Steam

Beth Sherman

When did it begin? I don’t know. When do you want it to begin? 

Fine. When we were little, my brother and I used to jump out the window into the snow. First, we’d catch our breath in our hands. It looked like steam or some special effect from a movie we’d never watch. The cold grabbed hold of us and tore at our skin. Some people say Maine’s pretty. That’s because they don’t live here. There’s nothing to look at, just mountains and pine trees and potato fields and more mountains. But I had my brother and that was enough. I wasn’t scared to jump from a window. I knew nothing bad would happen because he would keep me safe.    

If I’d grown up someplace else, someplace like Florida, for instance, I’d probably be working in a school right now. I’d be a teacher’s assistant. I always liked kids. At the end of the day, my husband and I would sip wine on the porch and watch our children play on the swing set. I’d be a different person. My father doesn’t think so. Neither does Pete. But I do. Otherwise, I couldn’t stand being cooped up with a bunch of women who committed real crimes. 

My father drove me to the bus station. 

“Listen,” he said. “There’s nothing for you in New York. Someone gets shot there every twenty minutes.”

“What about the rest of the time?”  

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

Outside, the wind moaned. Icicles dangled from tree branches. The plows had come through and piled snow higher than the car on both sides of the road. It was like driving through a tunnel.

“You could have waited till graduation. How far are you gonna get if you drop out of high school?”

“How far’d you get staying in school?”

He reached for me, but I pressed against the passenger side door and he ended up pretending to turn the radio higher. After that we stopped talking. 

My father’s lived in Maine his whole life. He’ll never leave our crappy town. The worst part is he doesn’t mind. He’s happy working at the auto body shop, having too many beers with his friends. He doesn’t care that he comes home smelling like diesel oil and passes out on the couch. Other nights, the angry ones – well, I don’t want to talk about that. 

When we got to the bus depot, he fiddled with the defroster. It was clear he was dropping me off instead of waiting for the bus to come. “I give it three weeks,” he said before the car door slammed shut. “After that, don’t bother coming back.” 

I want to be the one asking questions. Grilling you for a change. Asking you all kinds of personal stuff about your marriage and your kids and how often you use drugs. Would you like that? I didn’t think so. I’d sit there knowing when I was finished, I could leave this tiny room and get a burger and a Coke and walk down the street naked if I wanted and no one would think I was a bad person. I’ve gotten death threats. Did you hear? People who don’t even know me think I should be killed.    

The first night I slept in a park. Not Central Park, a smaller one downtown. There were lots of fancy buildings on the edge of it, like big glittery mirrors. A playground. A fountain. Dozens of benches smeared with bird poop. I put my duffel under my head like it was a pillow and a few hours later, when I woke up, a man had his hand down my shirt.  I screamed so loud I scared us both, before he took off with my stuff. I was too dazed to cry. All the money I’d saved was in the bag. I rummaged around in my jacket pockets, unearthing a quarter, a used tissue, and half a pack of gum. That stupid Frank Sinatra song kept playing in my head: Something about the news and being a part of it. 

I met Pete the next day at a Burger King on Seventh Avenue. He had a nose ring and his hair was bleached white with a green streak through it. He turned to me in the line and said: “You used to be able to come in here and get a burger for a buck.”

“Are they any good?” 

“How about I buy you one and you decide?” 

He also got me a medium fries and we split a vanilla shake. I looked terrible. I hadn’t showered and the makeup I’d applied in my bedroom at home was cakey and gross. Pete didn’t seem to notice.

He told me how he’d grown up on a farm in Utah with cows and chickens, instead of potatoes. “I’ll take you there sometime,” he told me.

I wasn’t sure if he was saying that because he wanted something from me or if he really meant it. “I don’t think I’d like a farm. I hate getting up early and I’m not good with animals.”

He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You have the most beautiful eyes. They give me chills. Look.”

He rolled up his sleeve and I saw he had a tattoo of an old-fashioned pocket watch on his bicep. Underneath it said: Don’t waste time. The rest of his arm was covered in goose bumps. 

“Look what your eyes have done. They’re so damn pretty they should be in a song.”

It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Plus, he was the only person I’d talked to since I got to the city.

