It All Began In a Pile of Clothes at the Back of My Van

Here is a small sample of the opening of my novel.
The basic synopsis is Crazy Homeless Woman Makes Good.
The thing is, it can happen so easily, homelessness. One day you're an active member of society - one tragedy, and you're living on the streets and have become invisible.
The book gets off on a rollingly depressing start, and then really soars in the final chapters.
I'm an optimist; so sue me.
And yes, I am aware that I can't afford in real life to include even so much as one single line of Beatles music, but this is my rough draft and I'll damn well quote The Beatles if I feel like it.

Input is otherwise quite welcome.

Contents

 

I.                    This Part is Called: The Downside of Fairy Tales

 

1.       Five-Cigarette Fairy Tale

2.       Tell Cinderella She Better Watch Her Back

3.       Once A Pumpkin, Always a Pumpkin

4.       The Amazing Adventures of Ruthie On The Lam

5.       Princes Who Are Not Charming Need Not Apply

6.       Whatever Happened to Charging in On a White Horse?

7.       You Call This a Fairy Godmother?

8.       Illegally Blonde

9.       Once Upon a Time…

 

II.                  This Part is Called: When You Wish Upon a Star

 

10.   Does This Apple Taste Bitter to You?

 

III.                This Part is Called: And She Lived Happily Ever After (Although Not In the Way She Might Have Expected)

 

 

 

THIS PART IS CALLED:

THE DOWNSIDE OF FAIRY TALES

 

 

Five Cigarette Fairytale

 

I sat and stared at the round window as my clothes swirled among the suds, concentrating on the white noise of fifty washing machines in an effort to drown out the monotony of my thoughts. Little round window with my own face staring glumly back at me. Brown eyes – bloodshot. Straight hair that was too thin and wispy to be much good for anything – dirty dishwater blonde, my parents used to call it. Round, expressionless face I hardly even recognized anymore. Seriously, if I didn’t know I was staring at my own reflection, I would have thought it was someone else, while most anybody else simply wouldn’t look twice. Just one more nameless face in the city, far from home.

 I was sitting in one of many yellow plastic chairs. The brothers of the chair gaped at me from varying positions along dirty white walls. I wondered where their occupants had gone. Trick-or-Treating, maybe? The Laundromat was empty, save for its lone caretaker, a thin, angry-looking woman with dark roots and high hair who apparently had never been told that smoking was a dirty habit best done outside the establishment. I used to be the kind who didn’t tell people these things myself, so instead I sat in the chair and tried to re-focus on the front of the washing machine. A watched washing machine never boils, I thought absently. God knows you don’t need to stare at yourself a moment longer.

                I glanced at the woman behind the counter. Was she angry, or just bored out of her skull like me? The harsh lines along her lips were grooved permanently into her face, a matter of fate more than choice, I decided.

                “My kids are out Trick-or-Treating with their dad,” I announced. ”My son, Stuart- he wanted to be a Ninja Vampire. Can you believe that? I don’t know where he comes up with these things.” I was proud of him, though – proud to have such a quirky kid. “Lucy, she’s a princess. Typical little girl – but she’s sweet – loves animals.” I was talking too much – felt like an idiot, but it seemed like I hadn’t spoken out loud to anyone in two or three days now. Funny, thinking of myself as someone with no one to talk to, coming from such a big family and all.

                She glanced over at me and flicked her cigarette into a green glass ashtray on the Formica countertop that could have come right out of the living room of my childhood.

                “I know it’s just Halloween,” I apologized, “but I’ve never been without them on a holiday before.”

                The woman pressed her cigarette into the tray with such force I thought I’d offended her. She came around the counter and sat in the yellow chair against the wall beside the counter. When she spoke, it was impossible to distinguish the huskiness of years worth of smoke inhalation from the whittled dryness of years worth of harbored grudges. “I thought I’d married fucking Prince Charming or something, but then my ex-husband ran off with a damn waitress.”  I spent the next half hour listening to a harrowing story of betrayal and abuse, drenched in the woman’s bitterness more thoroughly than my clothes in the rinse cycle.  The main theme of her tale was that assholes who leave their wives for waitresses are the worst kind of assholes around, and that their children never get over it. It was a five cigarette fairytale, ending with “He has completely fucked up my poor kids for life.”

