Phyllis Holliday, Abalone Moon Journal

When I open the door there is this man with a bandage on his ear. He has red hair and a lumpy nose. He has eyes like a wolf.

He looks up at me. "I have come here to live," he says, talking funny, like he doesn't come from around here which is San Francisco.

"I never heard that," I say. This is a border care home. I wait to see if he gets the joke. Border care. It is really board and care for people who can't take care of themselves. He keeps looking up at me. Squints, looking. "What's your name?" he asks.

"Bennie," I say and I wait for him to say that is a boy name and for me to say,"My real name is Bernice." My mother runs this place and they used to say, "my how big you are for your age," and now they don't say anything. Just look up and then around me to see what is in the room. "I wonder if there is any way to the..." He makes a motion with his hand and then I know what he wants.

Back of the house there is an empty space where they dug out some buildings and some of the sidewalk. Now there is a little town underground there, with people coming and going, making fires and eating and drinking and peeing and smelling it up.

He wants to live there.

I want to tell him he should get a social worker like Miz Pineda to come and get his name on a list and he can come and live here and eat home-made spaghetti and hamburgers and baloney sandwiches with us.

I let him in. We walk down the hall, past the four men and three women who live here now. They are all watching Oprah Winfrey, their faces showing the change of color as the picture switches back and forth.

Oprah is talking softly about some important and sad thing.

I will go back and keep an eye on everything and read my ladies magazine.

First I let the man go down the back steps to the secret little town under the sidewalk. I see a few people I have never seen before.

I wave at them and they wave back. I look and look. Something is different I cannot figure it out. No pee smell gosh how nice.

In the magazine is a question. "If you are in a burning building and you had to rescue one or the other, the Mona Lisa or a cat, which one would you rescue?"

This question worries me very much.

People are tired of hearing it but I wait until maybe they forget and then ask again. I want to know what they think.

A lot of people Miz Pineda for one do not even think I know who the Mona Lisa is. She tells me to be a good girl and not to worry about things.

But I know that painting. I saw it in a magazine one time and then I got to go to the library when I was littler and I learned how to look things up. I am not so little now. I guess not, ha ha, but I still know how to look things up. Not so fast maybe but I keep looking up the Mona Lisa with her folded hands and her bunched up pretty dress and her funny smile in a big heavy book. I look and look at her in that room where you are not supposed to talk loudly especially if you are alone.

I go to the library when it is not raining and on free days I go to art museums in parks but not in Paris France where the Mona Lisa is. I cannot get there on a bus.

I have a bus ticket which has a picture of me, my big white face and my little eyes and I am not smiling but there I am. Official handicapped. It is pinned to my coat.

Before she died my Aunt Tessie told me that I was a big baby, twelve pounds and my poor little Mama looked like she was carrying a baby hippo and it came out to be true didn't it? Ha ha.

That man with the bandage on his ear and his wolf eyes sure looks like somebody I have seen before. I wonder where. It is in my mind he is called the Dutchman.

We live next to where the whole street is being torn up. Some sunny days I walk to the library or on a street called Market except I never see any markets on it only stores with cameras and blue jeans and theatres for men to look at naked ladies.

On this street there are many people with nothing to do you would think they could stop and think about Mona Lisa and the cat.

"Mona Lisa? Sure, I'll take you and her out, the both of you. Forget the damn cat."

One of the border care old men just hates it and I keep forgetting.

I don't care," he shouts, drowning out Oprah Winfrey or the afternoon soap operas. "Burn it all down."

"That cat?"

"I don't care. Burn them all. And tell your mother to stop putting insect spray in my food."

"She wouldn't."

"Well it's her or the communists. I can smell it. I can taste it on my tongue."

I am walking along Ellis Street where the tiny children from all different parts of Asia stop playing and look up at me.

I smile down at them though I have been told my smile and my frown look alike. In a window I see a row of pictures. Some are sad and scribbly and some are wildflowers and pretty, full of red and yellow and blue.

