“Gideon,” I said.  “Gideon…Ing.”

“What makes you think I’ve got work?” the man asked.  He was tall, slightly stooped and skinny as a wire.  He looked like his hide had been stripped off, nailed to a shed for a few years and then draped back over him in a casual sort of way. 

“A man at the soup kitchen said he’d just quit,” I said.  “So… I thought I’d ask.”

Desperate though I was, I had sense enough to realize that a boy with only one set of clothes was going to be noticed.  I worked on a back story.  I was a student doing research for a school project on ancient modes of transport.  Might work if they didn’t ask me which school I went to.  I watched the museum that day.  I saw when the person who worked at the entrance went on her break and to lunch.  Someone who exited but never entered would be pretty obvious. It gave me a window where I could slip out and go look for work.

The Museum of Transportation had several good things going for it.  It had plenty of foot traffic, it was casually managed, minimally guarded, dimly lit, overly cluttered, and the last hour it was free to get in, and that’s when a lot of people went.  I got there with twenty minutes to spare.  I waited until several people were going in and coming out at the same time, and I sauntered in, trying to look like the visitor I wasn’t planning to be…

When I walked in the door, my mother didn’t know me.  She thought I was a client.  “It’s me,” I said.  “Gideon.” I realized I was looking down, not up into her face. I will remember her expression and our conversation, to my dying day. There was a pause.  “Oh.  OK,” Another pause.  “You’re not here to ….me?” She used a word we don’t use in our family. 

His name was Jasper Ing.  It took me a bit to figure out that people had surnames.  His was Ing.  He explained that to me while we separated the sheets and blankets into piles – those that had urine, those that had feces, those that were simply two weeks old and ready to change…

Shame became the word that meant, me. 

“Shame on you.” 

“What a shame, you’re…”

“What a shame he’s…”

That last one hurt most, because I ceased to exist.  I was a case.  I was a number. I was not a person, but then, I didn’t really expect to be…

So, I thought, that is what love means.  And I went back, because I got food, and a bath, and attention, and sex was the price I paid because that was the currency I had.  After a while it seemed normal to me – having absolutely no idea what normal really meant.  Brother Darwin taught me things.  We would go to the museum and he would talk to me about history.  He taught me a bit about reading and writing – more than I thought, actually – but mostly he was an oral sort of a fellow, in oh, so many ways. I cannot describe the dichotomy of emptiness, despair and hope that filled me in those years…

Brother Darwin talked to me.  I mean, really talked to me, like I was a sentient being.  Like I was a person.  I was in love.  I spent two hours with him.  He told me about Al’Shadai – the Declivian name for the Creator.  He told me that there were other boys and girls here who ate food and learned things and got to wash their hands and faces.  He told me other things, but the thing that stuck was the phrase, “Come back when you can.” He gave me a small roll, and I went home.  My mother was still asleep…