9
“A big ol' plate of peas, hmm?” The large cafeteria lady wearing a hair net and clear food-service gloves perked a brow at me.
I nodded wearily, trying to smile politely. “Yes. ...No meat. Thanks.”
Some of the residents in line before and after me paused to watch as the cafeteria lady brought two scoopfulls of green peas across the counter to my styrofoam dinner plate. I ignored their glances.
Please don't look at me.
Keeping my eyes to the floor, I did the slow-walk homeless-shuffle (4/4 time — Largo!), carrying my plate over to the table where Dee was sitting, nodding a silent greeting to her. Dee looked at the pees on my plate, but didn't say or ask about it. Sometimes I let the vegetarian rule slide when the meal was spaghetti, because the meat-sauce was mixed with the pasta by the time it got to my plate and there would be nothing to eat if I didn't eat the pasta with sauce. But this time, it was just pees.
I mustered up all the energy I could, to be pleasant (which wasn't too incredibly hard because Dee was my friend) and I smiled a little, asking, “So, how was your eveni—?”
“FUCK YOU!” A yell from across the room interrupted all dinnertime conversation in the basement as I looked up to see an angry white girl with long, light-red hair, skinny but with a bit of a belly, raising up her hands and slaming her palms down onto another person's styrofoam plate, spilling the food all over the floor.
The entire room watched in silence and the redhead yelled something more at the other woman, before storming up the stairs.
Someone nearby said to Dee and myself, “Those two girls? They got issues between them.” She pointed at the other lady remaining, who didn't even bother cleaning up the food on the floor. “She stole some of Pregnant White Girl's stuff.”
Pregnant White Girl was the nickname of the red-head, apparently. Most people used nicknames instead of using actual names, and I think I once heard someone calling me “Pretty White Girl” or something like that. Maybe it was a way to emotionally distance ourselves from each other, to use descriptors instead of names.
But the use of a nickname wasn't the thing that shocked me the most.
Holy shit, I thought to myself. She is pregnant and living in a homeless shelter. As I watched her angrily walk away, it occurred to me that she could have been me. I'd had sex with PLENTY of guys—sometimes unprotected—and it was a wonder that I escaped without STDs or pregnancy. But looking at her was like looking in a twisted mirror into an alternate reality. I instinctively sensed that she is exactly how I would have ended up, if I were in her shoes. I'd be pissed, too, if someone stole my stuff.
I saw myself in her. She became a symbol. She was not only who I would have become, but who I might become, if I were to stay in this situation.
I don't belong here, I thought to myself in a moment of sharp clarity. My God, what was I doing here? Waiting for handouts like a captured animal at the zoo, mangled snout forever opened to the sky for the zoo handlers to drop pellets into?
There was a sense of entitlement in the shelter residents that even I started to adopt after a month or two. Phones were an example; I didn't have one, but I knew that people could get “Obama phones”—cell phones for free—and they... no, we expected to be given apartments under Section 8, and we even expected to be set up with jobs through the social workers. Responsibility for the Self was taken away (or given away?). It was much easier to wait to be fed, like animals at the zoo, than to go out and get our own food and make our own lives. When did that switch happen? One moment I was thankful for the safety net of society that caught me at a time when I had nowhere else to go, and somewhere along the way I lost track and entered into a life of being given things, which ended up backfiring and making me (and the others) mentally sluggish and animalistic.
When living in a place where hand-outs are constantly received, one's entire life may arguably come to revolve around those hand-outs. Even I was just sitting around, waiting for dinner on the nights I didn't work late. I found that my mind lost its inherent ability to think creatively to solve problems, and instead the problems were given to others to solve for me. It was up to the government to give me housing. Up to President Obama to provide me with an “Obama phone” as the others called it. Up to the State to give me money for food via Food Stamps. Up to the social workers to give residents job opportunities. Leaving the shelter didn't even have to be a goal, anymore; this was our home, now. How quickly “new normals” can be set into place, under the pressure of stress! Government and State programs will come to save us. We just have to turn over our minds, our sanity, and our freedom of independent thought and inherent human ability to come up with creative solutions to life's problems. But after a while of this emmersive, all-encompassing environent, I forgot what “sane” meant to begin with.
But of course, all of this wasn't the original intention of the program. The shelter was supposed to be a landing place for women in emergency situations—a last resort that could help them get back on their feet again. Yet the monotony of being fed and sheltered every day by a routine system had the unintended consequence of dulling the mind. We were zoo animals in a brain-dead mind fog.
When “Pregnant White Girl” flipped the other lady's food onto the floor, my mind was jostled back to life and I was reminded that I don't have to wait to be GIVEN a home—I can get my own damn apartment. Yet ironically, when I had that thought, I was actually scared of going out and searching for my own apartment, even though I'd done it plenty of times before in my 20s (I even used to move about once a year, on average!).
That night, as I laid in the bunkbed in room 15, I renewed my resolution to get out. I was thinking more clearly than I ever had since moving into the shelter. Screw the idea of living at the shelter while attending the university across the street with its perfect grass and its perfect trees behind the sharp, pointed gates. Screw waiting for the Section 8 housing. I reminded myself that I'm fully capable of finding my own apartment. I didn't have to wait for someone else to tell me what to do. I didn't have to wait to be fed by the zoo keepers of society!
