Collisions 2: past and present

Today I was schlepping my way through the hot, muggy day whem I encountered a pair of teen girls sitting on the church steps. It was well before client hours, so I gave them the usual instructions to sit on the other steps, which are not an active doorway and then started searching for my keys. "Are you part of this?" asked one of the girls, pointing to the New Alt sign on the door. It was hot out there, so I let them in and handed them over to Danny to get some food while I got settled. Once they were upstairs in my quiet, sweaty office, the story came out. They are a lesbian couple, 15 and 16 years old, both had taken off from abusive homes, and they wanted to stay together. When I heard their ages, my heart sank. Below a certain age, there is no way to house teens without at least contacting ACS, and below 16, the youth shelters can't even take them in, they have to be placed by child welfare. Foster parents who want teens are few and far between, so most teens wind up in group homes. Hoping that maybe there was a solution I wasn't thinking of, I started reaching out to people I know at Urban Justice, Ali Forney, the Coalition for the Homeless. Ramon, who stays in touch with his lawyer from his own days in foster care, tried to reach her. By 5pm, it was pretty clear we couldn't keep them together. The older girl could go to Ali Forney, which would keep her safe from going back to her abusive father, which was crucial because she didn't think she could get away again. The younger girl, however, had to go to the ACS emergency shelter, and just the thought was making her shake with emotion. She had been in the system already, but kept being sent back to her mother, even though her mother kept kicking her out. Knowing she would be in trouble for throwing out a minor the mother kept lying and convincing the system that her daughter was the problem. I offered her the only thing I could, a referral to a lawyer who would really be on her side. She thanked me for being an adult who actually listened. Misty, my assistant, was fuming in her chair across the office, furious that kids have to go through things like this. She was remembering her own days in foster care, where they assumed she was so defective they barely taught her to read, and never saw the grieving little girl inside the acting out young boy. Behind my face, I was struggling too, remembering my own queer 15 year old self shaking in fear at the ACS emergency children's services, the old one on Laight St. before gentrification swallowed that area whole. Images started pouring through my brain, being stripped by strangers with a polaroid, determined to photograph every bruise or mark. Intrusive questions and not knowing, no answers, the incongruity of being handed colorful beads and string under the fluorescent lights while outside the night was darkening and the moon rose. And then being in a car, driving through the darkness, the dislocated feeling of having no idea where I was going or why. And finally, arriving at the group home, adults speaking in muted voices amid the silent breathing of sleeping girls. But I can't dissolve into the memories, not of that night or of running, the feeling that they could pop out from anywhere and grab me, the endless length of a subway ride when you have nowhere to go. I have clients to see, three more intakes and several regulars waiting, their sandwiches nibbled down to crusts drying out on their paper plates. So I elbow the memories back into the locked cabinet inside of me, fold up that girl and shove her into the safety of darkness, click the lock shut and call in the next client.