There are three homeless people who live at the courthouse entrance I use and who I see twice a day, five days a week. Two are black men likely in their fifties. One is plucky and energetic and regularly has a stream of attorneys who give him a couple of bucks to carry up their exhibits and files. This is the man who every day tells me as I leave the courthouse to "be good, be safe." The second man is quieter and hustles in a more straightforward fashion, by jingling loose change in a paper cup and asking for more. This is the man who tells me in the morning to "have a good day, stay focused." I like both of them immensely. They watch people and adapt to different personalities with real skill, and I feel like they look out for me.
The third person is a white woman who could be anywhere from 35 to 55. She never makes eye contact and she never says a word. She either quietly paces or sits next to her dozen or so plastic and canvas bags. From what I can tell, the bags are filled with more bags, plastic soda and juice bottles, and teddy bears. For several months, she has worn the same outfit: white tennis shoes, wide leg jeans in a medium blue wash, a long-sleeved denim shirt in the same medium blue wash, and a grey knit beanie. Her long blond hair hangs in greasy strings, her pale blue eyes stare vacantly at nothing.
I wish I'd had the foresight and the nerve to take a picture of her every day since she'd appeared in the denim outfit. Over the weeks, I've watched her become dirtier in measurable increments. The blue of her shirt and jeans went from brand new to yellow before slowly turning brown, and by now the dirt and grease have become so pronounced that her clothing has taken on a new thickness.
Yesterday, I noticed a new tear in her shirt along one shoulder seam. I'm worried there'll be no end to it, that she'll wear the denim jeans and shirt until they disintegrate completely and fall off. She asks for nothing, talks to no one. I'm sure there are support services in the area that have tried to reach her, but she seems to live entirely within a world of her own mind. If I thought that bringing her money or clothes or hygiene projects would help, I would have brought them already. But the one thing I've come to understand about her is that she's not with us, she's not interested in doing anything our way.
I can't fix her. The government, the hospitals, the non-profits can't fix her. The two black men seem to watch that no one bothers her but otherwise know to ignore her. What I could have done, what I wish I would have done, is take her picture, each day at the same time in the same place, each day documenting the quiet, simple brutality of filth.
VIRGIN IN THE VOLCANO
3 comments:
It's heartbreaking. I have a very Pandora's Box illness when it comes to money. If I give you a nickel, I will give you $5,000 and the jar I kept that nickel in. It's why I had to give myself the rule that I never give money, only food, or items I'd leave at Goodwill.
My guess, based on your description, is that she's mentally ill, unmedicated, and homeless because of her illness. I wonder if someone brought a plastic bag with clothes to the guys, if they could get it to her.
Your guys are cool - they're like moms sending you off to school each day.
The guys are cool, aren't they? But she breaks my heart too. I'm sure she is mentally ill, like so many others on the street, and I wish there was a way to reach her, a way to drag her back among the living.
i work on the street at an outdoor flower shop (there is literally no front door or "inside"– just corrugated metal doors that we raise and lower each day), and the number of homeless people i see each day (some of whom i know by name) is staggering.
Just today a passerby called the police on one of them, a newish young man who looks like an angry Anthony Kiedis; he is tan, and very lean but wiry, with muscles popping out on his arms, and his face is always a disturbed scowl. He yells, constantly, either to call us "hamburger-eating bitches", or to rail about the new inflated price of a 7-11 Big Gulp. Sometimes he just walks by and shouts the prices of the flowers ("ONE TWENTY-FIIIIVE!!") or makes out with the sidewalk mannequin at American Apparel, our next-door neighbor.
We have seen many homeless folks come and go, and many stay, but today was one of the first days that i really felt a sort of despondence about it all, like there was absolutely nothing we could do to help. Mental illness is clearly a factor, and just like you said: it seems that some of them are truly somewhere else. Just inaccessible.
One of our local free weeklies has a "meet a homeless person" article in each issue. i guess you could start your own... (you know, because you have so much free time? ::sarcasm::)
Cheers.
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