Work Text:
"Trash!"
The loud sound echoed into the cold night of the city. A man pushed Uriel out of the warmth of the coffee shop. The few people inside said nothing, nor the people who were walking across the street. Uriel had not done anything to break the rules; he had found a few dollars earlier and used it to buy a hot chocolate. If you bought something, they weren't supposed to kick you out. That was the rule. Uriel remembered it ,and yet he found himself on the cold sidewalk. He wasn't stupid. “I am not trash,” he wanted to say but shop owner had already closed the door.
Uriel swallowed any words that wanted to come out, he had never been good at speaking to people and knew pleading would get him nowhere. Well actually, it would get him in trouble if anything. He felt heat on his face, tears that fell from wide-set eyes onto the pavement. Looking up, he saw the cup he had been holding on the ground, the hot liquid spilt. Uriel tried to save any that could be, but all that left of the heat from the coffee shop was on the cold ground. He used his scraped up hands to stand, a gust of wind easily shooting through his too large coat and making it hurt to breath. A sob wanted to come out from his chapped and ripped lips.
It was already hard to breath because off the cold. Uriel tried to stop crying as the wind stole away the bit of warmth he managed to gather within the low-lit coffee shop. Curly dark hair covered his burning ears, whipping at his face, faint freckles speckled across his nose despite his skin being ashen from the cold, full chapped lips that threaten to bleed with the slightest movement. Clad in too large and much too worn clothing, Uriel stumbled from the coffee shop.
No one cared that he was thrown out into the cold, no one would miss him. The coffee shop had been speckled with people all of which did nothing more than steal a few quick glances as he was thrown out. Uriel had tried to be careful and quiet, having tucked him into a corner from everyone's view, out of the way to bother no one. Anything to just sit for a few moments away from the cold outside. Weak from starvation, his youthful face gaunt and deep set from hunger and dehydration. His dark eyes had little light left in them, his soul tarnished by people just as the elements had worn on his body. By Uriel trusting those who tempted him with food, or trusting that people like the shop owner would follow the rules that the other street people had told him. The rules of surviving when no one was there to miss you.
Uriel thought it was because he was different rather than his homelessness. Although he didn't know the word, hermaphrodite or intersex he knew the words abomination, freak, and others thanks to the foster system after his mother had passed away. As if they had been stamped on his forehead, and people just knew by looking at him. It had taken a lot of pain and time just for him to figure out he was different. But it did not take long to learn the ultimate rule- that was his fault. For being an abomination. He deserved it. After hearing it in almost every boys' home and every foster family, it became his reality and his understanding that the punishment for it would never end.
What confused him, was how people seemed to just know he deserved it. Uriel could not tell that by just looking at someone, but then again he had never saw anyone who ‘needed’ to be hurt. That was how one of his father fathers had put it. That some people needed to be hurt, reminded that they were below the rest in the ‘social order’. Maybe that is why people called him stupid. He didn't see what made everyone decide, and just know, who to look at with such mean eyes without saying a word. He'd never spoken to anyone about being different. He didn't know how to.
Just smile and be sweet. Just follow the rules. Just do as I say and you won't be hurt. Just be a good boy. Just buy something and no one can kick you out. Uriel followed the rules,yet he was always at fault, always blamed for whatever happened. Maybe he was stupid, a "retard" because he never knew what he did wrong.
Trash!
What Uriel did know was his mama or Mrs. Myrtle never called him any of those words. The thought of them made his chest ache as he stumbled through the street. It was so cold, the wind felt like knives stabbing him over and over. When he moved to one of the alley ways, it shut out some off the wind but he felt no warmth either.
No, his mama sat in her chair, eyes empty and gone. So far gone most of his life that Uriel did not know she was gone when he was very little because it had been so normal. Until he saw life in her eyes one night, movement behind the usually blank brown eyes. But any other time, she was gone. No one was behind those eyes, not until the rare nights came and when she picked up her pencil.
