When I leave the shelter for the homeless where I work a handful of nights, I see a woman’s white tennies sticking straight out from the booth where she sleeps. She sleeps on her side so her legs are side to side, one on top of the other and their stiffness remind me of railroad crossing bars—the ones that lower to keep traffic from going over the tracks until the last railcar has cleared the intersection.
She doesn’t have to sleep in a booth. The shelter provides mattresses, six inches thick, encased in heavy, pine-green, vinyl. These mattresses are twin size despite looking longer than any twin size mattress I have ever slept on. They are stored in a closet in the back of the room where they rest on their long edges leaning on each other waiting to be pulled from their slumber for the slumber of another. The room, affectionately called The Chapel for the worship service held twice a week, is used for multiple purposes by day—meetings, classes and birthday parties; and at night as emergency shelter. A hodge-podge of furniture lines the perimeter of the room: an upright piano of the Sunday school classroom-variety with matching bench; squatty shelves leaning haphazardly balancing Bibles and hymnals donated by local churches; and booths. Booths like the ones found in a 1950s luncheonette, eighteen of them pressed up against the north and south walls. Surely donations from a local malt shop or a highway diner, they are upholstered in powder-pink and gray vinyl with silver-glitter triangles decorating the backs. They make it difficult to see the chapel in the Chapel like a woman who has dressed for the occasion in everything she has fine and shiny—but it’s all wrong—she looks discount, like she’s trying too hard. Shelter residents, who are assigned to rooms and thus can remain on campus during the day, sometimes park in a booth to work on a crossword puzzle or read or knit and visit with each other. They clear out by evening, leaving the room empty for those who are checking in for the night. The incoming take a mattress from the closet and along with their belongings they stake a claim to an area of carpet. Staff gives each woman and her children (if she has them with her) a full set of bedding and towels and by the time it is lights-out, the floor is a maze of beds and bags and sleeping bodies. Since I was new to the job the first time I saw the white tennies sticking out from the booth, I thought perhaps the need was so great in our community that emergency shelter meant exactly that—make a bed on the seat of a booth and call it a night.
The shelter has no place for the homeless during the day. There is no courtyard in which to loiter; no café with stools and tables and chairs where they might pass the hours. Emergency Shelter guests—those who are waiting for a room in the short term shelter, checkout after breakfast and check back in at night. Some return during the day for meals but after eating they are expected to leave until 8:00 PM when they check back in.
Leaving the shelter after breakfast, emergency shelter guests walk over the viaduct which connects West O Street to O Street and leads them downtown. The feeble, old and disabled take the city bus for the half-mile ride over the viaduct and around the downtown loop, getting off the bus at the main stop on 11th Street, between O and N Streets. From there, they wander around downtown until the last bus runs. Sometimes I see them about, sitting under a bus stop shelter, or weather permitting, on a city bench. Some of them—the older ones—spend entire days in the public library; not reading, just lounging in one of the chairs meant for the comfort of card-carrying library patrons. I’ve watched shelter guests occupy the chairs. Their bodies, slow moving flesh and bones, settle into the form and the chair, like a cupped hand facing upward, cradles the body in the way a hand might hold a tender fruit for inspection before the decision to purchase is made.
I don’t know where the white tennies go during the day. I see her in the evening at the start of my shift. I don’t know much about her as she doesn’t stop in the shelter office very often. She doesn’t seem to have the usual wants—no medication or late passes; she hasn’t complained of bedbugs and she seems to remember the times for meals—so her needs from us are few. She’s not very tall and part of her body—the middle part—is plump. I once tried to describe to my youngest son her sunny disposition—how by the quality of her smile in concert with her clear eyes which, like something shiny spotted under shallow water, makes you smile inside causing a certain warmth to come over you, I said to him, “imagine a bowl of mini-marshmallows left on a table with no note, no instructions—doesn’t just thinking about that bring a smile to you? Doesn’t something pleasant spread through you?”
