Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [9]
The showers—four of them in one room—were an even more unpleasant extension of the bathroom. The mildew on the wall nearly changed the tint of its color, and the floor was covered with spent Band-Aids and soap chips ground into the already grungy floor. I knew right away that I would be showering with my shoes on until I could afford shower slippers. I concluded that the shower room hadn’t been cleaned—probably ever.
Yep, the inside appearance of the shelter didn’t match the immaculate exterior that had greeted me two hours prior. The bathroom had been neglected for quite some time, and as disgusted as I was by the shelter as a whole, I had already come to terms with the fact that it would be my home until I could bank enough money to move out. And I was okay with that. After all, my alternative—sleeping outside and bathing who knows where—was far less appealing and certainly less secure. This was my home, and I was ready for it.
I lucked out when Sarge found me an empty mattress where I could sleep for the night. Before I went to bed, he looked at me and said, “You look hungry.” He summoned me to the kitchen, where he tossed a few frozen chicken tenders in the microwave. He also scored me some potato salad and orange juice.
Freddy J., whose mental illness had kept him at the shelter for thirteen years—far longer than the one year maximum that the shelter permits to other residents—was having trouble sleeping, so he joined me at the table. Despite his noticeable mental deficiencies, he was the nicest person I met during my tenure at Crisis Ministries. I inquired about life at the shelter, but he was more interested in talking about life on the outside, so we compromised and talked about the latest movies we’d seen. He only liked Kung Fu, and I liked everything except Kung Fu, so most of our midnight meal was consumed in silence.
Although brief, my encounter with Freddy J. was my first with a fellow shelter resident. On his way out of the kitchen, he turned to me and smiled gently.
“Welcome to Crisis Ministries.”
TWO
EASYLABOR
Wednesday, July 26
“All right, Kevin Parker! Out! Get the hell out! You, sir. Out. Get the hell out.”
It was almost 5:30 A.M., and this was Ann, the overnight front desk attendant at Crisis Ministries, making her third go-round of attempting to wake up the sleeping stragglers. Everybody got to hit the snooze button once, but if you weren’t up after that, you were going hungry until lunchtime. And it was looking like Kevin Parker didn’t have much of a shot at breakfast.
“I’m up, I’m up. Jesus Christ. Why does it have to be like this every morning?”
But it was too late. Ann was sending two others out the door with Kevin, and she was on the hunt for more. She wasn’t one to mess around.
Most of the guys found it difficult to wake up before the sun every morning, while a few saw it as an advantage in occupying a vacant bathroom. Anxiety had rendered me sleepless for much of the night, and I could tell that it wasn’t going to be easy to rise at 5:15 A.M. on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, I was up. My mattress was tossed on the stack, my sleeping bag was rolled up, and I had even managed to sneak in to rinse my face before they raised the kitchen gate to serve breakfast. A shower was not at the top of my list of priorities, since I wanted to be on the front lines to get a feel for how the breakfast system worked. And besides, a shower wouldn’t do me much good without soap, a towel, or even a change of clothes.
The breakfast du jour was scrambled eggs, sausage links, grits, and toast. Royal treatment. I can get used to this. It didn’t take long, though, before I was warned that that day’s meal was an anomaly. “Most days we just get hardboiled eggs and cereal, but we got volunteers this morning,” a guy in front of me said. I went back for thirds. And then fourths. Who knew when I would be eating again.
It was Wednesday, and I was scheduled to attend orientation