Chapter 3
It was still dark outside. I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I wandered down the street and just kept walking. I was in a city, and there was traffic on the streets, but not many people walking that time of night. I kept to the shadows, avoiding people entirely, hiding whenever anyone came near.
Fortunately for me, it was a warmer part of the year when I left, so I didn’t have to deal with the cold. It was Spring I think.
I found a quiet corner and took out some of the food I’d taken and ate a little of it. I somehow knew I had to be careful not to eat too much because I had to make it last. After I ate I curled up and went to sleep.
I woke up in the morning to the sounds of the city. Cars and buses and trucks rumbled and growled as they moved along the streets. People called to each other and metal banged against metal as trash cans were emptied into the dumpsters in the alleys.
I moved away from the noise, looking for quiet. I was scared that somebody would see me, scared that they might hurt me, more scared that they would catch me and send me back.
I knew I could take care of myself at least as well as the people in the house had taken care of me, which was hardly at all. They had neglected all of us, so we were pretty much on our own anyway. I’d always had to look out for myself, and this way there’d be no one telling me what I could and could not do, and no one pushing me around or hitting me.
The first few weeks were the hardest. The food I’d stuffed in my pockets didn’t last long, and more food was hard to come by. I soon discovered that restaurants threw out a lot of food. Most of it was a sloppy stew made up of everything they were getting rid of all thrown together, but some was still edible. It wasn’t always very appealing, but I was hungry and couldn’t afford to be too picky, so I took what I could get.
They also threw out a lot of bread, and if I was quick enough I could grab a few unsullied rolls before they were turned into a soggy mess by the rest of the garbage, but it wasn’t something I could depend on, and I couldn’t live on just bread and rolls.
And then I discovered grocery stores. They were stocked with food, and people would walk around, taking what they wanted, and nobody tried to stop them. Something like fruit was very easy to steal. No one says anything if you pick up an apple and just walk away. But you can’t just stick it in your pocket. You have to carry it around until no one is looking.
The whole idea of grocery stores is to collect things you need as you wander through the store. People do it all the time. That’s what you’re supposed to do. The hard part is getting out of the store with it if you have no money. I discovered that if I kind of trailed along behind a large woman, people simply assumed I was with her and paid no attention to me.
It was easy to take something like a package of hot dogs. They’re fairly easy to conceal and take out of the store. Back in the alley or the abandoned building where I happened to be staying I could tear it open and eat what I wanted, then hand out the rest to whatever homeless people were around, and they were grateful to have it.
I wasn’t part of any homeless ‘community’ and tended to avoid other people as much as possible, afraid that someone would turn me in and send me back. So I would give away the food I couldn’t eat and disappear, always trying to stay out of sight.
I’ve noticed that many poor people are often overweight. This is probably because they buy and eat inexpensive foods with little nutritional value, things like cookies and cake and white bread. I didn’t know anything about nutrition. I had no way to cook something like pasta, and the cakes and boxes of cookies were too big for me to take without being noticed, so I didn’t eat much of that. I ate a lot of fruits and vegetables simply because they were easier to steal.
There were signs all over the place in the stores, and the packaged food had letters and symbols that seemed to mean something to people. I somehow figured out that they had information that people needed to know, but I had no way to interpret it. I had never been to school, and the foster couple had never bothered to try and teach us anything.
I don’t recall exactly when I began to realize that I needed to learn to read, but I somehow came to know that it was important. No one was going to teach me, so I had to teach myself.