And he said it did, “like strawberries, Mom, when you slice them and sprinkle sugar on them and you put them in that white bowl and leave them on the counter before dinner. It’s not time to eat and already just looking at those strawberries makes me feel good inside.”
Yeah, just like that!
She is deaf. I forget this about her. She stops in the office one night and wants to know if she can leave her bags in the Chapel even though it is not yet check-in time. She wants to take a walk with her husband and she’s tired of carrying the bags, she says, as she points to the clock over my head to show me it’s only 7:40 PM.
She has good eye-contact when she speaks and though her speech is unmistakably that of one who has a hearing loss—nasal and muffled— it’s not so much that it grates on the ears of the hearing. The sharp and hard sounds of some of the consonants are absent from her spoken words but when she speaks she says her peace and grins and smiles and wanders your face for a sign that you understand what she says. Her face remains in perpetual positivity. She goes on grinning and smiling and nodding her head as if all that affirming could will the listener into understanding her message.
Her husband is a guest at the shelter but because they are not rightfully married—not by a church or a court of law, just common law—he is housed in the “men’s side” of the shelter. They also have a curfew and on this night she wants to spend a few more minutes with him.
I’ve never seen her husband. Well, no. I have, in a way seen him, once.
I was driving to meet a friend for coffee at a shop not far from the shelter and off at a distance I saw her leaning on the edge of a retaining wall. Her bags, two white plastic trash bags—the 13 gallon size, tall kitchen bags with red plastic loops tied like red yarn around the ponytails of little girls—rested next to her legs and a man, large in stature and girth, was standing next to her. He had something wrapped in paper—like deli paper or meat-cutter’s paper—a roll of pork tenderloin?—about that size and shape. He was fingering the edges, spreading the paper apart. While I waited for the light to change, I watched as she looked over the edge and he lowered the package so that she might get a good look at this fine thing he had revealed. Whatever it was—the magic of it—pulled her in closer as if a length of thread running from his hand—a barely there knot in this thread, invisible to the eye—drew her nearer to him. Her head tipped up to him—the morning sun made her squint—his lips moving and her face moving from the package to his face. I could see she was smiling, and on her face there was delight so great its essence wafted my way and I wondered, as I saw her look back at the package—what treasure was this—what delight had he, for her, unwrapped.
She doesn’t have to sleep in a booth. The shelter provides mattresses, six inches thick, encased in heavy, pine-green, vinyl. These mattresses are twin size despite looking longer than any twin size mattress I have ever slept on. They are stored in a closet in the back of the room where they rest on their long edges leaning on each other waiting to be pulled from their slumber for the slumber of another. The room, affectionately called The Chapel for the worship service held twice a week, is used for multiple purposes by day—meetings, classes and birthday parties; and at night as emergency shelter. A hodge-podge of furniture lines the perimeter of the room: an upright piano of the Sunday school classroom-variety with matching bench; squatty shelves leaning haphazardly balancing Bibles and hymnals donated by local churches; and booths. Booths like the ones found in a 1950s luncheonette, eighteen of them pressed up against the north and south walls. Surely donations from a local malt shop or a highway diner, they are upholstered in powder-pink and gray vinyl with silver-glitter triangles decorating the backs. They make it difficult to see the chapel in the Chapel like a woman who has dressed for the occasion in everything she has fine and shiny—but it’s all wrong—she looks discount, like she’s trying too hard. Shelter residents, who are assigned to rooms and thus can remain on campus during the day, sometimes park in a booth to work on a crossword puzzle or read or knit and visit with each other. They clear out by evening, leaving the room empty for those who are checking in for the night. The incoming take a mattress from the closet and along with their belongings they stake a claim to an area of carpet. Staff gives each woman and her children (if she has them with her) a full set of bedding and towels and by the time it is lights-out, the floor is a maze of beds and bags and sleeping bodies. Since I was new to the job the first time I saw the white tennies sticking out from the booth, I thought perhaps the need was so great in our community that emergency shelter meant exactly that—make a bed on the seat of a booth and call it a night.
