There was a nice time where no one said anything. And then Shirley said, “Aren’t they little angels? These babies don’t know they’re homeless. They’re just as happy as can be.”
There was something about what Shirley said that bothered Foy, but he didn’t feel like trying to figure out what it was.
“How long does this last?” he asked, in part to change the subject. But he didn’t want it to sound like he wanted to leave, so he said, “I mean, this is our first time. We really don’t know anything.”
...read all of part one
Hold You Me
Part Two
Shirley took a deep breath and started talking about the history of the program and repeating a lot of general information they had already heard in orientation. It was specific information Foy was curious about, like how long they would be there. He hoped she wouldn't keep talking for a long time, but it seemed like she was going to.
“…then all the parents have to go to life skills classes every Tuesday, and that’s why we’re here. It depends. Some weeks we’re done by nine. Sometimes a little earlier.”
“Okay,” he said. He looked around at the little room. “This used to be a convent, didn’t it?” He asked this even though he knew the answer.
“Yes, it did. These were the nun’s quarters. Every nun had her own room, and each room had it’s own bathroom too.” Shirley seemed pleased that each nun had her own bathroom, as if that was very extravagant for nuns.
Foy looked around the room and noticed that there wasn’t a bathroom. Shirley seemed to notice the same thing and continued. “Although I think this might have been a study room. There were study rooms scattered throughout, as I understand it. This might have been one of them.”
Foy didn’t say anything after that. He watched Hannah with amusement. She had gotten over her initial discomfort and was holding a little boy on her lap and talking to him. She liked babies, but she was still a little awkward and unsure around them. Diven acted very sure of herself until she had to change a dirty diaper. Her finger slipped and she got “some” under her nail. She spent the rest of the evening sniffing her finger, muttering, and scrapping underneath it with a pencil point.
Danielle’s weight grew limp, and Foy could tell that she was asleep. He closed his eyes and enjoyed her heaviness. He thought he might like to come back to the baby room again on other Tuesdays, but he wondered if he would get the chance. He had the feeling that men didn't usually get assigned to the babies because of what the woman said in the hall.
The parents started showing up about 8:45. Danielle’s mother was the last to come. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her when she left the room, and in his mind he had decided she was African-American because Danielle had very dark skin. He was surprised to see that she was Hispanic.
Foy felt the two of them had a bond of some kind. He was looking forward to telling her what a sweet little girl Danielle was, but the woman seemed angry or perhaps just preoccupied. Some of the other parents had said “thank you,” as they left, but she just grabbed Danielle without saying a word or even making eye contact. The little girl was startled awake and whisked out of the room before he could see if she was going to start crying.
For a moment he was a little irritated, but then he thought about what had happened. He had a little conversation in his mind. “She comes here every Tuesday night, and there are different volunteers each week. And she might even be a little embarrassed, so don’t worry about it.”
Divan was already gone, so he chatted a moment with Shirley and Peggy before heading to the stairs with Hannah. Caroline saw them and asked how it went.
“I held Danielle the whole time, and she just laid there on my shoulder.”
“Yeah,” said Hannah. “She was adorable. She hugged him the whole time.”
Caroline smiled and said, “Aww, you know she likes being held because she doesn’t get held very much, bless her heart. Her mom’s all alone, and she has four other children.”
Foy stared at her. Suddenly everything that had happened that evening was erased and redrawn in his mind. He saw the woman push past him when he first arrived and remembered that a couple of other kids had been hurrying along at her feet. And there were children hanging onto her pants when she lifted Danielle to take her away. And now she was gone into the night, taking Danielle back to a world where an exhausted young woman tries to care for five children all by herself.
Foy looked at Hannah who was shaking her head with real concern, and a memory popped into his head. When Hannah was small she heard, “Let me hold you” so many times that she thought “hold you” was a verb. She would stand with her little hands in the air when she wanted to be held and say, “Hold you me!”
And now Foy saw Danielle as a little starving girl and himself as a rich man who tossed her a piece of bread one evening. It was a nice thing to do, but in the long run it wasn’t going to help anything. One night of holding her wasn’t going to make any difference. She needed to be held every day.
A wave of hopelessness began to come over him, and it seemed like there were so many people in the shelter. The lobby was full of them, volunteers with their white badges and the families taking their kids down the halls to their rooms. It was too much for him to take in, especially since he really didn’t understand all that was going on. He only knew about the baby room and Danielle.
He walked with Hannah out the front door and into the cold night. Steam came out of their mouths, and he began to feel happy again.
“Let’s get a treat at the gas station and watch “The Simpsons” when we get home, whaddya think?”
“All right!” she said with enthusiasm. Getting treats and watching “The Simpsons” was a big deal for them.
“I say we should make it a tradition and do it every time we're here.”
“Cool!”
He tried to put his arm around her and draw her close, but there were a lot of people around, and she didn’t want that. “Dad!” she said, pulling away. She had a way of saying it nicely so that he knew it was only because she didn’t want to be seen hugging him in the parking lot. Foy knew that she had been held enough in her life and that it was supposed to be this way.
“I know,” he said, and he didn’t feel at all bad about it.
rlp
6:38:02 AM 
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