Qualifying Hymns
Non-Fiction by Jenn Ashton
The smooth and stinky scent of slick gun oil tickled my nose. It reminded me of my dad, back when I was around eight on any given Saturday morning when he’d have all his grey shiny gun parts laid out on the kitchen table, which my mom would’ve first rushed to cover with layers of newspaper, tsk-ing under her breath. He’d let me touch every piece and look through the scopes to search for rabbits on our loud kitchen wallpaper, and I’d get to run the bore brush through the holey places, which is what I called the gun barrels. I’d lose interest though after my part was done, and I’d fall back into one of our old wooden captain’s chairs, sliding into position in my flannel PJs trying to read words on the newspapers or tilting my head this way and that, searching for comics to look at if their ink had not been eaten away by solvent.
I loved that smell, but that memory flickered through my mind so fast it barely registered; everything changes when the gun is pointed four inches from your face. Instead, time slows, you feel the weight of the baby on your hip, and you try to measure the mood of your husband. You add up how much he had drunk or smoked with how much his hands were shaking and you multiply that with the colour of his cheeks and the depth of rage he holds in his eyes.
You also add in every recent fight you’ve had along with every other denominator; was there food? Was there money? Was he working? Was the rent due? And on and on until you’ve used up your one second to think. Then you push a sentence out of your mouth like the paper tape on those big calculators they use at H&R Block when you bring them your income tax, and you hope like hell the reckoning is correct.
“I’m calling the police if you don’t put that down.” I’m shocked that I can get words out of my mouth it’s so dry. He doesn’t move, but he doesn’t shoot either. “I’m going to put the baby in her room.” Again, he doesn’t shoot, but he nods his head and I make my feet move and carry her the twenty steps to her room, lay her on the mattress on the floor, kiss her, and return to face him, shutting the door behind me, praying I’ll see her again.
He hasn’t moved except to lower the gun and raise it back to my face when I return. Then there is yelling. So much yelling. And the baby is crying in her room, and I’m reaching out for the old green phone on top of the dresser. Then with shaking fingers, I dial zero and say “Police…” to the operator. He still hasn’t shot me, and I’m thinking that maybe he won’t, but I can’t be sure of that or anything anymore, because it was only six months ago that we stood in front of a Justice, and he promised to love and care for me.
“He’s got a gun?” the man on the other end of the line is asking me.
“Yes, his hunting rifle.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes, it’s pointed about four inches from my head and my baby is in the next room.”
“Welllll,” he drawls, and in the background I can hear him leaning back in his squeaky chair, “Look, there’s not much I can do ... has he hurt you yet?” he asks.
“No,” I say slowly, looking at my feet and feeling my body. I’m starting to wonder if I have the police on the line at all, and maybe this is some sort of joke, as a reflex I look at the receiver in my hand.
“Best we can do is come and get you and the baby and put you into a cell for the night, or until he calms down, do you want us to do that?”
I’m in disbelief and shaking my head to make sure I’ve heard this right, “Can’t you come and get him? He’s the one with the gun?” I know my voice is getting high and shrieky.
“Well, now no, calm down. If he hasn’t done anything to you yet then he’s not in trouble. And if it’s his gun and he has a license for it, well, he’s okay.” He ends his sentence abruptly on an inhale, like he’s casually smoking.
“So, you have to wait for him, to shoot me, before you’ll arrest him?” I say back. I want to make sure I’ve understood this.
“That’s right, ma’am.”
Slamming the phone onto the cradle, I can see the curl of Daniel’s top lip under his moustache as he smiles his evil smile. He lowers the gun laughing, he knew nobody would come.
“You can’t do anything right, can you?” he snarls, his big afro shaking with his laugh.
“I’m taking the baby and leaving. You’ll have to shoot to stop me.” I felt a power in my bones, I knew I could do anything to keep us safe. Escaping the thick air between us I backstep quickly the few feet into the bedroom and turn, bending down to get my backpack that’s stored under the bed, but he catches up in a flash and I can feel his strong right millworker’s hand push against the small of my back, driving my head into the metal cross piece of the wheeled bed frame.
I’d been so happy to buy that frame at the Sally Ann for five bucks, I’d always wanted to have a mattress that wasn’t just lying on the floor. I thought we were moving up in the world when the bed was off the ground and there were cheerful curtains on the windows.
