An old piece (that I may have posted before, for which I'm sorry if I have), but these stories from my time working at homeless shelters in Baltimore have never left me, and they came to my mind tonight and would not go away. My only recourse about such situations is to write about them, but these I had already written about; so, in lieu of trying to better many things which I've already said, I'm simply going to repost my original piece about all this:
GOODBYE
A girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye. Breonna is five years old, with dreadlocks of multi-colored beads that bounce in the air whenever she spins around with a grin or skips down the hallway. Ive been working at the homeless shelter for maybe four months when I first meet her. Her mother, Hattie, is out and about, and made an agreement with Tyra, my boss and the shelter manager, that shell return by 2:00 PM if Tyra looks after her two kids, Breonna and her little brother Braeden, not even two years old. Its 3:00 PM when I get into the shelter for my shift, and Hattie still hasnt returned. Tyra is busy by this point and tells me to look after Breonna and Braeden, then runs into her office with a mischievous grin. I look down at this little girl with the wide eyes, bouncing from wall to wall in search of entertainment. Im terrified. I have no earthly idea how to watch over a kid. I try playing badminton with her, letting her win nearly every round, and shes thrilled. She and Braeden pull some sort of long tube out of a cardboard box and use it as a tunnel to crawl through; I tell them not to, that it could be dangerous, but they ignore me. I give up trying to assert any authority and do my best to make sure they dont play too rough. Braedens had too many peanut butter and crackers and throws up on me. Breonna finds this hilarious. Hattie finally returns at 4:30, and I fight the instinct to shout at her, Where the hell have you been? Breonna runs to me and gives me a hug before Hattie takes her away. Ive never been hugged by a kid before. From this moment, theyre no longer these unknowable little human beings to be avoided.
Breonna runs down the hall to wrap my waist in a hug whenever she sees me. At the beginning of each shift, its something I look forward to. I let her come into the office with me, distributing trash bags and gloves and whatever else the residents need to complete the daily chores of shelter upkeep. She reads off names for people to go into the dining room at dinner time. I carry her around with me and she tells me about the dragon that was in the shelter earlier in the day. I ask her questions (what color was the dragon? Was he nice?) She pauses before each answer, really considering it, a grin tugging at her lips. Her imagination has never been stimulated like this, and shes thrilled by it. She cries, and Im the only one in the whole shelter who can comfort her and get her to go to sleep.
She cries when her mom shouts at her for talking with people at dinner time instead of eating. She cries when her mom pulls her away from other kids shes tried playing with. She cries when her mom tells her shes stupid because shes acting like a five year old. She walks out of the bathroom, eyes wide and staring straight ahead, and ignores me completely when I try to say hi to her. Hattie comes up behind her a few seconds later, looking down at the floor as she walks back to the bedroom. I see this routine repeated several times; months later, I hate myself a little bit for never saying fuck it and just walking into the womens bathroom, privacy considerations and my job security be damned, to find out just what the hell Hattie does to Breonna in there that makes her so petrified. Sometimes at night on these days Breonna will ask me to pick her up, and shell wrap her arms around my neck as tightly as she can and bury her face in my shoulder, like shes saying, Please dont let me go. Sometimes I want to cry when this happens. Sometimes she does.
One day while Breonna is at school, Hattie comes into the shelter and starts collecting all her belongings. She had an emotional breakdown the night before, the pressure of the shelter environment finally getting to her, and she says now that shes leaving. Shes going to live with her cousin, who I find out later lives in a rowhouse in one of the worst parts of West Baltimore. Child Protective Services has been to that house on multiple occasions to check on allegations of abuse. Hattie gathers up everything they own and shes gone. Breonna never comes back to the shelter. This is the first time I learn one part of the nature of my job: a girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye.
The first time I see Kashalet I do a double-take. She looks so much like Breonna. Six years old, same height, same bead-covered dreadlocks, same intellectual curiosity about the world. By this point, Ive become the kids person in the shelter, the one who, its generally accepted amongst staff and adult residents alike, will handle any issues with them because they all take to me and I always seem to know just how to talk to them to make them listen. Part of it is because Im a male, and so many of these kids have no masculine figures in their lives; on some level, theyre searching for one, and I fit that bill. Another reason, though, is that I still remember what it was like to be a kid the pains, the things that made me feel better, the way the world never seemed to be the way it was in the storybooks and those memories inform the way I speak to the kids here. Despite this, for a time, I dont say much to Kashalet. I dont realize it for a while, but its true. She reminds me so much of Breonna, and I think, on a subconscious level, her memory still hurts, and I dont want to relive any of it.
