Page 16 of Cain
Suddenly, I’m twelve again, standing outside a foster home with my life stuffed in bags like garbage.
No suitcase.
No boxes.
Just trash bags.
Because that’s what you are, right?
When no one wants you. When you don’t belong.
“I had a suitcase,” I say.
“Don’t know nothin’ about that. Now get the fuck outta my building,” he snaps and slams his door shut.
I want to bang on his door and demand that he give me my suitcase. It isn’t special, it’s…a way to carry my things, so they don’t have to be put into trash bags.
I drop to my knees and open the bag.
My clothes are crumpled, shoved in like they were scraped off the floor.
My toothbrush snapped in half.
The book I was reading—The Master and Margarita—has a boot print on the cover.
I look for my jeans, old, faded, where I hid my money. I rummage through the bag, empty it all on the floor.
There’s nothing. It’s gone.
I collapse on the floor.
I look at the door again, but I know it won’t change a thing. I am a thief—they’ve branded me, and no one will believe me when I tell them my truth.
The asshole took my money. Four hundred dollars. All my savings. My security. All that I had.
I have nothing now.
Not the money I saved.
Not the job I loved.
Not even the two hundred I came to Silverton with.
I carry the trash bag, walk out.
It’s drizzling. It’s dark.
I don’t know where to go. In Seattle, I’d find a homeless shelter, but this is Silverton, and it doesn’t have homeless people.
The numbness inside me is taking over, and I can’t feel a thing.
I’m cold, I know that because I’m shivering. But deep down inside me, there is the promise of warmth. Of silence. Of shutting down.
I wander until my legs give out. I find I’m near the library. I know this place well. I curl up behind the stone steps, feeling like an animal that no one wants.
Jamie did a lot, but he never stripped me of my humanity. He never tookmeaway from me. I always bounced back, found myself, but now, I can feel nothing, like I’m still unconscious but without the beeping sounds of a hospital.
The cold eats at me.
