Free An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski Page A

uncle Limp got drunk and threw a brick threw the laundry room window, and Maurice and his family were kicked out of the Brooklyn Arms for good.
    At the Bryant, I looked past Darcella as she slumped against the door frame, into the room where Maurice lived. It was about twelve square feet, with two windows and a high ceiling. Toward the back there were two single beds with no sheets or pillows. There was a beat-up, beige La-Z-Boy chair and a half-sized refrigerator with asmall TV balanced on top. Maurice would later tell me the fridge never—not once—had any food in it. All he ever found there were a plastic jug of water and a box of baking soda used for cooking drugs.
    That was it; there was nothing else in the room. It was dark and bare: no pictures on the walls, dim overhead lighting, no curtains, no kitchen. I saw an older woman sitting in the chair—this was Rose. I couldn’t see anyone else, but I would soon learn Maurice lived in that room with as many as twelve people—his mother and grandmother, his sisters, an aunt and her two young children, one uncle full-time, and two or three more uncles coming in and out. The five young children slept in the single beds at night while the adults stayed up and did drugs. When morning came, the children got up and the adults crashed and slept away the day. Sometimes the uncles would sleep on the floor, sometimes in the room’s one closet.
    Sometimes Maurice would take the closet for himself to get some privacy.
    “Hello, I’m Laura,” I finally said. “I’m friends with Maurice. Are you his mother?”
    The woman stared at us blankly, absorbing nothing.
    “Did Maurice mention the baseball game to you? I want to take him to a Mets game, and I need your permission, if that’s okay.”
    The woman slid farther down the door frame. Her eyes rolled farther back in her head. I had seen people too drunk to stand or too high to talk, but I had never, ever seen anyone as out of it as this. Finally, she steadied herself, turned, and slowly shuffled away. The security guard began moving toward the elevator.
    Then Grandma Rose came to the door. She was much more alert, and she looked us over and frowned and said, “What’s this?”
    “Hi, my name is Laura, and this is my friend Lisa. I’m friends with Maurice. I don’t know if he’s told you about me.”
    “He has,” Rose said.
    “Oh, okay. That’s good. Well, I want to take Maurice to a Mets game this weekend, and I need to get his mother’s permission.”
    I handed Rose the note and a pen. She took the piece of paper, signed her name. She said, “That’s fine,” and handed it back.
    “Thank you so much,” I said. “And can you tell Maurice to stop by my apartment when he gets the chance?”
    Rose said, “Yes,” and closed the door.
    The next day my intercom buzzed, and Steve the doorman told me Maurice was downstairs.
    “Send him up,” I said.
    Maurice came in with a serious look on his face. “Miss Laura,” he said, “you have to promise you’ll never go to that place again.”
    I told Maurice I had to go to get his mother’s permission.
    “You have to promise me you’ll never go back there again.”
    “Maurice, it’s okay.”
    “No, it’s not. Nice white ladies should never be in a place like that. You can’t go back there. Promise me you won’t go back there.”
    I promised him that I wouldn’t, and I never did.
    At the time I thought Maurice was merely embarrassed by his living situation, but as I learned more about his family, I realized he was protecting me. He knew what his uncles were capable of; he knew how quickly someone could be victimized. Maurice never told a single relative where I lived or all that much about me.
    He did not want me to even brush up against his world.
    That Saturday Maurice met me in the lobby of the Symphony, and we went to the garage to get my car and drive the twenty minutes up the Grand Central Parkway to Shea Stadium. Maurice was beyond excited; he was