Andrea bounds across the room. "Ky-Ky-Ky-Ky-Ky,'' she says, more to herself than to him. Kay is 49 years old.
He is the club's art teacher. Andrea follows him into the art room, as she does every weekday afternoon. She loves art, and she loves Kay.
He is patient and kind. He teaches her new things, even though she is nervous about learning new things, and he never makes her feel dumb. He is like that with all the children, but that doesn't matter to Andrea.
He makes her feel special. Three hours later, Andrea calls her mother on the front-desk phone. "Hello, Mommy,'' she says.
When it is dark, she runs the one long block to her apartment building. She is scared of the men in the nighttime. There are always men selling drugs.
But it is still light at 6:45 on this spring night, so she just walks. Up the street, a man has unzipped his pants and is urinating on the sidewalk. She is looking up at the fifth-floor window.
Her mother is supposed to be watching her. But the sun is hitting the glass in a funny way, making a shadow on the window. She can't be sure anyone is there.
The furniture has been moved. "You can't switch things around,'' Andrea says when she comes through the door of the one-room apartment. She does not like change.
"No,'' she says, looking at the bed against the right-hand wall and the love seat by the bathroom wall, and the TV in a new corner. "That's not fair.'' No one responds.
Andrea's mother is sitting on the bed with Karla, Andrea's 19-year-old sister. Karla's 4-year-old daughter, Karen, is eating chicken-and-rice soup on a folding TV table. Andrea's grandmother is in the tiny kitchen, eating at a table pushed against the window.
The TV is tuned to the Cartoon Network. The three women and two girls -- four generations of one family -- share the single room. Andrea doesn't like all the noise.
And little Karen always wants to play, even when Andrea is tired and wants to watch TV. But she likes how it feels to have her family all together in one little space. She says it feels like a hug.
The family moved to the studio five months earlier from a rooming house near the Cow Palace. Before that they shared a room on Silver Avenue. They have lived in Oakland and Richmond, Treasure Island and the Mission.
Andrea liked Treasure Island the most. They had a house there. Andrea had her own room.
That was when her great-grandmother lived with them. Then she died in the house. Everyone was afraid to go up upstairs after that.
They might see her ghost. Andrea sinks into a swivel office chair by the front window. She takes out a drawing of a butterfly she made with Ky.
Karla tells her how pretty it is, fetches Scotch tape from the kitchen and hangs the butterfly above the window. The studio looks like a young girl's bedroom, all pink and yellow, with posters and figurines of Winnie the Pooh and Dora, Karen's favorite cartoon character. Three blond baby dolls sit along the top of the love seat.
The room is meticulously organized, with hooks and bins making use of every inch of the bathroom, tiny kitchen and closet. But she takes out her notebook and math book and opens them on her lap. She starts to write down a problem.
She hasn't memorized her multiplication tables yet. "I don't want to do my homework,'' she says. No one answers.
Karla and her mother are talking about a homeless coalition they joined a month ago. But at the recent Monday meeting, Karla got angry that people in the group were looking at her and whispering. She demanded to know what they were saying.
Now, Karla is saying, she is worried that she has blown their chance at leaving this $725-a-month studio with its leaking bathtub and a landlord who locks them out of the laundry room. She wonders how they can afford anything better. She gets about $800 a month from the government, and during baseball season, she works as a custodian at the Giants ballpark.
Andrea's mother doesn't work and gets $359 a month in welfare. Andrea's grandmother gets Social Security and a small pension from her years as a maid at the Pickwick Hotel. Andrea isn't listening to the grown-ups.
She has borrowed Karla's cell phone to call Sasha. She turns toward the window so no one can hear. "Do your homework,'' Andrea's mother says in Spanish.
"I am doing my homework!'' Andrea replies in English. But she isn't.
When she hangs up, she tells her mother she's hungry and slaps her math book shut. "OK, I'm done with my homework,'' she says. She eats a drumstick of fried chicken from a plate on her lap.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, there is no chicken. Last month, Jesus came in with groceries so they could eat until the checks came. Karla has switched the channel to Spanish hip-hop videos.
Little Karen, who has been inside all day, leaps from her chair and starts to dance. She copies the long-limbed women on the TV, grinding her little hips, rolling her shoulders, belting out the sexy words as if they were nursery rhymes. Karla and her mother laugh and shake their heads.
"I am so tired,'' Andrea says, yawning. She fetches her pajamas, disappearing behind the tulip-print curtain that serves as a door to the walk-in closet. Inside are a five-drawer dresser and two shelves of shirts and pants separated into neat stacks.
Shampoos and lotions cover the top of the dresser, and handbags and jewelry dangle from hooks. Andrea changes in the bathroom, then, in a nightshirt that says "Girls Rule!'' returns to the closet.
She chooses her school clothes for the next day and hangs them in the bathroom. She doesn't want to disturb anyone in the morning. Then she sits on the floor and tries to do sit-ups.
She has a physical fitness test at school. "Sometimes,'' Karla says, watching her little sister, "I think how much easier it is to be her age. Sometimes I wish I could go back and be a little kid again.
'' Andrea thinks Karla is crazy. "I want to be a grown-up already,'' she says. She would sleep in, like the rest of her family, and not have to go to school.
"I know there are lots of problems, but if you're grown up, you do anything you want. You stay in the house all day. You go shopping.
'' She met Jesus in middle school. She skipped classes to be with him. All the girls were boy crazy.
When she got pregnant at 14, three of her friends were pregnant, too. "I just see myself again like her,'' Karla says of her sister, "saying the same words.'' At bedtime, Andrea opens the love seat into a bed.
Her grandmother gets the pillows and blankets from a cabinet in the kitchen. Andrea crawls in and pulls the blanket up to her chin. She closes her eyes.
She turns onto her side and tucks her hand under her cheek. The TV is blaring a Mexican soap opera about a handsome tequila baron. It is just past 9 o'clock.
In a few hours, Andrea's grandmother will get into the pullout bed next to Andrea. Andrea's mother will sleep by the kitchen on top of the sofa's cushions. Karla also will sleep on the floor, on a thick comforter near the walk-in closet.
Four-year-old Karen will get the bed. She will share it with Jesus, her 19-year-old father, Karla's ex-boyfriend. Andrea bounds across the room.
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