underfoot had wide cracks, was parched, and I stared hard at my feet. If I tried to look up, the sun would catch me and immediately blind me from seeing where I was. My grandfather was impatient, dragging me, saying something in a language I don’t remember how to speak. I knew what he meant, though, and he was scolding me for lagging behind and being so heavy in his hand. He complained of his “large baggage” that he’d been burdened with: me, in his one hand, and in his other, the awkward, fake-leather duffle with a handle on top that looked like it was about to break. I looked up again and, for a moment, the sun took a pause behind a silvery cloud I was able to see in front of myself. We were heading to the port of a river where, a wide barge-like boat, waited for us. Seeming to be as impatient as my grandfather, it spoke through its ventilation, steaming. Next, we boarded the little steamship and headed up the river. I don’t remember much more of the dream except that I began to feel very scared. I lost my grandfather’s hand and began to move around the ship, calling for him by a name I can’t remember. The boat, for being a smaller river-vessel, had many doors through which I wandered, and opening one after the other, I became lost deeper and deeper in the belly of the ship.

This was when I would wake in the night, lost somewhere mid-plot of a dream that made little sense to me. Disoriented, I’d fumble in the darkness of my little den, wishing I’d remembered to take a box of matches from a corner store or restaurant, so that I could bring just a little light into the cold cellar. Instead, the floor teased me, alerting my barely-warmed body that, if I did not fall immediately back to sleep, if I could not coerce myself, that I’d loose all the warmth I chanced to keep.

I managed, on this night, to fall back to sleep quickly, and when I woke I crawled out of the cellar space and began my day. People might think that, being on the street, one would not have a routine. But I do, and it starts with heading toward the park with my blankets rolled under my arm, stopping by a small coffeehouse near the business district in route. There is a woman there who usually buys me a muffin or sometimes eggs and toast, and always a hot chocolate. She is the only “friend” in my life, for I otherwise keep to myself. I see her only during the week, she is a reminder to me when it is the weekday and when it is the weekend, because she is at home on Saturday and Sunday and only is at the café on her way to work. I am not sure what she does, I never have asked, but she is young and always well dressed, in work-suits and fancy shoes. Sometimes she hands me dollar bills or even a five-dollar bill. She never asks me why a young kid such as myself is alone on the street like every other adult-person always does, and I appreciate this. I can get really tired of that question. She is always kind enough to leave me be, and to not cause any trouble by contacting the people whom look for kids who live on the street, who take kids to the places where I definitely don’t want go.

I did spend some time in one of those places. It just didn’t work out for me. One day I made my way out to a road, and then took another road and before I knew it, I was quite some ways away from the small town where I’d been “placed” with a family. What happened was that my grandfather had taken us from our first home, which was in a place called Otavalo. We didn’t have any family in New York, but before we left Otavalo we met with a man who said that it was either New York or Miami where we could go without much trouble. My grandfather said that New York was better. eHe I ended up in New York by myself, though, because my grandfather did not make the boat ride. All of this happened when I was just five, and that was about nine years ago now and I don’t remember all of the details. I know that his heart hurt, so he said, and he laid down in the sleeping area of the boat we were on for a long time. One morning he did not rouse; it was the morning we landed in the place that we were to get off the boat. This was a place that my grandfather said no one would bother us for the right papers. I knew that the boat was only making one stop and so I had to get off alone.

My grandfather, though he did not show me much affection. But I know, he was dedicated, at least, to being my guardian. I remember, though I was probably too confused to understand, I was scared to get off the boat alone, but I did. I wandered for a day and a night, sleeping on a bench in front of an ice-cream store in a place called Jersey City. I remember hoping that when I woke up I could have ice cream for breakfast. When I woke up, though, a man had me by the shoulder, firmly enough so that I could not break from his hold. He made me go to the town where I stayed for a few years with a group of kids and then with a family. That was right around the time I decided to go on my own. I had seen enough of how adults lived in the world and I figured that if they could be so messed up and get by that I surely could. I caught a few rides and even a train and that’s how I found my Central Park. Maybe it’s a stretch to call it mine, but it is just as much my home as any place has ever been and mostly I can’t complain. I do find myself on the outside, mainly, feeling isolated from the business of the people who have places to go and people to meet, but it is safer for me to live alone and to go about my day as the person in charge than it is to put my life in any other hands, I’ve learned that. Plus, there are some really fine moments, like this one now, where the nice woman is coming out the door, heading to me with a muffin.

