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Back At Dawn Save as PDF
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

My own apartment, my own private corner of the world. I was finally in. I had made it.

seven

1

SUNDAY MORNING. HEAVY GRAY clouds in the leaden sky, bitter cold, empty sidewalks and parked cars with ice-coated windows, stripped trees pushed by the biting wind. Every new day in Chicago, another day of heavy gray clouds. I’ve yet to find anything quite as lonely as an empty city street on a cold Sunday morning.

I pocketed my hands but it did little to warm them. A new jacket, one equipped to tackle winter, was another in a long list of luxuries I couldn’t afford, after a bed, pillows, linens, food, a television, computer, toiletries, a dresser, earplugs, books, hangers on which to hang my clothes instead of folding them into piles on the floor.

I walked to the grocery store a quarter mile away, grabbed a basket, committed myself only to the basics. Anything I could do without for two weeks would be omitted. After paying Gene and after the weekend, I had a hundred and seventeen dollars. Making it on that alone would take a level of creativity I wasn’t sure I possessed.

I bought a loaf of bread, small jars of peanut butter and jelly, several packages of ramen noodles, a half gallon of milk, a box of imitation raisin bran, six bananas, a bar of soap, deodorant, a bottle of shampoo. I left with twenty-seven dollars less. At a store across the street I bought a shower curtain, towel, washrag—another twenty-two bucks. When I got home I ate two bowls of cereal and took a hot shower that lasted thirty minutes. Then I sat in front of the window and spent the remainder of the day watching the trains roar by, staring intently as if they carried with them all the hope I’d lost along the way.

2

Despite what I’m sure amounted to two separate scars—one over his eye, one on his cheek—in the end, I’m afraid, it was Jeff who had gotten the best of me. His words had cut me deeply, and nothing I did or thought kept the despair at bay. Boy, your mom would be proud, wouldn’t she? That very question had always haunted me because, let’s face it, if we’re to be judged by what we leave behind, then my mother’s life meant little. I was her legacy, and what have I ever done to be proud of? I would have gladly traded two facial scars for the agony that slowly descended; the first few days were hard, but like a snowball gaining size and strength the further down the hill it rolls, the pain only worsened as the days passed by.