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k after me? How were they going to do that? I wondered. How was anyone? Despite how terrible our lives had become, I wished Mama and I were back on the boardwalk selling her calligraphy and I was selling my lanyards. I wished we were back in the struggle. At least we were together then, and I had someone. Besides, she might have gotten better. Maybe she would have stopped drinking and found a place to work again, and I would have been able to return to school, any school. I used to feel tears come into my eyes when I would see other girls my age in their school uniforms, laughing and talking as they walked to school. The furthest thing from their minds was wondering about where they would sleep and what they would eat. If only I could somehow turn back time and change everything.
I closed my eyes and dreamed about it. Mama was pretty again, and I had new clothes and friends. We had at least as good an apartment as we had had with Daddy. Because Mama worked, I would start dinner for us before she came home. She would be so proud of me, and we’d laugh and tell each other about all the things that happened to both of us during the day. I’d have very good grades to show her, and then I would go off and do my homework. She would still do calligraphy, but now only for her own enjoyment. Because she was happier when she was doing it, she would do more elaborate pictures, and before long, she would be selling them to art galleries, not arts-and-crafts stores or bars. We’d have more money than ever, and Mama would start talking about buying a car.
“We’ll go on trips every weekend, see beautiful things, and stop at nice restaurants along the way,” she would say. “I told you. We can get along without him, and we can keep the struggle from doing us any more harm, because we’re together, partners, mother and daughter, more like sisters, good friends.”
She would hug me and hold me, and I would inhale the sweet scent of her perfume and hair, which was long and soft again. Men would be very interested in her, of course, but this time, she would be far more careful and go out only with responsible ones. Someday someone like that would propose to her, and our lives would improve tenfold. We’d live in a house, not an apartment, and Mama would not have to work anymore. This wonderful, well-to-do man would love me and be a real father to me. He’d come to parents’ nights and do homework with me and want to show me things and take me places, just as any other girl’s father would want to do with his daughter.
It occurred to me that most other girls would think my dreams were too simple, too ordinary. They would be dreaming of being popular singers or movie and television stars. They’d want big houses and expensive cars, even boats. They’d dream of jewelry and fashionable dresses and shoes, love affairs, and romantic adventures.
“Even your dreams are poor, pathetic,” they might say, and not want to be my friends.
I’d have to be very careful about telling anyone about my fantasies. I’d have to pretend I wanted exactly the same things they did. In fact, I’d have to keep many things secret, especially our struggle. What I would certainly have to do is come up with a story. In my dream, when I explained this to Mama, she nodded, understanding my problem, and said, “It’s best you tell them that your father was killed in a car accident. That way, they’ll feel sorry for you and not mock you.”
Exactly, I thought. Daddy was dead to me, anyway. It was almost not a lie.
I dreamed so hard I began to believe it was real. For a while, I was happy, and I felt no pain or discomfort, and then someone in another bed screamed with her own pain, and I was ripped out of my fantasy and dropped right back into this gray ward, with other patients who I found out were also uninsured homeless or deserted people. One lady told another we were all in the “human Dumpster.”
How long would they leave me in there? I wondered. Would I have to be there until my leg healed? And then where would they send me? What was being done with Mama? Would I ever see her, or would she simply be taken away and buried somewhere without anyone present? She used to say she would end up in Potter’s Field, a burying place for strangers, for people with no means.
“Where is Potter’s Field?” I had asked her.
“There’s one everywhere.” She had looked at me, considering whether to tell me any more. I was thirteen by then and not attending school. Whenever she was sober enough, she always expressed regret about my not being in school and often tried to teach me things.
“It comes from the Bible,” she’d continued. “My father was a Bible thumper. He would read aloud from it almost every night he was home. You know who Judas was, right?”
“Yes, he sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.”
“Good. Well, he regretted it afterward and went back to the high priests who had paid him. He threw the money on the floor. Afterward, he hung himself. The priests decided the money was tainted with blood and used it to create Potter’s Field, where strangers and the poor were to be buried. They called it Potter’s Field because it was located in a place where they mined clay for pots. As your father would stupidly say, that information and a dollar fifty will get you on the bus.”
“But that’s all it costs.”
“Duh. That was your father’s opinion of knowledge,” she had told me.
It was almost impossible now to remember Mama from those early days, when she would have more sober hours than not. Before she began drinking for the day, her eyes were still clear; she was still standing straight and had a look of determination in her face. But that got to be less and less the rule and more the exception.
Sometimes I thought maybe an alien had gotten into her. The alien didn’t have any of the self-pride and self-respect Mama used to have. Maybe Mama wasn’t dead. Maybe just the alien in her had died on the highway, and she would wake up and come back to me. I was looking at the door of the ward just the way Mama used to look out at the ocean for that boat that would save us, hoping that she would suddenly just appear, smiling.
“It’s going to be all right now,” she would say. “We’ll be fine, Sasha. I’m back.”
I blinked when a tall woman dressed in a fashionable designer turquoise pantsuit with gold epaulets stepped into the doorway and caused my dream Mama to pop like a bubble.
This woman had thick light brown hair styled at shoulder length and carried a purse that matched her outfit. The nail polish on her long nails even matched her outfit. She gazed into the ward, looking carefully at each patient until her eyes came around to me. Once she saw me, she seemed to freeze, her eyes locked on me, her soft, puffy lips just slightly open. Whom was she trying to look like, Angelina Jolie?
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had the look of a movie star, her makeup perfect, her complexion rich and peachy. But she looked somehow more important than a movie star. The regal way she held herself gave her an aura of authority, control, and power. The diamond ring on her left hand was so large that it seized on the ray of light spilling in from the nearest window and then seemed to brighten and become even more dazzling. She wore what looked like diamond teardrop earrings, too, and a necklace of small pearls.
A long moment passed before she stepped into the ward, and when she did, she stepped in as though she were trying to be careful, as careful as someone navigating a floor of mud. Maybe she thought the patients in the ward were contagious. She did look as if she was holding her breath. I waited when she paused at my bed.
“Are you Sasha Fawne Porter?” she asked.
She couldn’t be someone from Social Services, I thought. Could she? Who else would be looking for me? Who else would know my full name?
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded, opened her purse, and took out a very thin handkerchief to dab away something on her right eye. I saw nothing. Maybe she was wiping away imaginary germs. Why would there be a tear?
She focused on the area under the blanket where my cast was located.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” she asked, nodding at my legs.
