The Halfway Hotel

Carolina and I moved into the Royal Palm at the same time. I was struck, the first time we met, at her resemblance to a certain Julia Margaret Cameron model—the same bold cheekbones and haunted eyes. I told her that she had wonderful bone structure and that I wanted to photograph her. I think she fell a little bit in love with me then.

The Royal Palm was once a grand hotel, but its lush carpets were replaced with linoleum and all the walls and woodwork painted industrial green. Its residents were the dregs of society, the no hopers living out the rest of their Social Security and Thorazine sentences.

I had just gotten out of the psych ward. Years of depression had let slowly, grimly, inexorably to a near-fatal overdose—a suicide attempt. I needed a place to live, and I needed to be watched over. The Palm filled both those needs.

* * *

A line from a song a friend wrote keeps echoing through my head: “There’s doom all around us. There’s doom hanging over us.”

This particular doom worrying me now is that the hospital bills have started to roll in. So far I owe $2686.12, and that’s just for the emergency room. I hate to think how much a week’s stay at the psych ward will run.

I’m scared. I’m really scared that the bills won’t go away, and I’ll have no way to pay them.

* * *

We moved into the dorm. We lived, our lives reduced to a twin bed and a Rubbermaid bin each, with eight other women in one room. The nights were filled with screaming and moaning, snoring and farting, the sounds of masturbating and hallucinating.

I lay on my twin bed, wrapped in a faded red blanket, a vestige of my former life. I dreamed of being somewhere, anywhere else. I used to be a real person, with a job, a husband, a child, a mortgage. Now I was no one and had nothing.

* * *

The bedbugs came back last night. I don’t know how it happened, when my mattress and box spring are both covered in plastic. The only possibility I can think of is that they came from someone else’s bed.

It’s also alternating raining and snowing outside, on a day when I have two appointments to get to and from on the bus. The snow’s not sticking yet, but with my luck, it’ll be icy.

But that’s not as bad as the bedbugs. Very little is as bad as the bedbugs. The only thing I didn’t wash was my earplugs. Now I have a horrible vision of bedbug eggs hatching in my earplugs, which would mean they’d been in my ears!

* * *

Morning began with breakfast. Always the same—your choice of cornflakes, raisin bran, or cheerios. There was no coffee provided, so we all hoarded our own jars of instant. I soon learned that there was a thriving in-house economy based on coffee and cigarettes.

After breakfast came the first of many cigarettes. That’s what the homeless and the mentally ill do more than anything—smoke cigarettes. I think it might be required by law. The first of the day is the most delicious, the smoke burning down your throat, the slight dizziness as your body relaxes, saying This, yes, this is what I wanted.

Cigarette gone, it was time to plan the day. There were groups I could attend to talk about my feelings, paint about my feelings, collage about my feelings, and cook, mercifully not about my feelings. I usually attended painting group, writing group, and women’s group.

* * *

If I belonged here, I would wake up happy. I would be happy to have free cereal, all I can eat. I would be happy to have a hot shower, as long as I want. If I belonged here, I'd be happy to have so many people know my name. If I belonged here, I'd eat meat and look forward to Sloppy Joe night. If I belonged here, I'd want to talk to staff all the time. If I belonged here, that would be the end of wanting more.

I feel guilty for feeling like I don't belong here. But if I felt like I belonged here, it would be all over. I need to feel like I don't belong here for my personal survival. I need to hate it here, like a normal person would.

And if I ever get out, I'm never coming back.

The bathrooms here, oh my God. I can’t use the showers, because sewage is backing up into the stalls. At last count, only one bathroom didn’t have the toilet clogged, and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

I want to cry, but there’s nowhere to do it. I can’t take up the only working bathroom. I can cry in my social worker’s office, but not for hours.

I’m so scared that things will never get better. I’m scared that I’ll never find a job, never have a real life again.

I just want out of this life.

* * *

Done with groups and feelings, it was time for another cigarette. We sat outside and smoked in silence. Carolina had dyed her dark hair a violent blue, and it shone in the weak sun.

A fad started. Soon everyone was coming to Carolina to get their hair done, and pink and green heads popped up like Easter eggs. Anything to make the place a little more festive.

* * *

It looks like we’ll be getting a new girl in the dorm soon. She’s young and doesn’t look crazy. Maybe she’ll be someone I can be friends with, but that’s too much to hope for. If I think about it too much, I’ll start crying.

I’m so lonely in this place full of people.

* * *

Lunchtime at the Palm was nothing to look forward to. The food was way beyond hospital gross, delivered by an outside catering company and heated to lukewarm in the Palm kitchen. Oily meatloaf, rubbery carrots, granulated chocolate mousse. Thank God for food stamps.

There was not a grocery store within walking distance of the Palm. We had bodegas. They sold junk food, ready to eat right out of the package. We needed this, because we had no facilities for preparing food. I ate trail mix and milk and all the cookies I wanted, but I could go weeks without seeing a vegetable. This is why the poor are fat.

* * *

This is the worst part of the day when I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. I’m planning on seeing my kid today, but he doesn’t get home from school for three more hours.

Usually on these days I go visit Carolina and smoke a bowl, but Carolina’s not answering her phone or her door. She’s off somewhere, and I’m stuck here.