                “That’s awful,” I managed inadequately, “How long ago did he leave you?”

                I had this habit then of trying to measure the potential length of my pain against the experiences of others.

                “Thirty years ago,” she said dryly, lighting another cigarette, “The son-of-a-bitch died last year without ever having to pay a cent of child support.”

                I shoved my clothes from the dryer into my basket, eager to get out of the glare of the chair and its occupant. She stared at me significantly, seeming to expect some sort of response.

                “That bastard!” I smothered a nervous smirk on my way out the door, swearing to God if he was listening that there was no way in hell I was ever going to be that bitter thirty years down the road.

                So I can tell you right now, this is not going to be a story about how horrific shit happened to me and I came out of it a stronger, better person. In my family, shit happens to you and then you make a joke out of it and move on. Maybe it’s not psychologically sound, but it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than the alternative. Besides, psychologically sound is not exactly my style. Instead you get the delightful story of how I handled the situation in a manner characteristic of my family’s dysfunction and fell in love with the real deal despite it all. And it’s no less happy just because I had to kill him off, either. You’ll see.

               

 

                 

 

 

 

This Chapter is Called:  Tell Cinderella She Better Watch Her Back

 

When I was younger, so much younger than today,

I never needed anybody's help in any way.

But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,

Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

 

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being round.

Help me get my feet back on the ground,

Won't you please, please help me?

 

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,

My independence seems to vanish in the haze.

But every now and then I feel so insecure,

I know that I just need you like I've never done before.

              

                                                             ~ Lennon/McCartney

 

It all began innocently enough. I don’t like to be alone, that’s the bottom line. I was raised in this big family. There was always someone around: My brother bursting into my room to yell something at me about the Russian Revolution; two little sisters pounding on the bathroom door; cognitively impaired older sister tapping on the door telling me, “Don’t worry. I’m your best friend. If you need anything, I’ll be right over there in my room.” All I ever wanted was a moment of privacy, time to be myself, to hear myself think. I used to lock my bedroom door and tell my sisters, “Quiet! I’m trying to ‘find’ myself!’” I didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but it sounded right. I was lost, that’s what it was. I thought I was lost in the constant din of sibling voices – Plain old Ruth, the middle child, lost in the shuffle, invisible to the naked eye whenever my brother announced some new concept to worship or my baby sister threw another tantrum. It was all bullshit, of course. Most of the Ultimate Truths I bought into as a teenager were complete bullshit.

                I might have been thinking about that the night I was lying in the backseat of my van, under a pile of clothes and garbage bags trying to keep warm, shivering. Everything I ever thought was true was utter and complete crap, and now I’d screwed up so badly I was homeless.  I might not have thought those exact words, but the idea was there, staring me in the face more relentlessly than the threat of hunger. I had more prominent things on the surface of my mind, though – like the police. What if I did manage to fall asleep out here? I was exhausted. There’d be a pounding noise on the window, a stern-faced officer peering in at me. What would he do? At best he’d tell me to drive on. “We don’t allow people to loiter around here. Move on!”

 

                 I remembered when I was seventeen at the women’s shelter, right after my mother left me there. It was dark then, too, when the police came and took the homeless woman away. Originally they’d brought her in from where they found her sleeping on the beach. Now she’d been asleep in the bed next to mine, a disheveled older woman with eyes that had been like bottomless pits when she was awake. At some point during the night, I felt her leaning over me, heard her breathing – and abruptly the lights on and they were there, a man and a woman in uniform, taking her away. I curled under the thin blanket – you know the ones - those ones that feel like felt, and have the fake satin borders around them  - and listened over the pounding of my heart as someone out in the hall whispered something about the woman being a child molester…

 

                Maybe the police would just find me a better place to sleep. That would be a relief. They’d find some shelter that was open in the middle of the night that would be willing to take me in. I could park my van somewhere around the back. I could get some kind of help.

