“Welfare?” He studied my file.
I nodded. As we waited outside the courtroom, the heavy wooden doors suddenly burst open. A young man exploded into the lobby, swearing loudly, his face red, wet, and swollen.
“Bitch, fucking bitch!” he screamed. “Goddamn fucking bitch!” A large vein throbbed on the young man’s forehead, and his eyes bulged from his face. Were he not in such obvious distress, it would have been comic.
He continued to curse loudly even as a small man in a suit helped him toward the courtroom exit. The man in the suit spoke slowly and evenly, trying his best to defuse the situation. A number of uniformed men looked sternly in the young man’s direction. The small man in the suit waved the police off and herded his man out of the court.
“We’re up,” my lawyer said.
As I entered the courtroom, I saw the judge sitting theatrically high on the other side of the room. She was visibly upset—her brows knitted together, and speaking sharply and with much irritation to the clerks in the room— but she still showed much better composure than her last case. One of the clerks read my name. Turning her attention to my case, the judge scowled at the paperwork before her for a long time. My lawyer hesitantly spoke into the microphone on our side of the room, “He’s below the line, Your Honor.”
“I can read,” she sniped. She asked me to explain myself and I did the best I could. She grunted and set the monthly support to a nominal cost.
Although the amount was low, I reflected uncomfortably that I couldn’t pay it. And the thought of it accruing, perhaps accumulating penalties, as I languished in treatment stepped up my discomfort. I whispered as much to my lawyer. He looked surprised. But before he could say anything, the judge asked if I had something to add. I edged up to the microphone to tell her my concern.
Out of the side of his mouth, my lawyer whispered, “Shut up.” I could hear the urgency in his voice.
The judge stared down at me over her glasses. My lawyer kept his eyes straight ahead.
“No ma’am,” I said.
She rapped her gavel and put the matter to rest. Outside the courtroom, I asked my lawyer again how I was going to pay for the child support. He laughed at me with what seemed like genuine amusement. “You’ll think of something,” he said.
During the humid summer that followed, I liked to hang out with Aaron, especially on weekends. Each week at Rockford, there was a Sunday celebration: families brought home-cooked meals, girlfriends appeared in tight jeans and teased hair, and sons mended family ties.
Aaron and I never participated.
He had a girlfriend in Manhattan, but she was ignoring him while he was in treatment. I occasionally wrote my mother carefully composed letters that never asked for anything, or even posed any questions she might feel compelled to answer. I didn’t want to pressure her. In prior treatment experiences, I had pushed for the organized reconciliation, the weekend visits. I couldn’t imagine going through all that again.
As the summer wore on, counselors began to disappear, with little explanation for their absence. Juan was gone. Rick was gone. A few others were gone. Aaron pointed out that they had actually relapsed and then had to be let go. When I suggested they might have gotten better jobs, Aaron laughed. He was shrewd.
“They’re junkies,” he said. “You can tell they’re in trouble, if their caseload suddenly gets cut.” This appeared to be true.
Miguel, who had pale yellow where the whites of his eyes should have been, had his caseload cut to a third of what it once had been. A few days later, he took his remaining charges into the courtyard, and then nodded off in his folding chair during group. One-by-one his clients stood, folded their chairs and then wandered off, until only Miguel was left in the courtyard, his chin upon his chest. News of the counselors’ relapses terrified me. It was exactly the kind of thing I could see myself doing.
One Sunday evening in the cafeteria, Aaron mentioned his girlfriend had been to visit him. “Here?” I asked, surprised. I was eagerly forking my way through a pile of rice and beans. Last I had heard about Aaron’s girlfriend, she had folded up his diploma from NYU and sent it to him in a No. 10 envelope. I asked him about the creased diploma.
“Bitch,” he said, grinning. “But it looks like we’re back together.”
“Back together?” I asked.
I laid my fork down.
“I’m going to split after dinner,” he said. I nodded, my disappointment quickly consuming me. I toyed with my fork. Aaron kept eating. Trying to rally, I encouraged him to stay, to finish his treatment, to address his addiction.
He lowered his fork and grinned at me. “Here?” he laughed. He gave me his new address and phone number, and then he was gone.
Trains shrieked through Grand Concourse station at 149th Street. Mike and a few others stood in a small group on the platform, waiting for the train. We were on our way to sign up for a job training program in the South Bronx.
I leaned against one of the platform stanchions, lost in thought. As summer came to a close, we had to get jobs, find apartments, and make concrete plans to move out of the facility. This was my chief dilemma.
I was determined to move back to Pennsylvania, even though the mere thought of doing so gave me a knot in my stomach. I wanted to go home. To get out of New York City. But to make that kind of transition, I’d need support. I’d need somewhere to live while I looked for a job. And I’d need food and shelter as I saved up for an apartment. And that’s not even considering the intangibles of recovery, like depression, coping with the lack of companionship, and the requirement for constant encouragement that only the truly needy can hope to understand. Most guys would turn to their family for this kind of support. Only problem was, I’d burned those bridges, rebuilt them, then burned them all down again. More than once. My family would be crazy to take a big risk with me. I snorted bitterly at my own intractable predicament. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I just wanted to go home. But more and more, home was looking like a mirage, an unreachable dream.
“Timmy,” Mike shouted. He was right in my face, but I hadn’t noticed until he raised his voice. “What’s wrong with you?”
“S’up?” I asked.
“You can’t stand on the platform like that,” Mike said.
“Like what,” I asked, confused. I looked down at myself: zipper up, sneakers tied. I seemed okay.
“All lost,” Mike said. The others circled around me, nodding their heads. “Someone see you standing like that,” Mike said. “You going to get robbed. Or punched.”
I laughed. “I got stuff on my mind, man.”
“Look, you always got to be scanning, scanning.” Mike looked to the left, then to the right. Taking his time, he folded his arms across his chest. “You got to be on guard.” He looked completely at ease, the lord of all he surveyed. “You try,” he said.
“What are we looking for,” I asked.
Everyone chuckled. Mike shook his head in mock disgust. “You looking for trouble, girls, anything.” Mike laughed.
I looked to the left, then to the right. I felt awkward, uncomfortable.
“Good, good. That’s it,” Mike said. “Now check the package.”
“The package?” I asked.
More chuckling.
“The package,”