Bayward Street (2 page)

The sounds of my rollerblades against the concrete of the sidewalk was a steady hum. Even as I moved my body, weaving through the strangers that bustled along the busy city streets, the sound stayed the same. A break in the pavement stalled the noise momentarily, but once it was gone, the same hum I heard every day as I bladed these streets, continued.

This was my life.

I lived a steady hum.

I rounded a corner, swerving to miss a businessman who had his head down. He typed furiously, his fingers tapping at ridiculous speed against the touch screen of his cellphone, never even stopping to look up as I breezed past him, our shoulders skimming each other.

As I continued down the side street, I argued with myself about whether I should go back. Men like him were the reason that people like me survived another day. They were oblivious to the world around them, uncaring about anyone except for themselves and where they needed to be or what to buy for lunch.

I, on the other hand, had people who relied on me, nowhere to be, and the chances of me eating on any given day were always slim to none. Taking a quick look over my shoulder, I noticed the man was now across the street and disappearing into a large office building. My chance was gone, but I made a mental note of the time, suspecting that maybe this path was just a part of his regular commute to work, and I may have a chance another day.

I kicked up my speed, pushing myself faster. People never stepped out of my way. It didn’t surprise me, though. They thought they were better than me, they thought I had no right to be on this street with them. They were rushing to high profile jobs with their Gucci bags and business suits—lawyers, accountants, personal assistants, doctors— they were all possibilities.

And what was I?
I was a Bayward Street brat.

I robbed, I cheated, and sometimes I found food out the back of stores inside dumpsters. But no one was ever going to tell me where I could or couldn’t walk because I was a human being. And I may live on the streets, but I was still a person, and that gave me the right to walk or ride wherever the fuck I liked, just like them.

I’d built up a slight sweat by the time I’d reached my destination. As the beads condensed at my hairline, it was a pleasant reminder that I’d made it through another winter.

While California rarely reaches freezing, when you’re outside constantly in the rain and the cool air, it can still be deadly. It was so easy to forget that having a home meant when you had to leave it and brave the weather, it would still be right there ready and waiting for you. It was a sanctuary away from the elements. But when your home was the streets, there was no sanctuary. You did whatever you could to keep warm, and you hoped like hell that when you went to sleep that night, that you would wake up the next morning.

“Mr. Song, so nice to see you,” I beamed as I skidded to a halt outside the small dry-cleaning business.

He used his index finger to push his glasses up from the tip of his nose before welcoming me with a wide grin. “Fable! So nice to see you.”

When my life on the street began, Mr. Song was one of the first people to speak to me like I wasn’t just a piece of gum on the bottom of a shoe. As I sat on the sidewalk, holding my cardboard sign, he crouched down next to me and simply said, “No one give you money because you’re dirty and smelly. Come, I help.”

Layla, my best friend and fellow brat, had always told me not to trust any man who offered to take me somewhere and help me. But I saw something different in Mr. Song’s eyes, different to what I saw in the eyes of the people who walked past me in the street.

Compassion.

Song’s Dry-cleaning was a small but busy business. What he offered me that day, was a trade. I worked for a few hours in his store once a week, and he allowed me to wash and dry my clothes and have a shower. At the time, I’d felt like clean clothes were the least of my worries, the grumbling of my empty stomach ruling over all my other senses.

But he explained, “Girl with dirty clothes and unwash hair, look like drug addict. Girl who nice dressed, smell good, look like a girl who just need a little helping hand.”

His words made sense. People judged each other daily on their appearance. How you presented yourself could be the difference between getting the job you applied for or not, or getting a date with the woman you’ve been pining over.

The streets were no different. People still judged us by the way we looked, just for different reasons. How often did people walk down the street and see a homeless person with their tattered clothing and mangled hair, and think,
‘they’d just use the money for drugs or alcohol.’

I learned pretty fast that looking after myself meant maybe surviving another day.

Mr. Song invited me inside, and I made quick work of pouring the clothes from my duffle bag into an empty washing machine, before ducking upstairs to the small apartment he lived in and climbing into a hot shower. It was most likely the only one I would have all week, so I made it count. Washing away the scum of the last seven days, and delighting in seeing it wash down the drain at my feet. I washed and dried my hair before retreating back downstairs and switching my now clean clothes into a dryer.