When you’re on the run, it’s the little things you wish for and the smallest things you remember. I was a runaway, and even though I sometimes slept at home, for the most part I didn’t. My days and nights were usually filled with riding buses until they looped back into the bus terminal for the night. I didn’t mind because at night the world was different, and the rules bowed and changed like light through a prism.
Things happened differently at night, things that would never happen during the day. Sometimes, when you dragged your tired self off the bus, you’d run into somebody who just got off the late shift at KFC and he might have a bucket of the last chicken of the day, and you’d sit in the dark somewhere and have a midnight feast, just ravenous eating, no talking, like stray dogs. We were the children of the night, and the city was full of us. We slept in the back of your unlocked cars, in your garage, and even in your basements. You would have never seen us, but maybe sensed us, like ghosts in your world.
It was always a long walk home from where the buses landed for the night, but at least when it was dark you could check if any lights were on at home, and if not, you could slip in, grab a few hours of sleep, or not, and slip out, maybe first hunting up some change, maybe making a sandwich, swiss cheese and beer sausage on a Kaiser with a glass of ginger ale. Maybe even finding clean underwear if you’d done laundry in the past while.
Sometimes, though, there would be a bed. Somewhere a friend of a friend would let you in after their parents had gone to sleep, and you could grab a quick nap, sometimes on a couch, a chair, or the floor, but you’d always have to be gone by daybreak. And after a few years of that, a soft mattress was a dream. And then one day, to own your own mattress, or your own place for a mattress to live where you didn’t have to dress and run, when somebody’s parents woke up and chucked you out into the night when they found you in bed with their son. A kindness gone wrong, a break in the bargain with night-time promises unfulfilled.
Life on the run is a series of those over-stayed welcomes. As I got older and became truly homeless, I shifted into one of those couch- surfing people you hear about and was the ‘queen’ of the overstayed welcome. That awkward place made more awkward by the fact that I didn’t know how to read people or situations, never having had the opportunity to learn early on. Some people were kind and generous, offering a place to stop for a bit, where I could pause long enough to ask myself something about the situation I was running from or how I got here: Why didn’t I know? How could I not have seen it? And I continued to ask those questions in the gaps of my stays. The true homeless gaps where despair is your blanket at night and hope is a breakfast bowl that’s hard to find when you wake up if you’ve had any sleep at all.
More than anything, I didn’t want to be wandering again, but it would be safer than where we were now. It was easier for me to protect the baby when I felt safe myself. But at this stage of my life, it was all hit and miss and a lot of ‘doing the best you can.’ I didn’t want the baby to feel homeless, but I don’t think she did. I was her home, still, her food and warmth, her love and care and if we were together, she was always at home.
If you don’t know what homeless feels like, it’s like if you’ve ever moved house, and you’re in the truck taking the last of your stuff from your old house to your new house, it’s that moment when you’ve left your home and you’re not at your new place yet and your roots are exposed. Except, imagine that you’re in that truck, but with no destination in sight. Like a turtle, you have your earthly possessions on your back, in my case the one blue nylon backpack that used to be my dad’s, and my guitar in its case, the clasps bursting to pop open and reveal the books and baby clothes I had shoved under its slender neck.
One of the toughest parts of being homeless for me, was having to raise my voice and ask somebody for a place to stay, just for a night, in winter or if I was sick. Maybe that person said, ‘Yes, please stay,’ without asking their parents or partners, then it was so much worse than being on the street, even in really rough weather.
The scenario began with me being welcomed at the door by a nervous friend, invited in, usually to the family room. I would have maybe removed my wet shoes at the door and wiggled my toes on the solid warm ground, or wriggled them deep into a cushy shag carpet, in the orange or green of the day, my stomach rumbling at the thought of food. Any food, but especially something I craved like mashed potatoes and gravy or toast with butter or really, anything hot. I would maybe sit down, do a quick diaper change, maybe feed the baby, have a glass of water, and look over at my pack and think about washing my clothes, but then I would feel the tension. It would start in my jaw and move down my neck and slowly my muscles would all react when I began to hear the arguing. And then the raised voices and then the sole raised voice, and then the friend would come back in with a sullen look and the words ‘you can’t stay’ would be forced out of their tear-stained face.