Kashalet of course has no knowledge of any of this, and it isnt long before shes finding ways to ingratiate herself with me. Mister Austin, where was you? she asks one night after I had been out of work for a few days while sick. The way she says it makes me laugh. She asks me for help with her homework shes just started first grade and she loves it and giggles uncontrollably as I make jokes about the farm animal drawings on her math worksheet. She calls me over to help her play house with some dolls on a Thursday night, when some volunteers called the Jesus Girls come and give the kids some playtime while their parents are in a bible study group. She idolized you, Austin, Colleen, a teenaged member of the Jesus Girls who always comes with them on Thursdays, will tell me later about Kashalet. I know.
I buy her a couple books for her birthday. She loves books; shes already reading two grade levels ahead of everyone else in her class. Her mother, Jaquis, reads to her at night sometimes. Jaquis buys her a lot of books, and a lot of stuffed animals. Really, Jaquis buys her a lot, period. I wonder where she gets the money, but never ask; many residents in the shelter get SSI cash assistance, but never tell just how much. Jaquis also frequently loses her patience with Kashalet, shouting at her in front of everyone in the dining room to eat instead of calling me over to show me something. I tell Jaquis to calm down, that I dont mind coming over, but she ignores me. One day some volunteers from Towson University come by and organize a movie night for the kids. Kashalet takes it upon herself to give them all a tour of the shelter before Jaquis interrupts and tells her to get back in the bedroom. Later on that night, two of the volunteers will ask me why Jaquis is so short-tempered with her daughter.
One day, a Friday, I tell Kashalet good night and give her a hug, and as I walk down the hallway to make my rounds of the shelter, I think about how much Kashalet has gotten to me. Just like Breonna. Both of them I would have adopted if I could have. I would have changed my lifestyle, stopped going out to the bar at night, started saving more money, if I could have had the chance to raise them. In Breonnas case, her mother sure as hell didnt want her, so why not me? This is dangerous, getting so attached, but too late, its already happened.
The next day I get in, Monday, I see Kashalet and Jaquis names on the exit list in the main office. Jaquis had been stealing other residents prescription medication and selling them. Thats how she was enough money to buy so much. She was caught with 36 bottles of pills in her bag and kicked out of the shelter then and there, her daughter of course in tow. A girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye.
Adrian is three years old, a blond haired, blue eyed boy who Im still not convinced isnt a clone of me. He looks exactly like me in every picture taken of me when I was his age. Hes the most abused child Ive ever seen. His mother, Sharon, is constantly finding subtle ways to hurt him. Sometimes itll be biting him on the shoulder where we cant see the marks, or twisting the skin in his armpits. Sometimes hes filthy, without having a bath in four days. And thats not even counting the constant verbal and emotional turmoil she bestows upon him. Hes the only three year-old Ive ever seen who cries when hes taken back to his mother. One day, he was bawling terribly, eyes puffy and red, tears flowing in twin rivers down his cheeks, as he literally ran away from his mother, who stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched her son flee her with disinterested eyes. Whats wrong, Adrian? I said, crouching down to his level. He put his arms around my neck and I picked him up. His crying ceased at that precise second and he was completely silent. I think of that instance whenever I have to return him to his mother for the night.
Sharon was raped as a child. Her mother would bring her father and uncle down to their basement so they could take turns having their way with her. Her uncle is still in prison today for this. In her mind, what she does to Adrian hardly even registers as anything bad. Ive called Child Protective Services on her so many times Ive lost count, and theyve sent out agents to interview her and examine Adrian. So far, not one thing has happened to her. Everyone on staff has at least one story about calling CPS on Sharon. Everyone on staff has remarked at least once that CPS in Baltimore County is a fucking joke.
I come in one Saturday to take some guys over to CCBC Essex to play football and a police car is in the parking lot. When I get inside I ask Chris, the lead staff on duty, what happened. In the night, Sharon had thrown Adrian up against the wall and given him a black eye. She claims he ran into the wall himself, but half a dozen people saw her. Chris said to hell with CPS and called the cops directly. The police sent someone from their crime lab over to take pictures. Within an hour, a foster parent has been called to the shelter and is taking Adrian away as Sharon is escorted into the police car. As theyre leaving, surrounded by cops, Sharon says, in her typical deadpan voice, Mommy loves you, Adrian. Ive worked at the shelter for almost a year and a half by this point and Chris has been there for over two years, and this is the first time he or I have ever heard her use the L word.