The first time Uriel had seen this was on a humid night. Mama had her long hair drawn back from her face, long fingers wrapped around a pencil and the steady scratching of the lead working on paper. At first, Uriel thought his mama was writing. She did this now and then, but now her hand was moving in different directions and in the low light of the lamp and the moon shining brightly. The beams streamed in and on his mother through the open window, drapes ruffled by a rare breeze now and then.
The windows were left open in an attempt to make the suffocating days a little better inside the house with the slight breeze; even the nights were unbearably hot in late July. So much so, that Uriel could never sleep, neither did his mama. Then again his mama didn't sleep much at night anytime of year, usually dozing in her chair during the day.
But on those rare nights, he would see her alive. See her hands move and eyes showing the gateway to what his mama looked like. Uriel barely knew what made her so alive on the papers. She usually tore them up and put them away or hid her them in her coat to hide where ever her treasures were.
That was another concept he had captured in his life: treasures. Not like the ones that Mrs. Myrtle read to him about with pirates and such, but things that people held dear. He never learned what any of the treasures were, but he knew what people looked like when they handled or hid them. Mrs. Myrtle kept hers in a small wooden chest, the vague outlines looked like pictures to Uriel though he never snooped, just peeked into the doorway now and then. His mama's were in her room. People in black and with strange eyes went through her treasures when she passed, they went through everything. They were not gone like mama, but not alive in their eyes either. Just hard like the stone pathway that lead to their house from the small gate. He didn't like them, he got them in town or when people came to deliver things to the house.
However, those had an underlying meanness to them, but the people in black didn't have any meanness, just blank. When he heard he was going with these stone eye people, it had once again been one of those suffocating late July days. He was forced into another stuffy suit, the one he was supposed to wear to his mama's funeral, but he never got there. He had to stay at the house after Mrs. Myrtle and the tall man that owned the house yelled and carried on. He was not told why, but the man had always made his mama nervous, making her shake and look so scared. And then, the man had kept Uriel from his mama's funeral. But in the end, Uriel didn't care too much about going to the burial.
Mama had long been long dead days before when they carried her body out- Uriel had cried then and said goodbye. Mama had called him over and stroked his dark hair, curly much like her own that were mixed with graying stripes. Her eyes were awake and she had been too weak to really hold the pencil. Usually, he had to stay really quiet, at times even falling asleep watching her at night on the floor. But that night , she called his name in her soft voice. He had rarely ever heard her spoke at all, especially to him. He remembered leaning against her chair as she stroked his hair. Then he fell asleep. When the early morning sun hit his eyes, she was gone. Forever, no more hot nights and pen scratches.
He cried then, he cried when Mrs. Myrtle called for someone, and he had cried until the morning the suit was set on his bed.
Uriel remembered Mrs. Myrtle crying as she dressed him in that suit when he had to go. Her usually strong brown eyes filled with tears and even though she tried to be stern for him to be good. Uriel was not stupid, he knew others thought he was. He was not stupid, and he knew Mrs. Myrtle did not agree with whatever was happening, and he knew the tall man had something to do with it. So he had hugged the older woman tightly before he was taken away.
Mrs. Myrtle didn't think he was trash, neither did his mama. Never trash like everyone else did. Uriel tried to be friendly and nice like Mrs. Myrtle had told him to be, to smile.
In the alley way, Uriel ignored how it hurt but just thinking of the older black woman made him smile. She was the one who raised him and took care of his mama and him. He never could get ahold of her- he didn’t know his own address. An old road leading out to large pastures that the tall man owned- further onto a beaten house were an older house stood. His home. Two story farm house with a small fence hidden out of they way by the fields.
Mrs. Myrtle had always told him to smile when things were hard, to take yourself somewhere nice. A memory. When he was in his foster homes, and now on the streets he had one of those memories he clung to.
Before his mama had passed away, there had been another sweltering night. One of the few times he had been away from the house before he had been sent away.
