At the Edge of the Haight Read online

  At the EDGE

  of the HAIGHT

  by Katherine Seligman

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2021

  To David

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Acknowledgments

  chapter 1

  Root skimmed the sidewalk with his nose, sniffing at food wrappers, a black boot, and a pair of red tights someone had tossed in a perfect Z. I put my hand on his neck and nudged him past. “Not your business,” I said. He locked his eyes on me because he knew I had bread and cheese in my pack. They always kicked you out after breakfast, but you could take whatever you wanted if you stayed late to help clean up. It meant splitting from Ash and everyone, but I knew where they’d be, sitting at the front of the park, waiting for things to get started. I should have been there too, but of course I didn’t know that until later.

  It was too early for tourists to be out. Two men stood at the bus stop, coats drawn up against the fog and whatever else had blown in overnight. Jax was slumped on the corner in his wheelchair, snoring in small puffs, a gray blanket draped over his head. Otherwise, no one was around except for hardcore sleepers twisted in doorways, still too wasted to hear the cleaning truck brushing water against the curb, as if that did anything. You could always see what was left behind.

  I kept trying to hurry Root along, but he was taking his time, until the truck churned alongside us and he stopped and tilted his head to the smell like he was thinking about it. Then he took off, racing down the street, his tail flicked up straight. He crossed at the corner and disappeared into the bushes. I tore after him, my pack slapping against my back.

  “Root!” I yelled in a frantic voice. I’d taken him to the free clinic downtown a few weeks ago, foam spilling out of his mouth from something he found. They’d pumped his stomach and lectured me to take better care of him, as if I could make him act right when we stayed in Golden Gate Park. They told me I should think about giving him up so he could be adopted and be safe, in a house. They didn’t get it. We took care of each other.

  “Root, get your ass out of there,” I screamed. “I mean it!”

  There was no trace of him, but he knew his way around the park. We all did. I reached in and rattled the brush, which was waist high.

  “Root!”

  He came halfway out, his muzzle crusted with dirt. He looked at me the way he did when he knew he was in trouble. I grabbed for his collar, but missed, and he scrambled back in. I followed him through the brush into a small clearing and I kept talking to him, what did he think he was doing, he was crazy, so I didn’t see right off what was in front of me. But Root was looking down, at a kid lying on the ground, perfectly still, his eyes wide open to the sky. His head was turned a little to one side, his arms spread out as if he was making an angel in the dirt.

  Root sniffed his face and neck. The kid stuttered in a single long breath and I stood there, watching, holding my own. Root licked his cheek and edged his nose down the kid’s chest toward a seeping stain of blood. In the middle, almost hidden, was a tiny slit in his shirt. I couldn’t stop looking at the blood, the kid’s halo of light brown hair, and for once in twenty years on this earth I couldn’t seem to move.

  I knew I would see it for the rest of my life. Whenever I closed my eyes, he would be there, his life leaking out on the ground. Maybe it was true what my stand-in of a mother said. You are going to end up damaged goods. I couldn’t help copying her voice. “You are going to be sorry,” I said to Root and pulled him away from the kid. I wanted to put my hand on the kid’s chest to see if it was moving, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. My heart was banging against my chest. Who was I going to scream for? Ash and everyone else, they wouldn’t hear me.

  Root startled and growled with his mouth closed, a slow deep rattle he made when he knew he was on guard. We both looked over at a man standing at the edge of the clearing. He could have been there the whole time, waiting, or maybe he’d walked in right after us. He was a head taller than me, his black and gray hair pushed back into a stringy ducktail. I had a sweatshirt hood pulled up over my head so nothing about me stood out, but Root was something you’d remember. He looked like he’d been sewn together, his face soft Labrador, the rest some short, wide pit bull creation.

  The man stuck his hands in the pockets of his camo pants and stared at us. I tried to stare back, but all I could do was reach for Root, who moved from a muffled growl to an all-out bark. I didn’t usually make people nervous, but the man shifted back and forth, crunching sticks and leaves under his boots, which made Root bark louder. The man lunged toward us, then stopped, like he forgot something. I thought how easily he could come after me. No one would know. I’d be lying there, next to the kid. The cops would think we’d done it to each other.

  “Keep a handle on the fucking dog,” he said, wiping at what looked like blood on his forehead. I could tell he was used to ordering people around.

  It seemed like minutes passed, but it must have been less because neither of us moved. Even Root stood still, his eyes on the man. And then, not thinking where I was headed, I turned and ran. Root kept up, loping next to me. “You heard me?” he yelled after us. “I know where to find your ass.”

  I scrambled across the uneven dirt and past some trees, until I had to bend in half and gulp air. I listened for the man, but all I could hear was my own quick breath, or maybe it was his, or the wind. I couldn’t tell what was real. The carpet of yellow and brown leaves where I stood looked too bright. They smelled sweet but rotten. When I straightened up, my muscles were ready for more, but I couldn’t do it. The loop had started playing in my brain, of the kid on the ground and the look in the man’s eyes.

