Spare Change
She’s standing by a column. Sole of her right foot on the wall. Blue jeans, black hoodie, café con leche skin. Could have been my younger sister, if I had one. Do you have spare change?
I’m looking for the Peter Pan bus gate to meet my friend Jaquie in this place that looks like the love child of a subway station and an airport. All I see are signs to the Greyhound.
I tap my pockets, mouth sorry, keep walking. The girl moves closer, starts to walk in my same direction. She has none of the smells I associate with street life.
I pull out the few coins in my jean pocket. It’s all I have, and I need it, I mutter.
That’s okay. She smiles her white, straight teeth. Her cropped caramel hair reminds me of Jacquie’s — together, we cut school in junior high and high school.
Where’re you going? I’m Alex. I live here. The girl tells me. I imagine her at ten playing in the water of a hydrant, as I did, hands shielding her face from the sting. Learning tennis in an inner-city parks program. Afterwards, free sandwiches and apples in cardboard boxes chilled in dry ice. How many people her age live here? Do they shower at Covenant House or The Door? I don’t ask.
In Colombia, a nun “gave” mamá a girl from a local orphanage. “Feral,” my aunts described her — a ten-year-old, thinner and shorter than a six-year-old, light skin, chopped brown hair, lice that jumped onto her sky blue smock. The nun told mamá, You can use her to clean the house, do the dishes.
My parents never adopted her. My father hated her. I don’t know why. At fifteen, she went to work on my uncle’s farm, disappeared from our lives.
Alex smiles with her eyes. It’s what boys often say of me also. Did her father sneak into her bed, like Jacquie’s father? Was she beaten with his metal leg brace?
I tell Alex I’m meeting a friend. Port Authority may as well be the Catacombs. She shows me where to go, suggests we split my change. I thank her, say goodbye. She walks back towards the concourse examining her share.