When Smiles Fade (14 page)

Once back in the car, they set out to find a place to park for the night. Emma realized quickly that given the overwhelming number of drug addicts, dealers, and prostitutes on the streets, it would be difficult to find somewhere safe. Driving down Kensington Avenue, they came upon a street without sidewalks. Emma quickly told Brianna to turn onto it and park. She figured that on a street without sidewalks, there would be less foot traffic, making it somewhat safer—if the word had any relevance in a place like Kensington.

The first night the girls spent in the car seemed endless. Emma found herself wide awake for most of the night, alert to the sounds and sights around her. She was prepared to battle every possible threat if she had to. At daybreak, when Brianna woke up and ended her vigil, an exhausted Emma let herself sleep for a few hours.

By noon, the girls were back on Kensington Avenue, trying to come up with a way to earn money. Again, they had to ward off pimps, who approached them disguised as drug dealers and trying to get them high. These propositions were in keeping with the way things worked on the streets. At first, the pimps would offer girls drugs for free. As their prey steadily increased their intake, they became dependent on the drugs. And once the girls were totally hooked and at the mercy of the pimps, the bastards would turn them out to prostitute to pay off their drug debt and keep themselves high all the time. Confronted with the ugliness of the streets, Emma thanked her foul childhood for having taught her a valuable lesson: trust no one.

Walking down Kensington Avenue under the El was depressing. The steel monstrosity that loomed overhead always blocked the sun out and cast a cloud of gloom over the street, day and night. It was as if night never came to an end and the sun never rose below the underbelly of the El. All one saw in its shadows were hapless souls who stumbled through life, dismal and hopeless.

As Emma looked around she realized that as young as they were they had an important decision to make: find a way to live here or live to find their way out of this hell hole. There were so many people and she wondered how they could all have been so unlucky in life, including herself. Maybe she belonged in Kensington with the other misfits of the earth. She felt like nothing more than a throw-away person. Born. Abused. Taught anger and hate. Then thrown away to make a life on her own.

Still, she wanted the best for her sister. So over the next week, Emma began collecting information from the other teens on the streets, valuable information that would help keep them safe. She learned to park the car in different places so that no one could identify it or pinpoint its exact location. They rotated parking lots at churches, hospitals, and anywhere that public parking was allowed. Their biggest problem in moving the car around was the money they had to spend on gas.

Ten days had passed and the girls were still living out of Pam’s car. They desperately wanted a shower. They had used some of the water they had bought for drinking to wash themselves, but their unwashed hair had become lank and greasy and they were beginning to stink. It was at this point that Emma met Sydney, a teen who lived on the streets and gave her advice on how to “steal a scrub.” Emma learned that they could steal a scrub by sneaking into the girls’ locker room at Carroll Charles High School, but they had to be very careful and time it just right. The homeless girl had warned Emma to be cautious.

“Just pretend you go there and are familiar with the place,” she had advised. “The janitors know that some of us go over there once in a while to take a shower. They won’t bother you as long as you don’t make any trouble or trash the place. Make sure you stay cool, because if you don’t, you’ll fuck it up for the rest of us.”

Sydney had been born and raised in Kensington. Her mother had abandoned her at birth and her father was a drug-dealer-turned-addict. By the time she was seven years old, her father was in prison and Sydney had taken to the streets to survive on her own. Emma liked the young girl and was intrigued by her courage and ability to survive the mean streets of Kensington on her own for four years. She stopped to talk with her every day, and as the girls confided in each other about their traumatic backgrounds, they were able to connect on a level that was quite different from the one Emma shared with Brianna or anyone she’d ever met.

Emma was quick to share the news about the showers at the high school with Brianna and Gracie. They went to the store and purchased the cheapest bath products they could find.

“We can’t afford towels,” Emma explained. “So we’ll have to use the two sheets we have to dry ourselves.”