It makes me feel so hopeless, having nowhere to be but here in the Palm. I’ve read all the books I have, and it’s no use trying to do art here—it always comes out wrong.

In ten minutes I can eat a really bad lunch, and that will take about fifteen minutes. Then I wait some more for it to be time to leave. It’s awful.

* * *

Carolina got her own room, and we sat in it in the afternoons, smoking weed and endless cigarettes. Socks the cat writhing at our ankles, smoke drifting through the air in the little room. We gossiped about which of our fellow residents was back on crack, or picked up for prostitution or shit their pants in the second floor hallway. We talked of our children, who did not live with us. We often talked of the past, but never of the future. We couldn’t imagine it.

* * *

Tonight was karaoke night at the Halfway Hotel. I left halfway through, but not before witnessing two remarkable performances.

The first was Madonna's "Vogue" as done by a young man in full makeup with almost-convincing falsies, backed up by a former stripper who has a marked resemblance to Lady Elaine Fairchilde. Their elaborate choreography and enthusiasm made it more funny and less ridiculous than it sounds.

The other performance left me feeling sad. Catalina, one of the women I'm closer to, with heavy PTSD and a heavier fantasy novel addiction, had her sister come to deliver some things that Catalina had been storing with her.

Catalina insisted that she wanted to sing for her sister, and she sang (some song I don't know) about being the only one who can feel the rain on your skin. She belted it out with gestures and all the emotion she could muster.

The whole time, her sister was busy with bagging the stuff for storage and talking to staff.

It made me sad to see Catalina being invisible.

I don't mean to say that I don't see the sister's side too. She was probably running late, everything needed to be bagged against bedbugs and carried down, and her fool sister Catalina was singing instead of helping.

I don't know if Catalina's sister was complicit in any of the family drama that left Catalina so damaged. I'd like to think she wasn't, and she's just worn out with the aftermath. But watching her ignore her sister pouring her heart out was pretty damn poignant from this side of the visibility divide.

* * *

Evenings at the Palm were slow and leaden, when we didn’t have karaoke or bingo to liven it up. Endless games of Spades, endless breaks for cigarettes. Dinner, much like lunch. Every day the same, the same, always the same.

* * *

I will try to never again complain about being bored in the Halfway Hotel. I did that last night, and almost immediately David lost two teeth eating Smarties. He must have had some suspicions about those particular teeth, because he just spit them out and went back to playing Bingo.

But that was just the lead-in. The main event started when Carolina went up to Doreen's room to see if she was ready for dinner and found that Doreen had been cutting herself. Carolina came back downstairs as white as a sheet and said "I need to talk to staff right now." Then we all had to clear out of the common area, carrying the three course, made from scratch, dinner that Doreen's boyfriend Jack had made.

Carolina was so upset by what Doreen had done. She and her boyfriend Dan and I kept ducking out for cigarettes in the pouring rain. Eventually Doreen came outside, terrified that we were all angry at her. This is where I finally got to be useful-- as a former cutter I was able to say that I knew what it was like and why she did it. Eventually everyone calmed down, and I went to bed.

I woke up at three in the morning feeling freaked out as hell. I couldn't stop thinking about back when I was cutting and the soul-sucking, crazy-making relationship I was in at the time. I cried as quietly as I could for a while, and then recited Jabberwocky about 15 times until I calmed down.

Note to self- memorize more poems.

* * *

Carolina is almost thirty. Her teeth are broken and gapped like an old picket fence. She doesn’t look old, but she does look worn. She is wary, having spent her life in the system. She is stoic, waiting calmly for the next blow.

We have been here for months, seen fire, death, sickness, and violence. We have recalibrated our notions of normal. Our days have a rhythm—breakfast, smoke, groups, smoke, lunch, smoke, weed, smoke, dinner, smoke, bed. Any incident, and there are many, is a welcome break from the monotony.

* * *

I'm thinking this week about families. Specifically the kind that spring up in places like this.

Yesterday Mike, who I really only know to say "hi" to, told me he's being kicked out of the Halfway Hotel for smoking in his room while drunk. He said "I don't want to leave here. This is my family."

I am both touched and horrified that he feels that way. I can't imagine, can't let myself imagine myself staying long enough to feel that way. But it's only been three months. I could easily be here another year. How will I feel then?

None of us at the Halfway Hotel have good relationships with our biological families. That's one of the most insidious things about mental illness-- sometimes you're yourself, and sometimes you're just not. And when you're not, you hurt other people. You may not remember it later, but they do. Normal people have trouble distinguishing between the person and the disease. The other loonies are much more likely to forgive you when you're not yourself.

It seems sad to me that people call people they barely know family, but everyone needs something and I guess it's better than nothing.

* * *

I lived at the Royal Palm for a year. I will never forget that time, never regret it. I will never stop being grateful for those who took care of me during that time. I will never forget the friends I made, the lives whose paths crossed mine. I will never stop craning my neck as the bus goes by to see who is smoking outside the building.

I moved out of the Royal Palm eight months ago. We’re moving Carolina out today. She is the last friend I have left at the Palm, so I’m probably never coming back. It is the end of an era, and we are jubilant.