By Madison Forrest
Boston University News Service
Gray clouds and rain rest and the sky beams over Boston. People familiar and newly acquainted with the Public Garden wander and sit. Adults with nametags push egg cartons of babies who can see only blue.
A woman named Zori leaves space on her bench and offers food to the squirrels and birds gathered at her feet. Her black beanie is tucked under the hood of her black coat, and she takes a long drag from her cigarette before dumping a Tupperware of vegetable soup on the floor. Maybe the animals were full–or perhaps they had already had vegetable soup earlier that afternoon – but they kept their distance. Zori hasn’t spoken to anybody in a couple of days.
“I have a 12-year-old son. I miss my kid a lot, but I can’t see him right now, unfortunately… I’m actually not used to anyone ever stopping to talk to me. It’s rare – it’s once in a blue.”
Zori is a soft-spoken 34-year-old Dominican via New York City. She reaches for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to share with the animals as a squirrel crawls up her leg. Zori has been homeless for six years. She spends the time she can with the animals and gets food and showers at a nearby shelter.
“Out here I’ve noticed that a lot of people, when they see that you have a car or you have drugs to share, they’re your friend: ‘I got you, I’m your best friend.’ But when you’re dry— I’ve had a few people, now that I don’t have a car, they just walk past me, like I’m not useful anymore.”
Feeding the animals provides relief for Zori.
“I feel like I was once a mom too. I mean, I’m not able to see my child right now. It’s been like six years, but I feel like something about sitting down and just spending time with the animals is really – it’s really nice. It’s kind of like bonding with them, and it just makes me feel, you know – they’re just so beautiful to look at. Eating with them makes my day. It just puts me in a better mood.”
When Zori lived with her son and Scottish ex-boyfriend, she studied part-time to become a veterinary technician. Three classes away from her associate’s degree, she dropped out. Shortly after, her relationship crumbled, and Zori was forced to leave her son. She thinks about him a lot.
The animals’ comfort is important to Zori. In taking care of them, she can, in a way, fulfill the desire to nurture that cannot be exercised to its total capacity when she is apart from her child. She advises younger kids she sees not to do hard drugs, and eventually will go to family court to see her son again. Someone she had known and been in somewhat of an on-and-off relationship with left her on the first of the month and stole her prescribed Klonopin. It took her five years to find a psychiatrist that would refill them. She decided it was for the best that they parted ways.
Families and dogs pass – Zori watches fondly.
The cycle of drugs and questionable acquaintances is a source of guilt for Zori. How else can one endure the incessant hardships of living among such uncertainty and iniquity? She will often run into someone who says they met in jail, or on the streets, or through the man who left her on the first. The drugs have impacted her brain and clouded her memories.
“Once you mess with drugs – pills or whatever it is, cocaine – I feel like your brain isn’t the same. Like, I, you know, my memory is like shit now, you know. It’s just not the same.”
Zori has forgotten and regretted a lot, but her image of her son remains absolute, even after all this time.
“I wish I had a picture of my son. I feel like he has – he looks like both of us, yeah – but I feel like he has his father’s nose and his father’s mouth. He’s got like, a little, they call it a cupid’s bow. He’s got a dimple right here.” Zori softly smiles to reveal her own. “And he’s so cute. He’s got hazel eyes. His father’s got blue eyes, but he came out with hazel eyes. And he’s, he’s really cute. He’s got soft brown hair, and he’s got, like, a little acorn head…”
Zori’s eyes fall heavy, and her voice pauses as she takes the last breath of her cigarette.
“…And it’s so sad, because when I think of my kid, I think of him, and I dream about him till this day, like he’s still five or six, but in reality, he’s over five feet. He’s only 12, and he’s probably like, five six or five seven – he’s going to be tall. Yeah, because I’m taller than his father. So, yeah, it’s crazy, you know, and I, and I hate that I’ve let, I’ve let quite a few years pass by already.”
The last time she had spoken to him was over the phone, which violated the restraining order her ex had issued against her. She ended up in jail. Zori has endured a lot in the past 6 years, distanced from her son and, ultimately, herself. She was dependent on alcohol for a bit and spent some time in jail for disorderly conduct.
“And then, you know, and it sucks, because in my case, I’ve sat in jail for months and months and months, and I’ve had public attorneys or lawyers or whatever. I had one of them tell me, you know, because I was trying to tell her, Listen, I don’t want to get the two and a half. I was looking at, like, two and a half. And I said, ‘Well, you know, could they drop, like, one of the charges, blah, blah’, and we were talking about it. And then I told her, you know, I’m a good person, and then she said, ‘Well, you know, when you look at your record, it’s like a contradiction,’ because she’s like, ‘you don’t look like a good person on the record.’ I’m like, wow. I’m like, I’m like, Wow. That’s really hard to hear, actually, because when I lived with my kid, I never went to jail.”
Zori pauses and begins to cry.
“I never went – it’s not a good feeling. I apologize. It just–It sucks. But it’s like, I feel like, oh, I’m so sorry. I feel like I had a child, and I raised him for five years, and I, you know, I love animals. I love kids. It’s like, what do you mean? I messed up because I was drinking and I was acting a fool. So then there’s consequences to that.”
She no longer drinks.
The innocence she recognizes in the animals is evident in the tears she spares while recounting bad behavior during her years on her own. She wishes to get her life back on track – how nurturing the animals helps her to distance herself from harmful, illegal activities she describes as so easy to fall into. The green rosary she wears under her dark clothes, the hug she embraces from the first person to approach her. How deeply each word she articulates is drawn from her worn-down spirit and how forthcoming she welcomes being heard.
A cloud pauses beside the sun, and a chill finds its way through the garden. People relocate or huddle .
“And, you know, but it’s just like, the BS I’ve, I’ve had to deal with, you know..” She breathes. “…but I don’t mean to blab, but thank you for, for just listening.”
Her willingness to share with a stranger seems to be a draining relief. A relief that brings up old thoughts and moments she cannot entirely reimagine and different colored waves of grief.
She hopes to live to 60 and have pets again.
“If I don’t end up, how do you say, well, if I, because I have really bad asthma, really bad breathing problems, and I feel like sometimes I’m gambling on my life because I shouldn’t be doing things that I do sometimes, like because it’s bad for my health. But if I do get to live to be like 60 or 50, I’ve always said I’m going to be, you know, someone with like 80 cats. I’d be like an old lady, like an old cat lady, yeah, 100 cats in her house, you know, um, you’ve seen that on TV, right?”
She gleams at the thought.
