After I wiped my eyes, I joined him on the dock for coffee and together we watched the boats pass by and shortly before two o’clock, as always, he left for work and again I was alone.
Everything changes with the break of day.
As the sun rises, gliding over the horizon, the world turns bright. The oppressive burden of night disappears. For the first time in eight long hours, I can breathe.
In daylight, I find myself standing above the floor register on the bedroom floor, feet straddling it. I stare down at the black rectangle between my legs. There’s nothing ominous about it; it’s just an ordinary metal grate, cold now, the furnace no longer producing heat. I rub at my arms in an effort to warm them up.
I shower and dress and head out into the day. Outside it’s a cold start, no more than forty degrees that will rise up to sixty-five by midday. The sky is blue for now, though there’s rain in the forecast. The grass is wet with dew. My fingers are cold as I lock the door.
From where I stand, I catch a glimpse of my landlord through the window of her own kitchen. It’s the back of her, just a pouf of hair and the ribs of a blue sweater before they meet with the wooden slats of a chair. It is a distorted image at best, muddled by the reflection of the outside world on glass. She doesn’t see me.
I could knock on the door, make an introduction, but that really isn’t my thing.
I round the side of the carriage home, gathering Old Faithful from the alleyway where I left her, leaned up against the side of the home. Ivy grows up the brick of the garage, the leaves starting to turn red. The alley is abandoned. There is nothing more than garage doors and Dumpsters here. City of Chicago garbage bins. No people. No rats. No feral cats. No signs of life anywhere. I settle Mom and her urn into the basket on back, nothing more than a metal milk crate that I keep secure with bungee cords. We set off down the street.
It’s no secret that Chicago is the alley capital of the country, with over a thousand miles of shadowy backstreets. The kind of darkened corridors where people like to hide their trash and vermin, and nobodies like me.
Morning traffic, as always, is a mess. Millions of people move this way and that like cattle in a cattle drive. My first stop is the same as always: coffee. I take it to go with a sugar twist from the bakery, where the donuts are fresh and the coffee is hot and cheap. I don’t have six bucks a day to spend on coffee, and the owner knows me, sort of. She always says hello and calls me Jenny, and I don’t have the heart to tell her that, after all these years, she’s got it wrong. I set my coffee in the cup holder, pedaling away, making my way toward the Loop. I take my time, moving in wide circles around cars and trucks illegally parked in the bike lines, careful to avoid the city’s sewage grates. I stay away from potholes.
Having no luck finding my social security card in the box of Mom’s paperwork, I started the day with an idea in mind: getting a new one. That and figuring out how to get my name removed from this inauspicious death index it’s on. I head toward the Social Security Office and there, wait in line for a mind-numbing hour, only to learn that in order to get a new social security card, I need to prove who I am. Something more legitimate than just my word. I need to provide some sort of official identifying documentation like a driver’s license or a birth certificate that says I’m Jessica Sloane, neither of which I have.
On the advice of an employee at the Social Security Office, I head next to the Cook County Clerk’s Office in the Richard J. Daley Center—the Bureau of Vital Records—in the hopes of tracking my birth certificate down.
When I arrive at the Daley Center, the plaza is teeming with people. I tie Old Faithful up to the bike rack outside, watching as men and women in business suits take wide strides across the plaza. I rush past the Picasso and into the imposing lobby, where I wait in line to pass through security, looking on as others empty their pockets with the speed of a snail. I make it through the X-ray machine and the contents of my bag are searched. When I’m deemed harmless, the guard sends me on my way to the clerk’s office, which is in the lower level of the building.
A surge of people wait before the elevator doors and so I take the stairs alone, heading down where I take my place in a long line, sighing in solidarity with those who also wait, avoiding eye contact, losing patience.
When it’s my turn, an employee beckons, “Next,” with a hand held up in the air so that I see her there, hunched over a computer screen, shoulders sagging. I go to her, telling her what I need.
Suddenly it dawns on me all the information I’m liable to find when the woman locates my birth certificate. Not only the documentation I need to prove I’m Jessica Sloane, but the place where I was born. The exact time I slipped from Mom’s womb. The name of the obstetrician who stood below, waiting to catch me as I fell.
My father’s name.
In just a few short minutes, I’ll know once and for all who he is. Not only will I have proof of my own identity, but of my father’s as well.
I would never have done something as flagrant as seek out my birth certificate from vital records if Mom were still alive. That would have broken her heart, my having access to all these things she never wanted me to have. Searching our home seemed innocent enough, but tracking down my birth certificate feels like a really egregious act were she still here.
But Mom told me to find myself, and that’s what I’m trying to do. To get into college, to make something of myself. To do something that would make Mom proud, all of which I can’t do without a social security card.
“I need to get a copy of my birth certificate,” I say to the employee. My heart quickens as she slides a request form across the counter. She tells me to fill it out. I reach for a pen, completing as much of the form as I can. It isn’t much. I can’t answer the question that pertains to place of birth or anything having to do with my dad—what his name is, where he was born.
It’s only as I pause in my writing that the worker takes pity on me. Her eyes soften ever so slightly and she says, “You don’t have to fill it all in,” while staring uncomfortably at the urn in the crook of my arm, seeing the way the pen in my hand hovers above the words father’s name. “Just as much as you know,” she adds, telling me she can try and look it up with what little I know. I slide the form back to her, half-complete, and she says she’ll just need the payment and to see a photo ID.
A photo ID.
It’s easy to explain why I don’t have a photo ID. Because by this point in most people’s lives, they have a driver’s license, which is something I also don’t have. Because the cancer came the year I turned fifteen, the year I was meant to enroll in my high school’s after-school drivers’ education program. Because after we learned that Mom had an invasive tumor in her left breast, knowing how to drive a car—in a city where we didn’t need or own a car—didn’t take top priority. Because my afternoons were tied up with Mom from then on, riding the bus with her to bajillions of doctor appointments or working to help pay for our home and her care. Because once I knew there was a good chance Mom would die, I wanted to spend every minute I could with her.
And yet I’m loath to tell the worker the bind I’m in because I know how it will sound. And so instead of coming clean, I root around in the pockets of my jeans, extracting the lining. I dive a hand deep into the depths of my bag searching for something I know isn’t there. I pluck thirty dollars out of my wallet—the cost of the birth certificate is only fifteen—and try handing it to the woman. “Keep the change, please,” I say, bemoaning in a low voice how my license was in my bag just this morning. How it must have fallen from my wallet on the way in. How it was there, but now it’s gone.
I press the urn to my chest, hoping the woman’s mercy will prevail and she’ll pocket the