The next day, I called around to apartments in the rural-ish suburbs close to my deli job. One apartment complex said that I could move in for the price of the first month of rent, along with a deposit that would be half a month of rent.
I tallied up my money. I could afford it! I had just enough, with a few dollars to spare. The moment I realized I could afford it was surreal. That extra raise at the deli, along with increased hours, really made a difference in how quickly I gathered up the needed funds. I was so shocked that I had to work it slowly through my brain what this meant. It meant that I no longer had to live at the shelter. I was free to go when I wanted.
I'm... free? I thought to myself, in near-childlike confusion.
The other side of my brain said, Yes. I can sign the lease today, if I'd like.
I couldn't believe it. The shelter had been my reality for a solid three months. Was this real? I shit you not—there was a very real moment when, even after I realized I had the money, I didn't think I could leave. I thought it wasn't possible. I thought it might be some trick or that maybe I had miscalculated the total in my bank account. Dear God, there was a moment when I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay!
What about the others?, I thought to myself. I can't just abandon them, can I? (Survivor's guilt? You betcha.)
If I leave the shelter, would the others despise me? Would they say that I think I'm better than them, for leaving? I wouldn't be leaving to spite them—I only want my own apartment.
I had a full-blown conversation with myself in my own mind, debating back and forth whether or not to leave, until I finally defeated my own mind and said, No, I'm not staying in the shelter any longer! I want to leave and live in this new place!
The next day, I went to the apartment complex in the rural area near the deli and forced myself to write a check for the rent and downpayment. The lady at the front desk—who would later end up inviting me to her large Italian family's Christmas dinner when she would find out I had nowhere in particular to go for the holiday—processed the check, and she said to come back the following day for the key, after the check cleared.
That night would be my last night in the shelter. I found Dee right away and excitedly told her about the new apartment. She smiled and said she was happy for me, but there might have been a little sadness in her eyes.
We sat on our bunkbeds after dinner, chatting a little. She'd been talking more and more about Jesus and referencing the Bible. I liked Dee, and I usually tolerated her talk of the Bible because she seemed more New Age-y about it and less of a heretic... except on this night. This time I didn't want to hear it. I was done with the preacher-talk! Tired of being preached to. Besides, I was excited about getting the hell out of that shelter. It affected my entire being and I sat up straighter, giving Dee more confident eye contact, and thinking more clearly.
“I'm so happy I'm gonna finally get out of here,” I told her. “There's been this... mental fog or something, clouding my mind. It's like this place is a vortex of negative energy or something.”
I tried to explain more of the “shelter fog” energy and then she started talking more and more about the lessons in the Bible and really started sounding preachy. She'd say something like, Some people do this. Some people do that. She seemed to be hinting more and more about some kind of devil within “some people,” and each time she said “some people,” I had the feeling she was actually talking about me, specifically.
She was my best friend in the shelter, but this was really hitting a nerve with me. Eventually, I cut her off in mid-sentence: “Dee!” I exhaled a small laugh. “Okay, okay!” Dee was silent, surprised. “Jesus, it almost sounds like you’re saying I'm the devil,” I told her.
“Well, why do you think that is, Codi?” She looked right at me and without a smile The look in her eyes and on her face was as if she was waiting for me to realize the ultimate truth she was getting at: That I have the Devil himself inside of me.
I stared at her for a long moment in shock. She really was serious. That look told me everything.
I simply said, “Wow. I cannot even be around you right now.” I stood up from my bunkbed and went down to the basement where residents were already starting to set up mattresses along the walls.
My friend thinks I'm Satan—what the hell, man? Where did that even come from, anyway? Was this related to her Lesbian fear? I wasn't even a Lesbian. Was she angry I was leaving the shelter? Who knew what was going on, and maybe she didn't mean anything by it, but the last thing tying me to the shelter—the friendship with Dee—was breaking.
I went back upstairs and took a shower, then went to sleep without saying anything more to Dee. The overhead lights had already been turned off by the staff in the rooms and hallways. This marked the end of our friendship and I knew without a doubt—without any haziness in my mind—that it was time to leave.
I slept right through Miss Mavis' snoring above me. For the first time in three months, I woke up a little earlier than normal, while it was still dark outside. I suppose I was excited about the new apartment. The others were still sleeping and the fluroscent lights were all turned off. This would be the first morning in three months that I would skip hearing the 6:00AM call for the ladies to wake up.
I quietly gathered my belongings, walked own to the front desk and checked out, proudly saying that I wouldn't be returning. I didn't say goodbye to any of the other residents, not even Dee, and I didn't keep up contact. It was a swift, clean break.
With permission from the deli manager, I took a longer lunch break at work, so I could pick up the key to the new apartment.
That night, I created a makeshift “bed” out of clothes and my winter jacket with the yellow bear as a pillow, on top of the carpet in the bedroom. It was so quiet that I laid there in awe, staring up at the freshly-painted ceiling, listening to the nothingness. On the kitchen counter was a bag of expired pastries from work. The refrigerator was completely empty, but that was okay.
I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes for sleep.
I didn't know where I belonged in the grand scheme of things, but I knew that I didn't belong in that shelter. I had to break free of the mental prison that was sucking me down. Even though I would still be a wage slave at the deli, I was one step closer to freedom—mainly, the freedom to think for myself and reclaim the sanity of my own mind.