Taken In: A Winter Coat Tale

I wanted to keep that coat. I guess it was a fair trade, though. Maybe not.

It's not that I had a sentimental attachment to the coat; it was given to me by one of my old lovers, and to tell you the truth, I can't remember which one it was. It was either Jim or Lester. Both of them gave me clothing on a regular basis. I never asked. My other lovers gave me jewelry, or food, or nothing, as it suited them. I wasn't particular; I didn't choose my lovers, or allow myself to be chosen by them, in order to receive presents from them. It just worked out that way sometimes. Somehow, though, it became my favorite coat -- perhaps because no one else liked it (except for Lester or Jim), or maybe because I didn't need a winter coat in California. It was bulky, quilted, strange: black with narrow blue flowers striped across it, like anorexic irises. It resembled a house coat more than outerwear, but it was damned warm, and it suited my temperament. Most of my dresses looked like nightgowns back then anyway, so why shouldn't my winter coat look like a house coat?

Of course, once I moved to Minnesota the coat came in handy and then I loved it even more. I wore it thin, had it lined, wore it thin again, had it relined, outgrew it, had it let out -- literally went through thick and thin with that coat. Then I got sick. If you ever need to lose weight really fast, try a nice stomach flu. You think a flu is just a bad cold in disguise? So did I. I was wrong. Actually it wasn't the bug that almost did me in; it was the dehydration. I was in the hospital for six days, most of that time with an I.V. in my arm. Part of that was because I just kept going to work every day, unwilling to admit I was sick, for about two months, and spent another two weeks laid up at home before I finally got hauled off in an ambulance. If my cable hadn't gone out, I might have died, but the cable guy found me unconscious on the front stoop, where I'd been waiting for him. I was burning with fever and had just wanted a little air. In Minnesota, a little air can be pretty chilly, but it felt like an inferno to me. Anyway, I spent New Year's Eve in a semi-private room: fun it wasn't, and I hoped it wasn't prophetic, either.

I lost 37 pounds, only six of which I really had wanted to dismiss. My coat hung off of me, but I was loathe to have it taken in. Mostly, I stayed in. I was by that time between jobs, and between men -- the cable guy was nice but I wasn't in any condition to appreciate him. I had few reasons to go out, and, quite frankly, I was afraid.

One day, though, I did have to go out. Since I couldn't work I was ineligible for Unemployment benefits, and since I hadn't been injured on the job, I was ineligible for Workman's Compensation, so it was good old Adult Assistance, AKA welfare, for me. I'd applied but for some reason they wanted to see me in person again. I wasn't up to driving, and parking's a bitch in Minneapolis anyway, so I took a bus downtown and walked over to the old Century Plaza, where they hide the welfare office. It's a walk of several blocks and the wind was particularly sharp that morning and it half blinded me, whipping up dust from the sidewalk and just stinging my eyes all on its own. I hugged that coat around me and kept my head down.

The few pedestrians I perceived around me weren't walking far -- just from their offices to their cars, or from the bus stops to their offices. Nonetheless I managed to trip over, of all people, a small child. "Hey!" she yelled.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" I murmured, then took a good look around. There were no cars standing nearby, puffing toxins and steam into the gray day. There were no doorways to frame a parental figure on its way out to resume supervision of a temporarily lone child. There was no one walking on either side of the street on this block. "What in the world are you doing out here all alone?"

The child, who could not have been more than eight years old, and who was wearing summer clothes but seemed not to be shivering at all, had what looked like an ordinary steak knife, and shook it at me in a manner meant to be threatening. "Give me all your money!" she demanded.

"If I had any money," I advised her, grabbing her wrist with one hand and gingerly prying loose the knife with my other, "would I be walking down this street in this weather, with my coat hanging off my like a tent on a scarecrow? Get a clue. Where's your mom, anyway?"

"Haven't got one," replied the child, chuckling at my scarecrow analogy, which was, I suppose pretty apt. "So are you going to give me all your money or what?" Pretty cheeky, with no knife, and me still gripping her wrist. She didn't try to pull free.

"Come on," I said.

"Come on where?"

"Good point." I had no idea where to find a police station, or a policeman unless a cop car happened by -- I glanced at the street and saw none -- and the nearest bus stop I knew of was the one I'd left behind a few blocks back. I had a tiger by the tail and no free hand to pull my cell phone out of my coat pocket.

"Here," said the child, patiently, dipping her free paw into her own pocket and fetching out my cell for me. I didn't know what to do with the knife so I threw it as far as I could into the street, then used my now-free hand to accept the cell from hers and immediately stick it into my mouth so I could rummage in her pocket myself. I found an expired credit card and a good one, both mine, plus two more in someone else's name, my keys and my bus pass. I shoved them back into my own pocket, spat the cell phone into my hand and dialed 911.