As they left the store Gracie started to whistle “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses, so happy that they would be stealing a scrub the next day. The girls had grown up listening to music from all generations. They were quite familiar with the artists of the past and present. Emma looked at her now. “Patience? Yep, I get it.”

Gracie stood on her toes and raised her arms to the sky, “I haven’t been this fuckin’ happy in ten days, you guys. Who would have thought that some water and soap could make me feel like I just won a million bucks? Hey, Bri, maybe you can wash some of that stink off ya!” she teased.

“Stink? You wanna talk about stink, your ass stinks,” Bri bit back in fun.

It was in these special moments of being nothing more than teenagers that the three girls could release the anxiety caused by their hopeless living arrangement. The next day, just before school let out, the girls went over to the high school and, following Sydney’s instructions, entered the girls’ locker room. Emma felt the muck of days fall off her body as the water washed over her. With the funk of the last eleven days washed away, the girls emerged in high spirits.

It was just a few days later, as the girls were trying to settle in the car to go to sleep, that Gracie complained of a headache. “Emma, my head feels like someone is beating on it,” she moaned.

“Alright, I’m gonna walk down to Kensington Avenue. I’ll find a market and buy a bottle of aspirin. You two stay here. Make sure you keep the doors locked and the sheets over you. I’ll be back quick,” Emma told the two girls.

Emma left the car and made her way down the quiet street. She walked for over twenty minutes before she found an all-night market. Having purchased the aspirin, she tucked the bottle into her jacket and headed back to the car. She followed the same route she’d come, cutting through a long alleyway to get back onto Stouton Street.

Emma walked at a fast pace to make it through the alley as quickly as possible. She could almost feel the imminent danger of being in such an isolated spot. There were overflowing trash dumpsters, which seemed to be home to every rat in the city. Various abandoned household items lined either side of the brick walls. Spooking herself out, she began a slow jog, but was abruptly stopped when someone grabbed a handful of her hair.

Emma instinctively spun around and came face to face with the prostitute she had had the run-in with on Kensington Avenue when they were eating hotdogs. Before she knew it, she was surrounded by the four other hookers that Emma had seen with her that day. She immediately knew she was fucked. There was no way she would be able to take all five of them on. So she did the only thing she could do. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble. The other day, well, you just caught me at a bad time. That’s all.”

The prostitute gave her an icy cold smile, exposing the few teeth she still had in her mouth. “You think we care that you havin’ a bad fuckin’ day? What-cha think, we livin’ good and ain’t never had no bad days? Ha! Every fuckin’ day a bad day for us, motherfucker! Bottom line is, bitch, ain’t nobody fuck with Rock’s girls.”

As she finished her sentence she threw the first punch into Emma’s gut. She immediately doubled over holding her stomach. One of the other girls kicked her in the ass and she flew head first to the ground. It all became a blur as the girls punched and kicked her without restraint. Emma made her best attempt to cover her head; the beating was far worse than the crime she had committed by standing up to the girls days prior.

As Emma lay on the ground taking blow after blow, she resigned herself to the idea that she may die in that alley, beaten to death, and then she heard a young girl yell, “Rock, make them stop!”

“Why?” she could hear the man’s voice responding. “What’s she to you?”

“Come on, Rock. She’s a friend of mine, okay? She got her ass kicked already, look at her,” the young girl pleaded.

Rock told the crazed young girls, “K now. That’s ’nough. This bitch just got lucky.” Then he turned to Sydney. “You get her the fuck out of here before I turn them loose on her again.”

Sydney rushed over and helped Emma to her feet. She half carried, half dragged Emma out of the alley. Once she had her on Kensington Avenue she sat Emma down outside a drugstore. When Sydney came out she was carrying a bag of ice and a can of Coke. “Here, drink this,” she told Emma. “Sip it slow. You need the caffeine to wake you up. I need to get you back to your car.”