And just like that, a boy leaves, but this time I at least get to say goodbye.
Why does that matter? Does getting to say one word to someone mean they wont be going to a terrible house, that they wont grow up to be just as wounded and bitter as their mothers, that they wont forget all about me and the way I tried desperately to show them that there was a better way, that not everyone was like their mothers and that they didnt have to be either? Shouldnt they remember me regardless of any last words? Colleen points this out to me when Im in a dark mood over Kashalet leaving, the second little girl to whom I had grown quite attached who left without me even getting a chance to say goodbye. Thats part of what is so awesome and part of what sucks about it, she says. Typically in moments like this, Im violently averse to being cheered up by any degree, but Colleens words cut through my brooding and give me pause. Does the fact that I did say goodbye to Adrian mean anything special to him? No, but maybe it does to me. Perhaps we need to say goodbye just for ourselves, because thats the only way we feel any semblance of closure, the only way to convince ourselves that anything we did for people meant a damn and wont be forgotten because were not around them anymore. Had I said goodbye to Breonna, she would still be wherever she is now, with a mother who doesnt want her and an imagination thats begging to be fed but will instead be met with ridicule. Had I said goodbye to Kashalet, she would still be God only knows where with a mother battling an addiction that makes her resort to selfish and desperate measures who by turns pampers and shuns her daughter. Had I not said goodbye to Adrian, he would still be with foster parents, doing ten times better than he ever would have with his own mother and hopefully finally learning what its like to feel loved.
A girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye. Another girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye. A boy leaves, and I do get to say goodbye. It changes nothing, but still I wait for news of the two girls that will never come. Had I said goodbye, would I not think about them so much? Would I not wonder if theyre okay, lie awake in bed at night while trying to accept my own limitations in this world and their lives? It would make no difference at all of course I would still do all these things but somehow, had I been able to say that one word, I keep thinking that maybe it wouldnt hurt quite so much.
Thats simply the nature of this job. People come into the shelter and people go. You dont see them before they come in, you probably wont see much of them after they leave. If you get attached to any, thats on you, nobody made you do so. You can be annoyed by some, you can love others. But transition is the only constant there. At the end of the day, a girl and a boy will leave, and you wont get to say goodbye. Then another girl and another boy will arrive, and youll say hello.
GOODBYE
A girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye. Breonna is five years old, with dreadlocks of multi-colored beads that bounce in the air whenever she spins around with a grin or skips down the hallway. Ive been working at the homeless shelter for maybe four months when I first meet her. Her mother, Hattie, is out and about, and made an agreement with Tyra, my boss and the shelter manager, that shell return by 2:00 PM if Tyra looks after her two kids, Breonna and her little brother Braeden, not even two years old. Its 3:00 PM when I get into the shelter for my shift, and Hattie still hasnt returned. Tyra is busy by this point and tells me to look after Breonna and Braeden, then runs into her office with a mischievous grin. I look down at this little girl with the wide eyes, bouncing from wall to wall in search of entertainment. Im terrified. I have no earthly idea how to watch over a kid. I try playing badminton with her, letting her win nearly every round, and shes thrilled. She and Braeden pull some sort of long tube out of a cardboard box and use it as a tunnel to crawl through; I tell them not to, that it could be dangerous, but they ignore me. I give up trying to assert any authority and do my best to make sure they dont play too rough. Braedens had too many peanut butter and crackers and throws up on me. Breonna finds this hilarious. Hattie finally returns at 4:30, and I fight the instinct to shout at her, Where the hell have you been? Breonna runs to me and gives me a hug before Hattie takes her away. Ive never been hugged by a kid before. From this moment, theyre no longer these unknowable little human beings to be avoided.
Breonna runs down the hall to wrap my waist in a hug whenever she sees me. At the beginning of each shift, its something I look forward to. I let her come into the office with me, distributing trash bags and gloves and whatever else the residents need to complete the daily chores of shelter upkeep. She reads off names for people to go into the dining room at dinner time. I carry her around with me and she tells me about the dragon that was in the shelter earlier in the day. I ask her questions (what color was the dragon? Was he nice?) She pauses before each answer, really considering it, a grin tugging at her lips. Her imagination has never been stimulated like this, and shes thrilled by it. She cries, and Im the only one in the whole shelter who can comfort her and get her to go to sleep.
