Linda - 1

The only furniture in the room I rent is a small, green cot. The room I rent is the smallest of six bedrooms in a large house in a bad part of town. I bought the cot today, and now I'm out of money.

Laying on my army cot, under a thin, holey quilt, a tear runs down my cheek. It is salty and I can feel it cutting through a layer of dirt on my skin. It trickles down to my lips and I taste salt and it feels gritty; I lick my lips and it is gone. I need to take a shower. I also need to eat, have some water, and get some sleep. I'm not going to do any of that, though.

I have only twenty nine days until my rent is due, which means I have only twenty nine days to sleep in this room. In twenty nine days, I will have to take my blanket and my cot, and sleep somewhere else until I can get enough money to rent another room for another thirty days.

I hear the front door open and footsteps in the living room downstairs. I haven't met anybody else in this house yet, only the landlord. His name is Nicholas, and he is very nice. He says that there are six other people that live here. Two single men, one single woman, and a married couple with a child. The married couple have been here two months, and are moving out in another two weeks; they only needed somewhere to sleep until their house on the other side of town was ready. The two single men both do odd jobs around the city at all hours of the night and are hardly home. The single woman never goes anywhere. She never goes to work, she never leaves her room, except to walk across the hall to the bathroom and to the kitchen. I know all of this because my landlord is a gossip, and told me all of their life stories before I handed him $350 for first (and only) month's rent.

I'll probably never have to meet any of these people, which is good. I don't like meeting the people who live in the houses that I stay in from time to time. Most of the time, they realize right away that I'm not in it for the long haul, that I'm homeless, that I will be gone in thirty days. They know because of the clothes I wear on that first day that never change, because of the holes in my shoes and the fact that I have brought nothing with me. Nothing but a blanket, usually. Sometimes I have a small bag with another shirt in it, or some underwear, or some socks. But most of the time, I have nothing. They see this nothing, and they know. When they don't know, they try to talk to me, to befriend me, and I don't like that. When they do that, it becomes more and more difficult to leave the house, and I have to leave the house.

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Right before I left Chicago, I stayed in one house for two months. I became friends with another woman who lived there, the one who rented the room next door. Her name was Linda, just like mine.

She was a kind woman, short and homely with short hair and a job that she loved. She was happy living in that house, next door to me, and for two months, I was happy living next to her. She didn't judge me because my clothes were stained, or because my hair was a disaster, or any of it. She talked to me while she cooked and shared her food with me when it was done. She let me borrow books, and even let me keep one when I told her it was my favorite one.

After fifty eight days, I realized that two months had passed, and I was out of money. I didn't want to leave this house, or Linda. But I had to. So, I wrote her a note explaining that my parents had called (my parents are dead) telling me that they found me a better job (or any job at all) and I could stay at their house until I got back on my feet again. Two weeks later, she ran into me at the park. I was sleeping under a tree. I was so embarrassed that I scooped up my blanket and ran, with Linda shouting, “Linda! Wait! I can help you!”

So, I don't like to get to know the people that live in the house I'm staying in. It's better if I keep to myself.