Shannell trudged downstairs. Her laundry was done, and she needed to pull her soggy clothes out of the washer before she killed herself. Whatever despair she was caught in, taking her own life was a mundanity, just a grim chore—go downstairs, move wet clothes, start the dryer, put a gun to her head, and pull the trigger.
When she walked into the room, her decision only solidified. The gun already lay there. But next to it Shannell found her final justification for suicide—her sister’s body.
With blood puddled on the floor from her sister’s self-inflicted wound, Shannell was going to follow her sister’s example. The gun was the quick answer; she was going to use it on herself.
But she couldn’t get anywhere close to her sister or within arm’s reach of the gun. Desperate to pull the trigger, it wasn’t fear or grief that stopped her. She didn’t even attribute the invisible force that kept her alive to anything within herself.
Shannell told me this like an icebreaker, but her arms were held close to her body as if to defend herself from her words, and her already small frame seemed to shrink beneath what she said.
“Sorry to unload on you,” Justin said. “I know you’re not a therapist or anything.”
His glassy, teal eyes rolled slowly to the back of his skull, as they had done so many times during our conversation, before flittering back into focus.
“Nah,” I said. I had long given up trying to maintain eye contact. “But I can listen. If that helps any.”
Justin was constant motion, constant movement. His eyes drifted like stray marbles behind eyelids that bobbed up and down, open and closed. His head swayed, he trembled occasionally, and at one point his leg shook so violently I was certain it would detach. The clear plastic Starbucks cup of water and the cigarette—long and gray with granny-ash—were virtually forgotten as he’d occasionally bury his shaven head in his full hands.
He was pretty strung out. But that was the least of his problems.
Things were not going smoothly when Justin proposed to his fiancé. She was pregnant with his child, a girl. She constantly threatened to leave him and abort the baby, and would routinely throw her engagement ring to the street for Justin to retrieve. (After all, he was still making payments.)
But Justin was no saint himself. He would shoot heroin with his fiancé’s father, an addict for more than 10 years, and provide him with the drug. So when her father was found dead in his bedroom, needles plunged into his arms, Justin’s fiancé blamed him for supplying the heroin, and subsequently, her father’s death. Still, the couple stayed together, for the sake of their baby—blond-haired, blue-eyed Amanda.
My brother and I were wandering through a two-block cluster of tents and trailers. The dusty, gritty lot had laundry hanging in every direction, pup-tents made from propped-up tarps, reeking portable toilets as the only structures, planes constantly roaring overhead, and makeshift homes filled with hundreds of men, women, and children.
The chronically homeless, families who had just been evicted, teens down on their luck, and kids looking for a thrill had flocked to this 100-square yards sandwiched between the Ontario Airport and derelict houses.
Monroe was none of these. He was a parolee whose supervising officer had placed him at the newly christened dirt lot when there was nowhere else for him to live.
The media called it Tent City. The name was fitting before the city started regulating who deserved to stay and the number of tents dwindled to 20 or 30. Needless to say, someone like Monroe—just finishing paying for mistakes he made—was not welcome after that.
The reason Monroe was sentenced was muddled. The nearest I heard was some muttering about his arrest, which, of course, he still viewed as unfair. Whatever the case of the arrest—just or unjust—the situation he was in now was much more lucid.
Beth wears glasses, and she has a way of peering through them that’s fiercely intent.
I hadn’t realized this, but whenever someone would talk to her she would lean forward, squint a little through the glasses in between her hair, graying at the bangs and cropped at her forehead so it frames her glasses and face almost in a rectangle.
I’d seen Beth almost weekly for the last few months, but I realized until now it was much too easy to not pay enough attention to her.
She’s a short, round woman who walks with a slight limp when you stop to pay attention, but the problem is getting someone to pay that much attention. I was guilty of not taking enough notice.
It’s too easy to take a glance at someone and assume—based on one quick look—that you don’t have enough in common to strike up a decent conversation.
I don’t know why, but the middle-aged woman with slightly stringy hair and a smile missing a tooth seemed foreign to me, someone I wouldn’t be able to relate to.
That was my pitfall. It was easy to notice that throaty, nervous laugh and slightly flustered demeanor and move on.
But last week she taught me something I didn’t know.
Tangled blonde hair spilled from her fur-trimmed hood and hung low to her waist. Her hands were jammed in the pockets of her parka, worn and blue like her eyes. From chapped pink lips, she unconfidently muttered the words “Spare change?” to the deaf ears of those passing by.
