Monday, April 01, 2019

HOMELESS IN A LAND OF PLENTY: Part 3.

 


Chain of Misfortune

HOMELESS IN A LAND OF PLENTY

PART 3:  ALICE

By Jack Random



[In September 2018 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that it is unconstitutional to prohibit homeless individuals from sleeping in public parks or on the streets if there are inadequate shelters.  While subject to Supreme Court review, the ruling is a reminder that you cannot legislate the homeless out of existence.  Since that ruling, tent cities have sprung up in parks and open spaces, reminiscent of the Hoovervilles in the era of the Great Depression.]



ALICE


She’d been through it all before.  Eviction notices, drug deals gone bad, jail and bail, abandonment and betrayal.  She had a way of looking at things that was at once almost enlightened and supremely callous.  She believed that people were fundamentally good but they were governed by their immediate needs.  She didn’t hold grudges and she didn’t blame people for the things they did.  It wasn’t that she didn’t care.  She did but it didn’t matter.  She did what she had to do.  It was all a calculation.  What would give her the best chance of surviving until tomorrow? 
She missed Gary.  Now that they turned off the power she missed his warm body next to hers more than ever.  Now she needed someone else to help her make it through the days and nights.  She went looking where she always went: the local bars.  She knew better than to go to the same bar all the time.  Word got around.  The bartenders knew Alice.  They knew she was always on the make.  Always.  They knew she was always about the drugs.  They knew she was trouble.
She walked halfway across town to a bar she’d never been before.  She walked in, sat at the bar, batted her eyes and waited.  She was still young enough and healthy enough to attract the attention of the average bar going man. 
It was late afternoon and the bar was in the process of filling up.  It was a workingman’s bar – a few women but mostly men.  They were sweaty, grimy and looking for a way to leave the day’s labor behind them.  A few of them had their eyes on Alice and she had her eyes on them.  She looked them over and measured their worth.  They had jobs.  That was a major plus.  It meant they probably had cars or trucks or vans – some means of getting around.  They all fell short of good looking but all kinds of problems came with good looking.  None of them were flat-out ugly.  One of them had no wedding band.  That was a plus. 
She made her choice and gave him a look that he understood.  He exchanged a few words with the guys he came in with and strolled over to her place at the bar. 
“How you doing?” 
He was a little shy with women.  She liked that – as long as he wasn’t stupid about it. 
“I’ve had better days,” she opened. 
“Can I buy you a drink?” 
She motioned to the stool next to her and nodded. 
His name was Billy and she could tell it had been a while since he had a woman to warm his bed.  He was hungry and she liked that.  It enhanced the odds of getting what she needed.  She did not find him attractive but she liked the prospects of using him.  She could lead him.  She could persuade him to do her bidding. 
It took three drinks in a little over an hour.  She realized it was up to her.  He was shy or so it seemed. 
“Would you like to get out of here?” 
“Sure.” 
She climbed into his car and talked about nothing.  Because he didn’t say and he didn’t ask, she assumed they were going to his house or apartment or whatever his place of residence was.  He stopped for a six-pack of beer before he pulled up to a cheap motel by the freeway.  It was then she knew she had made a mistake. 
“What are we doing here?” 
“I’ve got money.  Don’t worry about it.” 
She was a long way from home – Gary’s home but it didn’t matter – and on the wrong side of town. 
“I thought you were a nice guy.  Can you just give me a ride home?” 
“Look, everyone knows what you are.  If you don’t want to put out, fine.  Get the fuck out of my car!” 
She took a breath and surveyed her options.  They were all bad.  She could get out and walk back to Gary’s house.  She could hitch a ride.  She could demand that Billy give her a ride.  She could play along and get the money.  She could be the whore he expected her to be. 
She had to wonder how she arrived in this place.  She had to wonder how she lost her family, her friends – everyone she cared about and everyone who ever really cared about her.  When did it happen and why?  She was a good girl for the longest time.  She had friends who shared her ambitions.  She wanted to be a cheerleader.  She thought she might be a secretary.  She could do that.  She could do whatever she wanted to do.  But that was before her Uncle Johnny abused her.  Abused her?  What kind of euphemism was that?  He took her into a closet, held his hand over her mouth and ripped her panties off.  He took her childhood.  He took her innocence.  He took her naiveté and with it all her hopes and dreams.  It robbed her of whatever confidence she might have developed. 
He did what he did over and over until she finally found the courage to tell her mother – a lot of good that did.  She said she didn’t believe her but Alice knew better.  She believed her but she didn’t want to believe her.  She was holding on to her life by the thinnest thread.  She couldn’t let go.  Not for a second.  She let her own daughter be consumed by the monsters in her life. 
Billy reached across her and opened the door. 
“Get the fuck out!” 
Her mind in a fog of rage, she grabbed his arm and shoved it away from her.  She stepped out of the car just as he gunned it.  Her head slammed into the pavement and she lost touch with the world around her until she found herself strapped to a gurney being loaded into an ambulance. 
She went in and out of consciousness, catching glimpses of the waking world as she went.  In the ambulance a man asked her questions that she could not understand – scattered words without real meaning.  Someone poked a hole in her arm and ran a tube to a plastic bag filled with some mysterious liquid.  She blacked out long enough that she didn’t remember being taken from the ambulance. 
She came to in the emergency room.  She recognized the sterile, Clorox smell.  If she weren’t sick already it would have got her there.  She remembered the time her and a friend wrecked a car to gain admittance in a gamble that they would offer the drugs that kept them alive and ticking.  It worked once or twice but they caught on.  She was put on a list.  No hospital within twenty miles would give her any form of opiates.  The nurses and the doctors knew her here.  They knew she had no insurance and no means of paying the hospital even a fraction of what she owed yet they still asked the same questions. 
Who’s your next of kin?  Is there anyone we can call?  Do you have insurance?  Do you have a job?  Where’s your place of employment?  Where do you live?  Is there anyone who would come?  Is there anywhere you could go? 
It was like one of those movies where people keep asking the same questions no matter how many times you give the same answers.  No, she didn’t have a job.  No, she didn’t have insurance.  No, she didn’t have anywhere to go and no one gave a shit what happened to her. 
They gave her extra strength Tylenol and released her the moment she could walk.  They didn’t care what had happened.  The cops didn’t care.  The doctors and nurses didn’t care.  She was worthless.  She was less than worthless.  She was a burden to her community.  She was a drug addict and she was out on the streets. 
A cop gave her a ride to the nearest shelter but they were booked.   She knew they would be.  It seemed to her the shelters were always full and even if they weren’t, they were closed to druggies like her.  They had a list and she was on it.  She went to the only place she knew that wouldn’t turn her away:  the homeless community under the bridge.

Copyright 2019 Ray Miller / aka Jack Random

No comments:

Post a Comment