5
“6AM, ladies! Time to wake up!”
In the morning, I heard the call to which I would soon become accustomed as fluorescent lights lit up the basement.
Gathering what little belongings I'd brought with me into the shelter, I looked around at the other women, most of whom started slowly rising. Some began to pull their mattresses over to a certain corner, piling them up on top of each other, and as I continued to watch, I took the hint and also dragged my mattress to the corner, adding it to the pile. Some residents remained comotose on their mattresses, and the shelter employees would come over and try to wake them up individually.
Once most of the mattresses were removed from the floor, shelter employees and some of the residents started rolling out tables on wheels, which they turned and opened up, organizing them into rows. There was no particular enthusiasm and certainly no confusion as they did this, and it seemed like this was the regular morning routine.
Despite the tables, no breakfast would be served, there. In fact, I quickly discovered that the shelter closes each day from 8:00AM to 2:00PM, and some of the residents were already leaving the basement area. I wouldn't start my first day at the deli job until 10:00AM, so I'd have to find somewhere else to hang out, until that time.
Dee, the young woman I met last night, came down and found me.
“Did you sleep alright?” Dee asked me.
I nodded, looking around. “Yeah. ...What do people usually do for food?” Food was often on my mind, and I hated that perpetual feeling of not being sure where my next meal was going to come from. With that weighing so heavily on my mind, it was often hard to think of anything else.
“They don't serve breakfast here, but there's a community center nearby that does,” she replied. “However....” She paused, sounding like she just had an idea as she glanced over to one of the female employees
“Follow me,” Dee said as we walked over to the employee, explaining that I was new and asked about food. The employee gave me a bagel and a small self-serving of cream cheese, with a plastic knife. She gave me a second bagel for lunch. Good thing, too, because I'd already eaten the food I hoisted from my new job at the grocery store, anyway. I was horrible at rationing food, and for reasons I didn't understand I seemed to eat more food if I knew I didn't have much food to begin with. I think it was probably a mind-frame along the lines of: I don't know where my next meal is going to come from, so I better eat as much as I can, right now! Luckily, I'd be able to continue to get expired pastires from the deli job that they were going to throw away at the end of the night anyway. Not the healthiest, but it kept me going.
Initially, I thought the shelter might give me this “lunch” every day (which was a happy thought, even if it was just a bagel), but on the second day, I discovered it was just a one-time thing. I would need to find my own food, until dinner time.
By 6:30AM, I stepped outside, squinting at the summer morning sunshine as I walked down the front steps. Birds sang songs in the trees and I had renewed hope as I carried the bagels to my car. The shelter was quite good, so far, and it was kind of exciting for a rural girl to be in the city!
“Hey, there, Jodi,” I patted my cat on the head as I got in the car. “Sleep well?” She stood up on the passenger seat, stretching, yawning and lifting her tail as I poured some crunchy food into her dish. It was cool during the nights, and the windows were all slightly open, for air flow.
My job at the deli was part-time, and on this particular day, I would work from 10:00AM to 2:00PM (just a short shift, for training), so I had to come up with somewhere else to go, while the shelter was closed during the day. I didn't really know any places to go in the city, so I ended up just driving back out towards what I knew—in the direction of the small town where I'd start the new job.
Somewhere between the city and the sticks, I found a public park and stopped for a bit. I filled up my water bottles at the public drinking fountain and just walked around and sat around until it was time to go. I found some blackberry bushes and gathered some of the berries, but other than food and the job, I had no purpose, no aim, no goal, and still not sure how to move forward.
———
The deli job was exciting and welcoming, a glimmer of hope for getting back on my feet. After my shift ended, I drove with a bit more confidence and speed, now that I was familiar with the route.
Back at the shelter, I saw Dee again. I told her that I worked at a deli and she mentioned that people who have jobs can get bunkbeds up on the second floor. The basement was for people who come and go for a night or two and don't have jobs. She recommended seeing one of the social workers, which I did right away.