The cops got a name out of her anyway: Emmy. Emmy was, in fact, ten. I never was good at guessing ages. She wouldn't tell anyone where she lived so they indicated that they would more or less sit on her until they could no longer avoid dumping her into the system, just in case she relented and they could take her home, wherever home turned out to be. For reasons unknown to me, she asked if she could go home with me. For reasons amazingly incomprehensible to me, I said okay. For reasons that are probably against the law, the police were okay with that, and gave her a bus ticket (they kept a supply in a desk drawer, just as hospitals do).

All the way home, I was thinking, What have I got myself into? She sat sullenly beside me, then got up and sat facing me from the other side of the bus. Anyone observing us would have thought I was forcing her to come home with me. Her attitude made me a bit sullen, myself, even after we got to my dinky one-bedroom apartment, a third-floor walk-up in a building with absolutely no landscaping, big holes in the parking lot (which I had to navigate weekly to reach the dumpsters) and tenants who didn't look any happier than I to be living there. Somehow, the sight of it cheered Emmy up, and when I unlocked my front door, she ran ahead of me, into the dark apartment. I flipped on the light and saw that she was racing around the living room, picking up little objects and putting them down, as if in some weird game of tag. She picked up my paper clip holder, my door stop (which wasn't at the door), a paper weight snow globe, which she shook again and again to make the little white flakes drift down around the deer and rabbits and a baby chick and a few impossibly cute flowers therein -- not exactly a winter scene, but there it was: spring for the animals, snow falling on them anyway. She stayed with that one almost 20 seconds before moving on to touch the television, the pillow on the rocking chair, the big photo of my late cat, Chester, over the love seat (there was no room for a real sofa). "Are you hungry?" I asked.

She nodded. I fixed us some canned tomato soup and a couple of peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, a glass of Pepsi for her and a beer right from the can for me. She grabbed my can and sipped from it, made a face and spat it out. I made her clean that up. Then she was tired and she lay down on the love seat. She was asleep before my jaw could finish dropping.

I emptied my coat pocket into a plastic shopping bag and lay the coat over her. I took the plastic bag into the bedroom and locked the door. It was early afternoon, but I, too, fell asleep in my clothes, and it was six in the morning when my bladder woke me up.

Emmy was gone. So was my coat. My paper clip holder was upturned, and although it had a magnetic rim, there were still enough paper clips strewn about to be annoying. My snow globe paper weight had flown the coop.

I said a few words that I had not uttered since finding out that I was going to have a period every single month until I was too old to appreciate its absence.

I showered, dressed and went out to see if this time I could make it all the way to the Century Plaza. The wind had died down but now it was snowing, which just made me mad: whoever had given me the coat -- Jim or Lester -- the other one had given me the snow globe. I thought about calling one of them but couldn't decide which one. Anyway, I was out of minutes, and one or both of them had left California for God knows where (not Minnesota, anyway).

About a week later, I was feeling a bit better. The snow hadn't stuck, the temperature had gone all the way up to 37 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a heat wave for Minnesota in late January. I met a guy online and we agreed to meet in mid-February. I found a decent winter coat, a bit too normal but at least not fur, in a thrift store, and even treated myself to some boots, so I could meet this guy without dying of embarrassment. When we finally met, he took me to a really fancy restaurant, with interesting artwork on the walls, soft music and no prices on the menu. He leaned forward across the table and took both my hands in his. "I'm married," he confided, "but my wife and I have an arrangement."

"I don't," said I, and ordered Tiramisu for dessert and a Golden Cadillac just because I knew it would be expensive.

He dropped me off in front of my building and tried to pretend not to be put off. He also tried to kiss me, but I didn't let him. Alone in my hallway, I sighed. He'd seemed so nice.... I turned the key in the lock and immediately knew something was wrong. The door was already unlocked.

I slipped my hand in through the door and turned on the light. Then I slipped in, myself, not sure whether I was going to be hit on the head or grabbed from behind. No one was there to do either. I looked around the room, trying to see if anything was out of place or missing. Nothing was missing, but there were two extra items on the love seat. One was a snow globe, twice the size of the one Emmy had taken. The other was my old quilted coat. I ran to the love seat and picked up first one, then the other. I hugged the coat to me, and immediately noticed that it was smaller. I examined it. It had been taken in with tiny, irregular, childlike stitches. A scrap of paper tumbled from its pocket. I caught it before it hit the floor.

"i m sorry i broke ur snowting hear is anoter" it read. It was unsigned. I reached into the pocket to see if there was anything else and found my expired credit card, with scrapes on it indicating that she had likely used it to break into my place.

I picked up the snow globe again. This one had a Santa bear in it. I placed it carefully where the other one had lived. The coat was too small. I had gained back my weight and a little more.

The next day I went back to the thrift store where I'd bought my new used coat, and donated my old one. It's not that I didn't value it anymore, or that I didn't appreciate the work that went into those tiny, irregular stitches. I just couldn't look at it without crying. Within a few weeks I'd donated the snow globe, too, for the same reason.

I kept hoping she'd come back, but she never did. I hope she found herself someone to take care of her... preferably not at knife-point. She did find someone to care about her: me.