                The thought of help made it hard to breathe right. I swallowed ineffectually and squeezed my eyes shut. Hot tears ran into my ears, tickling me. The only warmth I’d come in contact with all day. I cried harder.

                I started sort of talking to God. It’s a funny thing, how horrible things happen to some people and they get mean and cynical; while those same things happen to other people and they decide to come out of it on a more positive note. I wasn’t sure what the difference was, but in my case I started talking to God - It seemed a damn sight better than just sitting there crying, or talking to myself.  

                I listened for a moment to the sound of the cars whooshing by out on the streets – the cough of some other homeless person passing by who wasn’t fortunate enough to have a van to sleep in…

Yup, just me and God. So I said, “Hey, God?” and then I cried so much harder at the sound of my small, weak little voice in the silence of the cold van. “I’m sorry!” I wept, “I didn’t mean it! I know I messed up! Please get me out of this somehow – “I choked on the words shook convulsively under my protective pile.

                 I really needed some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be another long day trying to pull my life back together. I released my hair and grabbed what felt like a long-sleeved t-shirt. I sat up and felt around for the top of the shirt, then struggled to pull it over the sweater I was already wearing. Sure it should have gone under the sweater, but it was dark and I was cold and tired. Besides, it was too cold to take off a layer and try to get it right. I felt around and tried to yank up another piece of clothing. It came up so easily I fell back a little. Feeling the tiny buttons across the soft material, I held it to my face and cried. I scooted back down into my cocoon of clothes and wept into my daughter’s empty little shirt, clutching it in my fists like someone was going to come along and tear this from my hands, too.

                Silence.

                Except for my grief, it was still quiet.

                So quiet that I realized after a moment that I wasn’t crying anymore. I was just lying there hanging onto my hair and the baby’s shirt like an idiot, just listening to nothing.

                It occurred to me that my hands in my hair, up against my face: That was the closest thing to physical contact with living flesh that I’d felt in two months. .. I wiped my face on the shirt and blew my nose into it, feeling dirty and small for having to do it, but it’s not like there was any Kleenex in the van, or like I could have found it if there was.  Worse, there was no baby to wear the shirt, anyway. I sighed heavily; trying to shed the weight on my soul and stave off more tears, then reached out and pulled at another piece of clothing – jeans. Crap. Those were as cold as the upholstery. I felt around again and came up with what felt like another sweater, only this time I wrapped it around my shoulders and lay down with it. One sleeve was tucked around the shoulder pressed against the back seat, while I pulled the other one across my back and around to my chin. It felt almost like someone was holding me, if I closed my eyes and imagined hard enough.

And that’s how it started, really – with me homeless, crying under a pile of clothes in my van, parked outside the back of the old abandoned K-mart. Alone. Scared. Freezing. I closed my eyes and sort of pathetically imagined someone holding me. The back of the seat - that’s where he was. I don’t know why I had to go and decide it was a he, but there he was, lying there with me and just holding me, breathing in and out against my back and telling me everything was going to be all right. “Hey,” he said, “Ruthie, don’t cry. It’s going to be just fine. Trust me. You’re not alone, and you’re gonna get out of this, all right? You cry whenever you need to, but don’t you ever give up.” I know it sounds crazy, but it was kind of like talking to God again, only this time he was talking back. Anyway, I just defy you to be raised on Disney movies and then end up homeless and alone and see how you handle it. You come up with something better in the same situation, you let me know.  Not being the Cinderella type, all I could do was imagine this Prince Charming guy existed and kind of liked me. With my fabulous self-esteem, this was the best I could come up with at the time. It was a damn sight less self-indulgent than lying there asking God why he let me get into this situation in the first place.