There was a place, where those mean eyes turned into amazed ones. The carnival Mrs. Myrtle took him to on a very far drive away from the house, they had to stay the night in the hotel and instead of going to sleep, Mrs. Myrtle took him to a Carnival. Uriel never wanted to leave. Uriel felt the same euphoria many children felt among the sweets, lights, and games.
Once more it was one of those late July nights, suffocating and infested with mosquitos, but those two things never even dented the memory even if he was covered in those bites, his clothes stuck to him like another skin. He saw people's' eyes towards the different people without down turned mouths.
People who were different than him too, their faces were different or they had strange talents that made them different. Instead of mean eyes, people paid them and applauded. No one looked at them with mean eyes, but Uriel didn't want all those people staring at him. He was afraid at first if anyone noticed him, people would be mean.The mean eyes didn't happen though. No one even noticed him, if anything, they gave their sideway glances to Mrs. Myrtle but no one said anything.
That hot night, among the crowds, Mrs. Myrtle had disappeared among the crowd and Uriel had gotten scared and began to wander looking for her. Only, he was so small and was lost among the crowd of adults. At some point, his feet started to ache and the crowds began to thin, and he just sat between one of the huge tents and a closed food stand and cried. That is when a long haired man, well he seemed like a man at the time with his height, came up to him. He captivated Uriel with long dark hair and two different colored eyes. Not just the colors of his eyes but the emotions in them, the man was thinking, like his mama did when she was drawing.
The long haired man asked him his name and introduced himself as Gavriel. Uriel treasured that name in his mind even as he froze in the city streets in the present. He brought him to one of the caravans. It held all sorts of clothing, trunks, paper, and ink. For a long while Gavriel just watched him with those pretty two-toned eyes while he gave Uriel cake and a sweet tasting tea.
"Uriel." The voice had drawn his attention from his treat.
"Would you like to sta-" the enchanting voice had begun to speak again, but then two loud raps hit the caravan door. The long haired Gavriel stood up at once, almost like a German Shepard, tensed as he went to open the door. Uriel remembered peeking from his chair to see a beautiful older woman, older than his mama but younger than Mrs. Myrtle, with the same dark hair as Gavriel. The women gave him a slight, softened look before closing the door and shutting out his view. Low muffled words were all Uriel could make out until the yelling began.
Gavriel had been yelling at the pretty woman, about him. About how she couldn't hear the things Gavriel could, how Uriel belonged with them. The women yelled Gavriel's name and even lower whispers started again until finally, the door opened. It was the woman, she gently took his hand. Her eyes had stayed gentle, and now if Uriel thought real hard they seemed apologetic. Mrs. Myrtle had a look like that when he had to go away with the stone eyed people. Gavriel had his head bowed, and one gloved hand fisted.
"I'll come back! Mrs. Myrtle like the carnival too. I'll come back to see you, Gavriel," he had exclaimed, excited to come back again. That is what Mrs. Myrtle always told her grandson when he came to visit from the big house. When he had to leave, he was sad. Mrs. Myrtle always told him they would see each other real soon again, he would get to come back. And that always seemed to help them.
Uriel couldn't know the carnival would never stop in the same place. Where carnivals like Gavriel's were being weeded out, dispersing. Unknown to Uriel, Gavriel and his carnival had went off to Europe. But that never happened, he did not stay with Gavriel. The pretty woman took him to Mrs. Myrtle and he went back home the next morning. Gavriel and the carnival had left before sunrise in the opposite direction.
Uriel never dwelled on that part though, instead clinging to the memory of the bright lights, the sweets, and the interesting person he had met. That had been a year before the people had come for Uriel after his mother had passed, no one could have known she would die so young. They talked about him as if he weren't there. It only got worse, those hard eyes were constantly replaced with someone meaner or even more indifferent as he grew. Mean hands and terrible words became a consistant factor no matter how much he was moved around. He was put into a boys' home then into other people's homes. It never lasted, considering Uriel always was somehow 'bad' enough to be thrown out.