She cries when her mom shouts at her for talking with people at dinner time instead of eating. She cries when her mom pulls her away from other kids shes tried playing with. She cries when her mom tells her shes stupid because shes acting like a five year old. She walks out of the bathroom, eyes wide and staring straight ahead, and ignores me completely when I try to say hi to her. Hattie comes up behind her a few seconds later, looking down at the floor as she walks back to the bedroom. I see this routine repeated several times; months later, I hate myself a little bit for never saying fuck it and just walking into the womens bathroom, privacy considerations and my job security be damned, to find out just what the hell Hattie does to Breonna in there that makes her so petrified. Sometimes at night on these days Breonna will ask me to pick her up, and shell wrap her arms around my neck as tightly as she can and bury her face in my shoulder, like shes saying, Please dont let me go. Sometimes I want to cry when this happens. Sometimes she does.
One day while Breonna is at school, Hattie comes into the shelter and starts collecting all her belongings. She had an emotional breakdown the night before, the pressure of the shelter environment finally getting to her, and she says now that shes leaving. Shes going to live with her cousin, who I find out later lives in a rowhouse in one of the worst parts of West Baltimore. Child Protective Services has been to that house on multiple occasions to check on allegations of abuse. Hattie gathers up everything they own and shes gone. Breonna never comes back to the shelter. This is the first time I learn one part of the nature of my job: a girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye.
The first time I see Kashalet I do a double-take. She looks so much like Breonna. Six years old, same height, same bead-covered dreadlocks, same intellectual curiosity about the world. By this point, Ive become the kids person in the shelter, the one who, its generally accepted amongst staff and adult residents alike, will handle any issues with them because they all take to me and I always seem to know just how to talk to them to make them listen. Part of it is because Im a male, and so many of these kids have no masculine figures in their lives; on some level, theyre searching for one, and I fit that bill. Another reason, though, is that I still remember what it was like to be a kid the pains, the things that made me feel better, the way the world never seemed to be the way it was in the storybooks and those memories inform the way I speak to the kids here. Despite this, for a time, I dont say much to Kashalet. I dont realize it for a while, but its true. She reminds me so much of Breonna, and I think, on a subconscious level, her memory still hurts, and I dont want to relive any of it.
Kashalet of course has no knowledge of any of this, and it isnt long before shes finding ways to ingratiate herself with me. Mister Austin, where was you? she asks one night after I had been out of work for a few days while sick. The way she says it makes me laugh. She asks me for help with her homework shes just started first grade and she loves it and giggles uncontrollably as I make jokes about the farm animal drawings on her math worksheet. She calls me over to help her play house with some dolls on a Thursday night, when some volunteers called the Jesus Girls come and give the kids some playtime while their parents are in a bible study group. She idolized you, Austin, Colleen, a teenaged member of the Jesus Girls who always comes with them on Thursdays, will tell me later about Kashalet. I know.
I buy her a couple books for her birthday. She loves books; shes already reading two grade levels ahead of everyone else in her class. Her mother, Jaquis, reads to her at night sometimes. Jaquis buys her a lot of books, and a lot of stuffed animals. Really, Jaquis buys her a lot, period. I wonder where she gets the money, but never ask; many residents in the shelter get SSI cash assistance, but never tell just how much. Jaquis also frequently loses her patience with Kashalet, shouting at her in front of everyone in the dining room to eat instead of calling me over to show me something. I tell Jaquis to calm down, that I dont mind coming over, but she ignores me. One day some volunteers from Towson University come by and organize a movie night for the kids. Kashalet takes it upon herself to give them all a tour of the shelter before Jaquis interrupts and tells her to get back in the bedroom. Later on that night, two of the volunteers will ask me why Jaquis is so short-tempered with her daughter.
One day, a Friday, I tell Kashalet good night and give her a hug, and as I walk down the hallway to make my rounds of the shelter, I think about how much Kashalet has gotten to me. Just like Breonna. Both of them I would have adopted if I could have. I would have changed my lifestyle, stopped going out to the bar at night, started saving more money, if I could have had the chance to raise them. In Breonnas case, her mother sure as hell didnt want her, so why not me? This is dangerous, getting so attached, but too late, its already happened.
The next day I get in, Monday, I see Kashalet and Jaquis names on the exit list in the main office. Jaquis had been stealing other residents prescription medication and selling them. Thats how she was enough money to buy so much. She was caught with 36 bottles of pills in her bag and kicked out of the shelter then and there, her daughter of course in tow. A girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye.
