Get out of the powder keg

You’re giving off sparks!

So I wrote this play, and it went up on 42nd Street in New York City. I will write about that in another post, because it was really great — life affirming, and an event full of miracles. A lot of things happened which by rights, shouldn’t have. Directors from some of the best theater groups took the reins, a genius stage manager, the last minute replacement of a cast member which was the best thing that could have happened to the play.

I’m not writing about the play, because the most extraordinary thing happened when all my couch surf possibilities dried up, I couldn’t justify paying for a place to stay from crowdsurf contributions for the show, and I took to the streets with my wheeled carryon bag, my shoulder bag I kept as light as possible, my wits, and the mission I was given by God to charge into dark places.

What? You don’t think that’s what’s meant by such a mission? That there are ways to play it safe? A secret: I’m impulsive, and consider safety a low priority when there is adventure to be had, people to meet, truth to learn, and music, light and wisdom to discover.

What about being afraid? What about the possibility some harm would come to me? Here’s another secret: I’ve never been afraid in New York City. No one has ever bothered me there. I know that’s not the universal experience, but it’s been mine.

Also, there was Daisy to consider.

I met Daisy in the first fifteen minutes off the subway from JFK Airport, Tuesday night, December 17. I don’t know what I was doing on Lexington Avenue in the diamond district as I’m not that into rocks. I had a couple of hours to get to the theater for dress rehearsal.

“I’m cold,” her sign said, “I’m lonely; I’m hungry. Anything helps — even just a prayer.” I put a wad of bills in her cup and she looked up from under the hood of her jacket. Steely blue eyes, brown, curly hair, freckles on brown skin, possibly biracial, she said quietly, “Wow. Thanks.”

I hunted my mind for the right, encouraging words. All that came out was, “This is not forever.”

She stared at me for a moment before she said, “Okay.”

“I don’t know why I know this, but I know that it wasn’t always like this, and I know things will be better for you, and it won’t always be like this.”

“Okay,” she said again.

“I need some dinner,” I said. “Do you want some dinner?”

“I’m not leaving here,” she said of the corner of 53rd and Lexington.

“That’s cool,” I said, “I have to do this work thing in a couple of hours, but I’ll get us something and bring it back here, if that’s ok.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Take your money then.”

“No, that’s for you and I’ll get a bit of food.”

She really didn’t want to take the money. I said we could talk about it when I got back.

“Whatever.”

I came back with warm coffees from Starbucks and toasted sandwiches from a deli.

“Is it ok if I sit down?” I asked.

“Sure. Is this really a Grande Soy Mocha Latte?” She took a big swig. “This is the stuff. Thanks. You’re not from New York, are you?”

“Guilty,” I said, “but that’s all not that interesting.”

Daisy grew up in an upper middle class part of Long Island. The second of four children, a neat set of boy, girl, girl, boy, she was labeled the smart one, the dependable one — not as pretty as her sister, as well-liked as her older brother, nor as creative as her younger brother. Her parents valued exceptionalism but Daisy didn’t have anything that particularly made her stand out. She was an average student in a very socially competitive high school and dreamed of leaving to have her own life.

That’s when she met Shelly.

Daisy knew that when a stranger approaches a teenage girl, “discovering” her as a model, actress, or something else glamorous, that the person is probably a pornographer or worse.

Stay away, everything inside her said.

“It’s just a little gig at the malls,” Shelly said. “Like a hostess or something. Seriously. I love your look. You have nice legs.”

Daisy was about to give Shelly the card back and walk away.

“It’s $200 an hour,” Shelly said. “Just try it once.”

Daisy was sixteen. The business card suddenly became her ticket out of the cul-de-sac, boredom at school, no one listening, no one paying any attention — a ticket to do whatever she wanted. If that’s not the golden ticket for a sixteen-year-old girl.

A trip to Victoria’s Secret later, Daisy was walking around the mall with two other girls. Of course it was sex for money. Of course if they were connected with a man, they’d have to — Daisy couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. She wanted to call it off, but the other, more experienced girls were not there to be her shopping buddies. The peer pressure to go along and get along so everyone made money was intense.

Daisy went to the mall every day after school. She didn’t have to tell her parents where she was or when she’d be back, because they had quit asking.

After about four months, tenth grade was ending and Daisy was arrested. Actually she was detained, to be released to a parent and come to court later.

For a full day no one came.

Three shifts asked, “No one’s come to get you yet?”

What do you say besides, “No.”

Finally they brought her out to the lobby where her mother was waiting for her.

“Get in the car,” her mother said.

They drove to her father’s office.

“We couldn’t agree on what to do,” her father began, “except to say that you can’t be at home anymore.”

Daisy thought they meant she was going to a facility for troubled girls or something.

When Daisy pauses to think, or to decide how to say what she wants to say, she puts her fingers across her forehead. She’s compartmentalized her past so she can walk the road she’s on, in this case Lexington Avenue, with one foot in front of the other, until she stops for a half day or so.

They weren’t sending her to a facility.

“We can’t take you home to your brothers and sister,” her father said. Her mother sat, sobbing, but nodded her head to this monologue from her father, which became more unreal with each word.

