The Girl's Guide to Homelessness (26 page)

I would eat the blood first, I decided. Get it over with quickly, and then all the remaining “normal” food would wash the taste from my mouth. Keith hovered over me, awaiting my reaction. I speared a blood slice with my fork and tentatively placed it on my tongue. It was heavy, crumbly, metallic-tasting…and, surprisingly, it didn't taste too bad. I suppressed a shudder or two as I ate it, but only because I was working on disassociating myself from the concept, rather than the taste…like overcoming the mental block of eating brains or octopus or escargot or something. In junior high school, my Bangladeshi friend Sonia's mother had served me lamb heart, a Bengali delicacy, without telling me beforehand, and although it was delicious, once I found out what I'd consumed, from then on I was always a tad suspicious and careful to ask what I was being served up front. Culinary surprises aren't my thing.

I was so proud when I'd finished my blood pudding. Though I far preferred the taste of haggis, what was more important was that I'd done it. It felt like breaking the last
Witness taboo. I couldn't wait to tell Matt. I was sure that when we saw each other again,
he'd
be superproud, too. If I could eat clearly labeled blood of my own free will, then I could overcome anything.

N
ew Year's Eve came, and no Matt. By about 7:00 p.m., I'd given up waiting. It was the train station for me. It was cold and snowing out, but I figured it wouldn't be too bad to handle if I layered up on clothing. I couldn't bring the trunk along with me to the station, so I began to lug it up the street toward his flat. I knew I couldn't knock on Matt's door, but I could leave it outside. They were his presents, after all. Before leaving, I emailed him to let him know why I had to leave it for him. I wasn't sure if, in his frame of mind, he'd make the connection. I also reminded him that I'd be at the train station, as per his instructions.

It took me a half hour just to reach the end of the street. The trunk was incredibly heavy and awkward. Some young boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, stopped and asked me if I needed a hand. I gratefully accepted, and they each grabbed an end and walked it the next half mile to Matt's flat, where I dragged it up the stairs and dropped it outside his door, slinking away quietly and quickly. The lights were out and there was no sound from the inside. I
assumed that since he hadn't shown up, he was still trying to shake Lori and her mother, so I didn't want to disturb them. I didn't want to put extra pressure on him and make it harder for him to do what he had to do. I was warm and even sweating a bit from all the walking and lugging of the trunk, which reassured me that with a few extra layers of jackets, I wouldn't be too cold at the train station.

I returned to the Dunedin and gathered up my things. The Bests were going to a New Year's Eve party at Huntly Castle up the street and asked, with some concern, if I'd be OK.

“Oh, yes. Matt said he'd meet me at the train station, so I'm off to wait for him,” I said cheerily. “Thank you again, so much, for your hospitality!”

I shook their hands and trudged up the road, over the bridge across Huntly River, and into the isolated train station. The ground was all freezing stone. I pulled out my ragged copy of
Gone with the Wind
and began to read. Despite my thick socks and hiking boots, within an hour my toes were completely numb, and the numbness was starting to creep up my legs. As it got colder, I unpacked the contents of my suitcase, adding another layer, and then another. Before long, I was wearing three pairs of jeans and six pairs of pajama pants, one on top of the other, and every shirt, sweatshirt and jacket in my suitcase, topped off with the shaggy blue coat. I looked like a swollen, roly-poly Violet Beauregarde from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. The layering distorted my size to the point where anybody looking at me would have thought I weighed 350 pounds. But there was nobody around to see.

The hours dragged by and I tried to sleep, stretching myself out on the stone and using my suitcase and purse as pillows. But despite the layering, I was soon shivering
again. It started snowing lightly, but soon turned into a full-fledged snowstorm. The whirls of white outside were beautiful, but menacing. Eventually, of course, I had to pee. It was early in the morning, and there would be no local restaurants or bars open. Full of shame, I peeled off all my bottom layers except for the last pair of jeans, and climbed down onto the railroad tracks, squatting to piss, a dark yellow stream against the whiteness. My face burned, and I hoped there was no CCTV recording me. Crouching to pee with your jeans half on was incredibly awkward, and I couldn't avoid getting some on my pants.
Fuck.

