Tag: homeless

Invisible Child

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She called her living arrangement “the house,” even after her family was moved into one cramped room. She choreographed her own privacy, taking turns with her siblings to undress while the others looked away. They maneuvered around the shelter’s rules as well. Residents were banned from bringing in bleach, yet the janitors refused to clean the bathrooms. So the children swiped the janitors’ bleach and scrubbed the floors themselves. On the outside, Dasani seemed steady. She kept a poker face when the staff scolded her thirty-three-year-old mother as if Chanel were a cheeky adolescent. Yet these episodes left their mark. “Sometimes it feels like, ‘Why you guys messin’ with my mom?'” To mess with Chanel was to mess with Dasani. There was no separating mother from daughter. They felt the same anger, the same humiliation. Feelings passed between them like oxygen.

Still, Channel tried to shield Dasani from the worst things… Smaller degradations were part of daily life.

—  Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (Random House, October 5, 2021)

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by New York Times Book Review: “Dasani Showed Us What It’s Like to Grow Up Homeless. She’s Still Struggling.”

Walking. With Jack Kerouac.

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5:50 am. 35° F.  299 consecutive days. In a row. Cove Island Park. Daybreak morning walk.

Three cars in the parking lot. Mine. A pick-up, with its occupant with a baseball cap over his eyes, car running.  And her subcompact Subaru, hatchback up.  It’s dusk, but I can see into the boot. Overflowing. Blankets. Boots. Boxes. Some spilled to the ground. Homeless? Living out of her car?

Late 60’s. She’s struggling to put on snow pants, one hand leaning against the car to keep balance.  She catches me staring.  “Good Morning,” I offer. She replies in kind. I turn away.  Give her her space. 

I walk.

I can’t shake the image. Alone? Lonely? Cold? Hungry? 

Warm morning, quiet, windless. Now, Heavy. It would have been easier to stomach if she was male and younger.

Mary Oliver: When one is alone and lonely, the body gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, or splashes into the cold river, or pushes through the ice-crusted snow.  Anything that touches.

I walk.

299 days. In a row. And I’ve not encountered this. I’m on the backside of my loop, and there She is. Left hand swinging a metal detector in a wide arc. Her headphones, over her blue wool hat, listening for the cackle of buried metal.  She stops, pokes at the dirt with her pole and keeps moving between the rocks on the shoreline.

I swing my camera from my right shoulder into position. Adjust the focus, once, and then again, and again. I slide my index finger to the shutter button, where it lingers for a split second; in that same split second, the metal detector rests, and she’s now staring at me through my camera viewfinder, through the long zoom lens, her face, her eyes, all bearing down on me. Damn!

She lifts the metal detector and continues — swinging the metal detector in a smooth, quarter moon arc, now with her back to me.  Myopic? Nearsighted? Has to be. No, she must have seen me.  Continue reading “Walking. With Jack Kerouac.” →

Waiting. At The Star Market. Trying to Bend the Image.

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7:05 am. Stamford station.

I’m waiting for the 2151 Acela to Baltimore. Overhead board flashes On Time, Track 2.

There are two empty seats adjacent to a scruffy, long bearded old man. He’s wearing a heavy jacket, way too heavy for August. A rollerboard stands to his right. His head bowed, sleeping. You’re asking for trouble. Find another seat. I look around, and can’t find another seat. I catch others watching me, judging, ‘The Suit won’t come near That.’

And Mind, ever so efficient, calls up a Marie Howe poem, The Star Market:

“The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday. An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps. Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them: shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay..Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself…stumbling among the people who would have been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands and knees begging for mercy. If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought, could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?”

He lifts his head, turns towards me and stares.  I freeze.  The Others are now watching. I pause, and make my move.

I take the seat next to Him.

Others watch for a moment, eyebrows raised, and then go back to their smartphones. Did you do it because you wanted a seat? Or because others would think less of You, or that you didn’t want this Suit to meet their expectations? Or because you didn’t want Him to think you thought any less of Him?

There’s one empty seat between us. But there’s tension in the gap. He turns to look at me, I can feel his eyes on me. Here it comes, Can you help me out with a few bucks, Sir?”  

He sits silently. Continue reading “Waiting. At The Star Market. Trying to Bend the Image.” →

Walking Across Town. Blinded By the Light.

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Isabel Miramontes, Come On

Mid July in Manhattan.

I step out of the Metro North car onto the platform, and walk down the tunnel in Grand Central. There’s zero transition from the air cooled train car @ 69° F to This. The body is swallowed by dampness, cool to not cool, Bam. The softness of the pressed shirt turns to less soft, to not soft, to moist, to sticking to the chest. Feet, are choking from their leather wraps, swollen from weight gain (6.3 lbs in less than 30 days) – chafing is coming, oh, it’s coming, by days end, or sooner. There will be blood.

I exhale little puppy breaths to pass the heat, trying to keep cool. Fail.

It’s 6:28 a.m. Tourists mingle in midtown, coalesce around the network TV studios and their Morning Shows – holding their cups of coffee, hoping to spot a celebrity, or better yet, get a cameo for the folks back home. Hi, Jane from Iowa! Continue reading “Walking Across Town. Blinded By the Light.” →

Walking Cross-Town. Or, on the Highway to Hell?

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It’s late evening, the sun is setting, the end of a long day. I’m sitting in a Metro North train car on my commute home reflecting on the day. Cool air streams down from the overhead vents.

Summer has arrived in Manhattan, and despite this 23 square mile piece of land being surrounded on all sides by water, the Island can be 10-20° F hotter than it is at home in the suburbs – billions of tons of concrete, steel and asphalt broiling under the late day Sun.

I had read his essay the prior week, and it was still rooting its way into my core, into the marrow of my bones.  I flip open my e-reader to re-read the passages that I have highlighted in George Yancy’s “Is Your God Dead?” where he speaks to leaving our God in our places of worship or in our good intentions.  Continue reading “Walking Cross-Town. Or, on the Highway to Hell?” →