Fragments (2 page)

Literally, at
times, as the cold made her homeless to all intents and purposes.
As the morning heat burst faded she’d be forced out onto the
streets like those who didn’t have a home at all. She’d found all
the routes and tracks and tricks that her fellow travelers had
evolved in their own survival and it provided her with a routine, a
way to get through to summer; to when it was no longer cold. A
routine she needed to get up and onto if today was going to be a
good day. She took a deep breath and forced herself out from under
the layers.

The trick was
to be clean, neat and respectable, without making it look like you
had a coin in the world. Shopping malls and libraries were good for
a couple of hours but sitting down in malls for too long brought
security, and sitting down for too long in libraries, brought aches
and cold: libraries just weren’t that warm. Not all day warm.
Having an address, and thus a library card, bought her a couple of
hours a day with no problem. Enough time to read through the
newspapers and then move on. Shopping malls were great for thawing
out from moving about from one place to another. But they required
regular walking about and pretending to window shop, which was, in
its own way, a pain in the butt. Staring at everything you couldn’t
ever afford soon lost its thrall. Museums could shelter you for a
time but they never warmed you through. But she liked looking at
paintings, that was sure. She was always going to get a book about
painters out of the library, so she understood what she was looking
at, but she somehow never got round to it. Romances and thrillers
were her idea of a good read.

Then there was
a regular round of Goodwill and soup kitchens. Hot soup and bread
always sounded fine as the cold seeped into her bones and she was
expert at slipping in and out of places without being noticed, but
lukewarm grease water and stale bread made you so depressed it
wasn’t always a good deal. She used to help out at some of the
shelters and so avoided them. Some were too pushy in their
salvation thumping and some had too low a clientele, lice being the
least of the ‘extras’ on offer. But there was a wide selection of
decent ones throughout the city, and bus rides to and fro for a
couple of square meals could be the answer to pouring rain. She
could also get tins of soup and beans and packets of dried noodles
from the churches if she truly ran out. She tried not to do that:
there were people in worse shape than her that needed such, but hot
food in the middle of the day was worth a lot when the snow was
drifting.

Her day was
varied enough to keep her wits sharp at all times, and a balance
between staying on the move and not spending more effort on getting
warm and eating than she was getting back. The nirvana moment was
when she was tired, aching and still warm enough to believe life
was worth living, and she had only half an hour or so to get back
home in time for the heating being switched on. That way, when she
finally headed back, she was happy and grateful; longing to be in
her own space, tucked up by a radiator, glowing in the transient
warmth as she read books or watched TV. Not cramped and bitter and
moaning about her terrible lot in life and feeling sorry for
herself. Happy to have what she did have was a better option than
dwelling on what she did not. Her grandma had instilled that in her
at an early age and she kept the lesson close to her: her Gran had
lived through the depression unlike two of her siblings.

So she was
always striving to be happy and settled as she crawled into bed,
holding onto the heat and not thinking about the radiators cooling
down to stone cold dead, leaving her to fend for herself. Some days
it worked, some days it didn’t. Days where she still dreaded going
home even if she was cold or hungry, were bad days. Days where she
headed off home, grateful to her core that she wasn’t sleeping in a
shelter or trying to garner enough dry cardboard boxes and a safer
alleyway to sleep in, were good days. Excellent days were reserved
for summer.