After we finished eating, we walked down Broadway, making fun of the people dressed up as Minnie Mouse or Smurfs. One of the Elmos kept trying to shortchange the tourists he took pictures with until a guy punched him to get his money back. When it got dark, Pete invited me over to his place: a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. I remember the whole building smelled of piss and beer. He shared the tiny room with two other men. The walls were so thin you could hear people yelling on both sides.

How far did I think I’d get in New York City with no money? I never really thought about it. Now I know you can’t rent a closet for five times what I’d managed to save. I’m talking about an actual closet, with hangers and a light bulb that hangs from a chain.

“You’re a whore,” Pete would say.

He’d look up from the floor where he was picking at his guitar, hitting one sour note after another and calling me the worst names you can think of.

“You’re nuts. You need to check yourself into a hospital or something.”  

“Bitch. Without me, you’d be living on the streets.”

By this time, we were living in a different shelter. Pete claimed I was his wife but our marriage license had been stolen.     

He’d fling the guitar across the room and storm out. I wouldn’t see him for days. 

He wasn’t a mean drunk like my father. He never hit me. But there was something wrong with him I couldn’t fix. He’d be okay for a while and then out of nowhere he’d start saying the food at the shelter was poisoned or he’d accuse me of coming onto other guys behind his back. He’d get jittery and stay up all night, writing his “novel,” which was just a bunch of words strung together that didn’t make sense.     

“When they come for us, we need guns,” he used to say, staring at the door like someone was going to burst in any minute.

“We can’t afford a gun.”

It was true. We could barely afford a bottle of Pepsi.     

Plus, they do background checks in New York and neither of us would have passed. Back home, we have a Smith & Wesson. I went there once with a boyfriend. He owned a 69 Magnum that he took better care of than he did me. 

“Jalen says we got to get a gun.”     

“Uh huh.”

Jalen is one of the people inside the walls who talks to Pete. Not all the time. When he’s normal and I ask him about Jalen and Kryton and Ankara, he laughs and says he makes them up to tease me.     

The city is filled with sad people. You see them living out of cardboard boxes on Fifth Avenue, right in front of the expensive stores. Sometimes they have signs or dogs. No matter how awful things got, we were never that bad off. Every time I felt like going back to Maine, I thought about my father, and I stayed. Pete kept moving us from one shelter to the next. When it came time to fill out the papers and meet with social workers, he never acted crazy. He’d tell them how he’d been looking for work, how he wanted a better life for us.     

Pete likes to say everything happens for a reason. I guess he has a point.  There are millions of people in New York and who’s to say I wouldn’t have met some other guy if I’d walked into Dunkin’ Donuts instead. Maybe I’d have gotten a job somewhere. I used to walk into delis and coffee shops, tell them I could work the register or wait tables, whatever they needed. But they’d take one look at me and their faces would shut down. I was usually wearing something that didn’t fit right. And I must have smelled bad because I didn’t like taking showers at the shelters. The locks on the bathroom doors were broken and men were always walking in. Once, a guy grabbed me from behind and pushed me against the wall. I fought back. He only broke my nose. Pete found him and beat him up so badly they couldn’t wash his blood off the stairwell.     

It wasn’t always like that. I taught myself to play Pete’s guitar and sang on subway platforms with a wooden cigar box at my feet, where people put tips. Once in a while, Pete would get work unloading stuff from trucks. Then we could afford to treat ourselves. We’d ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth all day. It’s peaceful on the water. I felt like I was just another tourist taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty.     

“I love you, angel,” Pete said.

He’d have his arms around me, and he’d kiss the back of my neck and rub my hands to keep them warm.     

“You are the best thing in my life,” he’d say. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

Once, in winter, we bought roast chicken and potato chips and headed to the Hudson River. Pete called it a snow picnic.     

He used to go to church on Sundays. Sometimes I went with him. It was warm inside, and you could sit for as long as you wanted. No one threw you out. He comes from a religious family. They’re Mormons so for them God’s in charge of all the stuff you’re not allowed to do. Pete says how he’s through with that nonsense, but I don’t believe him. He still has his Bible from back home. The cover’s faded and the ink’s a little smeared. He carries it in a Ziploc bag from shelter to shelter, like a valuable sandwich.

