“Remnants” Katy Schultz

3 REMNANTS

Katy Schultz | 3rd Place

My Dairy Queen uniform, now a size too small, clung to my belly. A crease cut into the soft fesh where the waistband of my pants was too tight. I pulled the hem of my shirt, but the cheap polyester clung, damp with sweat. I was tired, my feet hurt, and I just wanted my bus to arrive so this day could end. I took a sip of Diet Coke and set the cup next to the bag containing my cheeseburger and fries. I was sick of cheeseburgers, but they were free, and it was not like Gram was going to make me dinner. It had taken all summer, but I’d almost saved the thousand dollars that I needed for frst and last month’s rent on an apartment in Portland that would get me out of Newport. Once there, I’d get a better job and start saving for college. A family of tourists carrying chairs, sand toys, and a squawking toddler walked between me and the street toward the sea wall. The father wore a loud Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, his pale belly protruding over the top of his khaki cargo shorts. A teenager wearing cutof jeans and a black Metallica t-shirt walked behind them. “I don’t want to go to the beach. It’s so boring,” he complained, not looking up from his phone. The bus appeared around the corner, just as I saw my mother, walking on the street between parked cars and the slow-moving trafc. I watched as Destiny slowly shufed closer, speaking to someone that no one else could see, gesturing with her hands in what looked like an involved conversation. As she stepped between two parked cars and onto the sidewalk, the man in the Hawaiian shirt put a protective arm around his wife and moved to the side, giving my mother a wide berth. Destiny stepped toward me to avoid the oblivious teenager, who still hadn’t looked up from his phone. I pressed my back to the bus stop, but with nowhere to go, we froze and stared at each other for a long moment. Pain and abandonment echoed in the space between us. The bus’s air brakes drew my attention, and I thrust my bag of food into her arms as I stepped past her and onto the bus. I stared straight ahead and refused to cry as the bus slowly made its way down Main Street. I hated her. I hated that my crazy mother lived here and that I was trapped here, our lives still entwined. I hated that everyone gave up on Destiny. Gram and Aunt Linda had quit trying to help her. They had given up on their own daughter and sister, and barely tolerated me. Destiny had escaped this town when she was eighteen, but returned pregnant with me at twenty. She left me with Gram before I was a year old, but selfessly bestowed two virtues: a fear that I would inherit her schizophrenia, and her frst name. I didn’t want either.

The size of Newport all but guaranteed everyone knew of the crazy lady named Destiny. When I was in second grade, Todd Jenkins, who was in the 5th grade, made the connection and told everyone at school that she was my mother. They were cruel in ways that only kids could be. They pulled on my braid and teased me until I cried. I don’t know when the mental illness took hold of her. I want to believe that she didn’t

know what she was doing when she named me Destiny. What kind of mother names her daughter after herself? It was normal for a man to name his Perhaps she thought son after himself, but Destiny wasn’t normal. Perhaps she thought that I’d be a do-over; a second, unbroken that I’d be a do-over; version of her.

a second, unbroken I stepped of the bus just as the sun was setting. By version of her. the time I reached our apartment, the sky had turned shades of pinks and yellows. Light from the lone window cast a soft glow over the combined living and dining areas. As I shut the door, the Pomeranians, Aunt Linda’s evil beasts, didn’t assault me with their usual yapping. Instead, they growled at me from each end of the couch where they guarded greasy bones, leaving dark stains on the cushions. I walked around them and into the kitchen.

From the dishes left on the stove, it looked like Gram had fried pork chops and potatoes. I looked in the fridge, hopeful that she’d left a plate for me. Disappointed but not surprised, I closed the refrigerator door and straightened the driftwood and sea glass magnet. I grabbed a packet of ramen from the cabinet and passed the snarling Pomeranians. I snarled back.

“Don’t growl at them. They didn’t do anything to you,” Aunt Linda said, standing at her bedroom door. It was only 7:00 pm, and she was already wearing her lavender housecoat. It hung open over a dingy t-shirt. I could smell the wine on her breath.

