Waving the sizzling knife in short, crazy arcs before my face, Andre exclaimed, “I know more than 300 ways to prepare beans!” Then, in a prophetic pitch, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he shouted, “but this recipe, this one is from God!” He broke out into a howl, his open mouth revealing a vast emptiness where his bottom incisors should have been (which ironically made him appear more dangerous).
Sitting in his tiny studio apartment the other night, the unfamiliar odors swirling between us served as ambiguous warnings that I cheerfully ignored. After all, a year ago Andre was still sleeping in Sacred Heart’s parking lot, anti-social and resigned to his place as human rubbish. For years he was without friend or family, his world a sinister place perceived through the distorting prism of schizophrenia. The only way the social safety net seemed to know how to deal with him was to lock him up periodically, then release him back to street, cold, hungry, and all alone.
But on this particular evening those desolate nights seemed far away--as if they had belonged to someone else. Andre was giddy and goofy and grinning with buoyant abandon. We were celebrating; neither of us knew what, but we were most assuredly celebrating.
Standing over the stove, Andre polished off a peach and dropped the pit into a pot that I later discovered was brewing our tea. He then took the towel from his shoulder, wiped the perspiration from his balding head, and dried the bowl from which I was about to eat. I was having the time of my life.
After several minutes more of fiddling with the pots and pans and plates and platters laid out before him, the moment came when he vigorously rubbed his hands together, clapped, and snapped his fingers--this seemed a good omen. He brought over to the table some olives, our tea, then after pouring the soup, he surprised me with a daring presentation of cubed potatoes and strips of merry “meat-fingers”, as he would refer to them in conversation.
“The meat,” and as he spoke, he used a gruff voice and made gorilla arms, “it was about to go bad,” (at which point I wondered how you could ever really be certain that something that was about to go bad, was not in fact, bad already). “It was about to go bad, so I boiled it.” When he said it, he said it with such conviction, puffing out his cheeks and thrusting the saucy knife at my chest, that boiling it seemed perfectly appropriate. I mean, what do I know? “You see,” he said sharply, as if having just proven his point, “I might be insane, but I’m not stupid!”
He turned back to his caldron, but suddenly, Andre shot his head up and froze. I watched him, wondering what would come next. My mouth hung open, waiting.
He slowly turned toward me and broke out in a knowing, almost wise chuckle. “Ah, ha, you see! I know they’re not really there!”
“Are you hearing voices?” I asked, sensing that in some strange way we had company.
“Yes, but I know they aren’t there. It’s a test,” and as he spoke he pointed frantically to about fifty different spots on his head in rapid succession, blinking wildly.
“What do the voices say, Andre?” I had never before asked him so direct a question about his symptoms.
His response was a masterly piece of misdirection. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to do anything.”
Now typically, in the business world for example, a pronouncement like "I'm not going to do anything," would be a sign of insolence or the sort of slothfulness that could get you sacked. But when Andre said it, I found myself feeling mostly relieved.
As we ate and talked and laughed, I kept before me the image of this man when he was living in our parking lot. How could it have been that for years he had languished in such degradation? He had regularly succumbed to eating from garbage dumpsters, sharing his food with the rats and stray dogs that occasionally accompanied him. Back then it had seemed impossible that he could have ever made it off the street. He was mentally ill, he was hardened, he was angry, he had given up ... and I had given up. Yet, against all conventional wisdom, here he was, living a humane, dignified, even happy existence. It had taken a great deal of work on the part of many people, but here he was.
I will never give up on another human being.
No comments:
Post a Comment