Whatever Happened To The Homecoming Queen? Or The Nameless Roll On With Dirty Faces

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Margret rolled herself around the subway station on 59th street, near the turn styles hitting every passerby up for a quarter. She used one leg to push herself backwards in her chair, Margret’s other leg had long gone lame. It was a routine that she had come to depend on both for her livelihood and to keep herself grounded. It didn’t matter if that ground was below the streets in the sub-terrine world of the subways. She often surprised by the lack of permanence in that world. A tapestry languages from passing tourists, coming or going and all the conversations of businessmen and women about deals which she would never understand. But they all would be gone in less than moment. Before they had time to disappear, she would up to them giving her well-worn pitch, “you have a quarter or dollar so I could get something to eat?” But they all passed by without making eye contact, both liberal and conservative alike often disappeared before she was done asking for money. It was always the fresh skin young people, beautiful in their bodies who came from nameless Mid-Western towns who dropped change into her waiting hand. In-between the miasma of conversations was echoes of laughter from those who were only just visiting from Europe or the West Coast or Long Island. Then there was sermons from the Caribbean subway preachers, with the best of intentions, holding court until the next train to arrive. Soon only the screaming of kids could be heard coming from the platforms.

From time to time the police would approach her to move on.

“You don’t need to tell me where to go, I’ll be here long after your gone!”

Then she would carelessly roll on where she would greet the ridders with her pitch as they went on to harass groups of kids jumping the turnstile.

The passersby didn’t see her much of the time as she had become wallpaper in this subterranean world. She had long evolved to blend into this shadowless world where neon lights didn’t even let the smartest of the rats hide but scurry from platform to rail. But her smell had become a thing of legend, even to the cops who patrolled the station. Herr’s was of the high end Le Parfum Des Mort, (perfume of the dead) which was never afforded to the run of the mill pan handler. Only the truly sick were marked by it. It was usually the first sign of someone who gave up and were resigned to dying on the streets and being buried in a box marked by a serial number. But for Margret, she was not among their ranks. She lived in housing for the disabled somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen and had full access to a bathroom with a shower. It was just that she found it too much of a hassle to move from her chair into the tub and back again. Her neighbors had taken to burning incense to ward off the stench as if burning away evil spirits in a cathedral. But underneath the dark grayish smell along with the dirt and the years which created a mask of deep seeded lines that ran across her face like tiny caverns, one could see if they squinted just hard enough, the last signs of a homecoming queen’s beauty. It was like looking at the last remains of a once great city which was abandoned far too soon. Only the deep cracks with weeds showing through, along with bombed out buildings littered with artifacts of the proud society, was all that remained. But who was ever going to notice?

Margret reached the station at four thirty an hour before the usual rush hour crowd came flooding up the stairs. She rolled herself towards the turnstile down the through way. The on-going stream of tourists flowed past her. To her left several wooden blanks cut off a huge portion of her station. Behind the boards the noise of drilling and cracking concrete echoed loudly against the walls. She rolled on, Margret was soon greeted by a sign which was placed on the final plank reading, “coming soon pizza, ice cream and gifts for friend.” Margret frowned at the message. She knew that she could expect the police to become more aggressive as this was going to be the ongoing effort to make the city “open for business” as one former mayor put it. And her presents was bad for business. Margret finally reached her waiting spot as Lucy came stumbling past her towards the escalator with her makeshift drum. She stopped in mid-stride then turn to Margret. Alice had been a veteran of the subway for more years than she cared to remember. She went from East Harlem to Brooklyn and back again. She used her drum as a rhythmless introduction, “Hello ladies and gentlemen, here is a brand new beat something new and unique…” The faces on the trains seemed to change with the seasons. That is when, when the transients were looking up. Most of the time she only saw the tops of people’s heads in their effort to look away or simply ignore those who fell out the business of a city which has become little more than a bizarre for those who will only be just visiting. Lucy stared down on Margret with her deep black eyes, blood shot from exhaustion of days without sleep. She smiled slightly at a familiar face of a fellow tribe member. Margret looked up with great effort,

Margret: “You hear the news that they’re turning this this station to a strip mall?”

Lucy: “Yea I heard. Won’t be long before the police start kicking us back out onto the street. This is how they want to clean up the city. No one can afford the rent no more. Unless you some rich ass hole from somewhere else. You hear about Crying Sam?”

Margret: “no”

Lucy: “He was busted for sleeping at Penn Station. They beat him in the legs, all bloody with their knight sticks.”

Margret’s head dropped nodding, that she well understood the situation. “I thought he’d be around forever. I saw him last week doing his crying act for some tourists on the east side. I think someone bought it, he got dollar bills for his effort.” She was only able to make a pathetic attempt and letting out a laugh. “Looks like they are trying to bury all of us so them tourists don’t have to look at our faces. They hope we can just melt away like that black snow every winter.”