Street People Art Project is lettered, kind of large at first and then smaller at the end, on a sign. Six goofy cartoon faces are on another big paper and out their mouths comes SPAP SPAP SPAP, in circles. After a while I figure out that is the letters of Street People Art Project.

When I walk in there is a smell that comes into my nose and onto the roof of my mouth. It is I find out later the smell of turpentine to wash out brushes and oil paint. I want to come and live in this room and I know people will laugh if I ask to. A woman comes and says her name is Merry and I ask her about Mona Lisa and the cat.

For the first time somebody, this Merry asks me what I think. What a surprise.

She is one of those women who look young at first but then aren't. I have seen her shoes she wears in the big store windows and I know they cost more than my Mama spends on her and me in the thrift store. I can add up some in my head.

But she is not phony and saying, "Oh you poor big dumb girl let me help you."

I say, "I dunno. I worry." I can smell the burning room like hamburger smoking and stinking in a pan. I can hear the poor little kitty, "Yow, yow." I can see Mona Lisa change her eyes as she looks out at the fire.

Merry says, "I saw the way you looked at the paintings in the window."

I am surprised. She saw me?

"So," she says, "I think you have trouble with the Mona Lisa and the cat because I'd bet you love paintings and you love cats."

The next thing I know I am given what are called poster paints and then I come and I come and I get my own easel and a palette and little silver tubes to squeeze with my big fingers. After the hard part which is not to let the paint run together it looks like toothpaste but comes more to acting like eggs in a pan, is to Let Yourself Go.

That is the easiest thing for me to do. The room just goes away and I cannot hear the woman who is always crying sniffling to herself about some bad thing that happened. I cannot hear the man with eyes like a shrimp and with red hands and blue veins sticking up who says he is really a famous artist but he took to drink and lost his name.

I do not even hear the voice of my little Mama and the important things she has said to me. "Do not talk to strangers. Do not pay attention if they laugh at you. Come home in time for lunch and dinner. Keep an eye on the guests so they do not steal things and get into fights. Be a good girl."

I am in the middle of something like a fog when it comes down the street and you can hear footsteps and you do not know if it is a giant, a person you know or a surprise like a lost child. I am by myself I am letting go letting go letting go.

So it is two times a week and then three times and then five. I have told Merry I am not a street person I have my border care home.

She smiles at that. I do not know if she knows it is a joke.

Now I have friends in the secret town under the street behind the house. The Dutchman invited me. His ear does not get any better but he is not sick or anything. Sometimes he looks a little green. I tell him he should get that ear fixed but he says it is OK come see how we have fixed up our home.

Lots of people live down there. You could not tell from the torn up street how they put in red velvet couches and brass beds and lace curtains. It is not cold. The stink is gone. I can smell flowers.

They have no TV.

They have books and a piano and a harp.

Once there was a tall skinny Italian lady with a funny name like Miss Modern Spaghetti. Once I saw two children, the ones I have seen in books, Pinky and Blue Boy hand in hand looking out the window and whispering.

When I went to look out the window too they ran away laughing but they were not laughing at me. They were having a contest to see if each one could say a thing and the other put a rhyme to it, giggle giggle, wiggle wiggle.

I cannot tell if it is a painting they change every day or if you can see from under the street into another secret country with trees and castles and barns and fields.

With my spending money I went to a big store with bright lights and bought pink lipstick. At first I put it on all wrong but Merry showed me how to put it on right and she said I looked pretty.

The days go by like a fun ride on a field trip we used to go on from the special class in school. Whee I used to whisper to myself on those fun rides. The other children were so little and noisy I never wanted to scare them or make them mad at me and kick me.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh.

Mama has gone to heaven.

They are going to shut down the border care home. Everybody is crying and arguing and making noise and nobody likes the food Miz No-Nonsense Polly fixes and she says, "The next person saying I put bug spray in it is gong to GET bug spray."

And the Dutchman is gone.