“Where will I go?” Daisy asked.
“Daisy, you should have thought of that before you did this. Went behind our backs. Did these horrible things to grown men you didn’t even know.”

Daisy had not thought much about what would happen if her parents found out. Her mother’s tissued sobs were about what she expected. She had some expectation that her father would be protective, indignant at least. “How could someone do this to my little girl?”

“Do you even want to know what I was thinking? Why I did it?” Daisy wondered.

“Daisy, it’s hard for me to even look at you right now.”

The rest of that day is not clear anymore in Daisy’s mind — she’s not sure what she did from the time she got on the LIRR train near her father’s office. She had cash on her, and the suitcase of clothes and toiletries that was waiting under her father’s desk. Her mother had stuffed a grand in hundreds into the inside pocket of the suitcase, but Daisy didn’t find it until three weeks later.

It was ten years ago. She knows her parents still live in the same house. Her siblings have grown up and moved on. None has looked for her, that she’s aware of. She used to leave messages on the phone at Christmas, but they changed or disconnected the home phone a few years ago.

While the first day, week, was traumatic to be sure, Daisy found a way to make it for years. She waited and bussed tables. She flopped in sublets under who-knows-whose name with young adults in similar situations. Now and then she’d move in with a boyfriend, then out again.

She sang sometimes at bars, but those gigs were hard to get when she was under twenty-one. She stood in line for American Idol twice, but didn’t get chosen. They asked her to find songs more fitting for her voice and style. She doesn’t sing in the diamond district; no one pays attention anyway. She stays by the jewelry stores, though, hoping one day one person will carelessly throw a diamond into her cup.

I had to leave for dress rehearsal for my play, but I looked for her late Thursday night. I had my bag with me, too. I was not sure where I was going after I talked to Daisy.

Overnight she moves around more, restless because there aren’t the crowds to throw a coin or bill into her cup. I found her at East 49th. She doesn’t sleep much at night — she waits until rush hour is over then sleeps in the quiet upper east side subway stations for a couple of hours in the mornings. If she sleeps in the diamond district, it gets her hollered at and poked with a stick by the cops. The metro cops don’t bother her if it’s not busy in the subway.

Redemption. What she did was bad, she says, but was it so much she deserved to be an outcast, her family never giving her a second thought?

What if that’s not true, I wondered. On the other hand, does it take blood relation to make a family?

Hell no, Daisy said. There’s more decent people on the streets of New York than there are in Long Island, at least where she grew up. Of course she’s angry. She’d talk to her mother and siblings if they came to her. Especially the younger ones — they had nothing to do with this. Her big brother was 18. He could do what he wanted. He could have tried to find her if he’d wanted.

It was in the 40s and even one day in the 60s the week before Christmas when I hung out with Daisy. We sat some, we walked some, we ate. I asked her what if I could tap into some resources back home and get you a place to stay? What if you found a job again once you had somewhere to be, and what if with a little hand up everything could be different? You had it before — you did it on your own when you were yet a kid.

Will a job get me a family? She asked.

Will becoming like everyone else make me lovable?

Will anyone ever want me for me, exactly like this? Then help me build something better — which would be, pretty much, anything?

Could anyone let me love them?

She asked these questions. I knew she had them, but I couldn’t believe she said them out loud. I knew she had them, because she was brave enough to admit on her sign that she was lonely.

We explored these questions as the sky grew darker.

We explored these questions as one star was visible above the city lights and in front of the clouds that obscured the rest. One star. The week before Christmas.

We talked of eternity and of our families, of the work we wanted to do, of how to belong. She asked about my family and what it was like when betrayal and ending could mean new beginnings instead of the death of something.

I painted a picture of what my life was like in all its mess and imperfection.

“You grow vegetables?” She said. “Organic gardening? That sounds so cool. Like soil dirt would be great instead of city dirt all the time.”

“You could do it,” I said. “You could study horticulture somewhere then have or work on an organic farm, even here in New York State.”

“It’s not the farm,” she said, “or the vegetables, or even living indoors. It’s having someone to be with. You have people who would miss you if you were gone.”

A second star appeared in the sky.

“You know you didn’t do anything that was that bad. Not so bad you couldn’t come back. You don’t need redemption so much as — something unconditional. I don’t know where that is for you or what will happen, but you know this isn’t forever, right?”

We talked about how families of origin are not always all that, and they aren’t always the holders of forgiveness, of redemption, of love.

She knew. “This isn’t where I die. This isn’t really where I live. There’s a next thing for me. And right now, I have clothes on my back and shoes on my feet, my mind in my head and teeth in my mouth. This isn’t it. This is a road to something. This isn’t it.”

It’s not 50 degrees in New York this week. There’s a snow and ice storm. It’s colder than they’ve had it. I hope Daisy’s not still on the street. I hope she took any offer to be inside that was forthcoming for her. I wish someone knew her enough to search for her, to find her, to invite her in. I think it happened for her, that she had a night or two inside when the frigidity could take her.

I hope I see Daisy again when I return to New York, yet I hope to not see her on the street. She will survive, I know it. She’ll find the door that leads to the indoor place she wants to be.