Alice: “You make any money today?”

Margret: “Na I just got here.”

Alice looked at here with the disappointed of a resentment that can only come from hopelessness.

Alice: “Well I’m headed to St. Bart’s. I heard their running a soup kitchen over there. It’s been a while since I had a hot meal. Can’t remember the last time. And the police don’t bother you when you try to sleep in front of their doors. I haven’t slept for weeks. Can’t remember the last time. Saints look after you there, no cops can touch you. Where are you staying these days?”

Margarete: “Section 8 housing, studio apartment. Stupid landlord keeps trying to kick me out. Keeps sending his thugs to harass me, stealin my mail and messen with the elevator but its clean.”

Alice’s eyes lit up at the thought of finally being able to bathe. Maybe even getting her cloths washed. “You think I could us your shower? Its been forever since I been clean.”

Margarete: “Land lord doesn’t like me having guests. His goons spy on all of us. They use any excuse to try and kick us out.”

Alice: “ Comeon give a sista a break. Aint like I’m tryin to stay or nothing. Just need a shower and then I’m gone.”

Margarete: “I don’t know. Don’t need to go back to housing court. The judges don’t like us much. I swear their on the take. Dirty bastards don’t try to hide their hatred for us. ”

Alice: “Look I bring you something real nice if you let me use your shower. I’m going to see a friend of mine. I’ll be there less than an hour. Them dirty judges can’t kick you out for that.”

Margarete was silent for a moment for a moment, shaking her head with trepidation. “Meet me here at 9:30. I should be done by then.”

Alice: “Thank you sista, thank you. I’ll be here.”

Alice walked quickly over to the escalators where she started to elevate to the street level and soon was gone. Margarete stared briefly at the spot where Alice had stood then started her ritual of wheeling herself from one passerby to the next giving her delivery. She would have been an American gypsy had she anywhere to go with the urgency of a nomad. But as it was, she was a child and resident of a city that slowly kills those who loved her the most yet gave eternal life to those who knew only indifference. And as she rolled on the sound of heavy machinery and shattering concrete echoed in the station which gave her pitch just a little harder to hear. With every turn of the wheel Margarete died just a little more each day. For each rejection was just another reminder of how indifferent the well dressed and mobile had become with their hardened hearts.

“Can you spare some change?”

The answers were always the same, no eye contact and no spoken answer at all, only the silent agreement that she would move on to next passerby. As the hours passed the occasional person would drop a quarter into her hand which she would pocket. The lucky days consisted of dollar bills and very few quarters or dimes. It was always preferable to get money “that make no sound when it’s in your pocket.” But those days were always rare. Those hauls allowed her to eat well if only for one night. By five thirty, the rush hour crowd came flooding up the stairs in their armies. There was never any use to hit up the first wave, no one ever made a dime out of em. They just moved swiftly for the escalator. Every time Margarete made her pitch she couldn’t escape the thought of the unnatural nature of money. Those who had it seemed bored. And the more bored they became, the more bitter they grew until the ennui settled in many a drunken eye. Those who didn’t have it just grew hungry. And when they weren’t begging, the dreamed day dreams of having plenty of money so they could sit in diners over cups of coffee and eggs.

As the hours passed and the echoes from shoes coming or down the stairs faded into the sounds of heavy machinery and passing trains Margarete’s cup became full from the occasional passerby dropping in a quarter or a dime or sometimes a penny. And as the cup became full, she poured the change into a pouch hanging from her side. From time to time someone drop her a dollar bill which meant could eat tonight. The clock in her head told her that it was nine o’clock but Alice was nowhere to be found. She rolled herself over to the escalator looked over but they only ones coming down was a group of young people in business suits. Margarete waited for a moment then decided to hit up more passers-by until Alice would arrive. Soon the crowds that had been so full earlier, had faded to straddlers. Even the sound of construction had stopped hours ago. Now that the pickings were slim, Margarete decided to leave. She rolled herself over to the elevator, up to the street level. She rolled on into the night of neon and digital lights which were sometimes purple but most of the time were colorless. When Margarete’s beauty had faded, she became nothing more than another ghost in the city of ghosts; haunting 9th Ave, which she moved down to get home, the 59th street station and even her own apartment. But ghosts can dream too and her dreams were always of eggs and black coffee.