I hoisted myself back up the side of the railroad tracks, my hands freezing from the snow. Gloves were the only thing I hadn't thought to pack. I hadn't counted on spending the night in a snowstorm.
How silly of me.
I wadded the jeans up and threw them into a nearby trash can, then ran bare-bottomed back into the station, pulling all the remaining pants back on as fast as I could. One less layer of clothing, but at least the running and the embarrassment forced a little blood through my body, and I felt warmer for just under an hour. I tried to sleep again, drifting in and out of consciousness, and occasionally standing to walk briskly in circles, pulling my sleeves over my hands and crossing my arms, hiding my fingers in my armpits.

Day came and went. Occasionally, I heard people nearby, walking their dogs or taking a lovers' stroll on New Year's Day. I pulled myself into as small a ball as I could in the corner of the station. Once or twice, I heard footsteps stop, and quiet murmurs, as though a passerby were staring at me, but then the footsteps would fade as they moved on. Matt never came, although I was still convinced he would. Darkness fell again, and the snow continued unabated. I had stopped shivering, and was beginning to feel only
numbness and a kind of hazy peace. I didn't realize at the time that I was entering the intermediate stages of hypothermia. I was just glad not to be shaking violently anymore. Hallucinations set in, and I spent hours alternately sleeping and speaking to voices that weren't really there, or huddling in the corner terrified, certain that an angry mob was stalking me with torches and pitchforks, then falling back to sleep.

At some point, I came around in a daze. The wind was cutting through my clothes to the bone, whipping snow into the station's shelter. It occurred to me, through my brain fog, that perhaps it was a bad strategy to remain down here, close to the river. Everything was colder by bodies of water, right? Thickly, I staggered to my feet and gathered up my suitcase and purse. The suitcase was nearly empty now—I was still wearing all the clothing I had—but my arms felt heavy and dead, and it was a struggle to lift
anything
.

I would head up to the town square, I decided. There was a bus stop there. That would provide shelter, and perhaps it would be warmer at higher ground.

It took nearly an hour to reach the town square. Every footstep felt like the most tremendous effort. I just wanted to sleep….

Finally, I reached the bus shelter and collapsed onto the bench, passing out within minutes. It
did
feel warmer here, although that may also have been from the exertion of my long trudge upwards from the train station. I don't know how long I was unconscious before I awoke to a man, maybe in his late thirties, patting my shoulder.

“Miss? MISS? Are you all right?”

I opened my eyes very slowly. My eyelids hurt.
Leave me alone. Can't you tell I want to sleep?

“I'm…fine. Really.”

“Are you sure? Should I call someone? I don't feel right just leaving you here. Do you have anywhere to sleep? It's freezing out. You shouldn't be trying to sleep out here. You could get yourself killed.”

“Someone will come to get me…I'll be OK.”

He protested a little more, but finally left. I went back to sleep.
Sleep? Die? I almost don't care anymore. Sleep is warm, or at least not cold.

 

I was jolted awake again by a female police officer shining a flashlight at me. Again, I tried to tell her that I would be OK, but she wasn't having any of it.
Damn, that man called the police,
I surmised. I didn't know what time it was, but it was still dark and I would later learn that the police had found me around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., early in the morning on January 2.

Before I knew it, the woman bundled me into a police car with her partner. He drove us back to the town police station, where I was offered hot chocolate and a blanket. They wanted to know why I was sleeping outside in the snow. They couldn't leave me there. I needed to tell them who did this to me, and they would find a place for me to stay for the night.

I started to cry. I tried to explain the situation to them, but I could tell that they didn't understand, or at least I thought they didn't. They exchanged glances.

They think I'm an abused woman. They think this is a domestic abuse case. They're going to treat him like an abusive boyfriend. They think I'm spouting off all the typical abuse victim BS.

