Annalise

I'm a retired high school teacher. I spent 35 years coaxing pimply teenagers to use their brains, enjoying the challenge of getting attention off giggly innuendos and onto the 13th and 14th Amendments, and I quickly came to realize teaching is performance, much like stand-up comedy or playing electric bass. It's story-telling, and everybody, even hormone-overdosed adolescents, likes a good story. My selling point was history was as much the present as the past. Which meant making connections my students could relate to, like how the withdrawal of Union troops from the South after the Civil War led directly to their living today in urban ghettos, with parents—or more likely, single moms—paying exorbitant rents for moldy, roach-infested apartments.

The school where I taught was located in a gentrifying neighborhood but had a student body drawn from some of the roughest parts of the city. Some of them were homeless, living in shelters with their parents and siblings, some literally on the street, in empty warehouses, or anyplace else they could get into without drawing the attention of the police. More than a few of the girls were turning tricks. Some because they were addicts or just because they thought it was cool. Others had no choice if they wanted to get something to eat besides the free lunch the city provided in the school cafeteria.

Annalise Rashid Foster had been one of those homeless. She arrived in my classroom a few days shy of her 18th birthday, a tall, lanky girl of African American and Lebanese extraction with narrow hips and straight black hair. She had spent the previous two years in and out of foster homes—five altogether—after her parents threw her out of the house for doing ups. In the first foster home she was raped regularly by her foster father. In another she was locked in a closet, sometimes all night, when she refused to eat rotten meat or threw up after trying to.

All this I only learned later.

Annalise was a quiet, thoughtful girl who seemed to like school. She usually stayed after, as did I. In my case it was to correct homework and draw up a lesson for the next day, hers to do homework. I sat behind my desk on a raised platform, she in the front row of an otherwise empty room. Sometimes she raised her hand as if class were in still in session and whispered a request for help about a difficult math problem or a word she didn't understand. Otherwise we might have been each alone in the room, though to be truthful I was always conscious of her presence.

During those after-school hours we shared a snack. At first it was just a few crackers I brought to get me from lunch break to a solitary dinner. But when I saw how Annalise gobbled up the Saltines I offered, I began bringing more substantial stuff: protein bars, juice, sometimes a bun. This was before I learned she was homeless.

It wasn't until nearly Thanksgiving that we started to have any kind of regular conversation. It started with my asking if her family made a fuss about the holiday. She replied matter-of-factly she didn't have a family.

"I mean your mom and dad, your sisters or brothers."

She moved her head from side to side without looking up from the open book in front of her. I tried to take in her silent reply. I knew many of my students were living in foster homes or shelters, but it had never occurred to me Annalise might be one of them, never mind homeless. Everything about her, her interest in learning, her demeanor, seemed to indicate a stable home life.

I asked where she would in fact be spending Thanksgiving. She moved her thin shoulders a fraction of an inch, a sparrow's shrug.

"Do you mean you have no family, or do you mean..."

She moved her head from side to side, still without looking up, as if I had asked her something of no consequence. But it wasn't that, I realized. It was shame.

One gloomy December afternoon, the light already fading from the bit of sky visible from the classroom windows, I noticed Annalise staring into space. I turned to see what could have fixed her attention, but there was nothing behind me except the board on which I had scribbled a few dates and names. But then I saw she wasn't just staring; she was crying, quietly, discreetly, as she did everything. Her dark eyes glistened, her chest shook gently beneath the pink cotton blouse she wore most days to class.

I had seen kids break down and cry, but always for obvious reasons—the class clown had pushed them out of their chair, or someone had made fun of their shabby jeans. But this was something else entirely. And her tears confused me all the more because she seemed to be in a world of her own, unaware of my presence or expecting I would notice and care.

I continued grading papers, glancing up now and then to see if there was any change. This went on for several minutes until I saw she had returned to her homework. Her eyes still glistened, but there were no new tears.

 

I had been expecting to spend Christmas with my mother, but she accepted my sister's invitation to celebrate the holiday upstate. I was resigned to pretending Christmas Day was just a day like any other. It wouldn't be the first time. I started to think about the possible ways Annalise would be spending that day, but I came up empty. A few days before the holiday break, after much hesitation (what if word got back to my principal, a cold bureaucrat with a penchant for bow ties?), I asked if she would like to have Christmas dinner with me.

"Annalise?" I said softly, reluctant to break her concentration on some math problems she was worrying.

She looked up in surprise. I almost never spoke to her unless she asked for help.

"I was wondering," I said, still without knowing how I could say it without giving her the wrong idea or reminding her of her homeless state. "I was planning to have dinner Christmas Day at the Union Diner. I wonder if you would like to join me. I have some business to attend to afterwards, but it would be nice to have some company, it being Christmas and all."

She stared back at me, her pencil poised in the air. I felt my face go warm. I half-expected her to say, "I may be homeless, but I don't need your charity." Instead, her face relaxed into a smile so bright it seemed to light up the room. "I'd like that, Mr. Kroger," she whispered.

