Chapter 7: Sheila

One of the few times of day that Sheila got to herself was very early in the morning. When the weather was warmer and there was more sunlight, she actually felt like she had the dawn to herself instead of sitting in the stirring blackness of winter mornings. The marine layer would sit heavy on their neighborhood and hold the world in an overcast limbo, not giving a hint one way or the other what the weather was going to be like. It was all a guessing game in San Francisco. Sheila often wondered why the city bothered with weather reports at all.

The kid was pretty good about sleeping, even in a house as chaotic as the one they were in so Sheila was usually able to make coffee and sit by herself on the stoop, watching the early morning joggers and dog walkers, the people who started their day as bright-eyed as a human could possibly be. Some of them recognized her from around the neighborhood and would smile, lift a hand in greeting. Rarely did they stop and take out their earbuds for a conversation. The few times that had happened, it wasn’t for anything good.

“I saw you the other day at Safeway,” one woman had said when she approached Sheila in the gray haze of a spring dawn. “I didn’t realize you had a baby.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe it myself sometimes.”

Sheila would replay that answer in her head for weeks following the interaction and wonder to herself what in the hell she meant.

“I was just curious…I mean, it’s none of my business but…” Sheila noticed the woman’s gaze climbing the ragged house behind her, taking stock of the cracked windows and splintering wood. “Well, if you ever wanted to learn about, um, assistance programs, I guess you could call it. Like section eight housing, stuff like that. I work in that world. I could-”

“We’re fine,” Sheila interrupted. “I’m fine. The baby is fine.”

The woman nodded, smiled. Both actions were stiff and forced. All the color of the world was washed out in the pre-dawn but Sheila saw a flush of rising red in the woman’s cheeks. She had been a slight pink from her run when she stopped but now there was the burning blood born from putting one’s foot in one’s mouth.

“Well, um, have a good day,” the woman said, starting up her run again before Sheila could answer her.

“Yeah, I probably won’t,” Sheila muttered into her coffee, the same burning blood making an appearance in her own cheeks. She wished she could have been sharper with the woman; told her that she and the baby were perfectly fine and she was right when she said it was none of her business. She wished she could have been proud and defiant and said something smart instead of just cutting her off and watching her toned legs carry her away.

Whatever it was that Sheila wanted to say, whatever she thought might have been a well timed retort to this woman’s concern, it didn’t change the fact that the woman was right. There’s no way she wouldn’t see through Sheila’s defensiveness. Beyond the cracked windows and peeling paint, there was the noise that the neighbors all dealt with and the constant coming and going of men that looked angry, dangerous. If Sheila wasn’t part of this world, she’d be worried about a baby in that house as well.

It was amazing what people can get used to. It was amazing what situations can spring up around someone trying their hardest to do better for themselves. The incident with the running woman had happened almost a year ago but it still stabbed at Sheila’s gut when she thought about it. Since then, it had gotten harder and harder to tell herself that living there in the pack house was alright; harder and harder to tell herself that she was cared for and that the others were looking out for her. Ryan had never outright offered for her and the kid to come stay with them but he had said in no uncertain terms that they’d never be out on the street. In the moments when she was honest with herself, Sheila knew that was more the rest of the pack promised her.

The front door, uncertain on its rusty hinges, swung wide. Sheila pressed her eyes together and hoped it was one of the tamer pack members, not one of the ones who could tear apart her mood and morning by just sitting close to her and demanding her time.

“Nice out, huh?” she heard from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Joseph standing at the threshold of the doorway. His eyes looked pretty bloodshot but he had the loose, hanging face of someone who had slept well.

“Nice out. And quiet.”

Joseph sat next to her, and Sheila exhaled. She hadn’t noticed the fact that she was holding her breath, unsure of whom she was about to face.

“Everyone still asleep?” Joseph asked.

“Seems that way,” Sheila answered. “Sometimes people in the house are awake this early but it’s not like they just got up. More like-”

“They’ve been up. For God only knows how long.”

Sheila stole a quick glimpse at Joseph’s face and counted how many years they had known each other, how many years they had both been crammed with the rest of the pack into this house. Something in him had slowed down in recent years. He wasn’t quite like Ryan and Rodrigo who both found themselves put off by the idea of the nearly feral communal living but she could see the drain of energy, his inability to bounce back the way he used to. Some of the pack stayed roaring and wild well into their fifties and sixties but those were the ones who dabbled in drugs and were found convulsing on bathroom floors in flop houses before their lights went out forever.

“Do you think you’ll ever get tired of it?” Sheila asked, amazed that those words managed to escape her mouth. “Living here like this, I mean.”

Joseph shrugged. His sights were focused on a spot in the distance, that hunter instinct that never quite left even when he was in human form. “I don’t really know any other way to live.”

“Oh, com’on now, don’t be ridiculous. Look around you. There’s a million different ways to live.”

“I think we need to keep the pack together,” he told her after a pause. He shifted his gaze from whatever had entranced him and was staring Sheila hard in her eyes. “We can’t let everything fall apart like some of the others have. We’d be like the Washington packs that hardly even know each other anymore. They all live separately, go their own ways.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s just how it goes, ya know? Maybe that’s the inevitable change.”

Only a few noises accompanied their conversation that early in the morning. Residents of San Francisco were lucky to have birds cooing and chirping, the distant sounds of water in some areas, the electronic whale song of hybrid cars. Among all that there was the scurrying of rodent feet, known to activate shifter instincts accidentally. They were like hair triggers on powerful guns. A rat dashed from a hiding place by the stoop out onto the sidewalk, staring back at the house with the wide vigilant eyes of a prey animal.

“Think we smell any different to that thing?” Joseph asked.

“We probably smell different to everything,” Sheila answered. “Humans included. They probably just know why we smell different so they chalk it up to body odor or whatever cheap detergent we use.”

“What do humans know anyway?” Joseph snorted, flapping his hand at the world around him. Sheila could tell he was making a rough attempt to lighten the mood or get her to smile but she already felt too brittle and the day had hardly begun. The rest of her waking hours were not looking promising.

“I gotta get stuff ready before people wake up,” Sheila said, rising from her spot on the stoop and leaving Joseph alone in the warm glow of dawn. She paused to glance back as she opened the door, and the rat from earlier was tucked up against a tree on the sidewalk, watching her with an animal interest before darting away as fast as its little legs could take it.