Angels, Fire Everywhere

Hitting home

Photo by Lucas K on Unsplash

This morning Deena and I are at the front desk. “Today the twenty-sixth?” Mr. Bird asks. He’s standing on the other side of the desk across from the front door, his finger pointing to the date printed at the top of the intake sheet. He is a diminutive, quiet, soft-spoken older man. Today he is wearing a denim baseball cap and a t-shirt that says Shine On! Team Kentucky.

“Yes,” I tell him, “today is the twenty-sixth.” “That a Thursday?” he asks. “No, it’s Sunday.” “Oh, Sunday!” he says, “thank you.” He will be back around in about an hour, wanting to confirm the same thing.

Taking his place is Eric the custodian. He circulates for a few hours every day wiping down tables, chairs, and counters, cleaning the bathroom and showers. He wears Latex gloves and a mask that always covers only his mouth but I can tell that he smiles often because of the wrinkles around his eyes.

“It’s quiet in here today,” he says as he wipes down the front desk where Mr. Bird was, “kind of scares me!” “That’s the good kind of scare,” I say. “You’re right about that,” he says, the corners of his eyes creasing. He moves on to take care of the chairs by the door to the volunteer room.

Then I hear it before I see it, F-bomb this, N-word that, flying over from the back of the desk. A man there is shouting the epithets into the phone.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Deena says to the man. She pauses eating the waffle she’s having for breakfast and turns in his direction. The man is staring down at the phone, getting louder. So is Deena.

“Hey! You gotta clean it up or I’m gonna ask ya ta leave,” she tells him. She straightens in her chair and sets her eyes on him. The man keeps looking down at the phone, he’s quiet, but then, “Mother—” “HEY!” Deena booms. “You gotta stop! I’m tellin’ you!”

He puts the phone down and walks toward the back. Deena watches him, making sure he’s settled, and then she gets back to her waffle. “I’m tellin’ you,” she sighs. I nod toward her waffle and ask, “Where did you get that?” I ask her. “Annette made it for me,” Deena says. Annette is also working today. She is in the coffee room now, tidying cups, carafes, canisters of powdered creamer, packets of sugar and artificial sweetener.

Around eleven a group drops off a couple of boxes of sack lunches. We don’t even need to announce it. A few men have seen the boxes and made a move to the front desk. Others have noticed the movement and before we know it all sixty or so of them are lined up and flowing past, each taking a bag and a bottle of water as fast as we can hand them out and then the boxes are empty, two minutes tops.

But a few men have missed out. They will have another chance when the chili man comes by in about an hour. When the weather is good he comes Sundays around noon and sets up out of his pickup truck at the corner of the intersection. Sundays offer other nourishment too, when a van or two from a nearby church comes by to take any interested men to services. They usually get a few.

Once Deena and I put the empty sack lunch boxes away and the extra bottles of water into the cooler, I look through the roster, but not at random. About a year and a half ago I had a health crisis. I spent about two weeks in an in-patient psychiatric unit.

When I left I had the feeling that it would just be a matter of time before I saw someone from my stay there. Even though an experience ends, that doesn’t always mean that it’s over. It might keep popping up, circling back, touching down.

For me that happened about a month ago, two blocks from the shelter, when I saw Keith, a double amputee who used to tear around the clinic in his wheelchair and provoke security. “Excuse me, Mr. Security, but could I please trouble you for a cup of coffee?” “You need to ask your nurse,” Mr. Security would say. “Mr. Security! COULD I PLEASE TROUBLE YOU FOR A CUP OF COFFEE?” “You need to ask—” “FUCK MY NURSE!” He would smack the arms of his wheelchair and peel off.

When I saw Keith a month ago, he was cruising along the sidewalk in his wheelchair. I was in the flow of traffic and not able to slow down or stop. By the time I had circled the block, Keith was gone. In the roster I find his name. I see that he has not been here in a while.

I check for another name. When I find it, I see that Robert has been away even longer. Robert and I enjoyed each other’s company. He was a champion high-school wrestler and football player with a deeply creative, deeply cracked brain. He would practice his moves in the hallway, muttering and talking out loud, totally in his own world.

But I would ask him a question or make some remark and he would answer cogently, like he would flick some switch in his mind to Sane Mode. One night we talked about books we liked. Watching Family Feud another evening after dinner we worked our way through some yoga poses.

I have also seen Robert’s mail in the shelter's mail cabinet. It’s thickened to a small, rubber-banded bundle. I know if I see Robert again I will recognize him. I wonder if he will recognize me. I would enjoy talking about books with him again.

Other names I see in the roster are John Vincent, Jr., followed by John Vincent III. Father and son, both homeless. A few months ago a young man came in to check his mail holding his four-month-old daughter in a blanket against his chest. I ask him her name. He tells me, adding, “Her momma's outside on the steps.”

And I am thinking, God, can it get any harder than this, to start life on the streets? But he is smiling, looking down at his daughter, and says, “We are blessed.” I am not understanding how his circumstances could be a blessing, just like I am not understanding how this keeps happening, from one generation to another.

And especially when I see a man who’s in some distress, someone like Michael who's lost his shoes again or forgotten his name, or Shawn who's come in so exhausted from working the third shift he can hardly stand, I wonder, my heart catching, Does his mother know?

I need to unpack that question. Does his mother know what? And why his mother? I can answer the second part of the question easily. I ask from a mother’s perspective because I am a mother.

But the first part of the question stumps me. As a mother, what would I want to know? That my son is alive? That he is homeless? That he is not making any sense? That he’s wearing blue ER scrubs and a white hospital band around his right wrist?

I don’t know, if I would want to know. Sometimes knowing is its own kind of agony. I think of Mr. Marshall, how he says he can talk to angels because he’s been through fire, and I think, There’s fire everywhere, angels, everywhere there’s fire.

To learn more about my experiences at the shelter, please see Angels, Fire Here and It's Cold Outside and Crowded in the Shelter.

You may also support my work at Buy Me a Coffee.