The Union Diner is an institution in that neighborhood. It proudly proclaims its longevity on the big plate glass: 1936. It stays open till midnight and even at closing time never has fewer than half a dozen customers at its counter or in the plush booths opposite. After my marriage broke up, the place became a mainstay for me. Why open a can of beans or order Chinese takeout when I could eat home-cooked meatloaf and mashed potatoes topped off with a slice of lemon meringue pie?

I arrived half an hour early and took a booth near the window. I was afraid Annalise might show up early, too, not see me, and assume I wasn't coming. It was a dank, cold afternoon, with snow predicted. I wondered where Annalise had spent the night.

She turned up right on time, glanced timidly through the big plate glass, and smiled.

She sat down on the other side of the black formica table in the booth I had chosen. I had grown up in a small town with an ice cream parlor identical in decor to the Union Diner's. But who knew how someone like Annalise might feel in a place like this.

"I'm glad you could make it."

She gave a low-watt version of the shy grin she had shown when I asked her to join me, but her eyes remained downcast.

"Did you have any trouble finding this place? It's a bit out of the way. They have good food. I think you'll enjoy it," I said, picking up the heavy plastic menus and handing one to her. Her eyes widened at the long rows of possibilities, everything from cheeseburger delux to fillet of sole. I said, "I guess I'll have the usual turkey with stuffing."

She looked up and said, "Me, too."

She ate eagerly but deliberately—"lady-like." Who knew when she had last had a real meal.

I did all the talking. Annalise nodded every so often, as if unwilling to speak when her mouth was full, which was most of the time. A woman sitting in the booth next to ours kept glancing our way.

I decided to have a black-and-white sundae for dessert. When I was a kid, I was mad for black-and-white sundaes.

"They have ice cream sundaes?"

"The best in town... at least, in this town."

She ordered a vanilla-butterscotch and, even after just putting away a big plate of food, looked eager with anticipation. I've said she was thin, but she did not look underweight. She must have been getting calories somehow.

During dessert she became talkative. She told me about the step-families she had lived with, though she only hinted at what that one man had done to her on a regular basis. I didn't ask where she was living now, and she didn't volunteer that information.

Eventually, I glanced at my watch and made a show of surprise. I said I had to get a move on. Annalise nodded and whispered, "Thank you, Mr. Kroger."

 

Post Christmas break we returned to our usual after-class routine, she still in the first row by the door, me behind my desk at the front of the room. I brought snacks just as I had done before, taking care not to make them too elaborate. At five or whenever I finished grading papers and preparing for the next day's classes, I packed up and reached for my jacket. Annalise did the same. I sometimes wondered, if I were to stay till six or seven, would she remain there in the front row, her head down on the day's homework? I tried not to think about where she went when we said goodbye.

January was cold but without any significant snowfall. My landlord was stingy with the heat, which meant I had to run an electric heater until I got into bed under a pile of blankets and coats. One frigid night I was just settling down when my bell rang. I got out of bed, threw on a sweater, and pushed the "Talk" button.

"Who is it?"

A voice responded so softly I couldn't make out what they had said. I almost decided to go back to bed. More than one tenant in that building had buzzed someone in without verifying who they were. The result in one case had been the theft of several delivery packages from the building's lobby.

But there was only one person I knew who spoke that quietly.

As I stood in my doorway waiting for her to reach my floor, I found it hard to believe it could be Annalise. How could she know where I lived? Even then, why would she choose such an ungodly time of day to come see me? But when I saw the light jacket she was wearing, all I could think was how cold it was outside.

She whispered, "Hello, Mr. Kroger."

I invited her to sit down in the easy chair I had picked up at a stoop sale. It was only then I saw she was shivering.

"Let me get you a blanket."

"I'm okay," she said as I wrapped one of the rags from my bed around her shoulders.

"I'll make you a cup of tea."

"It's okay, Mr. Kroger. I'll warm up in a couple minutes."

I sat down on the straight-backed chair facing her, amazed the shy girl who had sat in front of me that same afternoon doing homework was in my apartment.

"I'm very sorry to disturb you, Mr. Kroger, especially so late at night."

"It's okay," I said. "Don't worry about it."

"It's only because..." she started to say but had to take a deep breath before continuing, "It's just that something... kind of bad happened and..."

"You can spend the night here if you want."

"I can?"

"Sure."

Her head fell back against the soft plush of the old chair. She closed her eyes as if she had fallen asleep. When she opened them, her lips began to quiver. A glisten of tears filled her eyes just as they had in my classroom earlier that semester.

"Something happened, Mr. Kroger."

I waited for her to go on. "It's okay, Annalise. Take your time."

She started to cry again. Only, this time she sobbed like a little girl who had broken her favorite toy.

She had been spending the night in a warehouse down by the docks. She had done so before, though there was a watchman who made his rounds two or three times a night. She slept in between some bales of whatever was stored there. She had seemed safe unless the watchman should shine his light directly on her. In the morning she waited until a worker opened the big metal gate where trucks loaded and unloaded and slipped out when no one was looking.

