Dear Saul,
I hope this gets to you. I spent my last couple dollars of this months pay check to over-night it because I know you don’t stay in one place for very long. Me and Haley are doing okay. We are where in Cleveland, we arrived two weeks ago. We’re staying at a shelter called Saint Jude’s Battered Women’s Shelter. Sister James has been taken real good care of us. You’d like her. She was an atheist studying history at Harvard before she entered the convent. She found her faith while in the peace core in El-Salvador. It is a long story but I think you’d find her interesting.
She loves to discuss the philosophy of Bible. She believes that faith should be rationale. She is a little bit of a radical so she doesn’t often talk about these kinds of things around the other nuns. So I’m sure she would love to talk to you.
Anyways I got a job at that the restaurant you told me about. I’m just washing dishes now but the Janitor is going to retire in February and they said I could have his job. He makes $14 and hour. Can you believe it? Soon me and Haley will be able to have our own place. On my current wage I was able to get Haley some new clothes and was able to buy her a brand new uniform for school. I didn’t want to send her to school in hand me downs. She has had enough of that.
Haley loves it here in Cleveland, she is at a Catholic Elementary School Called Blessed Heart (I can feel your eyes rolling). It is a good school and yes despite your numerous attempts I still believe in God and am a God fearing catholic. The school is pretty liberal as far as Catholic schools go, no talk of eternal damnation if you don’t do your homework and the nuns are not allowed to hit the children.
I haven’t heard from Carl but I’m still afraid he’ll find us. I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I don’t think any man has every stood up to him like that, or at least never done it and walked away. I think you really scared him. I don’t know what me a Haley would have gone if you hadn’t let us stay at your place for that month. One more week with him and God only knows how black and blue I’d be. I’m gone and there’s no going back this time.
I thought about what you said I think that I’m going to go back to school. There is a Junior college about a mile away from here and they have financial aid and night classes. I saw how much fun you and Janice were having at Berkley I thought maybe I could have that too; all night long conversations with bad coffee and cheap vodka.
Oh, and I was going through our luggage and I found that poems you lost:
In the in between
I am a runaway soul
flight my daydream
Death a sweet escape
And life is a charming trance
Runaway with me
In the in between
A poem is a life line
love a memory
Runaway with me,
Flee to another world
Swift as a whisper
cross the universe
through one thoughtless action
through the in between