After a time, I knew the signs though and I would already be making my way to the door. Decades later I would realize the state of the relationships that I’d walked into, already crumbling under their own weight, and maybe doing a good thing for me had been a happy distraction, for a moment, until they were apprehended in the act and forced back to the other side. The control back and in its rightful place, which was not in the hand that had reached out to me.
And although in the beginning I often put the burden of blame on the people who took me in, that was a knee-jerk reaction, a teenage return, because without them, and their life- lines, no matter how weak they ended up being, saving me from a night — or two, or even a few hours — on the street was a massive gesture.
I can’t remember exactly when I realized that this couldn’t go on, the being homeless and then homeless with a baby. I’m not even sure if it was all at once or a series of slow realizations, the feeling of not ever wanting to be in ‘this’ or ‘that’ situation, ever again, that thought becoming so strong it would propel me into the next stage of my life, which was all about relationships. With men. Usually, a good deal older than me, often at least twice my age. With men, it was a bit more give and take, we could stay if. . . and usually in those times it was me that left, or ran, after I’d had some time to rest, eat some food, get the road washed off.
People think you get your street smarts on the street, but it’s not true, you get your smarts from living the same situation over and over and from learning the signs and symptoms of people. I’ve packed so much living into those spaces because I knew it was only with age and experience that I could truly move ahead in my life. I crammed so much learning into me it was like stealing food and stuffing every pocket so full, in the hopes I’d learn from my mistakes and prevent these things from happening again.
When you come out of homelessness, because you’ve found a place where you’re finally accepted, you slowly start collecting the things you want and think you need, and life is pretty grand. A baby, a marriage, a place to live, first a mattress, then a mattress up off the floor and cheerful yellow curtains, maybe like the ones you had when you were really little, back when there was a time you felt safe.
But now I was seeing stars on those curtains and every happy memory I’d made was gone in a crack. Like when a cartoon character vanishes, literally, in that chubby white puff of smoke. And anything I had collected no longer mattered; if I couldn’t carry it, I didn’t want it.
The next thing I remember was sitting with my back against the cold blue exterior bedroom wall, shaking and crying, my head pounding, with him crouching down in front of me blustering the threat: “If you don’t stop crying by the time I get back, I’m going to call the doctor and they’re going to come and take you away, and you’ll never see that baby again; you’re crazy,” he seethed and got up and left.
I slowly exhaled when I heard the front door slam. He didn’t have a mill shift that afternoon, so I knew he’d probably just gone down the hill to buy a pack of smokes. I forced myself to stop shaking and reached under the bed for the pack, I continued my preparations, collecting everything the baby and I owned so we could get the hell out of Dodge.
The baby had long since fallen asleep and I checked on her as I shoved her few sleepers into my pack along with the few diapers I had left, and a wooden pull toy in the shape of a chubby yellow horse. I probably should have left it, it took up a lot of room, but we had so few things, one toy would be okay, I reasoned with myself as I listened for the front door. I still had no idea where we would go, so I mentally went down my list of friends as I packed.
At sixteen I didn’t have a network of friends, not with a baby and a husband. I had nothing in common with anybody my age and even my best friend was still in high school. So having nowhere to go and having no friends outside of Daniel’s, I made a call to the one person I knew I could count on, a man I’d known since I was thirteen. I thought of him as my one true love. We’d spent three sum- mers together in his small town when I was shipped off to stay with my grandparents every June. He was kind to me, a gentleman- farm-boy, so I phoned him and he told me to wait if I could, but if I had to leave then I was to head to the bus depot, and he’d be there in the morning on the first bus. And just like that, I had a plan. Although I’d be on the run again, this time I’d be with somebody I trusted, for a fresh start.
My heart slowed as I hung up the phone and planned my last day of captivity. Just one more supper to get through, then I’d sleep with the baby, get up early, and leave. I didn’t mind anything now that there was a plan in place for my extraction, out of this abscessed mistake of a marriage.
When Daniel came home hours later, I was making supper in the tiny green and black kitchenette like nothing was wrong. I made a recipe of my gramma’s called Italian Delight.