“That’s your dinner?” she asked, motioning toward the ramen package. “Don’t you get free food at work?” “I gave it to Destiny. I saw her today. She looked hungry.” She hadn’t really looked hungry, but I wanted Aunt Linda to feel bad. “You are an idiot,” she responded. “She doesn’t care about you. She doesn’t care about anyone. You’d be better of if you just accepted that.” I turned to argue, but her door clicked shut before I could. I climbed the stairs to my loft and sat on my bed. It was just a futon cushion set on the foor. I pushed my back against the half wall that separated the loft from the living room and ate the ramen raw. I sprinkled it with the favor packet and listened to the Pomeranians gnaw on their pork chop bones, licking the fatty marrow from inside. If I were lucky, Gram and Aunt Linda would stay in their rooms and not return to the kitchen to look for more wine. On more than one occasion, they had screamed up at me in the loft, accusing me of stealing it. On more than one occasion, their accusations were correct.

It was a week before I saw Destiny again. She wore her blue fannel and the darker of the two pairs of jeans that she owned. She was set up at the park’s

edge, facing the sidewalk. My mother survived by selling trinkets to tourists; pieces of driftwood, shells, and junk that she held together with wire to look like fsh and sea stars. She scavenged discarded items from the beach where tourists had illegal bonfres in front of their overpriced rentals. She collected what was left after the fre was put out, and the ash blew away. Remnants were all that were ever left after the tourists had gone. Items that no longer belonged to the tourists, but instead to the beach. They lingered, left behind in this in-between, much like the broken, the homeless, and the crazy; no longer belonging to the past, yet having no real place in the future. Destiny gave the discarded objects a purpose. She was the collector and creator. They lingered, left behind in this inIn her hands, the objects reappeared, not as worthless between, much like junk, but as part of something with a future. the broken, the Destiny was a spectacle. She was also invisible. As homeless, and the with most homeless, people didn’t want to see her. I watched as several tourists walked past her until crazy; no longer fnally, a woman stopped to look at her crafts. I craned belonging to the past, my neck as my bus passed, and the woman opened her yet having no real wallet and handed Destiny a bill. That night, I ate my cheeseburger and fries for dinner. place in the future. The weather fnally turned, and a thick blanket of fog sheathed the coastline in gloom. I was downtown, loitering on Main Street to avoid going home. Destiny sat on a bench across the street. Nearby, Todd Jenkins stood on the sidewalk outside his parent’s shop, talking to a police ofcer. Destiny was carefully placing her trinkets into a box, nervously watching the two men. Todd pushed his chest out and put his hand on his hips. “She can’t sell her shit here,” he said to the police ofcer. “And that is why I told her to move on,” the policeman replied. “She is just going to come back tomorrow.” As Todd got louder and angrier, Destiny became more agitated, rocking forward and back, shaking her hands, and then clenching them into fsts before calming to place another piece in the box. The policeman shifted from one foot to the other. He looked at his watch, impatient and tired of waiting. The policeman dropped to one knee and tossed several pieces of her wares into the bin. Destiny reached for them, covering the remaining pieces with her arms. The policeman finched, lost his balance, and fell back, landing hard on the curb. The policeman fumbled for his mace, and I dodged two cars as I ran across the road, placing myself between my mother and the policeman. “It’s okay,” I said, a bit too forcefully. I knelt between the policeman and Destiny and placed my hand on her arm.

My mother recoiled and stared at me for a beat, then lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut, giving us both a moment to accept that my touch had made her cringe. “It’s okay,” I said again, but this time to her. “Mom, we have to go now.” She looked between the policeman and me as Todd helped the policeman stand. Destiny nodded and let me place the rest of her treasures in the box. I picked it up, but she pulled it from my hands. I followed her to her storage unit. I knew she lived there, alone in the dark, damp, and cold space. I knew because I’d watched her come and go. Someone had to. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t try to get better, but we both remained silent. Destiny unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her. The idea of eating another cheeseburger and fries made me sick, but so did the thought of ramen for dinner again. The #4 bus was early. I watched it drive away as I climbed down from the intercity transit connection a block away. It would be another hour before it came back around.

