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.

the only gift he had

Shoddy tattoos are scrawled over his arms, across his chest, and up onto his neck. The ones that aren’t profane are pornographic, and combined with his shaved head and swagger, it's easy to believe that at 24 years old, Brett has spent more time in prison than he did in high school.

Yet three days ago, Brett—a former gang member—came to my door late at night with the question he had been struggling to ask me for weeks. His over-sized jersey made him somehow look child-like as he stood in the yellow light of our porch lamp, awkwardly steeling his courage with half-hearted small talk. He couldn’t look me in the eye when he finally got around to asking, and when he spoke, he stumbled over his words: “Are you proud of me?”

Brett spent his entire youth in group homes. Dirty carpets, dead-bolted bedroom doors, and communal kitchens were what the world held out for his adolescence, and once he turned 18, he found himself homeless, sleeping in cars, in shelters, and on bus stop benches. Brett has never had a family.

And this time of year is difficult for Brett. It was one year ago that he succumbed to the loneliness and isolation he felt without the support of any meaningful human relationships. He swallowed 28 capsules of prescription medication on the day before Thanksgiving and awoke after two days, a breathing tube scorching his airway and IV's piercing his appendages; his arms were restrained.

Having spent the recent summer months without work, Brett’s diligent search for employment finally bore fruit, and he was able to begin a new job a couple weeks ago. As he awaits his first paycheck, he has received the financial assistance to stay in a motel, but the motel is no substitute for the stability of his own place. And it is lonely. And it is Thanksgiving.

After assuring Brett that indeed I was proud of him, he asked the next question on his list, this time looking directly into my eyes: “Can I spend Thanksgiving with you and your family?” 

The question caught me completely off-guard and sent my mind swimming in all directions. What could I say? 

And then, before I could say anything but after my obvious hesitation, he offered the only gift he had to give: “I could bring the turkey I get from Sacred Heart, that way you don’t have to buy one.”

just waiting

It was getting late, and darkness had brought with it a crisp November chill. A handful of Sacred Heart staff was still at work, busy with the final preparations for the following morning’s holiday registration. We knew the morning sun would reveal vast numbers of children and adults lined up around the block in the hopes of signing up for our holiday services, so everything needed to be in place the night before.

As we moved back and forth, setting up chairs for our disabled customers and posting signs directing volunteers to the back of the building, we noticed an old man who had quietly pulled a wire cart up to our front door. From his cart he drew a chair, and there appeared to settle in to what would be a long, cold night. After the shortest deliberation, we decided it would be unconscionable to allow this man—who we later learned was 70 years old—to remain outdoors all night. Opening our front door we approached him and asked what we could do for him.

“I’m just waiting for the registration to begin,” he told us. It was 7:00pm, and we had advertised that registration would begin at 9:00am the next day. “But it’s not for me. It’s for my daughters. They take care of me.” The old man went on to say that his daughters, who were both getting off work at midnight, would be there to relieve him by 1:00am.

We explained that it wasn’t necessary for him to remain outside all night, that there would be enough slots available if he came back in the morning. At this he rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “No, I’d better stay. I don’t want to risk it.”

Again we pleaded with him, this time taking down his daughters’ names and guaranteeing that they would be registered. “You don’t understand,” he insisted. “There will be no Thanksgiving meal for us, no presents for my grandchildren if I leave.” Still we tried to persuade him, and still he stood firm.

After twenty minutes of our insistence, the old man finally folded up his chair and lifted it into his cart. “If it’s OK," he asked politely, "I’m going to wait until you leave ... and then come back.” And without waiting for a response,  he pulled his cart into the darkness.

give hope

When I arrived at Sacred Heart last Saturday, crowds of people were gathered around our front door, the lines stretching out to the sidewalk, around the corner, and then around the block. Hundreds of children and adults wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags had camped out on the sidewalk in order to register for our holiday program. It was still only 5:00A.M., and we weren’t scheduled to begin registration for another four hours.