Hearing the bell on the door ring, indicating a customer had come in, I ventured out, now refreshed and ready. It was strange to have the people come into the shop and speak to me like I was just another person. It gave me a feeling of nostalgia to know they had no idea that after the next few hours, I’d head back to the small tent on Bayward Street that I called home. Knowing that they could full well pass me on the street the next day and look the opposite way, slipping me into that box of
‘just another teen who had run from home and now couldn’t support themselves.’
They would look the other way or cross the street, so they didn’t have to make eye contact or pretend to ignore me as I pleaded for change.

No. In that moment, to them, I was a young girl with a job, helping them clean wine stains out of their shirts or vomit stains from their sheets because their child had been sick the night before.

I was someone else.

And it felt good to be that person, even if only for a moment.

It was almost lunch time when Mr. Song shooed me from his store with two apples and a peanut butter sandwich. I graciously thanked him and sighed in relief as I skated away, tucking the food into my bag even though my body ached to slide into an alleyway where no one could see me and scoff it all down. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning when some random guys had dropped off bottled water and a pizza as they videotaped their good deed on a camera.

It made me embarrassed and also a little angry that we were being used to validate their contribution to society. Just so they could go home and upload it to the Internet and show everyone how they had braved the lowly depths of scum, and were saving the world one pizza at a time. I desperately wanted to tell them to shove their damn pizza up their ass, and come back when their intentions were pure and from the heart, not just because they wanted a million hits on
YouTube.

But if living on the streets had taught me one thing, it was that sometimes we needed to swallow our pride and accept the help that people offered, whether it was genuine or not. You didn’t survive here by being stubborn.

And essentially, survival was our main goal.

My body felt peace as I rolled to a stop at the end of the street that we called home. Bayward was a dead end street where a section of a new motorway had been put through a few years back. We lived underneath it, in what I would describe as a small community.

Ten tents grouped in a tight circle. Some broken pavement and logs surrounded an old drum which we used to create a fire when the weather was cooler. There was a high wire fence that was a sad attempt at keeping people out from underneath the roadway, but it never stopped us. If anything, it protected us from anyone who might stroll by and think that we’d be easy pickings.

We weren’t oblivious to the fact that teens who lived on the streets went missing every single day. Predators knew that no one would care if they disappeared. We could report it all we liked, but for the most part, the police felt as though they had better things to do than search the city for some anonymous teen who’d spent their time causing more problems for society than they were worth.

I ducked through the discreet hole in the fence before covering it back up and clomping through the rough terrain in my blades to my home.

“Honey, I’m home,” I called, slipping between the gap in two tents.

Layla sat atop one of the makeshift seats and turned to me, her face lighting up as she saw me. “How was Mr. Song today?”

Chuckling, I sat down next to her, tossing my bag to the ground beside me and beginning to remove my rollerblades. They were my prize possession. Getting around the city was made a lot easier when you had wheels and didn’t need to use your feet.

“Same old Mr. Song.”

She smiled and nodded like she knew exactly what I meant. “Kyle and Lee took off about five minutes ago, did you see them?”

I shook my head. “Where were they headed?”

“Making the trip across town to talk to that uncle of theirs.”

I pulled out the two apples from my bag and tossed her one. She caught it easily, her sad eyes brightening as she eyed the food. She hurried a thanks and took a huge bite, juice dripping from her chin.

“They’re going to see him again?” I asked curiously before ripping into my own apple with my teeth.

“They’ll be eighteen next month,” she mumbled around a mouthful of fruit. Layla was beautiful, even with little bits of spit and food shooting from her lips. Her blonde hair fell in waves over her shoulders, and her blue eyes were the color of the sky on the clearest of days. “They think he might be able to give them a job as soon as they’re legal to work behind the bar.”

Kyle and Lee were identical twins. Their parents had kicked them out at around fourteen when Lee had finally come out of the closet. Kyle was straight but had supported his brother’s way of life. Therefore, his parents had also given him the boot. Not that he would have ever stayed there without Lee, they were inseparable and hated being away from each other for longer than a day or two.

While most people would be shocked and surprised that a parent could push their children out onto the streets, not caring if they didn’t have a roof over their head and food in their stomachs, this story was one that we all knew well.