I looked down the street toward Destiny’s storage unit and wondered if she was in there. It had been six days since I had seen her. I watched from the corner, where I could see the rental ofce and the bathrooms. The door to her storage unit was propped open, but there was no sign of her. After ten minutes, I walked closer and pulled down a red “Notice of Eviction” taped to the door. I peeked inside. I was curious how Destiny lived and wanted to know why she chose this life over life with me. Cushions laid along one wall, and mismatched boxes lined another; pieces of plastic, rocks, shells, and sea glass were visible in each, all sorted by color. One box held white handles from discarded buckets children used to make sandcastles.

Deeper in the space were several large sculptures, standing three to four feet tall. They held bits of metal, rounded pieces of sea glass, and plastic, some recognizable and some beaten by the surf for so long that they had lost their identity. Found objects scavenged and reimagined, becoming something new: a dog, sitting and waiting, looking up as if toward its master, and a large bird, a raptor with a sharp beak and ferce talons, wings open as if about to take fight. My heart raced as I stepped further into the space and approached the largest sculpture. It was a child, a girl with a braid woven from rope and dried seaweed. Her skirts were made from layers of gauzy fshing line that almost appeared soft, and eyes that were fxed, looking down, made of lucent sea glass that was both the color and sadness that my mother and I shared. I let the bag of food drop from my hand and shoved the sculpture until it fell over. Pieces shattered and few into the far corners of the unit. How dare she? This child had no say; it didn’t ask to be made. Destiny lovingly pieced this girl together, creating something beautiful and worthy. How could she create this girl and abandon me? Only remnants of the sculpture remained—illusions of what should have been. My vision blurred with tears as I stepped back into the boxes along the wall knocking one over—shells spread across the foor. I dumped each of the boxes, kicking through the broken plastic and splintered driftwood, scattering them throughout the space. My

breath was ragged as I stepped toward the dog and the bird and smashed them both to the foor.

As I stood, gasping in the middle of the mess, guilt crept over my skin and settled in my chest. All this junk, cast of and dismissed by others, Destiny—my mom—lovingly reworked it into beautiful pieces of art, precious and unique. Why couldn’t she have shaped me, too? Why did she choose to save other people’s junk when she couldn’t even save her own?

In the silence of the storage unit, I looked at how she was living. Her bed was a few thin threadbare cushions, covered with a worn sleeping bag. Makeshift shelves supported concrete blocks and held a pan and hot plate. The only food was a box of cereal and a few packets of ramen. We were more alike than diferent. Everyone had abandoned her, just as she abandoned me. But we were entwined in this life, bound together, and no one else was going to help her. With the eviction notice still clutched in my hand, I wiped at my cheeks and walked to the rental ofce.

I slapped the eviction notice down. “Why is 34F getting evicted?” I asked. The man behind the desk looked wearily from the crumpled notice to me. “Destiny? She owes three months back rent.” He shufed a few papers and added, “With late fees, she owes me $785.”

My heart sank. I pulled my debit card from my back pocket. “I’ll pay it.” As I waited on the bench for the #4 bus, I realized I had left my cheeseburger in my mom’s storage unit and would have to eat ramen for dinner again. I lowered my head into my hands. I was tired, my feet hurt, and I just wanted this day to end, and I wanted a mother to make me dinner and tell me I could go to college. I stood and followed the tourists’ path over the sea wall. I listened to the incessant cawing of gulls screaming from the sky, overlooking the town and the rugged edge of the shoreline. A remnant of a recent bonfre, a piece of driftwood, rolled in the surf, crashing in, and rolling back out, incapable of directing its destiny. The waves were unrelenting, yet constantly shaping a new identity. One of many discarded remnants tumbled by the sea, perhaps reforming as part of undiscovered treasure.