it's christmas

Perched on some crumbling front yard retaining wall, his body shook and shuddered like a bedeviled puppet. His arms hung slack, his head stared vacantly, and from his open mouth came stuttering moans that turned my stomach. 

It was Christmas morning, and I had run out to grab a paper. Everyone else in the house was still asleep, gifts gleaming beneath the tree, and I wanted to be certain I was back before they woke.

After briefly looking over the paper at the 7-11, it occurred to me that the world was much the same as it had been the day before, so I left empty-handed. That’s when I saw Joshua sitting across the otherwise deserted street. It was 36 degrees, and even at that distance I could see that beneath his jacket he was bare-chested. His breath formed a halo around his anguished face as he grunted and exerted himself in his convulsions.

Walking briskly across the road I pulled my coat tight and watched for him to notice me. But even as I drew quite close, his gaze continued fixed in front of him while the rest of his body undulated with a mind of its own. He sat in the shadow of a pleasant looking home and was enclosed in a field of urban filth: a dented can of bean dip, a broken light bulb, a walker hung with damp clothes, some dried up lasagna, a crumpled surgical mask, and numerous wrappers, each bearing the rotten marks of their former contents. 

I sat down next to him, and the odor was overpowering. “Good morning,” I said cautiously. He gave no response, ankles rolling about as he pushed out muted gutturals. I continued. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine,” he said, suddenly ceasing his gyrations but keeping his face forward. There was ice in patches around his feet, but his voice was clear and lucid.

“Do you know what day it is?” I braced myself for his reply. I couldn't decide what would be more tragic, his knowing or his not knowing that it was Christmas Day. 

“Wednesday, I think.” 

It was Friday. I would have to ask again. “Do you know what is special about today?” I noticed a half-eaten, unwrapped sandwich leaking from his pocket. There was some sort of crust on his face and neck. The street was so quiet.

I stared at the side of his face. Here was a breathing, stinking piece of human waste amidst the garbage of a convenient store, a fast food restaurant, a gas station, a supermarket—and the society that spawned them.

 

The Jesuit theologian Ellacuria, martyred in El Salvador during their civil war, employed a pregnant metaphor in thinking about the poor who persist in the midst of a prosperous society: coproanalysis, the study of one’s excrement to diagnose disease. 

Admittedly, although the analogy is indelicate, it is telling. The suggestion that the poor, the destitute, the needy are the societal equivalent of excrement offends our sensibilities, but that is generally the extent of the offense. We might believe in the equality of all people, but we allow thousands of our neighbors to subsist on garbage; we might believe in inalienable human rights, yet we allow thousands of our neighbors to wallow in their own filth, sleeping in soiled clothing on sidewalks or in the mud beneath an overpass; we might believe that all humankind is endowed with inherent worth and dignity, yet we allow thousands of our neighbors to languish with untreated medical conditions.

Those whom I encounter on our streets, while possessed of many wonderful qualities, are also sick, lonely, frightened, hopeless, weary, cold, hungry, betrayed, abandoned, dejected, afflicted, and in some cases longing for death. The question that coproanalysis poses is this: what is this disease, this plague that infects us? What malady would produce such symptoms in our resource-rich society? What disorder would lead us to go about our daily lives while such suffering continues all around us?

The truth is that these children and adults are treated just as unclean, just as untouchable, and just as unholy as human feces. While we might do our best to place the blame for their conditions on their own shoulders, pointing to their inherent qualities, character flaws, personal proclivities, poor judgment, the result is all the same. And maybe it’s true. Perhaps human waste is just what they are, and we are otherwise relatively healthy.

 

I waited for Joshua’s answer. It was freezing, and I was close enough to see the goose bumps on his chest. I thought about my wife and children, warm beneath their covers. They would soon be waking.

For the first time since I had seen him he turned and faced me. His eyes were bright and alert. He smiled and answered, “It’s Christmas.”

emptiness

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and there was only an hour left before we would close our doors until the following Monday. Crowds still pressed through the halls, tracking in leaves and cold blasts of the November wind, but the place felt warmed by the smiles on people's faces. Our phones had been ringing feverishly all week with families desperate for assistance, but by this time the calls had begun to quiet. 

As we served this final press of families, staff were already talking about their holiday plans, buttoning their coats, and wishing their colleagues best wishes for the long weekend. And that’s when Jasmine rang.

