by Teal Swan
Aria felt uncomfortable in her own skin. The entire display made her lose even more faith in humanity. It was her poverty that forced her to consent to being there, where her pride could not. This was a poison called philanthropy. The reality was that people did not care. Every other day of the year, these same people would yell at them to stop loitering in front of their buildings or to go get a job. Every other day of the year, these same people would pass them by, dousing them in the ordure of their car fumes. But today, with the Christmas spirit upon them, suddenly they all acted like they cared. Aria would have been glad for this sudden shift, were it not for the smug looks on their faces. Contrary to popular opinion, it was not Christ-like at all. She could see that this giving was not really giving. It was taking. It was a transaction. People like herself accepted whatever they were handing out, and in exchange, they could revel in a sense of their own moral goodness. It was a display of self-gratification. People love nothing more than seeing themselves as good, even if it is by definition entirely self-centered.
By the end of the day, Aria had begrudgingly accrued an orange, four water bottles, mouthwash, shaving cream and a razor, four pairs of new socks, a pack of sanitary wipes, a bottle of hand sanitizer, two toothbrushes with toothpaste, a packet of gum, chapstick, five hand warmers, a packet of mixed nuts, four granola bars, a comb, a packet of cheese and crackers, $10 and some beef jerky which she couldn’t eat. When neither Luke nor Taylor was close enough to see, she fed the jerky to Palin, who inhaled it. Palin seemed overwhelmed with the excitement of the unforeseen change of atmosphere and the energy between people in the air. Each time a person had approached them, she submissively flattened her ears and crawled toward them, anxiously wagging her tail. Only one person leaned down to pet her. The rest simply assumed that because she was in the company of a vagrant, she must be carrying some kind of disease.
Having caught wind of a turkey dinner that was apparently offered every year to the homeless and hungry at the United Methodist Church, Taylor and Luke decided to follow a fellow drifter there. Aria declined to join them. Instead, she walked the long distance back to the car lot alone. When she arrived, she could see that Anthony had not moved from his original position. The cup of cocoa that Luke had placed beside him had been spilled. Aria assumed it had been knocked over intentionally. Aside from Anthony, there was no one else at the lot. They had probably all gone out to take advantage of the many opportunities that existed as a result of this sudden Christmas caring.
Aria sat in the mute atmosphere of the back seat of the Land Cruiser. Here, away from the self-gratification of the people and the diminishment she felt because of it, she was glad for her little pile of charity items, where she hadn’t felt glad before. She spread them all out on the seat of the car. She was conscious that the way she felt, looking at them, was similar to the way she’d felt on the few occasions when one of her foster parents had taken her trick-or-treating. She felt replete. At least for a little while, she wouldn’t have to go desperately searching to meet an immediate need.
Stripping down to her bra and underwear, Aria used a few of the hand wipes to give herself a kind of provisional sponge bath. She pulled the comb unforgivingly through the length of her hair. She was grateful for the comb most of all. Since her brush had gone missing when her backpack was stolen on one of her first days in the city, she had been using her own hands to untangle her hair every morning. Leaning her legs out the opposite side of the car from where Anthony’s camp was situated, she used one of the bottles of water, the razor and the men’s shaving cream to shave her legs for the first time in ages. She didn’t know why she did it. Perhaps it was stupid. There was no reason to shave her legs in the life she was currently living. In fact, doing so might make her more uncomfortable once the hair started to grow back in. But she was sick of feeling decrepit.
Because it was Christmas, she allowed herself to separate the orange and the packet of cheese and crackers from the rest of the stash, which she stuffed deep into the main compartment of her backpack. The sweet-sour taste of the orange segments was tainted by the bitter pith that still glazed her hand from when she’d peeled off the rind. She spread the cheese on one of the crackers with the little red stick that was provided in the packet. It tasted chemical, but it felt luxurious to eat. When she had finished, she threw the orange rind and the little tangle of hair that had come loose in her comb over the fence of the car lot.
Waiting for Taylor and Luke to return, Aria found herself loosely watching over Anthony’s little denigrated arbor. The blue tarp over his head was contorting with the lift and release of the wind. Aria imagined that he must have actually had good Christmases once. It made her sad to imagine them. She could see him younger, wearing a ridiculous Christmas sweater and sitting down at a long table with so many family members that he would have to shout to be heard over the chorus of voices. Of course, she didn’t know if what she imagined was anything like his actual Christmases. But she could conjure up no other explanation for his catatonic state.
For most people, Christmas was a time of celebration. It was a time for gifts and family and feasts. But for people like herself and Anthony, whose ostracization had led them straight into the back alleys of life, Christmas was anything but that. Watching him, Aria began wishing that if people were actually capable of caring about the people in society who were damaged or down and out of luck, they would act every day like they did on Christmas Day. Then again, if they did, she doubted whether anyone would be living on the streets in the first place.
