Homeless

Down the street from where I work in the mall, there’s a homeless shelter. I drive past it every single day, and I see people of all ages standing about in scraped together clothes, hair matted down with dirt and possibly blood, with no way to make it better for themselves. It saddens me to no end, but there’s nothing I can really do to help them; I’m one missed rent payment away from joining them.
I occasionally volunteer down there when I have days off, or when I have early work days, I’ll go down there in the afternoons. I really enjoy sitting and chatting away with the older guys as most of them are war veterans from ‘Nam or Korea. There was one guy who fought in WWII, but he died after I met him just once. Turns out, he had been a 4-star general, and his remains were interred at Arlington.
After volunteering there for about a year, Nancy walked in for the first time.
She was about sixteen years old, and it was impossible to believe that she was comfortable in the discarded scraps of fabric (one could hardly call them clothes) that she wore. Her hair was dark, but it was so caked with muck that it could have been any color. She couldn’t have been more than 5’1″, perhaps 110lbs soaking wet.
The first day she was there, she looked incredibly uncomfortable. She looked around as if trying to identify someone who might rape her in a dark alleyway. I poured some of the beef stew that had been made for that day’s meal into a bowl and brought it over to her. As I approached her, she kept her head down, not even flexing her neck muscles as I neared her.
“Looks like you need something to eat,” I said as I set the bowl down next to her. She darted her eyes to the bowl, then to me, noticing me for the first time. She never said anything, though. She just nodded her head in thanks, and began eating. The bowl was halfway gone before I was back in the kitchen. I kept tabs on her until about nine when I left for the evening. When I left, I saw her sitting near another guy I was well aware had a history of getting violent from time to time, but figured the other staff would take care of it if something happened to her.
A week later, she was still there. This time, however, she had a massive bruise on her neck and a cut on her cheek. It was as if someone had beaten her like an unwanted puppy. And they looked to be about a week old. I mentally kicked myself for not sticking around, but I couldn’t change what had happened. Instead, I did the only thing I could do in my situation.
This time, I brought a bowl for myself as well and sat down with her. I pushed a bowl towards her, and she looked up at it, unsure of what to do.
“Hi,” I said with a smile on my face. She let out a sound that may have been a reply, but I couldn’t make it out.
“I’m Dustin,” I introduced myself. I took a sip of the stew in my bowl, hoping she would realize I was just there to be friendly. “And you are…?”
She stared at me for a moment like I was a freak, but then picked up her spoon and began eating the stew. “Nancy,” she whispered after she swallowed a few spoons. I noticed a slight drawl in her voice, but couldn’t place it just yet.
“So, Nancy,” I began. “What are you doing here? You realize this is a homeless shelter, right?”
She nodded in affirmation as I set a can of soda down next to her bowl.
“Just you? Or are your folks with you, too?” I pressed. She shook her head no. “Well, which is it?” I asked.
“I don’t have parents,” she whispered. I was kind of taken aback. How could she not have parents? Surely she hadn’t been on the streets her entire life. I reached for the salt shaker and continued.
“Orphan?” She shook her head again.
“Well then you must have parents. Everyone does.” I passed her the salt shaker after I had used it, and she took it greedily.
“Not me,” she said matter-of-factually. “Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“Was there trouble at home?” I asked, now sounding concerned. She didn’t respond; instead, she just took another sip of her stew.
“You’re a runaway, aren’t you,” I said. But it was less a question, more a statement. I’d seen runaways in the shelter before, so this revelation was nothing new.
“Yeah,” she sighed.
“Why did you run away?” I asked, despite already knowing the answer. “Problems at home?”
A nod, and then another sip of the stew.
“Were they abusive?” I pressed further. Again, another statement. Hardly any girl her age would run away unless one parent, or perhaps both, was physically abusive towards her.
“Yes,” came her soft reply.
I didn’t want to press into details; sometimes, runaways will lock up if you probe too deeply too quickly. Instead, I changed the subject while keeping with the same train of thought.
“How long have you been a runaway?”
“About five months,” she replied.
“How have you survived being on your own? Are you from around here, or did you travel?”
“I came from down river,” she said. It was then that I placed her accent; she was Cajun. The way she tended to replace some of her “R”s with “W”s should have been my first clue, and the way she said “I” as “Ah” and also dropped some of her syllables was also a dead giveaway.
“Where at, around Orleans?” I asked.
“Yeah, near the river delta.”
“What are you doing up here in Chicago?”
“I’ve been hopping freight trains for three weeks. I’d sneak into the rail yards and stowaway on any train heading a direction other than south.”
I was a bit astounded by her honesty with me, a complete and total stranger in her eyes. I wanted to know why she was being so candid.
“So how have you managed to stay alive without constant shelter? Did you face any problems getting up here?”
“I met up with a group of vagrants near Tulsa, and they gave me a few things… in exchange for some other things.” Her voice dipped really low as she added that last bit, like she was ashamed of something.
“So these strange men took advantage of a pretty little girl like you? That’s not right,” I said offhandedly. I hadn’t thought much of the “pretty” bit because, to me, all women and girls are pretty, even the ones who look like wildebeests or hyenas. These women may not be particularly sexy, which I define differently than “pretty,” but every woman is pretty in her own right.
Nancy, however, took it to heart.
“You really think I’m pretty?”
I had just taken a sip of my soda as she said that, and nearly choked on it. The drink washed uneasily down my throat, and I turned to her direction. It was only then that I realized just how beautiful she could be. Her frail little arms and her face were covered in dirt, as if she hadn’t seen a shower in weeks, perhaps longer. Her clothes were muddy and shredded to pieces, and her legs, her lovely, slender legs, were clothed in a pair of hosiery that was ripping and bunching up in places so as to suggest they were too long for her.
Her hair was probably a burnt-red color underneath all that dirt, as well.
“Uh, well, yeah,” I stammered like a dork, trying to banish any and all dirty thoughts from my mind. At the time, I was about eight years her senior; a twenty-three year old man with a sixteen year old girl wasn’t as creepy or socially taboo as it would be if I was forty or fifty-something, but it could still send my happy ass to prison for a long time.
“Thanks,” she said with the first smile I had ever seen on her. “Nobody’s ever said that before.”
“They haven’t?” I asked, somewhat flabbergasted.
“No, my dad always called me either bitch, slut, or my personal favorite, fuck doll.”
“You’re dad was sexually abusive, as well?” I queried.
“Yeah, he could be when he got his liquor in him; momma wouldn’t touch him when he was drunk, so he’d come to me instead.”
“And she allowed this?” I asked, not thinking until after that I may have been getting too personal.
“She didn’t know,” Nancy added as she picked up her bowl to slurp some more of the soup. She tilted the bowl back, but at that moment, the guy at the table behind her stood up abruptly, and lost his balance. He stumbled backwards into Nancy, falling to the ground and causing Nancy to dump the remaining contents of the bowl all over her frontside.
“Oh hell,” she exclaimed.
“Here, I got it,” I said as I stood up, grabbing the napkin near my bowl and reaching across the table for her chest, wiping the stew off before I had any realization that I was touching her.
I stopped and she looked up at me, and I looked back in confusion for a moment before handing the napkin to her.
“Sorry,” I apologized quickly, but the smile never left her face as she cleaned the stew off her shirt.