I held up my injured hand now wrapped in blue gauze and wiggled my fingers, a motion that had just stopped hurting me a few days ago. “Ladies, I hate to break it to you, but I barkandbite.”
They both laughed, “Okay, I can’t say we’ll ever forget how you sent that one guy who was making trouble packing last year.”
“Or the time you told the board of directors they needed to get their heads out of their asses when they wanted to cut the sanitization budget,” Christine went on.
“Geez, it sounds like I should be banned from this place by now,” I said, not quite remembering the board of directors thing, but believing it.
“No!” Nina said, “What you should be is one of us! What do you do for work Selena?”
“Nina! Stop!” Christine exclaimed.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I just work at a store.”
“Do you like it?”
“I like the people.” I pushed out.
“Well, we know you like coming here. You’ve stayed here longer than some of the actual employees. You should consider it.”
“I don't think I can work here after telling the board of directors what I did Nina,” I said, smiling when her eyes lit up with humor. “And even if they did hire me, I could never set them straight like that again.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Nin. Now leave her alone before she decides to leave and never come back.”
Nina gave me a defeated look. I tried to give her a smile that said ‘it’s okay, really’ as I squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks anyway though, Nin.”
I checked my phone for the time. Almost event time. Clapping my hands together loudly, I rubbed them up and down like I was getting ready for a feast. “Now. What are we doing this week?”
Chapter Thirteen
CECI
They weren’t able to find an organization to come into the shelter this week, so we did movie night instead.
Sometimes, that happened. Sometimes the board didn’t approve what Christine and Nina wanted to do for the women, or there wasn’t an appropriate organization willing to come in for that date and they ended up having to improvise.
Movie night was one of those easy ones. The shelter had this old projector that was set up in the main room for the occasion. Some people would push the old couches together to make a bigger one and some would squirrel off the sides of the room to sit alone. The shelter provided approved snacks, and since I wasn’t an employee of the shelter, I provided unapproved snacks. Nothing inappropriate. Just enough popcorn that no one had to share.
They already had to share so much, I can’t imagine not even being able to have your own bag of popcorn.
Movie night was fine. We watched a couple, keeping the themes light and palatable. But gathering and eating popcorn in the dark while laughing at a screen for a few hours made me think of my family. We usually did movies after dinner. And with Connor, we did TV shows on slow nights like tonight. Being around all these people usually filled me up, but tonight it was making me feel emptier. Making me missmypeople.
This weighed on me, slowing down my usual pace here at the shelter. Usually I would stay until the girls left, but tonight I had to get out. As soon as everything was cleaned up, Christine and Nina promising they didn’t need any more help, I said my goodbyes and headed outside.
It was cold tonight, the cool sea air traveling far into the city. I liked nights like these. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the heat as much as the next girl. The summer wasn’t the same without at least a little of the burning sun, but there was something about the coolness of a Rhode Island summer night that calmed me. Cradling my turbulent soul in the memories of cold beach nights and my mom yanking sweaters over our heads in the middle of July. Nothing like salt air and the bite of an Atlantic breeze to make you feel at home.
Earlier, I had walked to the shelter from Paulo's having needed some air and time to think. It was dark out now, and I knew I probably shouldn’t be walking all the way back there for my car, but it was only a handful of miles away and every step in the nostalgic night air was feeling more and more like medicine as I strolled.
Walking, I tried to reconcile this aching feeling in my chest. It wasn’t new. I felt it almost every time I left the shelter. I used to think it was sadness or on hard days, devastation. But now, as I made myself more aware of others around me, I was starting to believe it was something else. Like I was aching because I didn’t want to leave.
I sighed.
I couldn’t work at the shelter. Nina was nice to say something like that, and to be honest it did make me feel good to be deemed capable at something. But it would be a liability to work there. For them to know me. The feeling had been nice, though. So nice I wanted to tell someone. But who would even understand?
No one thought of me like Nina and Christine did. No one saw me as kind or patient or calming. They wouldn’t understand my willingness to fight for women I didn’t know just because. They wouldn’t understand. And I couldn’t do any more than volunteer once or twice a week anyway, so what was the point of explaining it to them?
There wasn’t one. So I wouldn’t.