  I knew something about getting away. I’d been doing that most of my life, but not like this. No one had tried to stop me when I left the house where I’d lived longer than anywhere else. They had no idea where I was, standing in a park hundreds of miles away, alone in a whole different way. Root whined softly and I put a finger sternly to my lips, as if he’d know what that meant. Quiet, I mouthed. No one was coming to help. I could run through the park all the way to the ocean, but then where would I go? I turned toward the other direction, which led back to the street, and my body took over and I was running again, pretending I was someone who knew what she was doing.

  chapter 2

  We ran past a group of joggers in black leggings, who nodded at us, then stepped out of the way to give Root room. “No worries,” said the last one, over whatever was playing on her headphones. She should be worried, I wanted to say, because she was headed toward the man and that kid. But I was relieved other people were filling up the park. Two gardeners with a ladder walked toward us. I could hear traffic from the street. Maybe I had a chance.

  We slowed down when we reached a row of bright green benches surrounded by beds of yellow flowers and trees with big waxy leaves, then stopped at the lake that was supposed to make the park entrance look like a place you’d want to be. Every week they had to unclog the drain and clean o
ut whatever was floating on top, but the water always went back to swampy green. They blamed us. But we were the ones who watched out for it. We made a sign, we don’t trash your house, and sometimes people laughed and dropped change.

  Ash, Fleet, and Hope sat in a circle near the lake on one of the small dry patches of grass. The lawn was mushy in places and gone in others because we had worn it down, but also because the park people kept turning on the sprinklers, probably so we wouldn’t get too comfortable.

  “Mad,” said Ash. “Where you been?” He was digging in his pack and smiled with one half of his mouth, like the other part was too busy. I was sweating, still breathing hard, but I could have been back from recycling, my pack loaded with change. I could have stayed to clean up the whole shelter. I could have been anywhere. They had no idea. We were all travelers, with business no one else needed to know. Someone always had to go somewhere in a hurry, whether they were running to or from something. You didn’t ask because you probably didn’t want to know, even if these were the people you were with every day and night. I waved at Ash but didn’t stop.

  When I reached the street, I snapped on Root’s leash and ducked into the music store on the corner. I could spend hours looking through the aisles and no one would bother me or ask if I needed help. No one would complain if I took a handful of the lollipops they kept at the register but didn’t buy anything. It was warm and the store played tunes with a deep bass that echoed off the high ceiling and concrete floor into my chest. I didn’t have to think in there. The music knocked everything out of my brain. Root always perked up because they kept a little tin bowl of biscuits behind the counter. He never wanted to leave until he got one.

  I didn’t go to the counter, so he pulled on his leash and I had to push him and squeeze my fingers around his mouth to keep him quiet. He tried to wiggle away, but I clamped down tighter and then slid behind a corner rack while my heart calmed down. Bins of albums and CDs stretched out in front of me. I forced myself to read the names on them and checked the clock every few minutes until I saw that an hour had passed. The man had not walked into the store so I must have lost him. To make sure, I stayed another half hour. A deep steady reggae tune boomed into me. When I got up to leave, Root pulled me to the counter.

  “Sit,” said the guy behind the register, holding out a biscuit to Root, as if he hadn’t been through enough, but he obeyed and planted his backside on top of my foot. He gulped it down without chewing and I pulled him out of the store.

  My first week on the street I had found Root tied to a parking meter, scrawny and sad, his ribs looking like delicate sticks. I’d sat down next to him and he whimpered and climbed into my lap. He stayed there, chewing on my fingers until he fell asleep. No one came to get him, so I untied the rope and took him with me. I did have a habit of taking things, but Root was different. It wasn’t the same as walking into a store in Los Angeles where there was too much stuff and no one noticed if I lifted chapstick or a pack of batteries I didn’t need. I sometimes left my take on top of a trashcan or the free bin at the shelter. It was a private deal I had with myself: I could take things as long as they weren’t for me. But Root was clearly my dog. He followed me everywhere, into the bathroom at the park or at the shelter, and he barked if anyone tried to touch him when I wasn’t there. His eyes, one blue and one brown, were on me all the time.

  Outside the music store, a group of tourists filtered past me, pushing to stay close to the leader who carried a blue flag on a stick. They followed her like noiseless baby ducks. One woman aimed her camera at me, but I turned my back. Someone needed to tell her that nothing was free now. If you stared you should pay, Ash said. Usually I would put up a cup for change, but I wasn’t in the mood. Where was I going to sleep? The guy in the park might come looking at the shelter. And I couldn’t go back to the park. I’d have to post up somewhere, maybe without Root. If anyone wanted to find me all they had to do was ask about him.

  I passed a store with a leftover cemetery scene from Halloween in the window, a ghost lifting its bloody, smiling head out of a grave. It looked like it was staring at me. The used clothes store next door had a mannequin in a Cinderella costume hanging on a zip line. I sat down outside a head shop, the front painted a bright neon rash of stars and planets. I leaned back, Root between my knees. My legs felt like bags of sand. What did I do to deserve this? I avoided trouble most of the time. I stayed away from drama. I didn’t fight. So why did I have to see a kid who got wasted and the guy who probably did it?