Adrian is three years old, a blond haired, blue eyed boy who Im still not convinced isnt a clone of me. He looks exactly like me in every picture taken of me when I was his age. Hes the most abused child Ive ever seen. His mother, Sharon, is constantly finding subtle ways to hurt him. Sometimes itll be biting him on the shoulder where we cant see the marks, or twisting the skin in his armpits. Sometimes hes filthy, without having a bath in four days. And thats not even counting the constant verbal and emotional turmoil she bestows upon him. Hes the only three year-old Ive ever seen who cries when hes taken back to his mother. One day, he was bawling terribly, eyes puffy and red, tears flowing in twin rivers down his cheeks, as he literally ran away from his mother, who stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched her son flee her with disinterested eyes. Whats wrong, Adrian? I said, crouching down to his level. He put his arms around my neck and I picked him up. His crying ceased at that precise second and he was completely silent. I think of that instance whenever I have to return him to his mother for the night.
Sharon was raped as a child. Her mother would bring her father and uncle down to their basement so they could take turns having their way with her. Her uncle is still in prison today for this. In her mind, what she does to Adrian hardly even registers as anything bad. Ive called Child Protective Services on her so many times Ive lost count, and theyve sent out agents to interview her and examine Adrian. So far, not one thing has happened to her. Everyone on staff has at least one story about calling CPS on Sharon. Everyone on staff has remarked at least once that CPS in Baltimore County is a fucking joke.
I come in one Saturday to take some guys over to CCBC Essex to play football and a police car is in the parking lot. When I get inside I ask Chris, the lead staff on duty, what happened. In the night, Sharon had thrown Adrian up against the wall and given him a black eye. She claims he ran into the wall himself, but half a dozen people saw her. Chris said to hell with CPS and called the cops directly. The police sent someone from their crime lab over to take pictures. Within an hour, a foster parent has been called to the shelter and is taking Adrian away as Sharon is escorted into the police car. As theyre leaving, surrounded by cops, Sharon says, in her typical deadpan voice, Mommy loves you, Adrian. Ive worked at the shelter for almost a year and a half by this point and Chris has been there for over two years, and this is the first time he or I have ever heard her use the L word.
And just like that, a boy leaves, but this time I at least get to say goodbye.
Why does that matter? Does getting to say one word to someone mean they wont be going to a terrible house, that they wont grow up to be just as wounded and bitter as their mothers, that they wont forget all about me and the way I tried desperately to show them that there was a better way, that not everyone was like their mothers and that they didnt have to be either? Shouldnt they remember me regardless of any last words? Colleen points this out to me when Im in a dark mood over Kashalet leaving, the second little girl to whom I had grown quite attached who left without me even getting a chance to say goodbye. Thats part of what is so awesome and part of what sucks about it, she says. Typically in moments like this, Im violently averse to being cheered up by any degree, but Colleens words cut through my brooding and give me pause. Does the fact that I did say goodbye to Adrian mean anything special to him? No, but maybe it does to me. Perhaps we need to say goodbye just for ourselves, because thats the only way we feel any semblance of closure, the only way to convince ourselves that anything we did for people meant a damn and wont be forgotten because were not around them anymore. Had I said goodbye to Breonna, she would still be wherever she is now, with a mother who doesnt want her and an imagination thats begging to be fed but will instead be met with ridicule. Had I said goodbye to Kashalet, she would still be God only knows where with a mother battling an addiction that makes her resort to selfish and desperate measures who by turns pampers and shuns her daughter. Had I not said goodbye to Adrian, he would still be with foster parents, doing ten times better than he ever would have with his own mother and hopefully finally learning what its like to feel loved.
A girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye. Another girl leaves, and I dont get to say goodbye. A boy leaves, and I do get to say goodbye. It changes nothing, but still I wait for news of the two girls that will never come. Had I said goodbye, would I not think about them so much? Would I not wonder if theyre okay, lie awake in bed at night while trying to accept my own limitations in this world and their lives? It would make no difference at all of course I would still do all these things but somehow, had I been able to say that one word, I keep thinking that maybe it wouldnt hurt quite so much.
Thats simply the nature of this job. People come into the shelter and people go. You dont see them before they come in, you probably wont see much of them after they leave. If you get attached to any, thats on you, nobody made you do so. You can be annoyed by some, you can love others. But transition is the only constant there. At the end of the day, a girl and a boy will leave, and you wont get to say goodbye. Then another girl and another boy will arrive, and youll say hello.