Alice

When Alice arrived at the church where the soup kitchen took place, she was greeted by a line which went around the corner and was occupied by those residents of the ignored city of shallow pockets. Everyone was there, the can collectors this time without their carts, the pan handlers, the members of the “United Nergo Pizza Fund”, small time crooks and the street artist. To Alice, they were all refugees of a city which no longer had its own style. It now adopts the features of every other city in the US. Its buildings: It’s now Chicago on the Hudson River or Dallas in Astor Place and LA just off the Henry Hudson. The city of shallow pockets had become a hermit crab who wears its style like a shell of a sea snail until it out grows that shell and discards it in the mass grave yard of other shells. Of course it wasn’t always like that. Gone are tenements where bitter wives cared for roach filled apartments. And where the Poles on one block would feel nothing but resentment for the Italians on another block. And the Italians walked around with a deadly grudge towards the black kids on the neighboring street corners. And the young black youths hated the whole lot of them. Every turn was like entering the old country of some forgotten immigrant’s dream. No longer could a punk play the game of chance in The Bowery before entering a black leather, Rock’n Roll club. But what was always going to be left behind were the bitter hearts of a bitter mob with ferial souls which grew bitterer with each passing winter. Yet the pigeons walked around the littered sidewalks with a strange confidence while rats ran in and out of torn garbage bags with pieces of rotten food in their teeth.

“Aint that a mother fucka”? Asked big Ray, a black subway preacher who finally decided to take a break from trying to fill Jesus’s ministries to try a fill his stomach. Even though the question was not directed anyone in particular, one of the older can collectors, an older white man who had seen more winters than most in the line had seen years spoke up,

“What are you talken about? I don’t nuthin put a bunch of rats in dem bags. You losen it or something their buddy”?

Ray pointed at a large gray rat coming out of one the bags with pieces molded bread sticking out of its mouth, “Those bastard rats eat all they want and we here, grown ass men have to wait in line for watery soup and stiff bread. When the last one of us is being sent to Potter’s Field that goddam rat will still being runnin around garage bags getting fat. Don’t seem right to me. God must be testing us or maybe he is still pissed at us for letting him down”.

“Maybe God don’t give a shit about us” a female voice sounded off from about four people behind him.

“It would serve all of us sinners right if he don’t give a shit about us. We don’t do nuthin for him any how”. “I’d rather be fallen then kiss any man’s ass, the voice shot back. “At least I’d be with my home girls”

Big Ray puffed out his chest, sensing he was being challenged. He was now ready to deliver his sermon. He was never going to welcomed into any church since the last one he was in, the pastor stealing from alms the treasury’s office. The pastor chased him waving around a pistol that he kept in the top drawer of his disk. The holy man fired off one shot but the bullet was inches from hitting old Ray in the ass. But now he spoke up as if at some unseen alter or standing at God’s right hand.

“look woman you ain’t fit to pick the pocket of any low ass demon, ya bitch!”

“Your not fit to piss yourself from drinking any hell wine! Probably set your own black ass on fire!”

“Look sinner woman, I’m a man of God! You are just some lonely whore paying for insulting God and his children. I’ll be at his feet when I die. I do know that”!

“You mean some goddam fool who will be found piss stained on the 6 train” another voice interjected, this one from an old time veteran of the soup kitchens, known as Doc. He was well respected once as well skilled in the operating room in some of the city’s most respected hospitals. But three mental breakdowns and whisky, along with a landlord who preyed on the weakest of any heard, sent him spiraling to the streets.

“I seen you around spouting that biblical bullshit. You are the typical Baptist.! You use the Jew’s book and don’t know what it says”!

“Fuck You Doc! You Jew ass motha fucka. You ain’t no real doctor! Everyone knows it. You are just a broken down old asshole”!

“Hey bitch leave Doc alone”. Another voice shot out. “You probably delivered your black ass into the world”.

“More like he gave up prescriptions for morphine you junkie hag!”

The crowd started to turn on Ray who deflated his chest, coming to the reality that he was in a fight he could never win. He turned around and just stared a head, swearing under his breath that he was going to shut the old man up for good “one of these days”. Alice reached the end of the line and stood silently looking at her feet. There were only low rumblings now throughout the line, sounding like several on coming storms which would never become anything more than mere threats of rain. Those whose storms had become most chaotic belonged to the untethered. Those men and women who would emerge from the loveless subways onto the loveless streets all the while sailing on seas unseen by everyone else and making deals with the ghosts who resided in untethered skulls. Their storms on their open seas had were now more than threats, they were now hurricanes which carried all sailors far beyond the reach of land. The last thing any of them could forward to were the soup kitchens with stale bread and overly watered soup on the line, they were the most vocal, yet speaking to no one at all. Alice waited on the line, feeling vaguely sick from the days without food and very little water. The sun was starting to go down as the line slowly moved along. The door to the church kept getting closer as the hunger pains became ever more present. Can collectors bitched back and forth about who was invading whose turf. It was the dirty faced versus those who smelled faintly of urine. But to Alice it was all wallpaper fore she could already taste the soup and see the faces of the stone angels who looked down from their alters with the promise of saving anyone who entered, but never delivered.