I know being with Pete wasn’t good for me. Sometimes I’d lie awake at night thinking up ways to leave him. I’d picture myself on a bus or a train. I was always wearing clean clothes. I had money in my pocket and the air smelled like buttered rolls. Only that’s as far as I got: Transportation. I never had a real plan. And I knew it was only a dream. I couldn’t survive in the city without him.     

Right before I left Maine, my brother asked me to go out in the yard and shovel a path from the truck to the front door. He was taking a class at the community college and said he’d help me when he was done studying. After I finished with the path, I started making snow angels. He and I used to do that a lot. We’d get on our backs and wave our arms like mad and make angels with perfect wings. It was always so quiet in winter. The sky went on forever and sunlight tickled the branches of the pines, then slid down and warmed our faces. It was the closest I ever got to happiness.     

When I went back inside, my brother was lying on the couch with his face mashed into the pillow and his skin so white it was paler than snow. On the table beside him were lines of white powder that looked like sugar. It took twenty-three  minutes for the ambulance to come because the roads were so bad. The whole time I was talking to God in my head. Making imaginary bargains. Like I’d never steal lip gloss from Target again if only He’d fix it so my brother would be okay. I’d never cut school or talk back to my father or forget to make supper – you get the point. I even offered to switch places, so I’d be the one passed out and he’d be screaming wake up wake up wake up. 

The funeral was two days later. Because the ground was too frozen to bury him, they had to put his body into a storage unit until everything thawed out. We had a service at the cemetery anyway, just for show. Snow caked my eyelashes and made my teeth ache. Afterwards, the local paper wrote a story about us. How my brother was the eighty-first person to overdose in Maine that year. I was home when the reporter interviewed my father. She asked if we’d known my brother had a drug habit. That’s what she called it – a “habit.” As if it was something as casual as brushing his teeth at night or whistling under his breath. My father swore he didn’t know, but I did. I guess I was too stupid to realize what a big deal it was. I was more focused on my clothes and my friends and whether or not Trevor LaFroschia liked me. My brother wasn’t eating or sleeping. He’d gotten so skinny his pants kept slipping below his boxers, but every time I tried to talk to him about it, he promised to stop. My father was too busy drinking to notice. He could barely stand to look at me. Maybe he thought he’d already invested too much love in one kid, and it was easier to stop caring so he wouldn’t be crushed a second time. Or maybe he never really liked me to begin with.     

I used to see my brother all the time. He’d be sitting across the room from us at the shelter, eating a bowl of soup, or driving a truck up Eighth Avenue or getting on the downtown train just as the doors were closing. It wasn’t like with Jalen. I knew he wasn’t real. But he wasn’t a ghost either. It’s like all these other people had his face, only they didn’t know it.     

When Pete wasn’t around, I’d take out the molly I’d stolen from my brother’s bottom drawer and try to figure out how much it was worth. It didn’t look like much. Powdered sugar you could stretch into lines. But it was the only thing that could get me someplace better than where I was.     

Pete knew how to work the system, which meant we usually had someplace to stay. Only the shelters are too cold in winter and too hot in summer, so we played this game to keep our minds off the weather. It’s called “Would You?”

We’d ask each other questions like: Would you rather go to Germany or Australia? If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather have food or music? If you could change one thing, would it be where you live or how you look?     

Then we guessed which answer the other person would choose. I got pretty good at it. 

One time, we were asking each other how far we’d go for money. It was so cold in our room that my whole body hurt. Even my nose was cold, like a dog’s. We didn’t have a blanket. We were lying on the bed with our jackets over us.     

“Would you rather rob an old lady or a kid?” Pete asked.

The guy next door to us was beating on his girlfriend again and she was crying and cursing him in Spanish. Every time he hit her we could hear his fist smack some soft part of her body.     

Pete kept the game going. “When you broke into her apartment, would it be through the window or the door?”

“What do you think?”

“Window.”

“Correct.”

“Would you steal cash or jewelry?”

I guessed cash, but I was wrong.

“I’d take her wedding ring,” Pete said, “and give it to you.”

That’s how he asked me to marry him.     