One pan, one can of spaghetti, one can of corn, and half a pound of burger. Sometimes I would buy the sprinkle cheese to put on top or put in half an onion if we had one. It didn’t taste great, but it was hot and salty and there was always enough. I made the baby pablum out of a cardboard box because she wasn’t eating food yet, and when Daniel came into the kitchen, I sensed he’d calmed down. He must have gone and talked to somebody, maybe at the diner or maybe at the bar, but he was changed and quiet. I told him I was leaving but didn’t tell him anything else. He didn’t say a word. I was so afraid he’d follow us, so I gave no clues, there was still the gun to worry about, leaning in the corner beside the kitchen table. I dared not move it. I dared not do or say anything except the bare minimum of words and slow movements, to just get by, alive, until morning.
Over dinner, he asked me to stay three times. I politely declined each time, and even though we were being civil to each other, throughout the night, the tension in the little house built. I lay with the baby in her room but didn’t sleep, because there was no way to lock the door. I could hear him going through my backpack, zippers zipping firmly back and forth. I could hear the clasps on my guitar case snap open and closed and I could hear the floor creak when he walked into the kitchen to retrieve the gun. But then there was just silence.
Dawn couldn’t break soon enough and when it finally did, I got up quietly, changed the baby’s diaper, and dressed her as she slept on. I slowly opened the door and could see him asleep in the green armchair in the living room, the gun lying lazy and horizontal across his lap, its double-barreled eyes watching me like a sentinel. I tiptoed into the bathroom to pee, wash my face and brush my teeth, bringing my toothbrush and hairbrush back out with me and setting them by the phone. My pack was in the living room with him, I didn’t want to risk waking him. Not until I had to.
As I set the toothbrush down the phone rang, and I physically jumped and my jaw snapped shut, my molars painfully biting my cheek. Daniel jumped up and ran into the kitchen, gun still in hand, and I felt like we’d come full circle, standing on our same marks as the day before. Only now he set the gun down and answered the phone and I felt saved. It was his foreman at the mill, calling him for a shift. I’m not sure he remembered we wouldn’t be there when he got home, twelve hours later, he said goodbye so casually. But once he was gone, and I knew where he was going, my body relaxed again, and I cried a bit for what I was losing. For the dream that wouldn’t happen, not now, not with him. There was a big shift in me, and I felt this chapter had closed, and rightly so. Daniel had been a port for me, exciting at the beginning, with all new adventures ahead, but he was not a nice person, in the end. Still, it was a bittersweet loss, maybe not for him, but for my dream of yellow curtains and a bed up off the floor.
With this gift of time, I walked around the little house to see if there was anything I’d forgotten. I packed my few books that sat waiting on the little shelf in the living room so patiently. They certainly made things a little heavier, but how could I leave my friends. I packed Pip and King Arthur, Charlotte’s Web, an old brown book of fairy tales with an inscription to my mother dated 1946, and my tiny Bible. Most of them I could fit under my guitar, the rest I put into the outside pockets of the blue backpack after I’d gone through to see if Daniel had removed anything. It looked like he’d just done some snooping and taken out the few dollars I’d stashed under my clothes, but that was easy to replace, he’d taken it out and left it sitting on the table beside his chair. One five-dollar bill and two ones, he hadn’t touched the handful of change in the front pocket. That money was all I had in the world, all that was left of my twenty-dollar family allowance money for the month. I made a mental note to call them once I got somewhere with an address, to have it redirected, it was my only income.
I started to get nervous around 10 a.m. when it was break time at the mill and so I packed up the baby, my backpack and guitar case, left the front door key on the kitchen table, took one last look at the curtains and then the gun, and left for the bus depot.
It was already hot outside, as I trekked the few miles to the Greyhound depot, turning every block or so to see if I was being followed, and wishing I’d made a piece of toast before I’d left. With the baby still nursing I didn’t have to worry about buying food for her, and I knew I could go days without, but today my gut gnawed and grumbled at me. As soon as we reached the depot, I bought a slightly melted Three Musketeer’s bar and an icy-cold bottle of Orange Crush from the vending machines beside the row of grey benches. The soda bottle clanked when it slid out and I cracked it open using a rusted opener that was hanging on a string from a beam above my head. That soda tasted exactly like freedom. »