I stayed in that park until the sun went down and then I stayed longer. I found a bench not near a streetlight and did something like sleep for some hours. In the middle of the night I found a jar in a trash bin and I pissed in it and then I placed the jar back in the trash bin and I know that may seem a little ridiculous, but I thought it gave sleeping in a park just a shred of dignity if I didn’t pee right into the dirt like an animal, that if I could contain my own waste then I was somehow a person on an adventure, not a person with limited options and limited means and possibly dwindling sanity.
In the morning, there were birds. There were birds here just like there are birds anywhere.
28
Sometimes, I realized, many emotions sit on a face, at odds: a lip curl, a neck tilt, an echo in an eye. This was clear when the shed door opened and a woman was there and she didn’t seem too surprised by me being there, slumped sideways and using a wad of garden gloves as a pillow and I squinted from the sudden light and she said, Oh, dear, and she seemed happy and annoyed at the same time, pinched brow, tiny smile, her eyes doing something else entirely.
Well, good morning, she said, and I said something and she said, Is everything all right?
(And everything was not all right because I had been wandering for days or weeks, unsure of where I was going, eating from trash bins, being alone, the way Werner said I wasn’t meant to be, and I would show him, I thought, except I’d show him without actually showing him, because he wouldn’t see me sleeping in sheds and under grapevines in pitch-black vineyards because I’d done that all alone, waiting for daylight, waiting for an idea of what to do with myself, wondering if this kind of aloneness was what I really wanted—)
I’m all right, I said, but she didn’t say anything else and I realized she was waiting on more of an explanation, but all my explanations seemed to be at odds with my mouth, were on strike, had called in sick, or maybe never existed and I felt like crucial organs had taken off in the middle of the night, like my kidneys had crawled up my body and out my ears and left two small sandbags in their place and all my lymph nodes had been burned into charcoal lumps—
I was walking and got lost, I finally said. It was dark. I’m sorry.
No reason to apologize, dear, it happens to the best of us.
It does not, I thought but did not say, because I knew I was not a part of the best of us, and these kinds of things did not happen to the best of us, just to some of us in extremely rare cases when a person forgets how to reach any reasonable wing of herself, but I wasn’t going to go correcting this woman (Ruth, she said, putting her hand out to help me up) because I knew, at least, that telling a stranger that you couldn’t reach any reasonable wing of yourself just wasn’t a pleasant or helpful thing to say, not a good first impression, not a thing to say in daylight.
Ruth sighed and smiled. Stay for brekkie, then? Get cleaned up?
The house was antique and silent, and she showed me to a little, white bathroom and said I could use the green soap, the one shaped like a seashell. I unlatched my backpack and let it thud behind me and shed all my clothes and turned on the claw-foot tub, and I stared into a mirror, my tanned skin exaggerating the white in my eyes, hair wisps curling with sweat, dirt smeared around my face.
When the tub filled I slid in and soaked and forgot where I was and I thought about the question of whether the police had taken away the papers that Ruby had dropped off at the professor’s office that day, because once I had asked him if he still had those papers and he said he wasn’t sure where they had gone; and I said, You don’t remember? Why don’t you remember? Husband: It was a long time ago, Elly, and it was a very difficult year— And I: But why wouldn’t you remember what happened to them? And he’d said nothing or something that amounted to nothing, and I tongued this memory like a burn in my mouth until the bathwater cooled and shook me back into my body where my fingerprints were ruffled.
* * *
In the living room an elderly woman was slumped like a sandbag in an ornate wingback chair.
Nina, I’d like you to meet Elyria, Ruth said. Elyria, this is Nina.
Nice to meet you, I said, trying to seem calm and normal and nice — not a woman with a wildebeest renting a room in her, not a woman who sleeps in garden sheds and phone booths and anywhere — but my voice sounded like I had borrowed it and it didn’t fit my mouth, not my real thoughts made into real words, but some awkward hand-me-down.
It’s lovely to meet you, dear, Nina said, not looking up. Her belly paunch looked like risen dough.
Mother, Ruth said, you could make an effort at the very least.
A what?
An effort, Ruth said louder, you could — would you just sit up? We have a guest, Mother, really.
Fine, fine, Nina said, but she didn’t move any part of herself. She was wearing five or six pearl necklaces tangled together. A bowl of wet blueberries was balanced on her gut and a tear of blueberry skin was wedged between her front teeth.
I’m just going to the garden for some herbs, Ruth said. I’ll be right back. There’s coffee and tea if you’d like it.
Nina looked around the room as if someone might try to sneak up on her, then looked at me.
So, how is it? Sleeping in the garden shed?
Oh, it’s just okay, I said.
I think it sounds like fun. I’d like to have some fun again. Once I slept sitting up on a train. Imagine that. A young woman all dressed to travel — just sleeping — sitting up sleeping with her gloves and hat still on!
* * *
After I went at a plate of scrambled eggs and toast like a stray dog, then a second plate, then a bowl of fruit and more butter-heaped toast, Ruth started asking questions (the expected ones: where-was-I-from, where-was-I-going, why-had-I-slept-in-her-shed) and I tried to sip tea as if I was the kind of person who sipped tea as I told her the truth: that I wasn’t lost because I no longer had a destination, that the place I’d wanted to stay in New Zealand had fallen through and the backup plan had fallen through. I really do enjoy being alone, I told her, and I tried to smile, but I realized that I wasn’t quite smiling and what was happening was there was water on my face and it was coming from my eyes and this was surprising to me, but it didn’t seem to surprise Ruth, who tilted her head and asked about my family as if she was a therapist, someone accustomed to sudden, naked pain, and I found myself unable to lie like I had so many other times.