Finding a Family
Finding a Family
Morgan Bronson
December came coldly and swiftly on the family, although they had done nothing to incur such a terrible punishment. Daily, they gathered around a metal can, burning what they could and wearing the rest to keep warm, for the walls and roof above them could only do so much. On this particular day, snowflakes softly floated through the air, spinning and swirling with the wind until they settled in Steven’s matted hair. The grey of the sky cast a low light in the city streets, and in the cold, he hurried on towards the grocery store. on the corner of Market Street and 5th Avenue. A pocket full of change jingling rhythmically and the drone of cars echoed loudly in the still, winter air. The change he and his surrogate family had rustled up throughout the day, a penny here, a quarter there, until they gathered enough to buy a loaf of bread for dinner. Such was a common occurrence for “families” like his.
Together, they scavenged for food in the streets, and when they collected money, like tonight, one of them would take it to buy a meager meal. Each time, they would send a different person, or go to a different store to avoid attention. For two years now, he had lived in the alley with three other people, all refugees from modern life for one reason or another. Linda, who had been homeless the longest and was considered the matriarch, fled from her home many years ago after fighting with her parents about her ambitions. She had hoped for the glamorous life of the rich and famous, but she soon abandoned those dreams and became a lost nomad. John preferred not to talk about his past, but once, when John’s turn came to buy groceries, his sister Tia revealed their story. John had been in an accident, from which, he only had miraculously survived with bruises, a broken arm, and a gash on his forehead; the fiancé in the passenger seat had not been so lucky. After that, anytime John saw his reflection and the scar on his forehead, memories of the accident came back to persecute him, and he could not deal with the complexities of average life. He simply wanted to get away, and Tia, always up for an adventure, tagged along to watch over her older brother. Steven had attended college for a few years, but while he did, he watched his bank account disappear into student loans. Job application after job application disappeared within employers’ fully saturated filing cabinets, never to become anything more, and insufficient funding forced him to drop out of school. He never bothered to rent an apartment. One by one, they discovered the old, decaying factory off Brinkmann Avenue and took refuge there, where they easily became a tight-knit family.
As the traffic light on 4th Avenue turned and the screen below flashed WALK in bold, orange letters, Steven stepped down from the curb and felt his foot splosh into a pile of melted snow from the night before; the cold on his foot broke the trance that had carried him down the last block and a half of Market Street. Suddenly aware of his surroundings, he thought he heard a soft noise, though he could not distinguish it over the wail of the cars in the street. Steadily, he approached an alleyway, and the soft noise transformed into an agitated cry emanating from the dumpster. Underneath the heavy, plastic lid, he discovered a newborn baby, crying and wrapped in newspaper. He did not hesitate to pick her up, and carefully, he swaddled her in his crimson scarf to protect her from the cold. Warmth, along with gentle rocking and cooing did nothing to alleviate her discomfort, so she continued to cry. Although reduced to a whimper, her cry was persistent and tinged with hunger; the jingling of change in Steven’s pocket picked up as he hurried on to the grocery store.
His nose and cheeks burned upon entering the repository, which provided a welcome respite from the cold. Her eyes shone red and watery in the pale lights of the building, and in them, he saw weariness from crying all day, waiting for someone to save her from the fate she had not chosen for herself. He felt the room and the people in it grow tense at his presence, afraid he might steal something or pull a weapon at anytime. The metallic racket, clanging like cymbals in his pockets with each step, only raised their suspicions. No one in the store that night wondered why their decaying city’s crime rate was so high.
Once they saw the baby in his arms, however, looks changed.
“People like him shouldn’t be having children,” sneered the store clerk. He felt particularly smug at the close of his evening shift and thought he deserved to criticize someone the way his mother did him. “Look at him. He can barely take care of himself, let alone a baby.”
“They really should do something about those people,” agreed another idly watching employee.
All throughout the store, Steven met the condemning stares of other shoppers as he paced along, desperately trying to calm the child in his arms. They were mean and full of pity; pity, but not mercy for the ragged hobo coming in from the street for a few hours’ refuge from the cold, swirling air outside.
Still, he pushed on to the formula aisle, a mystifying sea of liquids and powders and boxes and brands. There were lactose-free formula, soy-based formula, cow milk based with added DHA and ARA. For a long time, he stared at what seemed like thousands of options, armed only with the knowledge that infants could not be given straight milk. Pressured by scowls from the young mother stopping in for last minute groceries, he grabbed the cheapest powder he could find and left to go to the next aisle. There, he hastily grabbed a plastic bottle, and as he made his way to the front of the store while the girl’s strained sniveling continued.
When he came to check out his groceries, the cashier could not conceal a look of bewilderment at the sight of the change Steven extracted from his pocket. He paid for the formula and silently slipped the spare coins- the few that remained- in the donation box by the keypad before walking exhaustedly over to a bench in the foyer. In no time, he ripped the package from the plastic bottle and poured the formula into it. A faucet by the deli provided warm water to mix the infusion the drowsy newborn so desperately needed. She howled in hunger until the bottle reached her mouth, and gulped down her dinner voraciously.
A newspaper, turned to another story about the city’s sorry state, lay carelessly folded on the bench next to him. Steven picked up the paper, threw it over his shoulder. And gently began to pat the baby’s back until she spit a creamy, white liquid all over it. As he got up to discard the soiled newspaper, the infant’s eyes closed, and exhausted, the little one drifted soundly to sleep.
He looked down at her tenderly and sighed. “What am I going to do with you?” he said. “We can’t take care of you,” he paused, “but you can’t take care of you either.” He simply could not bring himself to leave her at the fire station without a family, so with faith, he carried his new daughter home to meet her family on Brinkmann Avenue.