They Dragged Them through the Streets: A Novel

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180 S I try to picture Z’s face, but I can’t. I see only the photo, the fine definition, his face turned away. A branch low over the sidewalk brushes my forehead coldly, I can smell the rain wounding the petals. I imagine Vivienne’s hand lifting the branch for me to pass under. The trees’ spring vigor: roots drink the meltwater and sap rises. Z is dead. And the rest of us, did we tire of each other? Or did we tire of everything else? We watched the news together, the shots of a street after any blast: mourning passed over the women’s faces so quickly and into their open mouths. We can say that it is mourning, just as what occurs on that hillside is autumn. I don’t know. I look forward to seeing anyone new at the shelter. I tried to talk about this once and the other nurses didn’t understand—as though I were wishing homelessness on more people. No, not that. But I’d rather not see the same faces. 181 When someone new comes in, I tried to say, in that moment , we give comfort. Later we’re merely routine—but think how nice that first night here, as I press the stomach softly with the butt of the hand, feel at the organs. Good, I nod. We may or may not see each other again, any patient and I. They might go back home, to school, get a place with a friend, that kind of story. I tried asking the other nurses: Don’t you think it’s strange that what we should most hope for is that one day we’ll come in and no one will be here, in the whole city no one will need us? No, one woman said, and she was probably right. Of course I too want the routine, getting ready for work each morning. Of course it’s worse to think of the fates of those who don’t come in to the shelter. I’ve passed them, they sleep turned toward the metal of a bench. Sweatshirt pulled tight, so that it’s impossible to know them by their features. Faces are a landscape it takes us so long to map, so that days pass before I can say which man I pass each morning. They don’t remember me either. We duck under that tree branch in succession, in succession step over the root that erupts almost through the sidewalk . Our faces both touched by rain into deeper color. And I reach toward the damp flowers as Vivienne would. ...