You Think It, I'll Say It(47)

As I punched in the code that unlocked the front door, I could see a white woman on the bench in the entry hall, and I knew immediately that she was the new volunteer. Because of her professional clothes—black pants and a yellow silk blouse—she clearly wasn’t one of the mothers, and because she was just sitting there, she clearly wasn’t a shelter employee. Once inside, I saw that she had bad skin, which she’d covered in a pale concealer, making it uniform in tone but still bumpy, and shoulder-length wavy brown hair that was dry in that way that means you’re too old to wear it long. She was probably about Karen’s age.

When we made eye contact, she smiled in an eager, nervous, closed-lipped way, and I offered a closed-lipped smile in return. I sat on the other end of the bench, as far from her as possible. From the dining room, I could hear the clink and clatter of silverware and dishes, and a baby wailing. The families ate dinner at five-thirty, and we came at six, to give the mothers a break. That was the point of volunteers.

At five before six, Na’Shell and Tasaundra sprinted into the hall and hurled themselves onto my lap. Just behind them was Tasaundra’s younger brother, Dewey, who was two and walked in a staggering way. Behind him was another boy who had been there for the first time the week before, whose name I couldn’t remember—he looked about four and had tiny gold studs in both ears. He stood by the pay phone, watching us, and I waved and said, “Hey there.”

“I’m braiding your hair,” Tasaundra announced. She had already wedged herself behind me and was easing the elastic band out of my ponytail.

“Can I braid your hair, too?” Na’Shell said. “Miss Volunteer, I want to do your hair.” Both of them were five. Once Tasaundra had asked me, “Can you do this?” and jumped three times. I had jumped just as she had, at which point she’d grinned, pointed at me with her index finger, and said, “Your boobies is bouncin’.” Then she and Na’Shell had shrieked with laughter.

The woman on the other side of the bench said, “Oh!”

I turned.

“I heard them call you—you must be—I’m just starting—” She giggled a little.

“I’m Frances,” I said.

“Alaina.” She stuck out her hand, but I motioned with my chin down to my own right hand, which Na’Shell was gripping. The truth is that if my hand hadn’t been occupied, I still wouldn’t have wanted to shake Alaina’s. I had a thing then about touching certain people, about dirtiness, and I didn’t like Alaina’s hair and skin. Strangely, being groped by the kids didn’t bother me; there was a purity to their dirtiness because they were so young. But if, say, I was on a crowded elevator and a woman in a tank top was standing next to me and the top of her arm was pressed to the top of mine—if, especially, it was skin on skin instead of skin on clothes—I would feel so trapped and accosted that I’d want to cry.

“They sure like you, don’t they?” Alaina said, and she giggled again.

“Did you guys hear that?” I said. “You sure like me, right?”

Na’Shell squealed noncommittally. Alaina would figure out soon enough how generous the children were with their affection and also how quickly they’d turn on you, deciding you had let them down or hurt their feelings. None of it meant much. You tried to show them a good time for two hours once a week and not to become attached, because they left without warning. One Monday, a kid was there, and the next, he wasn’t—his mom had found a place for them to live, with her sister or her mother or her ex-boyfriend or as part of some new program where her own place was subsidized. The longest the families ever stayed at the shelter was six months, but most of them were gone far sooner.

Mikhail and Orlean walked through the doorway from the dining room. At nine and ten, they were the oldest; boys older than twelve weren’t allowed in the shelter because in the past, they’d gotten involved with some of the younger mothers. “Can we go downstairs now?” Mikhail asked. Mikhail’s two front teeth pointed in opposite directions, so that two-thirds of a triangle formed in the space where they weren’t. In idle moments, he had a habit of twisting his tongue sideways and poking it through the triangle.

I looked at my watch. “It’s not quite six.”

“But there’s two of yous.”

If we had been in the basement, I’d have said, Two of you. But I never corrected their grammar upstairs, where the mothers might overhear. I said to Alaina, “The rule is that two volunteers have to be present before we go downstairs. You’ve been through the training, right?”

“I’m ready to dive in headfirst.” She actually extended her arms in front of her head.

I walked to the threshold of the dining room, where the air smelled like steamed vegetables and fish. Scattered around the tables were a few mothers and a few babies—the babies didn’t go to the playroom—and about five more children I recognized. “We’re going downstairs,” I called. “So if you guys want to—”

“Miss Volunteer!” cried out Derek, and he stood as if to run toward me before his mother pulled him back by one strap of his overalls.

“Boy, you need to finish your dinner,” she snapped, and Derek burst into tears. Derek was my favorite: He was three years old and had beautiful long eyelashes and glittering alert eyes and pale brown skin—his mother was white, so I assumed his father was black—and when Derek laughed, his smile was enormous and his laughter was noisy and hoarse. He was the only one I had ever fantasized about taking home with me, setting up a cot for him and feeding him milk and animal crackers and buying him hardcover books with bright illustrations of mountaintop castles or sailboats on the ocean at night. Never mind that I had student loans to pay off and was living with a roommate and never mind that Derek already had a mother and that, in fact, she was one of the more intimidating figures at the shelter: She probably weighed three hundred pounds and often wore sweatpants through which you could see the cellulite on her buttocks and the backs of her thighs; she pulled her hair back in a ponytail that looked painfully tight; her teeth were yellow; her expression was unvaryingly sour. It seemed to me miraculous that she had been the one to give birth to Derek.