Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [64]
And that change was so very important, because nobody cared about me. I mean truly cared about me. I was on my own, and that was the first tangible realization that I made while I was in the shelter. At first, it was disheartening. When I was young—eleven, twelve, fourteen, eighteen, even twenty-two years old—people were pulling for me. They admired my potential on and off the basketball court, which was enough fuel alone to keep me going. Forget the confidence that I had in myself, I could rely on others for encouragement. At twenty-four, easing out of the “potential stage” and alone in Charleston, it was a completely different situation. I was in the driver’s seat, and there were no passengers. I didn’t have family or friends in Charleston to fall back on, and I didn’t have people alongside me cheering, really pulling for me. If I succeeded, super. “Good for you, Shep.” If not, eh, whatever. Of course, Kazia and the shelter staff were there for me as were my fellow shelter mates, but pass or fail, I was just another person to them. If I succeeded and moved out of the shelter, there was another guy coming in to fill my spot. If I failed and remained at the shelter, there was still another guy coming in with whom I would have to fight for attention. They would do what they could to support me, true, but there were a hundred people that they had to worry about, and there was nothing special about me, which turned out to be a great situation. Stroking my ego wasn’t going to do any good. Handing me $20 might feed me for a few days, but it wasn’t going to get me out of there. “Teach a man to fish….” I was able to learn from the mistakes that Rico and Easy E had made in their lives, and James and Phil Coleman and Kazia offered me guidance, but if I was going to make it out, I was going to make it by my own initiative.
And then, naturally, I started to hit a few bumps in the road. Of course I never expected my odyssey to run smoothly, but I also didn’t expect to have so many issues to deal with at once.
At the end of my sixth week in the shelter, I saw Marco for what would turn out to be the last time. I had been worried about him for the duration of my time in the shelter. As I mentioned, he would stay out of the shelter for two or three nights and then come to the shelter for the next two or three. I wasn’t worried about his safety or ability to cope with life on the streets. Marco Walten could take care of himself. But I could see that he was falling into a funk, that he was losing the spirit that had made him so appealing to me during those first couple of weeks that I knew him.
So during my sixth week, he came into the shelter for his last night, declaring that he was moving to another, more “upscale” shelter down the street, the Pentacalli Mission.
“They charge seventy dollars a week, but it ain’t a dump like this place,” he declared. “They have beds and closets for each person.”
They had a large room in the lobby with sofas and a big screen TV, and most importantly, residents could come and go as they pleased throughout the day. The Pentacalli Mission was more like a youth hostel. To me, the $70 trade-off wasn’t worth it, but Marco had had enough of the emotionally draining atmosphere at 573 Meeting Street.
Of course, we didn’t mean for it to be the last time we would see each other. But, even after exchanging contact information with the understanding that we would meet with each other