On the way home from the hospital we’d made a couple of stops to pick up the hammer, nails, screws, drill, glue, soldering iron, and protractor she claimed she needed. I’d been too happy to see her up and about to argue or question, I just paid for it all.

As soon as we reached the apartment she went to work, attaching her junk to the wall. I could see the wall was going to need a lot of repairs to bring it back to its original state but, again, I didn’t argue or protest. Anyway, she seemed so driven, I didn’t think I’d have any influence.

When she ran out of junk, she’d go out searching for more. I’d trail along because I was afraid of letting her out alone at night. Midtown was pretty safe, but she was a distracted teenage girl, not exactly tuned in to her surroundings. My presence worked out to her advantage though, because she used me as a pack mule.

Wood, metal, plastic straws, Styrofoam, flattened aluminum cans, paper towel tubes, doweling, wire coat hangers, pens, pencils, the broken neck of an old guitar, anything that caught her eye. Then back to the apartment again to affix it to her construction.

We did this all night, back and forth, in and out. At times she had me help her—hold something just so while she glued or screwed or soldered it in place. I’d started off thinking this was just some hodgepodge conglomeration of junk—one of those “street art” constructions that found their way into museums now and then.

“Do you have any idea about what this is going to look like when you’re through?” I asked her when it had reached halfway up the wall.

“I don’t have just ‘any’ idea, Mother, I have an exact idea about what it’s going to look like—what it must look like when I’m through.”

I didn’t see how that was possible, considering the random way she seemed to be throwing all the trash together. Well, it looked random, but as it grew, and as I saw how precise she was with the placement of her pieces of junk, I began to think she might have a plan. When she had me hold a piece in place while she affixed it to the whole, I had to hold it just so. Many times she’d use a protractor to get an angle exactly right.

Gradually, as we worked through the night—sleep was not an option—it began to take shape. Exactly what sort of shape I’m not sure, but a shape of some sort. In the base was an arched opening, maybe two feet high and two-and-a-half feet wide, but only a foot deep where it dead-ended at the outer wall of her room. If Ellie was constructing this to be a “shelter”—whatever that was supposed to mean—I could see no way she’d fit in there.

At sunrise she was still at it, though running out of trash. Only a few random pieces left. I was drained and sleep deprived and prayed she wouldn’t want to make another foraging trip.