The shelter has no place for the homeless during the day. There is no courtyard in which to loiter; no café with stools and tables and chairs where they might pass the hours. Emergency Shelter guests—those who are waiting for a room in the short term shelter, checkout after breakfast and check back in at night. Some return during the day for meals but after eating they are expected to leave until 8:00 PM when they check back in.
Leaving the shelter after breakfast, emergency shelter guests walk over the viaduct which connects West O Street to O Street and leads them downtown. The feeble, old and disabled take the city bus for the half-mile ride over the viaduct and around the downtown loop, getting off the bus at the main stop on 11th Street, between O and N Streets. From there, they wander around downtown until the last bus runs. Sometimes I see them about, sitting under a bus stop shelter, or weather permitting, on a city bench. Some of them—the older ones—spend entire days in the public library; not reading, just lounging in one of the chairs meant for the comfort of card-carrying library patrons. I’ve watched shelter guests occupy the chairs. Their bodies, slow moving flesh and bones, settle into the form and the chair, like a cupped hand facing upward, cradles the body in the way a hand might hold a tender fruit for inspection before the decision to purchase is made.
I don’t know where the white tennies go during the day. I see her in the evening at the start of my shift. I don’t know much about her as she doesn’t stop in the shelter office very often. She doesn’t seem to have the usual wants—no medication or late passes; she hasn’t complained of bedbugs and she seems to remember the times for meals—so her needs from us are few. She’s not very tall and part of her body—the middle part—is plump. I once tried to describe to my youngest son her sunny disposition—how by the quality of her smile in concert with her clear eyes which, like something shiny spotted under shallow water, makes you smile inside causing a certain warmth to come over you, I said to him, “imagine a bowl of mini-marshmallows left on a table with no note, no instructions—doesn’t just thinking about that bring a smile to you? Doesn’t something pleasant spread through you?”
And he said it did, “like strawberries, Mom, when you slice them and sprinkle sugar on them and you put them in that white bowl and leave them on the counter before dinner. It’s not time to eat and already just looking at those strawberries makes me feel good inside.”
Yeah, just like that!
She is deaf. I forget this about her. She stops in the office one night and wants to know if she can leave her bags in the Chapel even though it is not yet check-in time. She wants to take a walk with her husband and she’s tired of carrying the bags, she says, as she points to the clock over my head to show me it’s only 7:40 PM.
She has good eye-contact when she speaks and though her speech is unmistakably that of one who has a hearing loss—nasal and muffled— it’s not so much that it grates on the ears of the hearing. The sharp and hard sounds of some of the consonants are absent from her spoken words but when she speaks she says her peace and grins and smiles and wanders your face for a sign that you understand what she says. Her face remains in perpetual positivity. She goes on grinning and smiling and nodding her head as if all that affirming could will the listener into understanding her message.
Her husband is a guest at the shelter but because they are not rightfully married—not by a church or a court of law, just common law—he is housed in the “men’s side” of the shelter. They also have a curfew and on this night she wants to spend a few more minutes with him.
I’ve never seen her husband. Well, no. I have, in a way seen him, once.
I was driving to meet a friend for coffee at a shop not far from the shelter and off at a distance I saw her leaning on the edge of a retaining wall. Her bags, two white plastic trash bags—the 13 gallon size, tall kitchen bags with red plastic loops tied like red yarn around the ponytails of little girls—rested next to her legs and a man, large in stature and girth, was standing next to her. He had something wrapped in paper—like deli paper or meat-cutter’s paper—a roll of pork tenderloin?—about that size and shape. He was fingering the edges, spreading the paper apart. While I waited for the light to change, I watched as she looked over the edge and he lowered the package so that she might get a good look at this fine thing he had revealed. Whatever it was—the magic of it—pulled her in closer as if a length of thread running from his hand—a barely there knot in this thread, invisible to the eye—drew her nearer to him. Her head tipped up to him—the morning sun made her squint—his lips moving and her face moving from the package to his face. I could see she was smiling, and on her face there was delight so great its essence wafted my way and I wondered, as I saw her look back at the package—what treasure was this—what delight had he, for her, unwrapped.