The weather
changed the routine substantially. There were ways to eke out her
money by supplementing. Dry days were best for that. Trawling
through dumpsters for items that could be sold, or eaten, was a
useful addition. You had to be careful though, to not make it too
obvious and not to look too desperate. And choose your dumpster
route wisely. Dumpsters held all manner of things: dirty needles,
excrement (areas with a lot of young families were out), broken
glass and dead animals. Good food could be under rotten food, even
at the market areas. Dealing with smells and slime was crucial, and
many a treasure had been left as to reclaim it would leave her
looking too far down the pecking order. Keeping clean cost money,
and being clean was crucial if she was to keep all she did have.
There were also a fair amount of territory wars and some areas had
to be checked out with one eye behind you. She’d once been tipped
head first into a sewer rat of a dumpster, for daring to ‘steal’
from someone who claimed to own the whole block. She’d lain there
in the stench and filth, whilst the person – she never knew if it
was a man or a woman, just an aged bundle of screeching rags – had
banged on the side and then weighted down the lid on her. It had
taken an hour of heaving, sweaty work to get out, and her clothes
were in slimy rags by the time she’d managed to get the lid up
enough to crawl out. She’d had visions of her body being noticed at
the dump, and the terror of a communal burial with the rest of the
rubbish had finally been strong enough to propel her out. She could
see her dead fingers being gnawed by rats and her eyes... yes, fear
had finally got that lid up and her out of her reluctant tomb.
Dumpsters could provide bounty but it wasn’t for the faint hearted
or weak stomached.

One advantage
to snow and ice was that trawling for decent food was a lot easier:
nature’s fridge, she sometimes thought of it. But constant contact
with frozen metal wore the soul down and ate into any warmth you
might have. Her rucksack held a good supply of zip lock bags, so
she could salvage what she could safely when she could. Keeping
hands warm and dry was crucial and she’d learned to always use a
thick pair of rubber household gloves over her woolen ones. Useful
in pelting rain too, as it kept her hands dry no matter how much
the rest of her dripped.

Wet days, or
days with thick snow, were spent on her regular route of thrift
stores and Goodwill. She was always searching for a warmer pair of
boots or a thicker coat. She never scrimped on ice grips: she could
not afford a fall. A sprain would be bad enough, a broken bone
would end her independence, she was sure. She’d be in the spiral
down to the shelters, and then the gutters, before you could
blink.

Her driving
force, her mantra, was if that she got through one more winter and
kept on saving, she would one day be able to get on a bus and move
back down south. Then she’d be in clover, then she’d be able to
relax, and maybe get another dog once she’d found a decent place to
live. She’d almost done it four years back, then Bertie had got ill
on her and the bills on trying to keep him alive had wiped her out.
Every day, as she moved through the alleyways, the sight of another
unfortunate accompanied by their dog pierced her heart. Like the
Ice Queen she’d once read about as a child, she felt there was ice
in her eyes, moving into her bloodstream and freezing her soul.
Sometimes when she woke up in the night, she still reached for his
hairy hide to stroke and would wonder why he wasn’t there.

One day, one
day, she’d be in the south and not have to worry, and she’d find
another mutt to love and keep safe.

A really bad
day, a terrible day, was a day when it was too fierce outside to go
out at all. When no matter what she did, or where she might go,
she’d be returning colder, hungrier, than when the day started.
Those days would be spent in, aware that every moment the TV ran,
the light burned, for every zing of the microwave... she was using
up her precious electricity. She lived in terror of being stuck in
the room without any electricity at all. To be cold, and hungry,
unable to heat a cup of water to sip down whilst sucking on cheap
candy. To be sitting in the dark waiting for her next pension draw.
It had never happened yet: she forced herself to add extra to the
card all year round to get her through the winter. And she
maintained her routine at all costs, during the snow, when she
could. It was the stick she used to beat herself out into the
streets every day, while keeping her sights on the carrot in her
head: of one day getting on that bus south. And on days where the
cold had driven out that thought there was always the promise of
summer: it would come. It always came: just as it always left.

Today was going
to be a bad day. All she had was some peanut butter scrapings and
noodles. It had been too wet, for too many days. She’d three
outside coats in all, as drying out a wet one was painfully slow
with little heat. Each were battered, bruised, and patched but
didn’t smell and did a fair amount of work in keeping her from
dropping down dead with cold, or being refused entry to the mall or
the library. But all were still damp. She spent ages sifting
through in her mind which one to go with. Outside, the rain was
turning to snow and driving into the windows horizontally. Sleet.
She hated sleet the worse. Snow was warmer than half snow, half
rain, she was convinced. Sleet hit you physically, like little
bullets, far more raw and draining than hailstones. Hailstones
bounced off you. Sleet clung to you, drenched you, drained you,
shivered into your veins. Sleet soaked through and down faster than
anything. She looked out at the slushy streets and the people
wading through to get to work, to get home from work, to do
anything to get off the street at all costs.

