Mom and I developed a routine. We took the bus together every morning. I drank in the city through the window, half-asleep, while she knitted sweaters she would later sell for pennies at the Rescued Treasure thrift shop. Then I would walk with her to the arched, white-brick entrance of the building—so tall I had to crane my neck to see the full height of it. Mom, clad in her uniform of yellow, short-sleeved polo shirt with the logo of the company she worked for and blue apron and khaki pants, would lean down moments before the jaws of the grand entrance swallowed her to squeeze my shoulder and hand me a wrinkled five-dollar bill. She would hold the note for dear life as she warned: This is for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Money doesn’t grow on trees, Nicholai. Spend it wisely.
Truth was, I never spent it at all. Instead, I’d swipe stuff from the local bodega. After a few times, the cashier caught me and said I was welcome to the expired stash in his storeroom, as long as I didn’t tell anyone.
The meat and dairy stuff were nonstarters, but the stale chips were okay.
The rest of my schedule was wide open. At first, I loitered in parks, burning time people watching. Then I realized it made me really angry seeing other kids and their siblings, nannies, and sometimes even parents spending time together on the lush park lawns, swinging from monkey bars, eating their prepacked lunches with their star-shaped sandwiches, smiling toothlessly at cameras, collecting happy memories and stuffing them into their pockets. My already profound sense of injustice expanded in my chest like a balloon. My poverty was tangible and palpable in the way I walked, talked, and dressed. I knew I looked shit poor and didn’t need a reminder by seeing the way people eyed me. With detached concern usually reserved for stray dogs. I was an eyesore in their pristine existence. A ketchup stain on their designer outfit. A reminder that a few blocks away, there was another world, full of kids who didn’t know what speech therapy, time-shared vacation houses, or gluten-free brunches were. A world where the fridge was mostly empty and getting spanked every now and again filled you with a sense of pride, because it meant your parents gave half a shit.
The first few days were soul crushing. I counted down the seconds until Mom got off work, ogling my cheap wristwatch like it was purposefully slow, just to see me sweat. Even the gummy hot dog Mom bought me from a street food vendor once we got back to our neighborhood, out of guilt and exhaustion from a day of fawning over another family, didn’t soften the blow.
On the third day of summer break, I found a small private cemetery, nestled between the edge of Central Park and a bus-tour booth. It was hidden from view, was empty most hours of the day, and offered a vantage point of the Roths’ building entrance. It was, ironically, heaven on earth. I barely ventured out of the cemetery in the days that followed. Only briefly, when I needed to find a tree to pee behind, looked for cigarette butts to smoke, or raided the expired stash at the bodega, padding my pockets with more than I could eat so I could sell the remaining food for half price in Hunts Point. I would take the food and hurry back to the cemetery, where I would lean against the gravestone of a man named Harry Frasier and stuff my face.
It wasn’t a morbid place, Mount Hebron Memorial. To me, it looked like everything else in the neighborhood. Neat and impeccable, with roses that always bloomed, carefully trimmed bushes, and paved pathways. Even the gravestones shone like the leather on a brand-new pair of Jordans. The few cars that were parked by the office cabin were Lexuses and Porsches.
The cemetery was like an invisibility cloak. Sometimes I’d pretend I was dead and no one could see me. No one did see me. That knowledge comforted me. Only stupid people wanted to be seen and heard. To survive in my world, you had to slip off the grid.
It was all going smoothly until the fourth day. Let the record show I was minding my own business, taking a nap using Harry Frasier’s tombstone as my pillow. It was hot and humid, the temperature engulfing me from all directions. The heat rose from the ground, and the sun sliced through the trees. I woke up with a jerk, a thick layer of sweat coating my brow, light headed with thirst. I needed to find a garden hose. When my eyes popped open, I saw a girl my age maybe six graves down, under a giant weeping willow. She wore short jeans and a strappy shirt. She was sitting on one of the graves, staring at me with eyes the color of a grimy swamp. Her brown hair was out of control. Curling everywhere, like Medusa’s snakes.