The sidewalk was impassible. I had a lot to do to prepare for the 250 volunteers who would begin arriving at 6:00A.M., but instead I found myself outside, moving slowly among the people, weaving in and out of the street, searching each face in the darkness for one young woman in particular.

Back in October, on another early Saturday morning, I was about to meet her for the first time.

  

The morning fog had not yet dissipated, and the girl I passed on the stairwell was inhaling a cigarette for breakfast, her makeup evidently making the best of its second consecutive day. I had been reduced to retracing my steps as I tried to find unit 205 of the beleaguered 4^th Street apartment complex, the numbering system of which had utterly confounded me.

When I finally found the door, its screen utterly demolished, I hesitated. What would I say? Everything was so quiet. Then I knocked.

A minute passed, and I knocked again. Another minute passed. I looked back to the sleepy smoker on the stairwell for guidance, but she seemed indifferent to my predicament. A part of me was relieved at the lack of response, but then suddenly the door opened.

The young man who answered did so with his back to me, and on pulling open the door, simply disappeared into the bathroom without ever making eye contact. Having left the door open, I poked my head into the darkened room.

The walls were bare, and there was no furniture, no dishes or utensils, no light fixtures, and in fact, there wasn’t even any evidence of electricity. Among the empty bags of chips, shredded cardboard, a stick, a sock, lint, dirt, and innumerable strands of hair, I counted four, then five bodies strewn across the discolored carpet, each covered by a thin sheet or blanket. Most of them looked like teenagers, their exhausted faces pressed into the coarse, unwashed shag, asleep with their shoes on.

After a moment one of the piles of flesh and bone rose and readied herself by rubbing her face with her hands. This is how I first met Regina.

 

Regina is twenty years old, the mother of a four-year old daughter, and homeless. Her father, also homeless, is a customer of ours at Sacred Heart, and after being released from a long prison sentence is now trying to put his life back together. Having lost his relationship with his daughter, he still worries about her, and after finding out where she had been staying, asked if I would try to help her. I spoke with her on the phone, and she agreed to meet.

After our first meeting that October morning, I neither saw nor heard from her again for several weeks. She was a pleasant young woman who hoped to get an education, remarking that she wanted to be a counselor, “So I could help people who are living on the street.” But she had dropped out of high school, had no income, and no real system of support.

Then a few days ago she called me. It was quite late, and she needed a ride. She had been forced out of the apartment where I had first met her, and she and her daughter were now staying somewhere on The Alameda.

When I picked up Regina and her daughter on Monterey Highway, it was cold and dark. She gave me a convoluted account of the events that had recently transpired, and not really knowing what to say or how to help, I brought up Thanksgiving, for it was evident that there wasn’t going to be a family meal for her to partake in.

“Are you interested in a Thanksgiving meal for you and your daughter? We are getting ready for our holiday program at Sacred Heart, and if you register you can also get new toys for …” and I gestured silently at the four-year old, who looked intently at my pointing finger from the backseat. Regina said she was interested.

But when we got to our destination, it was a motel. 

I helped her in with her duffle bags—all her worldly possessions. “Regina, will you be able to prepare a Thanksgiving meal?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Then showing me the little refrigerator with a plug-in hot plate on top of it, she told me that some of the rooms have kitchenettes. 

As I prepared to leave, I asked her how long she was planning to stay at the motel.

“Well, I get $65 a night from my social worker for two weeks—because I was in a bad situation.” I tried not to imagine what sort of situation would trigger this response from her social worker. 

“How long have you been staying here?” I asked.

“About eight days.”

“Then you only have six days left—is that right? What will you do?”

“Well, I found out that this motel gives me a weekly rate.” This added four more days to her stay. “But in a week, I get $150 more.” Another two days.

I was making the calculations in my head as she enumerated the winding down of her resources. Just as one source would run out, a little more would emerge, but always less then the amount before. Until finally, there was nothing.