  The last of the tourists straggled out of the park, finished with the museums and gardens and ponds. They didn’t want to be left alone, not at the end of the day, with us, and the knots of kids chanting “X, buds, X, buds, X, buds” like it was a prayer. Some took out cash, hunched over so they could hide it, and bought plastic bags of who knows what. You could sell anything and charge them double. They didn’t know.

  I was too undone to look anyone in the eyes, which might have gotten me a box of food or a sandwich. One time a lady started a fight with her man on the sidewalk right in front of me, telling him how selfish he was for not handing over the rest of his steak dinner. He didn’t need it so why didn’t he give it to the girl, who was obviously hungry. He stomped off, the box under his arm, and she yelled after him about how he didn’t see anything unless it had to do with his own self. But then she went running after him. Who could figure that out?

  “There you are,” said Ash, coming up next to me. He sat down, put a hand on my back, where it felt like an electric pulse.

  “Hold on to Root?” I said.

  I passed him the leash and he took it, without asking why. He thought everything was still a big love project the way it was on the street years ago, long before he was here. Just show up and you’d find what you need.

  “Only tonight,” I said. “I’ll hit you up in the morning and get him.”

  Ash wrapped the leash tightly around his hand. He was a skinny upside-down triangle, with heavy dark blond dreads that ran down his back and a single patch of beard on his chin. He had one tattoo, what looked like a loop of string, in the crease of his right arm.

  He handed me the end of a bottle of Wild Turkey and headed off toward the shelter. It was edging colder, and the sun was dissolving into thin layers of pink and blue on its way behind the trees. I didn’t see anyone I knew. They would be at the shelter, bunched up in line, waiting to get a bed, or disappearing back into the park. I headed around the corner to an empty flat where someone had jacked open a window last week. Word got out. We knew, even if we didn’t stay there, because you never knew what you were going to find in a squat.

  There were already six kids on the cracked concrete steps out front. I held up the bottle of Wild Turkey and sat next to the one guy I’d seen before, Serenity. He sold the same weed as everyone, except he named it after himself. People remembered and they came looking. He smiled and passed me a joint. I tried to turn it down, but he narrowed his eyes in disappointment and I took it, inhaled deeply, and handed him my bottle. My head was spinning because I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I leaned back and looked at the bright blue apartment building across the street. It had what looked like real gold trim along the roof and windows that curved out over the sidewalk. A man on the top floor inched a pot onto a table. Steam rose up and started fogging the window. I imagined going over there for dinner, eating whatever was in the pot. I would be sitting across from him and it would be like every other dinner he had. Except for me. I was set to wave if he looked out, but he didn’t.

  Serenity passed me the end of the joint and I took a hit. He put an arm around my shoulder and led me up the stairs to the front door, which was cracked and looked like it had been glued back together. I let myself unwind the tiniest bit. The front room had a stained couch, a metal lamp bent in half and boxes of what looked like rusted nails. The carpet was rolled to one side. I sat on the couch, put my head back, tried not to think about the guy in the park, and closed my eyes, h
opefully signaling that I would be out of contact for a while. I was drifting, buzzed from the weed, when the jamming started, first Serenity on his harmonica, then a kid with a banjo and someone drumming on a plastic bucket with chop sticks that made a hollow, sharp sound. Another kid danced around the room, working his hips, pawing the air with his hands. Someone brought out cups of crusted lentils that the Civil Food people had handed out in the park in the morning and cans of Red Bull from the guy who drove around in a car shaped like a giant soda can. You’d wave at him and he’d toss cans out the window. He didn’t care how many times you waved. I sipped the sharp sweet liquid to force down the cold lentils. It was pointless to try to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see that kid laying in the park, just on the other side of living who knows what kind of life.

  chapter 3

  Most of the time I could shut out everything else and talk to myself like I was another person. The first time I cut school I looked in the bathroom mirror. “Maddy,” I said, taking myself in, “what are we going to do?” And I knew I would go to the beach, hang out, walk by the house I used to live in, which is exactly what happened. But sitting on the couch, still speeding on Red Bull and fear, I could not force the conversation. I made myself stare up at a hole in the ceiling, right above me. With both eyes open it was an egg about to drop, but if I closed one it was a far-away star. Fixing on that kept me from thinking back on what happened. Maybe the kid in the park had gotten up and walked away. How did I know? I hadn’t gotten close enough to touch him.

  Near morning the room was quiet, but my brain felt like someone was in there moving furniture. I was jumpy and sweaty when I heard a knock on the door. Through the crack I could see Ash and Root, his nose wedged at the bottom of the door. Ash’s dreads hung in a wet clump down his back and his eyes were red, but at least he’d gotten a bed last night. They opened the shelter every winter, but there were always too many of us. We lined up if it was cold or rainy, even though we all felt the same way about the rules. If you got a bed, you had to be inside before eight at night, no coming and going, and leave at eight each morning. They said they wanted you looking for work or going to school or attending to your future, which was not sitting around in there doing nothing. So mostly we hung on the street, at the park or the library, as soon as it opened since they had to let you in there.