The social workers' offices were along the wall of the basement area where I'd slept the night before. This area now looked completely different, with daylight shining in through the windows onto the long, red tables and benches organized in rows. Some people were hanging out and chatting. The TV was still off. I went into one of the offices and sat down in front of a young man who looked to be either fresh out of college or still in college. I wouldn't be surprised if this was an internship for him, though the weary look on his face suggested that I wasn't the first resident he'd ever spoken with.
“Are you already enrolled with EBT and SNAP benefits?” He began the routine questions.
I blinked. “What's that?” I asked, clueless.
“It's the food stamp program,” he replied. “You can be given a sum of money each month, for buying food.”
I stared at him in awe, with wide eyes. Was this real? There was a program that would just give me money for food? Why hadn't I heard of this earlier? This was like magic, to me.
“No, but I would like to sign up for that,” I said eagerly, already envisioning endless food as he extracted a few papers from a folder.
“What is your long-term plan?” the social worker asked next.
I immediately assumed he was asking me for 5, 10, possibly even 20 years down the road. These large numbers boggled my mind and I sat in shocked silence for a moment. I hadn't thought that far ahead since... well, never, aside from planning my art degree when I first began college. It was quite possible that a lack of such a long-term plan was what ended me up in the shelter in the first place.
“Do you mean, like, in a year or two?” I asked, shortening the length of time, just in case he meant sooner.
“No, I mean next week, or in a few days,” he replied. This answer was equally as shocking, as it made me realize that there are others in the shelter who might not even plan for the next few days. These people are truly desitute, I hypocritically thought to myself, immediately telling myself that I'm certainly not like “these people.” I was already trying to separate myself from the others, as if my life was on track, while the rest of them were... who knows what—drug addicts who lay in bed all morning? That certainly wasn't me.
Up on a high horse? You bet. I rejoiced in the fact that I had a job and in the fact that I was able to think not just days but months ahead in the future! Not only that, but I had a goal—to have my own apartment. Hurray for me.
“I'm saving up money to get my own apartment,” I replied to the young social worker proudly, as if he had never heard this novel idea from anyone else, before. Then I prodded, “I heard that if people have a job, they can get a bunkbed, upstairs...?”
He nodded. “That's right,” he said, and soon assigned me a bed. It would be the lower bunk near the door in room 15. He gave me some paperwork and directions to the city building where I should go to sign up for the food stamp program. It was within walking distance of the shelter.
He handed me a plastic bag that contained some basic hygiene items, such as soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush and mouthwash. I happily accepted this. First this place gives me bagels and now they're giving me hygiene items? To someone who was living out of her car just a couple days ago and taking showers with pond water, being given gifts of food and toiletries was like being given gold and silver.
Finally, he gave me some fresh sheets for the bed. “Laundry is once a week, on Thursdays,” he added. “You can get fresh sheets when you give us the old ones.”
I nodded and carried the bed sheets upstairs to room 15.
The hallways were painted in bright, happy colors. None of the rooms had doors. I saw some women hanging out in the rooms as I passed by. Some were playing music, others just talking. Each room seemed to have the same layout—two bunkbeds for four people with a small table to the side, all illuminated by buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.
I turned the corner and got to room 15, seeing the empty lower bunk by the door. As I glanced around the room, I saw one person in the opposite upper bunk bed, who I recognized.
“Codi!” the cheerful voice of Dee brought me comfort. “Are you coming up here to stay in this room?”
I smiled and nodded. “Yup! Good to see you again.” I put my backpack on the floor, leaned against one of the metal legs of the bunk bed and started to put the sheets on the thin, plastic mattress.
“What's that? One of those Care Bears?” Dee asked, pointing to a stuffed animal that I'd brought with me.
I laughed and nodded as I held up a large, stuffed yellow bear with a picture of a yellow sun on its white belly. “Yup! It's Sunshine Bear. I happened to have this from years ago, and I brought it in, since they don't seem to have pillows.”