I happily strolled along Fifth Avenue on my way home from work, iPhone in one hand and a carton of leftover Chinese lunch in the other. The somber gray sky from the early morning had dissolved to blue wash, and I could finally wear my heavy coat unzipped while outdoors. Spring was finally making its presence known.
Standing solitary between parking meters, she caught my eye from a few feet away as I chatted inanely on my phone. Panhandlers are a sad plenty on the streets in New York, but she stood out from the others.
She was young—possibly younger than I.
And it was apparent that begging for alms was not her typical Friday afternoon activity. Her words, barely audible, seemed to evaporate the second they left the tongue. Shy, meek, unobtrusive, unrehearsed, and desperately necessary.
And ineffective.
Cat was a broken lump underneath the 405 Freeway in L.A. when my brother pulled over the mini-van to pick her up.
In the middle of Lawndale, I’m not sure what possessed him and his two friends to stop at an underpass and walk up to someone. He gave a simple explanation. He thought she was hurt.
He turned out to be right, but not nearly how he expected.
Cat was more than talkative as soon as they showed up, but after they realized she wasn’t bleeding out on the side of the road, they weren’t sure what to do.
They ended up doing what they would have on a normal night. They grabbed dinner and a drink or two, only with an extra, wide-eyed, frizzy-haired companion this time.
Over a burger, they were taken aback by how fast she’d opened up to them, but as soon as they heard the beginning of the story, it made sense.
For years her only human contact was through the pre-paid cell phones she’d manage to sneak home and use until her boyfriend found them. She paid for them with abuse. She was his and nobody else’s, and she had bruises to show it.
(Continued from previous post.)
There must have been at least 10 on each arm—cuts, two- to three-inch horizontal slices from elbow to wrist. Some were stitched together with black wire, like little spider legs stretching through his skin. Others were shallow crevices filled with thin, red, bloody film. All were fresh. He handed me my share of the candy, and I thanked him, trying desperately not to stare at his butchered forearms.
We began to talk. First about Spanish, then in Spanish. He asked me if I go to school. He asked about my family. He asked where I’m from, how I like Brooklyn, how I like the weather, what I do for a living.
“Y tu?” I asked, fishing for the correct word in Spanish. “Tienes familia? Family?”
In broken English, Norberto began to explain that he said he served time in prison for a reason I didn’t exactly catch. Shortly after he was released, his wife and son died in a car accident. They were hit by a drunken driver.
“In the ground,” he said.
“Dead?” I asked. “Uh, muerto?”
Three hours and counting, the plastic seats in New York Methodist’s ER waiting room were stiffening my lower back and numbing my crossed legs. The hospital wasn’t the most romantic venue at which to spend Valentine’s Saturday, but my swollen, pus-leaking left eye left me little alternative. Besides, being single on February 14 can be quite miserable, and it was a bit relieving to have a valid excuse to spend the day alone.
Norberto took the empty seat beside me. He had caramel skin and silver hair, slicked back, tucked behind his ears, grazing his shoulders. His black leather jacket was worn and gray at the elbows, closures broken, and his knee showed through a frayed hole in his jeans. Interjecting an occasional “Oh!” and “Ay!”, Norberto watched a basketball game on the flat-screen TV mounted high on the wall. “Sheeeeew!” he’d say, shaking his head and looking my way after an exceptionally good play. I’d smile, reaching into my pocket and slowly turning up my iPod.
At the commercial break, Norberto stood and rolled his shoulders out of his jacket. He laid it on his seat and pointed. “Please watch?” he asked.
I looked up from pamphlet I was reading. “Oh, sure,” I said.
He nodded and made his way to the reception desk, and my eyes followed. He spoke with the young, apparently puzzled receptionist with bleached hair and hand-drawn eyebrows. Defeated, she called someone else over, who calmly conversed with Norberto. He nodded and came back toward me.
Rusty was a short, skinny, little guy. Even when I was 8 years old he didn’t seem that intimidating. The bushy beard was more or less kempt, and he made good conversation.
He called himself “the harmless, little wino,” and, as far as I could tell, he definitely was. He was usually drinking the wine out of a cup he’d gotten at McDonald’s too. It added to the persona.
I don’t have many neighbors from 12 years ago I remember. I guess it’s pretty normal for apartment life where people come and go – especially with my mom as the manager. I would see a random parade of tenants coming to the front door slipping in their rent or asking for a key after they locked themselves out for the fifth time that month.
I remember Rusty though.
