Giovanni, a Stuck Van, and a Sleepover

Last night I took the recycling out at 1 A.M. That was stupid of me. There’s no way to carry paper bags of glass and plastic quietly. I can only imagine the groggy conversation between our downstairs tenants as they heard someone breaking in.

But, no, no one was breaking in. It was just their stupid landlord throwing glass, plastic, and screen doors around in the middle of the night.

As I set the recycling at the edge of the alley, I saw an old, white and bondo-colored Dodge Ram van stuck in the snow up the block. The driver kept spinning the wheels as if pressing the accelerator harder would get him out of there. As if on the tires’ thousandth rotation they’ll finally get traction on what used to be snow but is now an ice patch smoothed perfectly slick by the previous 999 spins.

A man stood in front of the van giving directions to the driver like a first mate—or, actually, since he was the one directing, perhaps it was more like a captain—not sure how these kinds of things work in seafaring situations. I shouldn’t have gotten myself involved in a nautical simile.

I walked over to the van and used my best supralinguistic gesticulation to sign don’t spin the tires. It’s making it worse. The first-mate/captain seemed to get the point and passed on his interpretation of my waving arms to the driver in Spanish.

Then the driver spun the wheels again. I looked at him through his rolled-down window, and there was Giovanni.

Two years ago, a shivering boy showed up on our December doorstep. Giovanni. He was14 years old, probably.

When someone at your door isn’t dressed for “the elements” as they’re sometimes called (as if a jargony term can lessen the pain these elements inflict), you let them in before you hear their story. Especially if it’s a kid.

He said he was locked out of his house. We said, do you want to call your folks for a key? He said, no, it was his folks who locked him out. His dad, in specific.

Before I had a chance to express my disgust at this parental turpitude, Giovanni came to his dad’s defense. Dad had had a long day at work. Giovanni hadn’t been doing what he was told. Dad said if he didn’t shape up he’d have to find somewhere else to stay.

Giovanni hadn’t shaped up apparently.

That settled my storm of moral indignation slightly. I mean, 14 years old is pretty old. Definitely old enough to follow the logic of sentences like, “Get your act together or leave.” And he chose not to get his act together. Now we were dealing the consequences.

My point is, we’re not talking about 1st grader out on his own here. I can almost see me doing this to my kids when they’re teenagers. Not quite, but almost. Anyway, it’s not abuse. Necessarily.

Regardless of who was at fault, the kid needed a place to stay, so we gave him one. He was trembling and crying from fear and cold. We threw a couple blankets on the couch and he had a temporary home. In the morning, he left for school.

In the alley last night, looking hardly older than the evening when we met, Giovanni sat behind the wheel of a trapped van. He looked slight and anxious.

“Chin up, buddy!” I thought. “I’ve gotten you unstuck once before. We can do it again, no problem.”

But I didn’t say anything. I just joined the first-mate/captain at the back of the van and helped push the angled vehicle until it had straightened out and settled into the alley’s icy wheel ruts that would guide the titanic vessel out of this tiny, unnavigably Shackletonian estuary of an alleyway out to the open sea of 22nd Avenue.

(Please excuse my uncalled-for retrogression into maritime metaphors.)