Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [17]
THREE
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOLLAR
Thursday, July 27
“Ha! Y’all wanna play with me? Y’all mothers are crazy! This is like a sport to me! I love this! Ha! Everybody out! Everybody get the hell out!”
Ann was great. She didn’t care about anything. Whether we liked her or hated her, she didn’t care. Actually, she’d probably prefer that we grew to hate her so that we would get our acts together and get out of the shelter sooner as opposed to later.
But that didn’t necessarily matter to us at that moment. Ann was kicking us out. Not just Kevin Parker. Not just one or two people. Us. Everybody.
Just like many mornings to come, nobody had taken the initiative to grab a mop and clean the floor. Everybody, including myself, knew it had to be done on a daily basis before we could eat breakfast. It was supposed to be like clockwork: wake up, gather our belongings, stack our mattresses, and clean the floor.
But it never went that way.
Ann had an advantage, though, an ace in the hole. She knew when she could kick us out and when she couldn’t. If we had volunteers cooking a gourmet breakfast, she wasn’t going to kick us out because the food would get wasted. If the menu was cereal and hardboiled eggs, she wouldn’t hesitate to send us out the door.
And that’s how things seemed to be headed on this Thursday morning—not the way some of us wanted to start our day.
Where is that mop? Give me the mop. I’ll clean the friggin’ floor.
But it was clearly too late. As soon as Carlton was headed out the door, we knew it was time to go. He had pushed Ann’s buttons so many times that he knew when to keep pushing them, just as he knew when it was time for us to accept our fate. Out the door we went.
My second day in Charleston had the makings to be a wash. Ann had forced us all out the door by 6:00, so I had two and a half hours of idle time to wait for orientation. I napped on the concrete outside the shelter, uncomfortable as it was, until the sun rose over the trees. Then I read the brochures I had picked up from inside the shelter on sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, and anxiety disorders. I also did my best to study the bus schedule, which I knew was going to be my main source of transportation for the coming months.
Twenty or so of the other guys meandered about the shelter grounds with no particular place to go. Unhurried, a few raked leaves or swept cigarette butts off the brick walkways. I couldn’t help thinking that this is where it happened—this is where people disappeared, fell off the map. Younger runaways, still full of potential, were lost in the fray; thirty-somethings, reaching the realization that things just hadn’t gone as planned; older guys who had been my current age—full of such promise—when I was just a baby running around in diapers. They were me once upon a time.
Contrary to my expectations, Ms. Evelyn’s orientation was not a waste of my time. I was bored at the beginning as she covered many of the same topics that Sergeant Mendoza had covered in his orientation: rules; how to cope with being homeless; how residing at Crisis Ministries was a privilege and not a right; and how most men who were starting over on their own stayed at the shelter for an average of four to six months, with a limit of one year. But I perked up when she began to detail the wide variety of resources that Crisis Ministries had to offer.
It was incredible.
There was a legal team prepared to represent selected cases pro bono.
The nurse was in every day from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. to treat our aches and pains, and, more importantly, there was a team of doctors who came in every Wednesday night to examine people with chronic health