Dee smiled brightly. “That's a good idea. I use sweaters for my pillow. They don't give us pillows, just in case we get lice.”
I blinked and gave a bewildered, “Oh,” before glancing at the bed, bed posts, and floor, trying to spot any possible current infestations. It seemed clean enough, for now.
Someone passed by, glancing into the room. There wouldn't be much privacy, here, but I didn't even care. I wasn't going to be picky.
I looked back to the bed. Still no signs of bugs. Even if there were bugs, could I really complain, anyway? After all, this place was being given to me for free.
After I had the bed sheets set up, Dee gave me a small tour of the upstairs area—a short tour, as the only thing to really see was the location of the toilets and showers.
That evening, for the first time in possibly a week, I took a nice, hot shower. The shower knob could be turned on by pressing a button, but it had a timer that would shut down the water after two minutes, and then I'd have to press the button again and it would run for another two minutes, and so on. The water felt nice and it was good to get rid of the “deli smell” from my job. The evenings seemed to be the best time to shower at the shelter, because the mornings in the bathrooms were quite crowded (we sometimes had to share sinks because half the sinks and toilets were clogged with hair, tampons, shit, and who else knows what).
When I got back to room 15 after the shower, two new people were there, with the muted sound of a preacher man talking through a small radio plugged into the wall.
Dee smiled and introduced us, “Codi, this is Miss Vera.” She pointed to a grey-haired, short, black woman with glasses, sitting on the bunk below her own, who was listening to a small radio broadcast of a guy talking about sins and Jesus.
“And over there is Miss Mavis.” She pointed above my bed to the bunk on top, where another grey-haired woman with an underbite sat and nodded to me as she chewed on something.
They both smiled to me and I nodded, smiling to both of them, but didn't get a chance to say much, as there was suddenly the sound of people rushing by in the hallway, moving towards the stairs.
Dee looked at her watch. “Time for dinner!” Her cheerfulness, along with the prospect of food, filled my heart with joy.
We went downstairs and formed a long line for food that was often very Midwestern—meat and peas, sloppy joes, spaghetti and meatballs, etc. The mattresses were still piled up in the corner. I accepted whatever food they put on my plate. I may have been vegetarian, but I was a broke-ass vegetarian, and I wasn't going to be too picky about the food, although for the first few weeks I did avoid anything that looked like meat on the plate.
I sat by Dee for every dinner. I kind of emotionally clung to her and she became my best friend in that place. She was basically my only friend, during the entire three months in the shelter.
She told me a lot about the shelter and told me about programs such as Section-8 Housing, which helps people find places to live, and the “Obama phone,” a cell phone which people could either get for free or get at a discount.
After we finished dinner and went back up to the room, I started to hear people in the hallway saying the phrase, “BAY-buh.” The shelter employees were giving everyone fresh sheets, even though it wasn't laundry day, yet. It took me longer than it should have to understand that everyone was talking about bed bugs in the shelter. Miss Vera turned down her preacher-talk radio and took out a jar of Vaseline, dipping her fingers into it and spreading it onto the metal posts of her bunk bed.
“This'll keep them bed bugs away,” Miss Vera explained as she passed the jar to me, adjusting her reading glasses with her knuckles. I did the same on my bunk.
That night, I had a bit more trouble sleeping, due to Miss Mavis above me snoring like the spastic, sudden, sharp horn of an 18-wheeler semi-truck. It wasn't just that, though. Each time I had a minor itch, I would sit up suddenly, staring at my arm for several long moments to see if there were any bed bugs or lice or God-knows-what crawling all over me. There never was anything—not once did I ever see any bugs, but they were easy to imagine, and I couldn't help but wonder if there were any bugs accidentally eaten at dinnertime. I eventually fell asleep due to sheer mental exhaustion.
The people, so far, were either nice to me or just left me alone, but it was still a stressful situation, and I had a nagging subconscious feeling that something wasn't quite right, here.