She was my sixth social worker. Mrs. Benita Perez changed my last name to Jones from Chukovskaya, which was what someone thought my last name was—they were never certain, it was simply on the one slip of paper I had, with Miroslav. She did it with her pen on a form and then punched it into the computer. And with that tiny change, she gave me a redo.
“I don’t like Smith, so we’re going with the other easy one, yeah?” she’d said, smiling at me. “Now that you’re Jones, mijo, let’s see what else you can do besides screw up.”
It shouldn’t have meant or done anything, but I went from focusing on being no one’s kid to being a man who was ready to grow up and do something with his life.
A week later, she’d changed my school and placed me in a home in Redondo Beach. Ten of us lived there, and it was run more like a barracks than a house, but that was fine with me. Hearing Mr. Hutchins yell “Jones” when it was time for me to come to the dinner table was music to my ears. The retired Army chaplain was like the others in that he didn’t care whether I was there, but at least he actually used the money he got for taking care of me to put food on the table and clothes on my back. I chalked it up as a win.
When I turned sixteen, I got two jobs, one after school at a grocery store stocking shelves and the other at a twenty-four-hour gas station. I had the overnight shift and a lot of time to sleep and study, locked in the plexiglass bulletproof cage. No one checked how old I was, no one cared. Everyone but Mrs. Perez was surprised when I was accepted to the University of Chicago, and what financial aid didn’t take care of, the scholarships she helped me apply for did. The year I graduated was the year she retired. I still sent her Christmas cards in Portland.
Until I moved to Chicago, I had never had a home, nothing permanent. The dorms were a revelation—the freedom—and the job I got at the diner two blocks from campus was nice. For once I was the same as everyone else, as every other college freshman. No one looked down on me, judged me, or treated me differently. I could recreate myself, and I did.
Having figured out a long time ago that I was gay, I went to work sleeping with any guy who looked my way. It was how I met Janet Woollard, later Powell. She came charging into her boyfriend’s dorm room at six in the morning and found me naked in his bed.
She screamed.
I groaned.
Her boyfriend, Todd something, ran to the bathroom and locked himself in.
“Get your ass out here!” she roared at him through the door.
I was hopping up and down on one foot, pulling on my pants.
“Oh Jan,” Monica Byers clucked from the doorway, two other girls with her, all in skimpy sleepwear I would have expected if they were Victoria’s Secret models. “I guess Todd got so sick of you, he went gay.”
Janet’s face, the look of absolute agony on it, I couldn’t take.
“Dude, I’m not gay,” I said disdainfully, sneering at Monica, conceited bitch that she was. She had the total Queen Bee thing going. If you didn’t kiss her ass, she was a total nightmare. “And Todd’s only upset because he walked in here and Janet and I were in his bed. Guy’s gonna be traumatized for life.”
She was stunned.
The coven with her was stunned.
And with my lie, I kept Todd’s secret and turned Janet into the bad girl she’d always wanted to be. I grabbed her hand and yanked her after me out the door and down the back stairs. On the ground floor, in the common area, I let her go. She ran around in front of me and barred my exit.
“What?”
“Todd’s gay?”
“Todd was curious.”
“Did you top?”
I grinned. “Baby, I always top.” Which was the first truth of that day.
She put her hands on her hips and stared up into my face. “How come you lied for me?”
“Because Monica Byers is the c word,” I explained, “and I only don’t use the word in deference to you. Girls hate it, right?”
“We do, yes.”
“And also, you don’t deserve whatever she was about to dish out.”
Her eyes softened as she extended her hand. “I’m Janet Woollard.”
“Miro Jones.”
“You wanna come to my room? I just got back from home and my mom loaded me up with frozen food.”
“You got Hot Pockets?”
“I do, plus Bagel Bites and pizza rolls.”
“How ’bout waffles? It is only like six thirty.”
“I even have syrup and a crapton of soda.”
“Sold.”
We feasted in her room, on her bed, making trips back and forth to the microwave. Her roommate, Aruna Rao, who would meet a big Irish fireman named Liam Duffy and fall madly and completely in love with him—thus keeping her from ever returning to Dallas, Texas—breezed in two hours later.