Last night I mistook a streetlight for the moon. I’m still feeling a little funky this afternoon—the smoke from the Devil Canyon fire is getting to me. But I blame the sun, the damn sun—it never extends a comforting shadow.
The little girl with her dope-fiend mother approaches me in Pioneer Park. I’m surrounded by the donations bucket and a cast-off Christmas wreath I found in a garbage dumpster. The wreath, with its velvety red ribbons, albeit creased with mud, lends a festive zing to my presentation.
The girl clutches a G.I. Joe combat doll, one of the older models. The doll is half naked, missing its pants, a look of distaste engraved on its plastic face. With her other hand, the girl tugs at her mother’s army surplus jacket.
“Honey, let go of my coat. You’re gonna tear it.”
The kid checks me out with an expression that’s half Jean Seberg in Saint Joan and half Marlon Brando. A facial dialectic hewn from stoic resignation about what the future has in store for her. In tandem with a fount of volcanic rage. All tied together by uncertainty.
Her pinched face belongs to someone who’s found out way too young that an awareness of life comes from a proximity to death. In this instance, that happens to be her mother. The woman’s long brown hair is matted and unwashed. Her thin patrician features are pitted and scored with moles and wrinkles.
The girl puts on her best tough-guy act. She torques her face into a passable television-gangster scowl. Chin up, eyes blazing. “Pastor?”
“Yes, my daughter? What is it that you need?”
“Can you ask god to bring us a nice Christmas?”
I must not lie. It is a sin. Horribly so. For her sake, I will. “You bet I can. I have the know-how.”
“You can get the job done?”
“I’ve got the tools and the skills.”
“How do I know you’re the real thing?”
“Because I’ve paid my dues.”
“You’re no perpetrator?”
“No additives or preservatives. No MSG.”
“For sure?”
I level a first-class stare at the girl, fortified with all the historical consciousness I have at my disposal. A stare that transmits the essentials of my worldview. Read my eyes, child. In our time, identities are permeable, if not interchangeable. Yet certain truths remain inviolate. History favors the poor. Tomorrow belongs to you.
I whinny: “I’m the real deal. The last show in town.”
She lets out a charming giggle. We get down to business. I flip the donations bucket upside down. I lower my haunches onto the makeshift seat. I extend my right arm to her. “Let me help you make your dreams real.”
The girl’s wee nose burns red with embarrassment. Her mother gives her an affectionate nudge. “C’mon, honey. I ain’t got all afternoon. Talk to him, will you?”
She launches herself in one short hop and bounds onto my lap. The kid is surprisingly light. Holding her is like cradling someone who’s not completely in this world, but in some other world, too. A place where no one can go unless she invites them.
She looks up at me, peruses the rust-brown bloodstains on my robe. She gives me the benefit of the doubt by not saying anything about them. Then she invites me into that other world of hers with a whiff of licorice-flavored breath brushing my cheek: “I’m Sally. And my mom is Crazy Diane.”
The girl’s mother, with intuitive streetwise wisdom, has discreetly stepped beyond earshot. She’s energetically panhandling a passing tech employee for a cigarette.
“Why is your mother called that?”
“She smokes rocks.”
“A lot?”
“When she’s got money. And even when she doesn’t.”
“And where do the two of you live?”
“Pioneer Motel on Fifth Street.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“Pelican Bay.”
I do a tally. Her father is upstate in the pen. Her mother smokes crack. They reside in an SRO motel room. No wonder the G.I. Joe doll she owns looks so rough-and-tumble. Living at the Pioneer is rugged. Cockroaches on the ceiling. No place to cook.
“So what do you want for Christmas?”
I know what she’ll say—she will ask for a miracle. She’ll demand a world where the refrigerator is always full. Where spaghetti simmers on the stove, an apple pie in the oven. In a pip-squeak trill, she announces: “I want my mom in rehab.”
Crazy Diane overhears her daughter’s wish. She cackles, visibly pleased, two pink spots on her dead-white cheeks. “That would be a nice gift, sweetie.” She then crosses the sidewalk to accost an off-duty bus driver still in uniform. He’s got a pint-sized Christmas tree stashed under his left arm. She taps his hand, asking him for spare change.
I want this moment to last forever—Sally holding her G.I. Joe doll. Her mother snickering when the bus driver says, “No, no change here.” The wind molesting the empty nickel bags on the pavement. The mad sunlight dappling El Pueblo’s windows. Ordinarily, I don’t enjoy sustained moments—steeped as they often are in mistakes, problems, and failures. But this moment is a jewel.
I tell Sally: “I can’t promise anything. Most rehab places are overbooked. But I’ll get on the job, don’t you worry.”
Satisfied with that response, Sally bounces off my lap and runs to her mother. She takes Crazy Diane by the hand. The saintly child and despoiled mother soldier up E Street to the mall.
I stretch my legs. I sneeze several times. All in all, I’m tickled by my performance. Not bad for a half-assed ex-con. If I could make the day end on this note, I would. Let things rest. Let injured souls make a hegira to happiness. Let the donations bucket brim with gold. Let the tambourine jangle with merriment. Is anyone listening?