She smiles at me and then is disrupted and makes a strange face; she is uncomfortable because something in her shoe is irritating her. I see this as she reaches down and goes to adjust the strap of her fancy sandal. I go to tell her to watch out but I don’t know how to open my mouth, it is too hard for me to call out or talk loudly, usually it takes me a long time to speak. So I am late in trying and, by now, the door strikes her. The door strikes her because the fat man has not looked down when he opens the door to see that my breakfast-woman has bent over to fix her shoe. Somehow, in just a seemingly light strike of the door she’s toppled over to her side, and the hot chocolate she gets me every day, and the muffin, too, spills from her hand.

Maybe it’s rude that the first thought I have is “there goes my breakfast” but my second thought, which is nearly noble, justifies the first. I immediately go to her, which is very unusual for me, because I keep to myself and mostly just share with the trees in the park or with the sunshine that hits my brow when I sit by the river. However, I realize that I feel an attachment to my breakfast provider and I go to her side to make sure that she is breathing. The man who has struck her down takes an awkward pause and with a wobbly, high-pitched voice speaks to me.

“Did I just hit this poor young woman?” He asks, as though he clearly does not know; he is that oblivious.

It takes me almost thirty whole seconds, at least, to clear my throat and to get a strait answer out. My voice sounds so strange to me, a mixture of the place where I was born and the sounds I remember from that distant part of the world scrambled with the sounds of other places, night winds, subways noise, words I’ve picked up in places that have kept me hostage.

“Yes. You didn’t see her when you opened the door,” I managed to say.
My breakfast-woman now opens her eyes and she begins to stammer a bit. Finally, she utters a whole sentence.

“I knocked your chocolate over, will you get yourself another one?”
I feel my heart do something that seems like a hiccup. This woman, who has just been knocked unconscious, is truly selfless enough to think immediately of my silly hot chocolate upon regaining her awareness. I respond by pulling her up so that she is not sprawled on the sidewalk, but is now leaning up against the side of the building.

“Oh my. I am sort of a disaster today,” she says. “I should make a phone call and take the morning off of work.” She takes a few deep breaths, which reminds me of the way that I breathe to stay warm at night, and she takes a little cell-phone from her purse. I always find myself staring at those phones; they come in all sorts of colors and sizes, and are almost attractive, like pets or babies. I think right then how people look like their phones a bit, the way that people look like their dogs or children. Her phone is pink and silver, slender and rounded at the edges. It looks to me like a watermelon. She dials a number and speaks quickly to someone named Fred and then hangs up. She smiles, the sort of smile that looks as though nothing wrong has ever happened to her in her whole life. Her lips are the color of the leaves in the park right around mid-October, which was only a few months ago but seems forever gone, the way that seasons can seem so far-passed when recounted backwards, and the fall, especially by mid-winter, seems so far off in the distance. I think that the past seems further away to me than it might to most. Perhaps the cold of my cellar makes a callous in my brain over the place where one is easily able to recount the details of their previous days. My previous days are like the cracked roads I dream of, like old photographs in drawers that are too haunted-looking to put in an album. Especially for someone like me, I don’t even have a shelf, a place to put an album of photographs.

The woman, my breakfast-getter has quickly recovered.
“You know what?” She asks. “I have been running around doing everything at lightning speed and this is what happens. I didn’t even have time to put my shoe on accurately this morning, and before I know it, I get hit in the you-know-where.”
She is kind of funny, I realize. She has always been in a rush and so has never really spoken to me before now. The tone of her voice makes her sound much older than she is. It seems that many people in this city speak in a way that makes them sound old. I think it’s the accent of New York City, the voice goes up and down and often times is accompanied by hands that seem to be saying things on their own, a sort of “I give up” mixed with a “this is ridiculous”. It makes for something that seems humorous; it makes for a small sparkle in some peoples’ eyes. This woman does have a sparkle, I see. I hadn’t ever really looked at her before now; her lips are the color of berries. They are more than the color of leaves, they are the color of the raspberries I found a long time ago, I can’t remember where, but I can feel the scratchiness their small thorns left in my hands.

“Do you want to go sit down and have a normal breakfast like normal people?” She invites me.
Its been so long since I’ve been invited anywhere, I realize, I forget how to say “no” and so before I can remember how to say it, she gets up. She brushes off her bell-shape winter jacket, refastens a gold button near the collar and takes my arm. I usually don’t let anyone take my arm, not after the officer took me by the arm to that terrible place, but today things seem mixed up. They seem out of sync and so I don’t have a chance to recoil, and I let her take my arm and it feels nice, actually.

We walk and I am very aware of our pace. I am aware of each of my legs, how one is out of synch with the other, or maybe it is that they move out of synch when they are near hers. I feel pressured, like we are supposed to move together as old friends would, but it is awkward for me to be taken by the arm. Now, I am more silent than ever. To become more silent when one is already absolutely quiet is a difficult task, but I know how to do it. I stop breathing and I don’t even let my ears move, or my eyebrows, my hair stands still. She notices and unlaces her arm from mine. She takes my shoulder and steers me, instead, into a restaurant around the corner. It is a place where you seat yourself and she takes me to a booth, and we sit on opposite sides.