And the line moved on not unlike a timeless sea for every clock that had ever ticked away had forgotten everyone in this line, as every clock has forgotten all those who stand in soup lines as has all the board clock watchers. For it is difficult to remember anything in a go go city and where if you are assaulted by your landlord’s thug for hire, then it’s your fault for standing under his baseball bat. How is it that no one ever asked, that in the city that never sleeps so many are caught up in a dream that only leads to ruin? That those who could afford to dream do so high above the nightmares of all who are kept awake by board police officers looking for a body to process in order to get overtime. Alice had long realized that she was the only nobody who asked that question too many times to no one at all. And never seemed to reach an answer that she found satisfactory. Those around her always said the same thing, “Its God’s will.” Upon hearing this Alice felt bile build up in her throat which made her spit in disgust. What God would remember Us? After all one’s place is carved in the brain as a never reminder of what it means to drop from the wrong womb. It is tattooed deep in the flesh with fire and ink.
“We can’t afford to put no money in no donation plate”.

This is also where sellers of optimistic thinking have become the new salesman whose hands in your pockets. The moto of this city has become if your homeless then it’s your fault that the housing court judge who railroaded you used to be your landlord’s lawyer and the two still dine together. After all anyone can learn to be a skilled cut throat worshiped from one board room to the next. And any housing court judge worth his salt can learn to be a skilled filing clerk. Ray and Doc and the untethered along with most of the can collectors had disappeared into the entrance of the church. Alice was just mere feet from the door when a familiar voice sounded from behind her,

“Alice sweet Alice you still kicken around this crumby city? I thought you of all people would get out.” She turned around to see a midnight dark face smiling at her. With two yellowed eyes of addiction and cloths which hung of his thin frame in tatters, giving him the look of something between a great Moorish saint and a scarecrow. But one could have rest assured no historian or anthropologist spend a spot of ink on his life nor would any reporter from the Times spend it on his death. If he were a saint, he’d have to be contented with knowing he had become nothing more than a relic in an ascending wilderness and was sure to be forgotten.

Alice knew the voice and the face better than her own seeing she wondered the mirrorless subways and only spoke when begging for change. Henry lived, when they were both young in the apartment across from where Alice grew up. Like most neighbors, they played together as children often pretending they lived in one of the sky scrapers on Park Place or Madison. Other times they wandered around the empty lots where buildings once stood only to be replaced by rubble. But their lasting connection, the one beyond childhood came when they learned about the love of on the nod. Neither could remember who got who hooked but the prick of the syringe replaced the need for sex early on. Alice scratched her heard before yelling in sum surprise,

“You must not been looking too hard. I been down in the subways beaten my drum. You know, like the old days trying to get money for a fix? Besides you know I couldn’t go no where, my mother being sick and all. I had to take care of her. Besides it ain’t like this is a prison!” The whites of Henry’s eyes had yellowed from sickness and ruin, but his smile was still bright and hid the fact he was painfully thin with the skin on top of his head being stretched tight over his skull and his cheek bones looking as if they were about to tear through the skin. “Oh didn’t mean nothing by it.” Was just hoping someone from the hood got out.” The smile faded from his face and soon Alice could clearly see his sunken eyes desperate, looking for any new connection.

“I didn’t think you ate anymore Henry.”

“I ain’t here to eat, I just stopped because I saw you girl. Ain’t going to touch that stall bread and shitty soup.”

He looked around as if searching for something but couldn’t remember what it was or if he lost anything at all. Henry tapped the breast pocket of his jacket with an index finger over his mouth. He started speaking in a low voice as if revealing some deep dark secret.

“What you say, want to forget about this scene? I got something here which will fill you up. I know a place where we can go.”

“Shiyt I wasn’t hungry anyway. I want to ride something that ain’t no train.”

Alice and Henry raced towards the train station on 51st street and Lexington, ran down the steps and jumped the turnstile. They made a waiting uptown train up to East 125th street. It was the first ride for Alice where she was only a passenger who didn’t need to bang her drum. They made their way to a wooded area where the east river park had not reached. Under the last light of the day, Henry and Alice sat down as he took out his works. After all the work was done, to cook up the white powder in a bottle top with the help of a zippo lighter, Henry tied Alice off as she waited with anticipation. No sooner did he push down the plunger, Alice felt a golden warmth throughout her body which fell slack and drifted high above the city and all the can collectors, the subway stations, the reporters from the Times and all the indifferent faces that passed by. They all disappeared as she dissolved into a blue light where there were no cops at all.

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