CHAPTER 17
Home was not a person. Home was not a place. Having dug up their roots so many times, Taylor and Aria were beginning to wonder if people like themselves were homeless less because no home existed and more because neither of them even knew what home was. Other people seemed to know. They’d found it somewhere. Those people lacked the anxious searching that polluted Taylor and Aria’s lives. The pair debated the concept of home on their way to the church where Luke had taken them the day after they had met him so many months ago, hoping to find the doors open for lunch once again. Aria was conscious of how good it felt to walk down the street in new socks.
Something that Aria had come to find out is that when you are homeless, suddenly wealth is determined by a pair of new socks. They keep you warm, they keep you clean, they prevent a whole host of different ailments that occur when it seems like all you are doing with your life is walking. And as she had found out the hard way, when push comes to shove, they can serve many other functions than that which they were originally intended for.
The $10 that Aria had gathered on Christmas Day had run out. When Taylor had gone out to the city looking for jobs, which he had done every day the previous week, Aria had waited for him to leave before setting out on her own. First she spent some of the money at a grocery store on a packet of cigarettes. Then she bought a bus fare so she could save herself from walking. She spent the rest of the money on a carton of plain rice from a Chinese fast-food restaurant. Part of her felt guilty for having spent money that she could have saved for emergency situations. Contrary to what people often say about people on the streets, it was not in her nature to spend money all at once. But having nice things and having money on the street is more dangerous than spending it. It would have made Aria a target. And she already knew what it felt like to save money only to have it stolen. So she decided it would be better to spend it on herself than to potentially lose it all.
On their way to the church, Taylor and Aria paused at a stoplight near a shopping center, waiting for it to turn green. Aria felt her heart jump a little at the familiar sight of Darren, who was standing across the intersection from them, panhandling. When the light turned green, Aria held Taylor back so they could spy on him without him noticing. He was sitting on a bench with his battered crutches laid out in plain view. A sign propped up in front of him read “Homeless Vet Support Your Troops.” His prosthetic leg was intentionally displayed.
I
n the months they had spent at the camp, Aria had come to understand Darren. His entire presentation was meant to guilt people. He was angry. The lack of opportunities that he’d had in life were opportunities that the army had promised to give him. He had enlisted with a sense of national honor and pride. Back then, he felt like he belonged to something bigger than himself. But that honor and that pride were now timeworn. They had frayed out from underneath him, exposing instead a void of terminal aloneness.
Darren now felt as if the very country he served had turned its back on him. And he was determined to make the country and its ungrateful, idiot civilians remember him. He displayed the sacrifices he had made for them in plain view as if to say, “Shame on you, look what I sacrificed for you, now give something back to me for it.”
Aria felt conflicted watching him. On the one hand, his sense of entitlement and the shame he used as a tool of extortion were enough to make you hate him. Many of the citizens he was now guilting, including herself, had never wanted him to go to war in the first place. It’s hard to feel grateful for a sacrifice you never wanted or asked someone to make. But on the other hand, he was right. Aria imagined that in his position, she would be angry too if she had offered up her life for someone or something else and in return had ended up losing everything; reduced to constant pain both emotionally and physically. The country had turned its back on him, especially the very institutions that had promised him belonging in the first place. Like a broken Springfield Model civil war rifle, he was now a forgotten symbol of war. Patched together and gathering dust, he was no longer a tool the government could use for the violence of their foreign policy.
Like that broken gun, Darren was less devastated to be on the shelf than he was to be considered worthless now, his dignity abolished by every passerby that ignored him.
Taylor and Aria decided to cross the street perpendicular to where he was sitting. They did so without him ever noticing that they were there. When they reached the church, the line was shorter than it had been the last time they had come there. The big black woman, Imani, was manning the table once again, her rich, welcoming smile pulling people down the line. She seemed happy to see Aria again, which took Aria by surprise. “How you two doin’?” she asked, ladling chili into two paper bowls on the table in front of her.
“We’re OK ma’am, how are you?” Taylor answered, suddenly reverting to the manners that were beaten into him in his youth.
“Well, I’m fine today, just fine,” she responded, pausing to collect two care kits from a cardboard box underneath the table before continuing to speak. “We’ve got these here for you today. Some deodorant, some hand lotion and chapstick and some baby wipes. The kids made ’em themselves.” She pointed to each item as she listed them, all of which had been carefully packed in a plastic ziplock bag.
Taylor and Aria paused awkwardly, not knowing if they should take the bowls and care packages from the table themselves or whether they should wait for her to hand them over directly, until Imani broke that pause. “You know I’d been hopin’ to see you here again. I wrote the number down to my office in case you ever wanted some help with anythin’. We’ve got some great programs you might like.” She handed Aria a business card, which advertised the church. On its back, she had handwritten her phone number and her name.
“Thanks,” Aria said, trying to disguise her distrust with openness. She put the card into her pocket.
“You two come back and see me now,” Imani said, carefully handing each of them their chili and care packages.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Taylor said. Aria just smiled and nodded her head to indicate that she had heard her. Imani felt the relief of knowing that her first attempt to establish connection with Aria had successfully landed.