If it had been
just after social security day, as opposed to a couple of days
before, she’d had stayed in, holding onto the last of the morning’s
heat doggedly, spinning out the hours until the evening bounty
arrived. Or maybe gone to the Laundromat and relished the sultry
rush of steam laden air, as she worked through her few clothes
methodically. Then rushed back to watch TV and hide, holding the
warm clothes in a bag as protection against the cold as she dived
back to her room. But it was not to be. If she stayed in the
spinning disk on the meter might betray her. ‘Sides, she needed
food and had empty pockets.

She wrapped her
feet in three layers of socks and two layers of plastic bags. She
really needed to find new boots, with intact soles, but soles were
thin by the time she got her feet into any shoes, and the streets
long and hard. Walking kept up her wiry strength, kept her heart
pumping and her bones from growing too fragile. Walking was life,
not just for the scavenging that could be achieved en route.

She took a deep
breath before launching out the door, pulling warm air into her
lungs and praying it would hold there for as long as it took to get
to somewhere else.

It was, without
doubt, the worst day of her life. Nothing had worked on any level.
It was dark again, and she was wet, frozen, shivering, and hungry.
She’d been so cold that when she’d walked past the filthy lump of
rags that was Dolly, and Dolly had offered the usual swig of
something foul and very alcoholic, she’d almost been tempted.
Almost allowed herself to feel the flood of warmth as whatever gut
rot it was rolled down her throat and set fire to her belly.
Almost. Her hand had stayed, and then retreated, and she’d smiled
at Dolly and moved on, as she always did. Dolly swore at her heels
for being a stuck up bitch, as she always did. But next time they’d
see each other, they’d smile, and Dolly would offer the bottle. And
if she had it, Maggie would hand Dolly some food. It was a miracle
to her that Dolly somehow kept going. No doubt she was so foul the
rats were scared to nibble on her. Maggie knew that she wasn’t so
foul that some of the equally foul street men didn’t woo her for
her favors. How else was a girl to get ethyl alcohol?
There but
for the grace of God...

It was a long
way back to her room. Even now, crying silently under her breath
with the cold and the effort to keep moving, Maggie couldn’t face
returning. If she went too early, the room would be cold. She’d be
locked in there waiting out the moment the radiators sprang to
life. It could sometimes take forever, it seemed, and it unsettled
her badly. Brought her hard up against the walls of her life. No,
she must get another hour, maybe two, out of today. Somehow. She
had to eke out some comfort, somewhere, before she went back. She
had to walk into the welcoming heat, and take advantage of every
scrap of it: she had to stay away just a bit longer.

The wind picked
up and drove sleet into her eyes; she stumbled, and gripped the
walls of an alleyway, holding onto the corner to keep her upright.
Across the road, someone fell over, and a couple of bulky figures
moved forward to help. One of the helpers went down. The wind
shrieked in her face, bringing with it the raw fury of the lakes
that funneled all that cold into the canyons of the city: she had
to get out of this onslaught.

She picked her
way down the alleyway, trying to find the spot where the wind no
longer tore at you, the walls calming the demon. The grabbing hands
dropped and she was out of the wind’s assault. The sleet was
hammering down on her now, from above, still lethal, still deadly,
but no longer being driven into her sideways. She slumped back
against the walls, no longer bothered about how filthy they might
be, and tucked behind the corner of a dumpster. A moment: she just
needed a moment, and then she’d give in, try and sneak on a bus and
go home. Wrap her hands around a mug of hot water with a stock cube
in it and dream of summer, watching something on the box. Wait
until she’d dried, and then thawed on the radiators. Get herself
into bed while the heat was still in the air, then settle down to
listen to her radio and read a book.