Chapter VI: In the Gardens with Eva

Eva showed up in July of The Professor’s last year of life. She was 17 years old, pregnant, bruised and addicted. Eva came from a good family, won beauty pageants and excelled at private schools. She got mixed up very young and then went through interventions, rehabs and clinics. She snuck out, ran away, got into trouble and slept around. She had found that the only things in life that made her happy were lying, cheating, stealing, manipulation and bribery.

After a few years of rapid self-destruction, her parents lost complete control and stopped pushing back. Like a rubber ball that kept getting hit against a brick wall, Eva came back harder and harder each time. This time they didn’t swing and she lost her momentum, lost her mind and lost her way.

She was sucked in by the gravity of the Tri-Towns. She was seduced by the posh boutiques and the upscale malls. She was drawn in by the dark back alleys and the chemical hideouts. She was hypnotized by the bottom-feeders and proprietors of pollution. She died in as many ways as a person can die while still living, breathing and walking.

And that was all before she got to Morgenthau.

She ended up at Morgenthau because Simeon thought that it would be the best place to get rid of the girl. She longed for his affection and it was driving him crazy. Plus, Simeon feared that if his parents found out that he had impregnated a 17-year-old, drugged out prostitute, it would jeopardize his stake in the family fortune— one that kept shrinking the longer they owned the Morgenthau property.

Simeon believed that the campus was the perfect place to hide Eva. She would quickly be eaten up by the campus’ bad element before she even knew what hit her. In his mind, she wouldn’t last more than two weeks. Simeon believed this because he had no idea about the community that had slowly grown over the squat’s existence.

Simeon wore thick glasses on wire-thin frames, and even with such a powerful prescription he could only see his residents for what we were, not who we were. He saw the addicts, whores, drug dealers, thieves, gamblers, losers and hopeless souls. Anybody could see that that’s what we were. But deep in the darkened, disgusting hallways of the main residence hall were emotions that were so basic and so universally human that Simeon could never have understood. He was never there on the nights when Grover would make soup for as many people as could fit in the tiny common room. To Simeon, Grover was just another queer with AIDS. He was never there to see Alistair’s innovations and how they made our lives easier. To Simeon, Alistair was just another junkie. He never saw any of the beautiful canvases that Winston painted in his cavernous residence in the Library. To Simeon, Winston was just a raving lunatic who believed in ghosts.

And Eva was just another piece of ass to Simeon. In his eyes, she didn’t have emotions, she didn’t have a soul, she didn’t have any dignity—to him the only thing she had was between her legs. He didn’t just assume that she would be eaten alive in a place like Morgenthau; he was actually looking forward to it. He wanted his problem to go away, and there was no better place to disappear completely than on the other side of that stone wall and those iron gates.

One morning while returning to collect one of his tools, Willie discovered Eva in The Gardens on the west side of campus. She had fallen asleep on one of the benches that lined the pathways of the Gardens. She jumped at the sight of Willie, a tall, muscular and unkempt black man. Willie tried to calm her down and assure her that he meant no harm, but according to Willie, the girl had shriveled up into a tiny ball that could not be pried open.

Immediately, Willie began to miss Kendra, who had been buried over in these same Gardens for a little more than three months. Kendra knew how to deal with young people. The youngest residents at Morgenthau were generally in their mid- to late-twenties. A lot of them were like me, college dropouts that fell into a life of addiction and despair. Nobody could ever recall a girl as young as Eva—who looked even younger than she was—ever coming to live at the University. Had Kendra been there, she might have convinced the girl to leave this wretched place, go to a home for pregnant teens and get her life back together. But she was dead, and so was the hope for a lot of people.

Willie couldn’t just leave her in the Gardens. She may have survived the first night, but a pretty young girl like that could not expect to be safe in an environment wrought with characters like the addicts, the maniacs and The Watcher. He came back over to the Main Residence Hall and asked if anyone could help him with this terrified girl. The Professor—who had not recovered from the great confrontation in the rain with Kendra—refused to leave the building and go anywhere, particularly to The Gardens. By that point, Doobie and Hook Hands were dead, The Steve was still recovering from his near death experience and Grover was in the Tri-Towns moonlighting as a volunteer to score us free soup. The only person who wasn’t cynical or stubborn enough to go help the poor girl was me.

Eva had loosened up from her tightly constricted ball as we approached. I asked Willie to stay back as I moved forward to talk to her. The closer I got, the more the young girl dazzled me. How had this pretty young face with long blond hair ended up covered in dirt and bruises? I knew girls like this in high school and college. They were Wall Street traders, professional models and actresses. They might do the occasional speedball or purge themselves to make weight for the spring catalogue, but they didn’t end up in places like this.

I tried to communicate with the girl, but she had become extremely distrustful of all men in the wake of her fiasco with Simeon. Even if a soothing female presence like Kendra had been alive to handle this situation I doubt that she could connect with the girl immediately. I looked over longingly over to the corner of The Gardens where Kendra lay buried. My eyes then glanced back towards the cherry trees where we had buried Herschel Hook Hands and Doobie. Eventually they would bury all of us out here, including this angel who had been cursed and sent to this purgatory.

After a few seconds of drifting in a daydream I came back to reality and spotted the girl staring at me through the corner of my eyes. By the time I cocked my head over to where she was sitting she had already returned to her comatose pose. She tried to hide for a few seconds, but she knew that I had caught her staring at me. After half a minute, she slowly lifted her head and made eye contact with me.

Eva had big, bright, blue eyes, perfectly symmetrical on both sides, with the exception of minor swelling under her left eye that had yet to bruise into an ugly indigo. I looked behind my shoulder to find Willie standing at a distance, still flabbergasted by this alien princess that had landed on our disgusting planet.

“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.

She took a deep breath and a big gulp that I could tell was irritating her sore throat. I expected to hear the coarse rasp like that of the many junkies and maniacs that I’d encountered on campus. What came out of her mouth was a voice that was as smooth as silk and sweet as honey.

“Eva,” spoke the frazzled teenager. I took a look back at Willie, who couldn’t believe that I had found a way to break through the rust and connect with her. He picked up his tools and turned as he began his walk back to the main residence hall. I rose up from the bench and extended my hand to Eva. She stared at my hand for a few seconds, questioned my gesture and finally reached out her hand to mine. It was skinny, rough and ice cold, like holding hands with a skeleton.

“Come with us,” I said. “We’re going to make sure nobody hurts you. You’ll be safe with us.” Although I delivered that line with assurance and sincerity, I only took a few steps before I began to have serious doubts about keeping that promise.