Imani was a social worker on a mission, on several missions in fact. Her sense of purpose in the world had replaced the conscious need for a partner or any other form of support for that matter. She was a member of the church, where she handed out lunch to the homeless on most days of the week. Every morning and also at unexpected times, when crises occurred, Imani had her hands full with her work at a family services center in one of the worst parts of town. In the afternoons, she went home to her two-bedroom apartment, to take care of her family members that were incapable of taking care of themselves, much less each other.
It seemed to Imani that all she did was manage crises, whether it was in her professional life or in her private life. In fact, handing out food to the homeless and attending church were the two most stress-free facets of her life. When the state found Imani’s sister to be unfit to take care of her three kids, their custody was passed to Imani’s mother, the children’s grandmother, who was progressively being rusted through by both diabetes and heart disease. Now, one year later, Imani found herself sleeping on her own pull-out couch and caretaking all of them. Because of this, Imani had no spare time to speak of. She had no other choice than to be strong. Her moral heart had made self-sacrifice its bedrock. The fact was that Imani took care of everyone in her life.
In common with many of her background and culture, Imani was a God-fearing woman. But she wore her faith with more self-effacing grace than others. She believed in every fiber of her being that Jesus cared for all his children and did so in mysterious ways. Her faith was so deep and unshakable that she was not troubled with doubtful questions about the ways in which this “care” happened. When tragedy struck, which it so often did around her, she knew it was not God that was mistaken but she that could not grasp the full picture. In her wallet, she carried a paper, now crinkled from years of use, that said, Faith only occurs in the absence of knowing. It was her favorite quote and she lived her life by it.
Imani had worked out the first time she saw her that Aria was homeless and that she was underage. But she also knew that calling the police was not the solution. “You just gotta love ’em,” she thought in her head. That first time, Aria had been with Luke. Imani had seen him in the line before. She knew him to be a man who could be counted on to take advantage of all the benefits the church could offer. Like nearly everyone else, she could tell that he had chosen to be homeless and because of this, his entitlement drove her crazy. Still, she hoped that because Luke had been the one to lead Aria there, he would bring her back and gradually, she might be able to connect Aria with the necessary resources to get her off of the street.
Imani had no way of knowing whether Aria would do anything with the connection she’d tried to make, or whether she had been too damaged at this point to recognize opportunity when it was handed to her. But Imani could rest in knowing that she had done what she could do for now. She also knew that the best way to get Aria to trust her was to put absolutely no pressure on her at all. These kids who had no home to go to were like stray animals. You had to be patient and not react or trap them, and stay consistent while they tested you again and again. Sometimes Imani felt like they were actually trying to get her to act in such a way that they could prove to themselves that no one loved them. It was like playing a game of chess where what these kids didn’t get was that winning this game meant killing their own best interests.
The slurry of flavors scalded Aria’s nose before she had even tasted it. It was not the best bowl of chili. It probably wasn’t even good. But Aria’s current circumstances elevated her appraisal of it. The way the sharp musk of cumin coated her throat, and its heavy sustenance, made her feel cradled on the inside.
Taylor and Aria ate without talking. A warm meal had been so hard to come by that it was a pleasure worth the silence. Having become accustomed to one meal a day and some days none, Aria struggled to finish the chili. By the time she fished the last bean from the bowl, her stomach was sore. Taylor, who finished before she did, announced he was going to take a short nap and to wake him up whenever she was ready to go. He lay down in the grass and covered his face with his jacket.
Aria leaned back on her elbows to try to relieve the ache of being too full. She watched Imani
serving the other people in the line. A young man had made himself at home on a cardboard box beside her. He was slumped over his bowl of chili, spooning it into his mouth boorishly and laughing. From the familiarity of the body language and talk between them, Aria guessed that they must know each other personally. His head was covered in a purple do-rag. He wore an oversized puffy blue coat and oversized jeans that rode so low they didn’t quite cover his boxers. The knock-off gold watch he was wearing on his left wrist made the brown skin, under the jungle of black tattoos on his arm, look copper. He had thick lips and wide-set dark eyes. Even from a distance, Aria could see that his eyes caught so much light, the reflection in them made his pupils look white instead of black. In fact, the reflection made his eyes look like he was crying even when he was smiling. Underneath his carefully constructed image of bravado, Aria could see the child still alive in him inside his eyes. A five-year-old boy looking at the world as if he was still watching his father leave him. He seemed to be forever crying without crying at a loss still unresolved within him.
Aria switched her attention to the cook. Imani seemed to her to be the epitome of a big black woman. Her skin was the color of hickory. The entire length of her coarse hair was regulated into box braids, two of which she had tied together in the back, as if in a last-minute attempt to keep them out of her face and to tame the rest. She spoke with a twangy paralanguage common to the African-Americans who had spent their youth on the South Central side of the city. The way she moved her body was both slow and loose. This mannerism of casual familiarity made people feel at ease. She wore a pair of black-rimmed prescription glasses and a loose-fitting blouse with stretch pants over her heavy curves.