People often looked down on us, thinking that we were rebellious and rule breakers. But the reality was that the streets had made us this way. We didn’t all one day just get sick of our parents and decide we’d be better off living on the streets, begging for our next meal.

We wanted a home, and we desperately needed someone to give a shit about us, offer us safety and love, and some kind of security. The things we never got from our real families, but that we found here, in a dark, dingy hole in a back street of the city with people who had nothing to give but their hearts.

“Fable!” A heavy arm draped across my shoulders and pulled me in for a hug.

My body leaned into Eazy, feeling comfortable in his arms. For sixteen the kid was big, even though I’d watched his muscle and weight deteriorate since he’d been here. But he still made me feel safe.

“Hey E.”

“Layla said she was keen to hit the metro station later tonight. You want to come?”

Offering Eazy half of my apple, he smiled gratefully. “Yeah, I’ll come. Will Kyle and Lee be back in time do you think?”

Layla shrugged. “It’s a hike to the other side of town where their uncle’s club is located. It’s gonna take them a good couple hours to get there and back. I’m sure we’ll be okay to go without them.”

Layla was amazing on the guitar, she played with heart and passion. It was the one thing she’d never let be affected by her life on the street–her love for music.

Nerves settled in my stomach. I hated hitting the metro stations at night without a solid group of us. But it was one of the ways we made money to help us survive. And as it was, Friday night was the optimal time. There were people leaving the city after Friday night drinks with their businesses, or people heading into the center of the city to see the lights or hit the night clubs. And alcohol made people more generous with their money, but also made them a lot more unpredictable.

“We’ll be fine, Fay. We can take Andre and Coop.” Eazy gave me another squeeze before tossing the polished off apple core into the fire drum. “It’s gonna be all good.”

I couldn’t help but return his smile as he hit me with a boyish grin. While E had only been with us for a few months, he’d instantly become someone who I could trust.

We hung out for the rest of the day, listening to Layla tinkle on her guitar and another of our friends, Daisy, play sweet melodies on her violin. Just like Layla, Daisy thrived on music and sometimes I wondered if it was the only thing that kept her sane.

As night time drew near, I had hoped that Kyle would make it back in time to make the trip with us down to the station. Kyle was the one I felt the safest with, he was heavy set and smart, always had his eyes watching. While I wasn’t afraid to throw a punch or fight for myself if provoked, I wasn’t naive enough to think that there weren’t men out there who were a lot stronger than me. And if that was the case and I was caught alone, I hated to think what could happen.

We would travel together but split up at various points in order to hit different groups of people. The way we worked was strategic and well planned. It needed to be. The streets of the city and the subway were dangerous on a good day, but at night they could be deadly.

I found my favorite pair of dark denim low rise jeans and pulled them on. Unfortunately for me, they’d just been washed and dried that day so pulling them on meant I struggled with them for ten minutes as I attempted to shimmy them up my legs, the fabric clutching to me for dear life even with the high amount of stretch they contained.

“You seriously should just get some new jeans,” Layla commented, watching in amusement as I lay on the floor of my tent, attempting to suck my stomach in and force the buttons together. It was an art form.

“Yeah, maybe it’s time for some backyard clothesline shopping.” I nodded in agreement as I pushed up off the ground and climbed out.

Layla clapped her hands. “Oh, I love that store, they have such a range to choose from.”

I gasped mockingly. “And it’s right in our price range.”

We both laughed as I hooked my arm through hers and pulled her toward the fence where the boys and Daisy were waiting.

Stealing was a very real part of how we survived. Clothing people had hung out to dry. A bag or a purse someone wasn’t keeping an eye on. Sometimes it was even money or wallets straight out of someone’s pocket. Pick-pocketing wasn’t my forte, but some of the other kids here had it down to a fine art.

We all risked a lot by thieving from people. Being caught meant possibly being arrested and time away–some of us already suffered through that punishment and were not ready to go back. We’d all prefer to have a job and earn money that way, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. But so far most people were reluctant to hire us, most of us had some type of criminal record and some of us were hiding away, so having a job meant it would be easy for people to track us down.

The thought made me shudder. Going back to my parents would be a death sentence. My father had survived my stabbing attempt, and he was out for blood—my blood.

And I would rather risk my life on these streets than give him the gratification of being the one to end it.