Shambala

Her name isn't Cheyenne, it's Pat. Pat used to be a hotel manager, until she discovered Shambala.

Shambala, from what I can tell, is a place that existed thousands of years ago, populated by aliens and spirits who created our Earth as a form of experiment. Not everyone on Earth has a soul, Cheyenne informs me in her soothing customer-service trained voice. Some of us are reincarnated citizens of Shambala, here to guide the soulless ones towards greater understanding and steer the earth towards a wonderful time of peace. I think the idea of alien forces subtly shaping us into a retake of their lost paradise is terrifying. Cheyenne can't wait. And she's won every hand so far, so Shambala seems to be working out well for her.

The shelter's common room tends to bring the moms together. I expected crackheads and crazies, but what I have is a separate nation of tiny mothers swapping smokes and swearing lustily. The babies are always loud. I think they shout so much to blow the smoke away from their eyes. The mothers are the weepiest, the elderly distant salutatorians. Tiny girls. Tiny women. Tiny mothers, with their tiny mistakes, refusing to accept that the party is over, that they can't apologize or write an essay or do community service to get away with their particular error in judgment. Some of them have embraced motherhood, with a pathetic grasp, and those ones don't cry. They plot. There are four of them.

Cheyenne lays down a five card straight.

"Fuck a duck!" My hands drop the cards. "How do you do it? That's four games in a row."

The serene Shambala smile. "I think I'm beating you by about a hundred points here. Will we be forfeiting the game, dear?"

I'm not frustrated, but I play it up for laughs as she goes through the ashtray and picks out all the butts with an inch or more left on them. Into her silver cigarette case they go, to be dissected and rolled up into homemades.

"Here come the leeches," says Cheyenne as she finishes up. It's her term for the four mothers: it has rolled into my self-talk as well. We both smile and she walks out. I don't bother saying goodbye because we'll meet up after dinner for more cards – what else is there to do?

Flick, crack, whoosh. My lighter still has a few days in it. I only have four smokes left, but that's okay. I make homemades too. The leeches wander in to the common room, shouting.

"It ain't right. That shit is not right." Heather, I think. The loudest, the ringleader.

"I know! What the fuck?" Is it Patty? Penny? I can never remember. Every leader has a lackey, what difference does the name make?

"It just, that shit is not right, that's no way to be pregnant." Heather is truly righteous. Heather will not be satisfied with a private bitch session. Her legs are shaky when she sits down. Her voice is strident and rushed. One of her carefully made ponytails is loose. Heather is out for blood.

Part of me, still a teenager and knowing well the rage of loud and scary girls, wants to leave, but I make myself stay. My room is full of my own strident problems. It's better than being alone, and two weeks of weary routine in this place is starving me of excitement.

"Eve says this is her fourth fucking baby. Social Services already knows and they're going to take it right at the hospital this time. They already have a house for it. Fuck, after four fucking babies you'd think someone might have told you you can't just eat shit when you're pregnant." Patty. It is Patty. Vice-President of fire-stoking and shit-disturbing. The girls who smack the beehive and then run into a barn for protection are the worst.

"Yeah, well, I think we need to do something. I mean, it's like, just as bad for us to sit here and watch it. I think it might even be illegal. Like if you watch someone get hit by a car and you don't do anything, you can go to jail, and this is totally the same thing."

Now I know who the target is. Cheryl. Cheryl is one of the only two long-term residents. Cheryl is functionally developmentally delayed, and I have also watched her eat with incredulity. Double servings of every dessert in the kitchen. Uneaten servings of vegetables. A box of Twinkies in her room, refilled every two days. Three cases of warm Pepsi sit on her dresser, always full. I would be surprised to find out she voluntarily ate anything unsweetened.

"Is she out having a smoke?" Heather's tone is just as loud, but more threatening. I can almost hear the tumblers turn over in her head, freeing the self-righteousness that grows so fast from jealousy. It's unfair. It's unfair to heather that Cheryl can eat what she likes, because Cheryl isn't going to have to keep her baby. Heather has decided that her baby is a millstone to bear with honour. Heather's baby will be a lawyer, or a rap superstar, and he will give Heather back her dreams, if she chains herself to him and forgets all about being fifteen, and pregnant, and living at the YMCA.

"I think so. She's out there with that cabbie guy, so she's probably getting high."

"She's in 226, right?"

"I dunno. I'm not on that floor."

"Who is? We can't ask Eve."

"Why? What does Eve care if you go talk to her?"

"I'm not gonna talk to that stupid twat. We're gonna go throw out her fucking junk."

And then they realize I am there. I put out my smoke carefully. I am scared of two fifteen-year-old girls. I am twenty-three and homeless and I don't remember much of the last five weeks, but I remember to be afraid of teenage girls. Especially when you are the only person around and they are out for blood.

Not everyone has a soul, says a memory of Cheyenne. In Shambala I was a great judge. I was fair and honest, and that is why they sent me back. This world is in need of justice.

"Did you hear what we were talking about?" Heather swings. "Because I don't fucking care, it's all true anyways."

"I heard you. Cheryl's on my floor." Why did I tell her? Why did I do that? Fear, fear, ancient fear. Fear and conditioning to do whatever they want. Do whatever they want and they will break your glasses but they won't beat you up. Say whatever they want you to say and they won't throw you around by the hair. I realize I am stroking my neck and I do not have long hair anymore. It disappeared in the last five weeks. I don't remember them very well.

"What room? We're gonna throw out her pop. All she eats is fucking shit and it's bad for her baby. She's like a killer in advance." Patty rolls the emphasis around on her tongue and the contract is now on the table. If you don't help us, you must not care about her baby. If you don't care about her baby, you must not care about mine either. And we will be enemies, you and I.

"I don't know. I don't exactly talk to people here. She's always outside with people, and I'm usually in my room. Just knock on doors and ask. Tell whoever that she has a phone call and Eve sent you up to look for her." I am negotiating the contract. Eve will know in a second that they were not delivering a message. Cheryl does not get phone calls.

"How can you not know what room she's in? There's only, like, five on this floor. Don't you understand that this is important? That poor baby, it's gonna come out all fucked-up and shit."

I can tell them, then Eve. I can even tell Cheryl once the leeches leave. I need to get away from their eyes. Tell them anything. I can feel the reflex as it happens, like a menstrual cramp; inevitable, manifest destiny.

Not all people living on Earth have souls. Shambalans try to find the lost sheep. To lead by example, slowly remaking Paradise.

I cut off my hair so he can't use it if he finds me. I did it the minute I got off the bus. I remember the sore, scabby patches on my scalp. They hurt if I was shaky with the scissors.Then from behind me, the cops taking the scissors away. I can see my hair in a pile in the fountain by City Hall, slowly rippling under the surface of the water and becoming thin black fishes.

Hatred is a human invention. We don't quite understand it.

"I don't care about her fucking baby and I don't care what you stupid bitches do with your lives. If you worried as much about yourselves as you do about other people you might not be living in a fucking homeless shelter with fucking babies and spending all your welfare money on smokes and weed. You have no right to shit on her. Hear me? No fucking right."

They wait until I stand up and start walking out to throw the pack of cards at me. I don't turn around. Cheyenne and I can play Sorry! tonight instead.