Skyler and Sammi were born three months later. Those were the happiest days. I think I finally started to care about Pete, instead of thinking up ways to flat leave him. We got free formula and baby supplies and when we went to the soup kitchen for a free meal everyone would look at the babies and fuss over them. I took them with me when I sang in the subway. People gave me more money when they saw the girls, who laughed when trains rushed by. They weren’t scared. Trains were like big, noisy pets. And Pete liked being a dad. He’d change the girls’ diapers, push them in the stroller and walk the halls carrying them until they stopped crying and fell asleep. When I asked him about the people in the walls, he said Jalen and the others had gone into hiding for now and he didn’t know exactly where they were. He never called me names anymore or threw my things in the trash. He spent every free minute looking after his girls, singing to them in his high-pitched, cracked voice, which used to get on my nerves but now sounded as soothing as summer rain.     

In my favorite picture of us, Skyler’s wearing a pink headband with a bow on it that I found on the platform of the downtown A train. It cleaned up good in the wash. All the dirt came out and it looked like new. Sammi is wearing this big smile that’s always on her face. People comment on it. They say things like, What a happy baby. What a sweetheart. Not that Skyler isn’t happy, too. They have different personalities. When they were born, I was the only one who could tell them apart. The nurse put them in my arms, and I knew I finally had something that was mine. It was like holding the best part of me.     

The last shelter we lived in was in the Bronx. A small, dark building next to a liquor store so there were always drunks hanging around hassling you when you walked by. When I heard someone knocking, I thought Pete was back and he’d forgotten his key. The babies were lying on the sofa. I opened the door to see a girl standing there. She was older than me, with tangled black hair and olive skin. She had three kids with her. A little boy who looked about three and two older girls. I thought maybe she lived down the hall and wanted to know if I had any milk. That’s how stupid I am.     

Pete had a plan. We were going to Florida. Saving up, selling the molly a little at a time. All our money was rolled up in a sock. I used to count it when I was feeling low. He knew some guy whose friend worked construction and they were always hiring. We’d looked at photos of Miami on his phone. It was pretty – palm trees, sunsets, beaches, ocean. I pictured us feeding the seagulls, how the girls would learn to swim and have a good life. They’d never be cold. We’d live in a real house with a kitchen and a yard. People would get to know us.     

“I’m Pete’s wife,” the girl said, pushing her way past me, dragging her kids with her.

It felt like someone had punched me in the throat because the minute she said it I knew it was true.

“Get out,” I told her. “There’s nothing for you here.”

“I don’t want him back. I need money.”

The kids were looking at Skyler and Sammi. The girl looked at them too and shrugged her shoulders like they were nothing special.     

“Danny has to go to the dentist and Maya needs new shoes.”

I put my hands over my ears because I didn’t want to know her kids’ names. There were too many people in the room. It was hard to breathe.     

“You have to leave. You can’t stay here.”

I spoke really loudly – not yelling because I didn’t want Skyler and Sammi to think I was the type of person who yells – but loud enough to get the girl mad. She started screaming at me, saying how she was going to tell the cops about Pete and haul his sorry ass to jail, how he never saw his own kids anymore. He couldn’t just dump them like they were nothing.     

The babies started crying. I wanted to go over and pick them up, but her kids were in the way.     

“Stop,” I said, closing my eyes.     

I could see she didn’t blame me for anything. Even though she was mad, she felt sorry for me.     

The rest is a blur. I don’t remember how I got her out. I think I told her to leave her number. Or I promised I’d talk to him. Anything to get rid of her.     

By the time he came back, we were gone.     

We had rats in Maine. My father used to hide glue traps all over the place. I was the one who had to collect them and throw them in the trash. The rats’ eyes were always open, staring at me like they were trying to make me feel guilty. With sticky traps, they don’t die right away. Their feet get caught and they struggle for a long time. I think they die of a heart attacks or something. That’s how I feel – since you asked. Like I’m in a big sticky trap and the more I try to wriggle free, the more it hurts.