“Please, order anything you want. It is just so nice for me to stop absolutely everything and take an hour to do nothing I’ve planned. Do you know how long it has been since I’ve had a proper breakfast? My doctor says that my lack of a slow morning meal is exactly why I have poor circulation and pain in my chest at night. He says that you have to start your day slow and also, in the night, wind it down. I know he’s right. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that, you know?” She is talking quite a bit, I think.

I enjoy what she is saying but I don’t really know what to say in response. What do I have to say to her? What could she possibly think to share?

I am appreciating that she is not asking me questions. The only time I’ve ever been around adults they ask too many questions. I think it’s because they’ve forgotten everything, and that they are so bored they must be entertained. I think they ask questions because they want their responder to be like a television show. Especially when adults talk to me, because I live on the street. I think that they assume that I have something interesting to share with them, some tragedy that I want to dump on them that makes them sort of feel like they are watching a movie.

The waiter comes and my breakfast-getter orders Eggs Benedict and Tiramisu. I don’t read the menu that well and so I just order the same thing. I’ve never had either, but I am looking forward to eating. I’ve only been to a restaurant five times in total, and this one seems really special. All of the names of the dishes are with little marks over their letters and start with the word “le” and “la”. The woman tells me its French. She says that the “le” and “la” make a word “feminine” or “masculine”. I think that’s really strange that words can be boys or girls.

It’s funny because I haven’t even said anything and its like this woman can hear what I’m thinking. She laughs at me and says that the words are not “boys” or “girls” but that they have an “etymological” connection to things that are “inherently” of a female or male nature. I have no clue, really, what she is saying, but I sort of understand. I understand when she says that words have “origins”, and came first through the moon or the sun. She says that the moon is considered a “mothering” force and that the sun is typified as a “father”. I like this because I have looked at the moon so much and have really thought of “her” as my “mother”. I’ve never thought about the sun as my “father”, but it was something that might be fun to try on sometime.

“My name is Francis Flora,” she announces all of a sudden. I rummage through my available words. I know I have some. They come up, but they are like water that flows suddenly out of a sink that has been fully in its “on” position but has had no pipes running anything up through its nozzle. I spit out my sentence.
“Is that your whole name?” She likes my question.

“My whole name is bizarre,” she shares. “Are you ready?”
I smile. I feel my lips make a smile. I am hoping her name is funny because I can laugh and I don’t think I laugh that much. I heard a lady giving a talk once in the park to a bunch of pregnant woman on a blanket and she said that laughter was “the most important medicine”, she said that when you are pregnant you really should be laughing all the time.

She tells me her name.

“Francesca-Floretta Renee Peralta-Rubenstein is my whole name believe it or not.” She is laughing through her eyes.

I crack a smile. This is great, I think. This is funny. I go to speak again and it comes more easily.

“Please,” I say. “Please can you repeat that?” I am grinning wide.

“Sure. Francesca-Floretta Renee Peralta-Rubenstein. My family,” she continues “is a very serious and lingual eastern-European and Italian mixture. If you ever think you have it hard, kid, you should just come over to my family’s house during the holidays. My sibling’s names alone are reason enough for endless therapy bills footed by the parental units.”

I am happy to hear Francis-Flora’s story. I am happy she is talking so much. It makes me forget that I don’t know my own whole name, or even much of my first. I like it more that she doesn’t even care to ask. I hope she keeps talking. Each word that comes from her berry-color lips wipe the dust off the non-descript drab images of my past, wash tint over the haunted dreams in my night, make me feel like I have a little light on, and a better blanket to keep warm.

Francis-Flora keeps talking, she tells me about her school days and her brother, her boyfriend that she wishes sometimes she did not have. She tells me about a place called Bar Harbor and then our food comes. It is, by far, the most exotic thing I have ever tasted. I understand now why people are running around going to cafes all day, in and out. I think about how maybe one day I’ll get behind a frying pan; I’ll make something called a “soufflé” with weird accents that have either a moon or sun name “le” or “la”.
By the end of our meal, I am relieved; Francis-Flora has still asked no questions. She pays for the meal and I let her. I mean– I have no money to offer. She takes my arm again and walks me to the place where we started our morning.

“Well, I have to go to the office now, Fred’s been holding down the fort and he’s probably really enjoying the peace and quiet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She turns around. Her life is so full. I think what it would be like to have so many people coming in and out of my day’s hours and I head to the park. “Francis-Flora,” I think aloud “she has such a complex life!”