Psalm of my life: If you can’t live in the world you have, make one up.
She stopped at five different “tents and boxes” and handed out cash from her prize money at each one. These were not boozers or druggies, at least not mostly. They would use the money for food and other necessaries, because they all had young kids living with them in their distress.
“Thank you,” said one young mom, who was white but looked brown with the sun and the dirt. Cain could relate. This was the “tan” of homelessness. It was unlike any other skin tanning ever, Cain knew. It fried your brain as well as your outside. It never really came off you because you worried every minute it could happen again. It was like you were a fugitive for life and your only crime was bad luck or bad choices. When the rich and powerful made a mistake their lawyers and PR folks took care of it.
Cain waved the woman’s thanks off and kept running. The next family was black, the next one after that, too. The next ones spoke Spanglish and shivered in the chill. The next family, she couldn’t really tell what they were, not that it mattered. They were breathing, they were human. They look like me in that way. That was enough. Boxes were meant to house stuff, not put people in. Not until they’re dead, anyway. Most people looked at them and felt either sorry or disgusted, or both. Not Cain. She just saw folks who needed some help.
At the end she had given away over half her winnings.
She knew what the term “Good Samaritan” meant, but only because of the Bible reading. But that was not why she was doing it. She did it because today she had money and today they didn’t, but needed it. Keep it simple was Cain’s motto. When you thought too hard about it, you tended to want to keep what you had and dare others to try to take it.
She got back to her place and completed her daily workout with pushups, floor dips, chin-ups on a bar wedged in a doorway, lots of ab and core work with a medicine ball, and exercises with a kettle-bell she’d gotten for a buck from a gym going out of business. Then bodyweight lunges and squats and calisthenics followed by shadow boxing; she finished with some heavy-duty stretching.
The strong and vigilant don’t always survive, but it damn sure improves your chances.
She showered in cold water because that was all there was. She had started her period late last night. She had had her first period at age eleven while she was with the Atkinses. She thought she was dying when the cramps came and the blood dripped from down there. She had begged Desiree to help her. The woman had laughed and thrown her a roll of paper towels, telling her that it would come every month, like clockwork. She had added, “They sell stuff for it, but the paper towels will do for you. It’s not like you’re going anywhere. So deal with it.”
And Cain had dealt with it using the paper towels. Until Wanda Atkins had explained to Cain what was really going on, and given her boxes of tampons. That had been an eye opener. She remembered asking Wanda if boys had periods, too.
“No,” she had said. “Good thing, because they couldn’t handle it.”
Cain believed she spoke the literal truth.
Wanda had been nice to her, sneaking her books, taking care of some medical needs, bringing her some extra food. But she never once made any effort to free her. There were limits, Cain supposed, to people’s generosity. And morals.
CHAPTER
11
FOR TWENTY-FIVE HOURS A WEEK and nine bucks an hour Cain operated a forklift loading packing crates onto tractor trailers. They wouldn’t allow her full-time work, because that came with benefits and other rights. All the guys there—she was the only female—were also part-timers.
She parked her Honda outside the terminal, put on her hard hat and protective shoe coverings and safety goggles, punched the clock, and climbed into her little rig. They could have gotten plenty of guys with heavy equipment operating licenses to do this, and who had been laid off in the recent downturn. But Cain was a lot cheaper and didn’t demand full-time work. People like her were a hot commodity in the free market right now. She was a worker who didn’t mind getting screwed: Employers loved her.