Just when I wanted to ask him who he is. I think I guessed.

Once a teacher got mad at me and said, "Listen, you can't be dumb and crazy at the same time."

I was afraid to say anything to her.

It was when I had another question like who would you save Mona Lisa or the cat and I forgot that question. I got so scared. I did not say anything for a long time, Mama said five years, I dunno, and then I asked for another hamburger.please, please.

Mama who loved me is gone and nothing is left but the words she told me. "Don't talk to strangers. Get home on time for lunch and dinner. Be a good girl." Miz No-Nonsense Polly says I do not need to watch the guests that is her job, now.

When I go down to see the Dutchman and Pinky and Blue Boy and Miss Modern Spaghetti there are just some strange men peeing in the dark.

"Go away," they say. "Beat it. Get lost."

I let myself go.

I look down and there are cuts on my legs and ankles and I am wearing a brown coat I do not think is mine. My dress is wet and dirty and I am in a doorway and I am very frightened. My heart beats like a pigeon trying to run away from a bus. I do not know where I am.

How did I get to this corner with green glass busted all over the street and trucks for beer and for a long word that begins with M. Mayonnaise. I look at that for a long time. I reach into the pocket of somebody else's coat and pull out hamburger wrappers. Jack in the Box. Wendy's.

I walk and walk and walk.

After a while I see the gold top dome of the City Hall and Market Street and I know where I am.

I can go home.

When I get there the whole house is gone. There is a big hole where the Dutchman and then the mad smelly men were and a big pile of dirt where my room was and the room where the TV and Oprah Winfrey were.

I am afraid to cry and afraid to move. Big yellow machines sit there like giant bugs with feelers.

I think of the man who said we put bug spray in his food and I am crying even if somebody sees me and laughs out loud.

There is one person who will not laugh at me.

I walk along Ellis Street past the little children from Asia and little stores with sacks of rice outside and I get to Street People Art Project. SPAP.

"Hey, get her out of here she stinks to high heaven," screams an old lady with two red spots on her cheeks and long grey hair.

After she has given me coffee with milk and two doughnuts with rainbow sprinkles and I could not say I wanted a hamburger, I tell her, "I figured out how to do it."

Merry nods, not catching on.

Wherever I was I had figured it out and it came back with me. "You save the Mona Lisa," I say. "Your turn it over so the cat can't claw and you take the cat out on the back of the painting."

Merry smiles, nodding. "That is good. But I like the other way you solved it and so did a lot of people. You get rested and cleaned up and fed and we'll find you a place to stay. Your whole life has to be restructured."

I guess I glared at her. I do not know what that restruck word meant but I bet it is a special class for big people. "My Mama," I begin.

Merry looks sad. She reaches out and pats my hand which is so dirty. "I know. I know, Bernie." She gets up and has a smile but looks sad too, and points at a table with paintings stood up on it, and at a corkboard which has a big picture of me, Have You Seen this Person? And another one I can't see too well, smudgy and I guess a copy of a painting.

I get up and look at all this, and I see my pictures on the table. Copies. $5. Benefit the program.

I have to hold onto the table not to tip over. That turpentine comes into my nose and my mouth and I have wet eyes. I look at the wall. When I painted those pictures I let myself go so far I never remembered and now here they are. And so am I.

I painted a funny sad Mona Lisa holding a pussy cat in her arms. Behind her are the flames of a big burning castle with a gold tower.

And there are Pinky and Blue Boy just like I remember. They are holding a basket of kittens and they look like they are all tap dancing, sort of, the two children and the pretty kittens.

And there is Miz Modern Spaghetti with a long skinny yowly cat like a snake around her neck.

And there is the Dutchman holding a cat the color of Sunflowers.

And there I am in one of my paintings, no more than one of me. Lots and lots, as I have seen my reflection in store windows, and I am carrying a different cat in every picture, teeny ones, big fluffy ones, black, golden, calico, beat up and sometimes alongside, a little Asian child with their own kitty cat.