2/12/22
I am working right off Central and Indiana, blocks from the epicenter of The War Zone. One of the first things I notice about the people who populate this neighborhood is that young or old, everyone’s gait resembles someone who is dragging their body around like a heavy sack. And everyone is hunched over, their shoulders bowed like a harp. There may be one or two people who race around the blocks, but everyone else has a zombie limp. One man who you can tell is young despite having a face ravaged by the street stomps around as if angry and spews a stream of words worthy of a Bob Dylan song. A poet, a rapper, a racer. I can’t help wonder where his mother is. His father. Does he have sisters and brothers? He keeps repeating “I’m just a little bit dumb,” as if he is just sane enough to know something is amiss about his brain.
Any time I’m in this part of Albuquerque, I can’t help be on the look out for Sarah. I remember when I worked for Street Safe and Christine, the director, kept a dry erase board with the names of missing girls posted above her desk. This was in addition to the Bad Guy List. There were always at least five girls who regularly showed up for outreach who hadn’t shown up in over three weeks. Christine let a little time elapse before listing the girls on the white board. But we kept an eye out for the regulars, for the girls that we knew
As I’m driving down Central, I gawk at every scarecrow bodied girl I pass wondering if I’d recognize her even if I saw her. It was her wrist brace that I used to identify her by. And she always wore a black hoodie. Once I park my car, I see a girl with a sequined pink backpack and for a second imagine she is the girl I would see at Outreach, the girl continually getting dragged away from the clothes bins by her boyfriend after she’d only chosen a couple items. As if there is only one pink backpack, only one young girl with an affinity for the color, for the imagery of childhood — unicorns and rainbows, teddy bears and bows roaming The War Zone. I spot a girl with a black hoodie, but her thighs are wide and solid. Sarah was spindly and looked as if with a little effort you could snap her legs in half like a chicken bone. This is not Sarah. I want to approach this girl and ask if she’s heard of this girl I now have lodged in memory. But I am afraid I might experience a kind of transference, the kind the psychologists fear, the kind patients so easily slip into. Regardless of resemblance, with no thought to reason, an unsuspecting person might adopt his or her therapist as a stand in for an absent parent or emotionally distant partner. And then another pink backpack walks by. None of the backpacks are a practical size; they are child sized. Perhaps these girls are holding onto something symbolic of innocence, or they bring up a picture of a caring parent that carefully chose school items for a girl child she was sure to cherish.
I spend most of the day parked between the racetrack and a trailer park, the warehouse where I work and Smoke City sandwiched between the two. The corner trailer in the park has a pair of speakers set up in front of its door. Today “Amazing Grace” is playing and it brings an air of spirituality to an area that it would seem God has forgotten. I am swept up by its sublime melody; the singer’s voice makes my skin tremble. Halfway through the song, a man sticks his head out a small window and screams, “Your music sucks.” After the song ends, it starts once again from the beginning. This is a message: we here in The War Zone don’t answer to anyone.