“Do you have any food left?” Those were the first words that came through the receiver. Her voice was breathless. 

After being assured that we did in fact still have food boxes available, she asked how late we would be serving. “I’m not really sure how this works.” She’d never sought this sort of assistance before, and she was uncomfortable with the thought of accepting the gift of food.

“We only have about one hour left,” our staff informed her. The other end of the line went silent. “Can you make it here by then?”

“I’m …” she started, but then paused. “We’ll try,” she finally replied.

She never made it. But a half hour after we had served our last meal and closed our doors, the phone rang again. Most of our staff had tidied up their areas and had gone to be with their families. We answered the phone, and it was Jasmine. She explained her situation and pleaded with us to make an exception by delivering the food box to her. After listening to her present conditions, one of our staff members volunteered to make the delivery.

It turned out that Jasmine and her two-year old daughter were now homeless. They had come up with enough money to stay in a Motel 6 for the night, and that is where we met them on the evening before Thanksgiving. At that time all across the country there were warm and wonderful homecomings: students returning to their parents after their first semester away at college; grandparents flying across country to spend the holidays with their grandchildren; friends reuniting after years apart. But for Jasmine and her daughter, things were happening in reverse. Their lives were fracturing.

When we brought the food box into Jasmine’s room, she thanked us with what seemed an outpouring of all the grief she had been carrying for her family. In the cold, sterile, artificial furnishings of the motel room, everything she had ever associated with Thanksgiving seemed a mockery--something for somebody else. Yet even in such circumstances, in the midst of so much despair, she was overwhelmed with gratitude at our offering. And as she shared her appreciation for the food we had brought, her daughter’s eyes remained fixed and inexpressive. I think I would prefer to have seen her daughter express anything at all, rather than such emptiness. At two years old, emptiness.

After a few minutes of thanks and reassurance, we felt compelled to ask the disturbing question regarding how she planned to prepare the food. She held her daughter close, adjusted her little knit cap, and—as if apologizing—pointed out that the motel lobby had a microwave.

sacred & profane

I am ambivalent with regard to the notion of fate. That said, I believe that Wednesday morning, when the temperature had again dropped below freezing, our encounter was as predestined as the fall of any sparrow.

Just before sunrise, well wrapped in layers against the coming of the cold, I opened my front door and with a deep breath stepped outside. My eyes immediately began to water in the bitter air. Parked cars, rooftops, lawns—even dead leaves—were white with frost. My tears flowed slowly.

I had hoped I wouldn’t see it, but I never really doubted. I didn’t know who it would be, only that I dreaded the encounter. It was so cold. I even took a different way to work this particular morning, trying to avoid the meeting. But my altered path led me inextricably to what was determined to happen, regardless.

Before having passed beyond the shadow of my apartment building, there it was. Like a sacred object—ancient, wise, terrible—he sat immovable amid the scutter and scurry of morning traffic. Untouched by the world around him, he instead drew the world to himself.

Poised on the bus stop bench, a child’s pink blanket draped over his head and concealing his body, he filled me with foreboding. A jacket stiff with snow lay at his side, along with the other articles that might have kept him warm: pants, gloves, sweaters, shoes, a sleeping bag—all bristling like cacti with spines of white frost. The clothing formed an unbroken trail into the gutter. A brittle shell of ice encased his swollen feet, his socks stuck and stinging on his useless toes like the carapace of a mottled crab.

I stood for a moment, unsure of what was supposed to happen next. It seemed he had found me. How many times had this encounter taken place throughout the course of the world?

I moved very close.

“Hello?” I whispered.

He slowly drew back the blanket, eyes rolling in his head, and as he did, the sweet aroma of vegetable matter filled the space around us. And with the lowering of the blanket I could see that besides his sweatshirt, he was wearing only a pair of ratted underwear. His thighs were blotchy, and all his skin seemed tea-stained and scaly. It was 31 degrees, and he was perfectly still. I wondered if he was dying. 

“Are you okay?” 

His eyes, cloudy and congealed, wandered past me as mucus bubbled from his nostrils in a way I had only before observed in infants. His mildewed beard of brown and gray was chunked with globs of glistening ice, and coiled across his baldhead was a deep, undulating scar. Something had long ago reached in and touched his brain.

For a moment more I stood in awe of what was before me. I felt small, my words like throwing apples at a god.