“That would mean that your last night will be,” I re-calculated. “November 25^th. You’ll have to leave the motel by 11:00 A.M. … on Thanksgiving Day.”

She sat on the bed, her daughter asleep on her lap, and all she said was, “Oh.”

 

I still have no idea if Regina made it in to register for our services last Saturday. It was a busy day, and some 1500 families came through our doors. But there are still some spaces open. I hope she makes it.

night

After passing through an eerie series of security stations and electronically locked hallways, I emerged in a blue-lit chamber half-filled with heavily medicated men and women. More disturbing than their disheveled appearance or the vacant looks on their faces was noticing that the patients were all shuffling about in socks, slippers, or slip-ons. For their own safety—to protect them from self-destruction—shoelaces are not permitted.

Finding the Sacred Heart customer I had come to visit, we sat down facing one another. The chairs we sat on were heavy—far too heavy for a person to lift. He slurred something, then his eyes fixed on my shoulder, and he was immobilized—except for his palsied hands. A bead of drool slowly crept from his lip. I wondered, How had it come to this?

 

As a young high school English teacher, I had to learn the hard way that 15 year-olds aren’t generally manic for the likes of Chaucer, Milton, or Keats. But Andy, a particularly gifted junior, was an exception. He devoured Dostoyevsky between classes and counted Kafka a like-minded confidante. He wrote both poetry and prose for pleasure and enjoyed wrestling with the classical philosophers as much as analyzing independent cinema. Andy was a popular student, a starter on the varsity football squad, played electric guitar, and appeared to have an auspicious future before him.

Upon graduation, Andy went off to university. The next time I saw him shook me profoundly.

The athletic intellect I had known as a high school student was now heavier by 80 pounds and had trouble finishing a thought. Instead of living in a well-appointed home, he wandered the streets at night. Instead of working on a graduate degree, he spent his days pulling recyclables from city garbage cans. He delivered interminable rants on esoteric topics, punctuated by pure fantasies of dealings with politicos, publicists, and the occasional movie star. His world was now consumed by an inner violence, sometimes directed toward others, sometimes toward himself. 

Andy had experienced a psychic break at about the age of twenty. Without warning, this bright, personable student was plunged into the darkness of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. His behavior quickly became erratic, and after assaulting both his mother and father was relegated to the streets.

Now, at thirty years old, it seems that things are deteriorating further. He is currently locked in a psychiatric hospital—his fourth visit in two months. He has been caught in a cycle that reveals a massive breech in our social safety net.

Unwilling or unable to maintain a disciplined regimen of medication while trying to survive the vicissitudes of homelessness, Andy’s episodes are becoming more frequent and more volatile. But the system’s answer is woefully inadequate: usually it is a 72-hour hold, followed by a cab ride to a downtown street corner. In the more egregious cases, he will get up to two weeks in a hospital, capped off by a bed at a homeless shelter.

Nine days ago Andy called me at home. He was terrified and begged to see me. Aware of his recent degeneration, I agreed to come see him. It was the middle of the night and he was at St. James Park in the heart of downtown. When I found him, he began to weep, perhaps as much in relief as in agony. He complained of a wizard who was putting thoughts into his head, a wizard who appeared to him in the form of a black squirrel. He agreed that it was best to call the police and have him taken to the hospital, and after I got off the phone, he brightened up a little.

We sat on the park’s swing set while we waited for the police to arrive, and as we swayed back and forth, he suddenly took off his shoe, telling me he wanted to show me something. He lifted up his shoeless foot and began to peel off his sock. I looked intently, having learned to expect the unexpected in circumstances like these. As the sock came off, I stared at his bare foot, trying to make out what I was seeing. It was a shoelace wrapped neatly around his arch.

In a voice suddenly sane, Andy said matter-of-factly, “When they admit you, they take away your belt and your shoelaces, they check your hair and your pockets, they remove your shoes … but they don’t take off your socks.”

He unraveled the shoelace and handed it to me.

 

Andy will be released from his present stay within the next couple days—I don’t know how much longer he will last.