One day, in a bus station he sat on one of the hard benches and it had began to snow. Usually the excitable boy would have enjoyed seeing the flurries. He wanted to look over and point to tell Mrs. Myrtle, dark eyes shining with amazement. But then he remembered Mrs. Myrtle wasn't there. She had not been there in a few years at that point. The habit had yet to die. So Uriel's hand dropped, as the excitement faded within an instant and waited for yet another set of mean eyes. Who he was supposed to be thankful for even considering taking him in because he was different. Who got to hurt him with mean hands. Until he was moved to somewhere else because he was bad.
They were never wrong, he was always bad, he was always the problem, and everything that happened was always his fault. Inside of the station, Uriel stood up and began to walk away. He pushed past the doors, cold air engulfing him, pressing the air out of his lungs, but he did not stop. Wind and snow ruffling through his curly hair and bringing tears to his eyes as he had ran. Several times his heart began to flutter, between high anxiety and elation. He wondered into a city, covered in white snow and bustling with people, almost like the carnival. They passed by him, not seeming to notice. Not noticing that he was different, and he saw people, people that looked like his mama, with empty eyes. Not hard eyes when he passed these empty eyed people. Others looked at them with mean eyes. So now and then, he would sit down with these people, the empty ones. They never spoke, and always had a fire. His mama never smelled, but he would take emptiness and warmth than the mean eyes that stared at him coldly.
Uriel didn't understand homelessness, not the stigma at least. He could not understand all the people in his life previously, with mean eyes had been told he was different before even meeting him. Uriel could not know that people treated him differently because he was homeless, not because they knew he was intersex. No one told him that he could have gone to the city and live, no one would have been able to tell at a glance like he had always thought. But now in the city, at a glance. People could tell he was homeless, but Uriel would have never understood their hate.
That had been at the beginning, he had long since lived on the street. Uriel had learned how to somewhat live, or at least how to not die. Learned to do things for money, like his cartwheels and flips. Learned that money was the key to staying alive. They would laugh and sometimes give him money or better yet food. Uriel loved when people would smile, and he would thank them and smile back just as Mrs. Myrtle had taught him to. Some would seem nice, but Uriel had felt the hard way that sometimes the ones who acted nice were worse.
Sometimes, he thought he would die and he knew what happened to people who died. People like him, people would just walk over a dead body. People like him, who slept in the alley. Even pretty people makeup and nice clothes or large men who fell in the alleyway. It made no difference, the bodies left to rot in the street. It felt like madness, Uriel would always would sit them up or move them, so they would not get stepped on. But Uriel knew no one would probably move him when he died.
So now, when he sat in the snow, he made sure to be leaned up against one of the empty dumpsters, too wet to make a fire and a lot of the people he used to sit with were gone. He didn't know how they started those fires that kept the cold away, he hadn't learned that trick yet. That's why he had tried to stay in the warm shop. People wouldn't step on him or over him, not when he died. No. He would die leaning and out of the way so that no one would step on him.
Trash!
Uriel looked for the stars from the alley way. At least it kept the wind away from him, but there were no stars. Not a single one. He had hoped, at least when he passed he would see the same ones his mama did. Or maybe that if he didn't see them that it wasn't his time to die yet, no matter how much everything hurt. But he knew he was going to die, he was already starting to not feel the cold anymore. Hot chocolate freezing on the ground outside of the store, eyes no longer burning with tears. Frozen tears clinging to lashes, eyes half lidded but seeing nothing and chapped lips blue. The rags of clothing going rigid as was the body. The wind stopped howling, his chest had stopped moving. A wetness began to fall down his cheeks, but not hot salty tears but a new layer of snow.
Uriel wouldn't see the sun again even if he had bought that hot chocolate to get to stay in the warm store for just a few hours to strive off a cold death. But he could have, if he had gotten to stay in the corner, or all those years ago had set off in the morning with the carnival rather than with Mrs. Myrtle. Either option, Uriel could have lived. Instead, he was not found until days later becoming another statistic, becoming another nameless body plucked off the streets.
The body was hauled away the same day as the dumpster, nothing investigated just like
Trash!