This arrangement had been working well for almost a month. But that night for some reason the watchman chose to look behind the bales where she was sleeping. Maybe she had made a noise. Maybe he thought a family of rats were living there—there were plenty of rats, she said.

"Aha? What have we here?" the man said.

At that point all she could think was, where would she spend the rest of the night?

"I should have run away. But where could I run?" she said. "The place is locked up tight until the men arrive in the morning."

The watchman didn't seem angry. Maybe, she thought, he would just let her be with a warning not to come back. He was a tall man in one of those police-like uniforms they wear. She climbed out from behind the stacks.

"Well, well," he said, looking her up and down. For a moment she dared hope he might give her something to eat before sending her on her way.

But that's not what happened, she said. "Instead, he..."

She sniffed hard, swallowed and without looking up, nodding as if I had asked out loud what she was thinking.

"Jesus. I'm so sorry, Annalise. You can sleep on the sofa. Let me make you that cup of tea. Are you sure you're warm enough?"

When I was back in bed, minus a few more covers, I tried not to think what had happened to her in that warehouse. It must have been an hour before I fell sleep.

When I awoke, I thought it must be time to get up and get ready for work. It was still dark outside my bedroom window, but the sun rises late at that time of year. Had I remembered to set my alarm?

It was only then I realized I was not alone. Something was moving in the bed beside me. I heard a sigh. Something warm moved closer. I lay as still as if a small bird had made its way into my bed. I felt an arm on my chest and a small, weightless head on my shoulder. I laid my hand on my visitor's back as gently as if the bones there might break under its weight. I stroked her hair with the tips of my fingers.

When I woke again, she was gone.

 

That morning she took her seat in class as if nothing unusual had happened. All morning long as I tried to ride herd on the class cut-up, I kept wondering if she would stay after school as usual. I got my answer when class dismissed. She remained at her desk, head down on the homework I had assigned. When I offered the day's snack—bananas and protein bars—she accepted her share with a shy thank you and sat back down again. At five I began packing up. She did likewise, and when I stood up and reached for my coat, she was gone.

Late that evening she again rang my bell. She said she couldn't find a safe place to spend the night. Would I mind if she slept on my sofa again? She gave a big sigh of relief when I said yes, but there were no tears this time, and she stayed put for the entire night. I gave her something to eat—I had ordered-in a pizza on the chance she would show up. When I awoke in the morning she was gone.

This went on for the next three nights. She rang my bell at ten, had something to eat and went to sleep. Each morning she showed up for class as usual. The only variation was she started wearing a green top instead of her usual pink one.

For two of those nights she spent with me, she only ate and slept, but on the third she became talkative. That was when I learned about her experiences in foster homes, her drug usage ("But I been clean for three months, Mr. Kroger") and some of her family life before her parents threw her out.

On the fourth night, I made more than enough beef stew to feed both myself and a hungry teenager, but Annalise never showed up. I waited till midnight, then fell asleep on the sofa where I would be sure to hear the buzzer.

That was the last I saw of Annalise. She did not show up for class the next day or the days afterward. Had she thought she was becoming a burden to me? Had she found a place to spend the night in another part of town? I had no way of finding out. I had never seen her talk to anyone in class, never mind become friends with any of them. I considered going to the police, but short of the worst, how could they know where a homeless person might be?

I went back to eating dinner at the Union Diner. I sat at the counter, as had been my habit until the day I ate Christmas dinner with Annalise. I tried not to glance at the booth by the window.

Was I in love with her? If I was, it wasn't like any other experience of love I had known. I did dream about her, though, and the dreams were always about seeing her on the street. But she didn't hear when I called out to her. She ran into a store front or turned a corner and vanished.

The final weeks of spring semester were always a slog, but that year it seemed the school year would never end. The students became more and more restless, the class cut-up acted out more and more outrageously. All of them were itching to get free of the warm classroom and out into the not-so-fresh air. Even my best student—best since Annalise had left—joined in the antics, punching the boy in front of him just to get him angry and then playing innocent when confronted.

I still stayed after class to correct homework and draw up a lesson plan. I still brought a snack to get me through the afternoon, even brought extras as if Annalise were still occupying that empty seat next to the classroom door. From time to time I looked up, a part of me still hoping to see her narrow frame hunched over the day's math problems.

A couple months later, I was driving on the ring road skirting the outer limits of the city. There are a number of underpasses where young women and sometimes young men hang out to make themselves available to passing cars. Most are teenagers, the rest in their early 20s. I once had a girl in my class who showed up on crutches. When I asked what happened, she said she had a fall. Later, a friend of hers told me she had been thrown out of a car by one of the men she had solicited.

I can't help wondering about those young people when I drive past them. Didn't they all have mothers and fathers once? A room of their own filled with stuffed animals and posters of rock stars? I can't say for sure a girl I saw standing too near the edge of the road, dressed in skimpy shorts and a blouse more open than closed, wasn't Annalise.

I think about that moment every time I glance at the desk she used to occupy in the first row by the door. A chubby, restless boy occupies it now, but he seems more like a phantom, an alien life form who has taken over a space rightfully belonging to someone else.