Liberty Bell
Ernie pulled a paper ticket out of a machine, handed it to me, and chin-jutted toward the back of the room. I dragged myself over there and found a seat. It was easier to focus on faces past the low wooden gate than the ones nearby.
“I ain’t s’posed to do more papers. I given y’all that last time. I need my check.”
“If you want a check this month, bring proper documentation by end of day,” the office lady said, talking over the complaining woman’s shoulder as if warding off an evil spirit just to the left and behind her.
The scrappy back and forth about paperwork, IDs, and dollar amounts made the overhead fluorescents glow brighter. A bailiff squinted at the desk.
“Bitch, please,” the angry mother said, snatching a document from the welfare worker’s hand and dragging her little boy back to the waiting side.
The wooden gate separating the government side from the waiting side was nothing compared to the wall behind the welfare lady’s face. For people like us, the ones on the waiting side, she might as well be a cop, judge, teacher, bondsman, or any other authority type we needed to vent on. You could wait forever and never get past that wall.
When our number was nearly up, I went to the bathroom to find Ernie. I walked past smokers and urinal pissers toward the sit-down toilets. The stall doors had been removed to stop bad things from happening inside. It didn’t. In the first stall was an old man on a seatless crapper, doubled over, grunting and crying. In the next one, a man in ragged clothes was arguing with a woman who wasn’t there—or maybe he was practicing for later. In the third stall, a tall skinny guy was yanking on his thing with both hands like he was trying to rip it off his body. I tried not to look at it, but I did. It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen. In the last stall, the one I knew I’d find him in, Ernie was slumped back with one eyelid cracked open. At least he put his funny gun away, I thought.
“Number’s up,” I said.
“Gotta be kidding me. I just got here,” Ernie said.
It’d been thirty-five minutes, but Ernie didn’t understand time the way other people did, the way a clock did.
“Fifty-one, last chance,” the bailiff said.
“Fifty-one!” I yelled as we turned the corner.
The bailiff pointed to a desk.
“Ernest Bardo?” The welfare lady asked the space behind Ernie.
“Present,” Ernie said with a gravelly chuckle.
*
When we were almost back to Lathrop Homes, Ernie handed me a sixty-five-dollar book of food stamps. It was the first time I’d noticed the Liberty Bell on its cover. In Social Studies we were reading about American independence. The teacher said we were free to live as we wanted because we had fought hard for that right.
“Why’s the Liberty Bell cracked?” I asked Ernie.
“Same reason people are cracked,” he said, chin-jutting toward Nino’s bodega.
I walked inside and handed the fresh book of stamps to Nino. He looked past me through the window and popped the register.
“I’m keepin’ the five he owe,” Nino said, handing me forty-seven in cash—the usual eighty cents on the dollar minus Ernie’s five. I put a dollar in my pocket before walking out.
“That bastard beat you,” Ernie grunted, counting the cash.
“You owed him six.”
“I’ll crack him like the fuckin’ Liberty Bell,” Ernie threatened half-heartedly as he hustled toward the dope spot.
I took the El downtown to catch a triple feature at the Oriental. After paying the dollar entrance, I pushed past people ’til I saw the broken middle-row seat with a split running up its back. I was glad to find it empty, even though it usually was. I sat down, fidgeting the grooves in the armrest where I had carved and re-carved my initials so many times, waiting for the lights to dim, waiting for the people to disappear.
