Chapter One: The Price of a Wash
Sarah had stopped counting the nights she slept outside. Around the week the numbers started to blur.
She knew the city by its places. The wall behind the bakery stayed warm until the ovens went off at midnight. The bus shelter on the corner of Dalton Street had a bench with no armrests so Sarah could lie flat. The guard from the shopping centre came by at two. Tapped it with his stick. Some guards shouted. Some only watched. Sarah learned to tell which by the way they walked.
Hunger stopped being a feeling. Hunger became a place Sarah lived. Hunger made Sarah slow. Hunger made sounds arrive late. Hunger made every smell from every kitchen feel like an insult.
On the night or the fourteenth Sarah was filling a plastic bottle at the water fountain in the park when a man spoke behind her.
"You right?"
Sarah turned fast ready to run. He was standing a steps back hands visible a clean jacket zipped to the chin. Thirty, maybe. He had the ordinary face of someone coming home from work.
"You look like you have not eaten " he said. "I do not mean to pry."
Nobody had asked Sarah a question like that since she ran. Her throat closed around the answer.
"I live ten minutes from here " he said. "You could wash up. Get warm. I will give you a money if you do one favour for me."
Sarah should have asked what the favour was. Part of Sarah did, very far back.. He had said wash and warm and Sarahs body had already started walking.
His building smelled of cooking. That was the thing Sarah noticed on the stairs: onions, somebodys rice, a radio playing behind a door. The ordinary life of people. Sarah followed him up to the floor. He let Sarah in ahead of him. Sarah stood on the rug in her ruined shoes afraid to dirty it.
There was a sofa with a blanket folded over one arm. A lamp. A small table with a bowl of fruit on it fruit. Sarah looked at an orange the way some people look at gold.
Behind Sarah, a key turned in the lock. It was a sound. Sarahs whole body understood it before Sarah did.
"I'd like to use the bathroom " Sarah said.
"In a minute."
His hand came to Sarahs shoulder lower then somewhere it should never have been. Sarah stepped away. He followed. Sarah said no. He laughed, short and irritated the way you laugh at a child who is being difficult.
"You followed a home " he said. "What did you think this was?"
Sarah had not thought. That was the truth. It was the worst of it. Sarah had not thought, because thinking required food.
Sarah did not know the word for what he intended. Sarah knew that years ago Sarah had looked through a gap in a door and seen her uncle with a woman who was not her aunt. Sarah understood then without any words that nobody in that room was safe. The memory came up cold and complete. Sarah lunged for the door. He caught Sarah by the arm and threw Sarah onto the bed. Sarah kicked. Sarahs heel landed hard in his stomach.
He swore at Sarah. After that he stopped being careful if he had ever been.
What Sarah kept from the next while came in pieces. A brown stain on the ceiling shaped like a hand. The lamp, which he did not turn off. Sarahs own voice, going hoarse. Then going out altogether. At some point Sarahs mind left the room. Stood in a corner watching Sarah on the bed as though Sarah belonged to a stranger. The next thing Sarah knew it was quiet. Sarah was on her side, in the dark with her knees pulled up.
Sarah did not remember getting to the bathroom. Sarah remembered the water and the small hard bar of soap and scrubbing until Sarahs skin burned. Sarah remembered that none of it changed anything.
When she stepped outside he was sitting on the sofa scrolling through his phone. He did not look up at first. He held out some folded notes.
"Take it. Go."
She looked at the money. It would not buy two days of bread. She understood what she had been valued at.
Every part of her wanted to knock it from his hand.. She had nowhere to sleep and nothing in her stomach and pride was something you could only afford on a full belly. She took it. Her fingers were steady which surprised her. She walked out down the stairs past the smell of someones dinner into a morning that had already turned bright as though nothing had happened to anyone.
She bought a loaf from the bakery on Dalton Street. Ate half of it on the curb with her back to the road. Her hands were still shaking.
Then she was sick, behind a van. She told herself it was the bread eaten fast.
Across the street a curtain moved in a first-floor window. Sarah did not see it.