After Emma finished the Coke and Sydney had iced her legs and ribs, she helped her up and practically carried her back to the car. The young girl knocked on the window, and a startled Brianna shot up from under the sheet. After her vision cleared and her heart rate returned to normal she saw it was Emma.

Throwing open the car door Brianna gasped, “Oh my God! What the fuck happened to you?” She helped Sydney get Emma into the backseat of the car.

“Who did this to her?” Gracie screeched in a state of panic.

“Those hookers she stood up to the other day. They beat the shit out of her. They ganged up on her in an alley. She didn’t have a chance. There were too many of them. By the time I got there they had fucked her up pretty good,” Syd explained.

Emma was awake but not completely aware of what was going on around her. She finally spoke up. “Syd saved my life.” Then she slid down on the backseat and fell asleep.

Gracie leaned into Sydney and hugged her. “Thank you, Syd.”

Syd nodded at the two girls and headed off toward her home in the streets of Kensington.

“What are we going to do, Bri? I’m scared,” Gracie asked, worried about her sister.

Brianna embraced her. “We’re gonna stay in the car with Em. Tomorrow when she’s awake we’ll figure out what we should do,” Brianna explained calmly, but inside she was terror stricken at the thought of being in charge. The two girls exchanged a worried look before lying down to try to sleep. It was as if they both sensed what was yet to come.

A couple of days passed before Emma felt like herself again. Luckily, the gang of girls hadn’t broken anything, but almost her entire body was bruised. Emma told the other two girls, “Thank God for Sydney. If she hadn’t shown up they probably would have beat me to death.”

Now that she was feeling a little better the girls ventured out to look for a way to make a little money. As they roamed around the ghetto, Emma noticed Sydney standing with a group of teens on a street corner. She approached Syd, extending her arms to give her a hug. “Ah, she lives!” Sydney exclaimed.

“Yeah, thanks to you,” Emma returned. “So how did you get them to stop?”

“Well, the hookers work for Rock. He’s a drug dealer and pimp. Him and my dad used to work together dealing drugs. Then my dad got hooked on coke. Once my old man went to prison, Rock went solo. He’s known me from the time I was born. After I told him you were a friend of mine he called his bitches off. Don’t get me wrong, Rock is a total asshole. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him. But he doesn’t give me a hard time like he does the other girls around here,” she explained.

Emma listened to the eleven-year-old, wondering again how she managed to survive on her own and grateful that she had been brave enough to speak up that night. “Well, listen, Syd, I owe you one. That was pretty fucking cool of you to step in and take that kind of risk for me. I mean, we don’t even know each other that good.”

Syd took a seat on the curb and lit a cigarette. “Yeah, well. You told me what you’ve been through. I get it. None of us asked for this shit life, so if we can help each other every once in a while I figure what the fuck, why not? Right?”

Gracie sat on the curb next to Syd, and even though she was two years older, she felt like a weak child next to Sydney. “I wish I could be as brave as you are,” she confided. “I’m with my sister and I’m scared all the time. Aren’t you afraid that someone is going to hurt you?”

Syd took a long drag from her cigarette and offered it to Gracie, who shook her head. “Nah. I was born in Kensington. I mean, sometimes I get scared. Mostly that I won’t have anything to eat, but other than that, being homeless doesn’t scare me. I have my street family and we get along fine. When you’re out here long enough you learn how to get by on whatever comes your way. You’re lucky. At least you have them,” she stated, gesturing toward Emma and Brianna.

Gracie nodded. “Yeah, Em has been protecting me my whole life. She’s pretty much been my mom since I was really little. I guess I am pretty lucky, huh?”

“Yep,” Sydney replied with a note of sadness in her voice. The worst part of her life was that she had no real family. Syd envied Gracie for having a sister like Emma and secretly wished that she could have been her little sister instead.

Gracie gently bumped her knee into Sydney’s. “Well, thanks for helping Em the other night. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to her. We’ll see you around, right?”