I’m a good mother. I know what that means because I didn’t have one. She took off when I was three and my brother was five. She didn’t leave a note saying she was sorry or that she’d write us with her address when she got where she was going. I remember her standing in front of the stove, cooking something yellow. My father says that can’t be right because she never cooked or cleaned a day in her life. According to him, she just lay around the house and complained. There aren’t any photographs. Maybe he threw them away or never took any to begin with. I’m not telling you because I want you to feel sorry for me. It’s not an excuse, just a fact.     

I didn’t know how to work the system like Pete did. When I applied for new housing, they said I already had a place to live. They wanted to know if Pete had abused me or the girls – if that’s why I wanted to leave. I said yeah, he did. I had to get away from him. Everything he told me was a lie. What’s one more? I’d seen his true self. A guy who could walk away from three kids and never look back is a guy who’d forget about us one day.     

The social worker was barely older than me. She wore jeans and a low-cut blouse. I thought she looked unprofessional.     

She took a small plastic frog from a drawer in her desk and gave it to Skyler. Sammi was asleep. “Let me check your file,” she said, thumbing through papers in a cream-colored folder.  

“I have a file?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“I’m sorry. That information is confidential.”

I could guess what was inside. Police reports from when I’d gotten caught buying weed and stealing food. All the times people had called social services about me, saying it was wrong to have my girls on the subway platform while I sang.

“Are you planning on filing charges against your husband?”

Pete and I aren’t legally married. We were waiting until we got to Miami, a sunset ceremony on the beach.     

“I’m leaving the city. We’re going to stay with my father in Houlton, Maine.”

“When?”

“Today. Could I use your phone? He’s going to wire us the money.”

“Certainly.”

She pushed the phone across the desk. It was four in the afternoon. I dialed and waited, listening to the phone ring in the empty house, picturing snow clouding the windows.     

“He’s not home yet. I’ll call back later.”

“Do you want to try him at work? We can look up the number.”

“He might be on the tractor,” I said, smiling harder.

There were potato fields surrounding our house, but nobody had farmed them in forty years. I was never going back to Maine. I didn’t want my father to lay a finger on my babies.     

“Do you think you could lend me money for bus fare and then when I get there, I’ll send you a check to pay you back?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Let’s see if we can find you a room for the night and we can call your father in the morning. Or I can keep trying him if you leave me his number.” 

“Sure.”     

I gave her the number of Just Bucks, in Houlton, where I used to work before it closed. 

“I can stay with a friend in Brooklyn tonight. My friend, Stacy. She’s a teaching assistant.  Is it okay if I come back tomorrow, around ten? That way, you can help figure out how I can get us the money.”     

She nodded, like she believed me. I guess watching Pete all this time had taught me a few things after all.     

When that girl knocked on the door, she ripped something loose in my heart. It wasn’t me I was worried about. It was the girls. Now they’d never have a father. The only thing they had was me. The thought left me shaky and hollowed out. I just wanted to stop feeling that way. I’d never taken molly before. You can ask Pete. He’ll tell you.     

They were working on the Second Avenue subway but there were still places you could get to underground, secret parts that weren’t finished. The workers had left a tarp on the platform, and I made a bed out of that. It was cold and I put the babies close to a steam pipe. That way, they’d be warm.

You know the rest. It was in all the papers. How a construction worker found us. How their skin turned purple and started blistering from the heat. How I couldn’t have known the pipe would burst.     

Tell me again what reckless endangerment means.     

Skyler has some breathing problems. And Sammi’s going to need another operation. But they’re alive. That’s all that matters. They’re alive. I did everything you said. I told exactly what happened. Now you have to let me out. I’ll never take drugs again. I swear. I’m their mother. That has to count for something.     

I know what I did was wrong. My babies almost died because of me. If you fix it so they’ll be okay I’ll do anything you say. Anything at all. I promise I won’t ever go near either of those girls again if the doctors make them well.     

When did it begin?

The first time we jumped out the window it had been snowing for a week. Drifts licked the side of the house. We opened my bedroom window as wide as it could go and sat on the ledge. The potato fields were tucked into a thick coverlet of snow.   

“Come on,” my brother said. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”

I wanted to believe him. Outside, jays screamed in the pines. The moon was icy white and all the potatoes were sleeping underground. When he grabbed hold of my hand, I felt the snow strike my face and before I knew it, we were falling.