“You stay here with my partner,” the female officer said. “I'm going over there to his flat. Don't worry, we're not
going to arrest him or anything. I'm just going to talk to both of them. What they've done to you is
not
all right, not under any circumstances.”

The woman left, and I cried harder. It was all my fault. He'd never love me again. What if they took away Kelsey because they thought he wasn't a fit parent? I began to shiver uncontrollably as I warmed, and the hypothermia slowly wore off.

Her partner leaned over and put his hands on my shoulders.

“I want you to know something. I've never met this Matt Barnes of yours. But I can tell you right now, he is
scum
. He is the biggest asshole I've ever heard of, and you deserve much better. I've never heard of anyone doing something so disgusting to his fiancée.” I tried to smile at him through my tears, but I was paralyzed with fear. Once they were done speaking with Matt, he'd hate me. He'd never speak to me again. He'd think that I'd gone to the police myself. I was stuck here with no money, no phone, no way to get back home for weeks, and Matt would never trust me again, certainly not enough to ask Lori to leave and put me up in the flat.

The female officer returned quickly. In Huntly, everything was a two-minute drive away or less.

“There's nobody at that flat. From what we can tell, nobody's been there for days. There's a suitcase outside, a big, blue metal trunk. Is that yours?”

“Yes. It's got our Christmas presents in it. It was too heavy and awkward to take to the train station.”

“It's outside still, covered in snow. There are no footprints on the stairs, nothing. When was the last time you saw him, again?”

“Monday. A few days ago.”

“I'd say nobody's been there for several days. That flat's vacant. He must have left right after you saw him.”

My mind exploded. I couldn't accept this. There was no way that Matt had told me he loved me and wanted to marry me, and then turned around and fled the city immediately afterwards. There must be some mistake.

“We've called the Dunedin, and they've said to bring you back. They're going to keep you there on the honor system until you can pay them. They trust you. Get your suitcase.”

I couldn't believe the kindness of the Bests. Christine answered the door and fussed over me, loading me up with extra blankets and instructing me to put my clothes, wet from the snow, over the radiator to dry. I was tucked into bed with extra cookies in my basket.

“Don't worry about a thing. We don't have a moment's doubt that you'll pay us as soon as you can. Nobody's going to kick you out on the street. You can stay here as long as you need to, and you'll be well fed while you're at it.”

If I hadn't been so tired and cried out, I would have wept at their kindness. As it was, I thanked them profusely as much as I could before passing out and sleeping the sleep of the dead.

 

I awoke to emails from several members of the Homeless Tales crew. The website was still down, Matt wasn't returning any of their concerned emails—was everything all right? I was the first person they all thought to turn to, since I was Matt's girlfriend.

Most of them I told very little. I didn't want to embarrass Matt in front of his crew. I just explained that the host had forgotten to pay the bill, I was working on fixing it, and that Matt had had to go deal with some personal
issues. I was fine, but was having a hard time getting hold of him, since he had internet trouble. I didn't have all the crew members' email addresses, so I asked them to spread the word.

To a handful of the crew members who contributed the most, and to whom Matt felt the closest, I told more of the story. I explained that he had gone missing and I was very worried about him. I filled them in on the sequence of events after I'd shown up. I didn't know where he'd gone, if he was hurt or in the hospital, or what had happened to make him leave.

There was wide variation among their reactions, and it mostly seemed to be split along gender lines. The women were shocked, and though they didn't believe any of it sounded like Matt, they were quick to brand his actions abusive and urge me to give him up as a lost cause. The men, on the other hand, suggested that perhaps he had tried to stand up to Lori, and she and her mother had absconded with the baby. Perhaps, they continued, he was forced to go after them with no notice, to ensure his child's safety.

“Men can do some stupid, crazy things if they feel that their child is in danger,” said Michael Ian, one of our good friends, who ran an excellent website called SLO Homeless. “But I know Matt, and I have no doubt that he loves you, even if what he's doing is wrong and has put you in danger. I have a feeling he'll eventually get back on his medication and realize the magnitude of how he's hurt you. Give it time. Keep emailing him, letting him know what's going on. He loves you, I know it.”