In large urban areas such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, up to half of those on parole are homeless.
Melvin’s girlfriend, Veltra, who worked as a nurse for a home health care company, came to me with a job opportunity. One of her patients, an elderly woman, could no longer afford a nurse after reaching the maximum that insurance coverage allowed for home services. “Ms. Andrews just wants to live out the rest of her days in her own home,” Veltra explained. “But she needs some help getting by. Would you want to care for her?”
Not only was I grateful for a job, but I eagerly approached this as the beginning of my Living Amends: helping another person.
Ms. Andrews was a sweet lady, and I bathed her, did her laundry, cleaned the house, grocery shopped, cooked, and picked up her prescriptions. Appalled at the cost of some of her medications, I discussed with the pharmacist how I could petition the insurance company for cheaper options—which I then did with success. When Ms. Andrews had to trade her walker for a wheelchair, I ordered an electric wheelchair so she could scoot around the house and ride alongside me when we walked outdoors. She told her friends about me, and they began calling me too. I saw firsthand how poorly most seniors are treated—how lonely and scary it is to grow frail, and how ill equipped we are as a society to provide care.
Each time I walked through the door, I watched Ms. Andrews’s face fill with joy and relief. She soon asked if I could move in. Never had I experienced validation like this. Ms. Andrews not only needed me, but she wanted me there. I’d come into this job focused on my Living Amends, not anticipating that it was I who’d get so much in return. I had been given a sense of purpose.
After six months living at Toni’s, I moved into Ms. Andrews’s home. Though Toni never asked that I pay rent, I had offered, and when I left I gave her what I had. It was the first time I had been honorable with my agreements. Before that, drugs hadn’t let me. Some time after I’d moved out, Toni was at work and opened a bottom drawer in her desk to find her jewelry. She’d forgotten she had hidden it there, in an unlocked drawer in her office—a place she’d once deemed safer than in her own home with her mother.
Ms. Andrews paid me $8 an hour, but couldn’t afford to pay overnight hours, so we arranged that I would make up the difference by also working for some of her friends. My schedule was busy: in the morning, I made breakfast and got Ms. Andrews up and in her chair before leaving to care for another client. I returned for Ms. Andrews’s lunch, then left again to care for a third client. During the night, I was on call for when Ms. Andrews needed me. She and her friends continued referring me, and before long, I was caring for seven clients, visiting different homes on alternating days of the week. I was accountable, and I was building self-esteem. People needed help, and it felt so good that I was someone who was able to help.
Soon, I had more clients than I could handle, so I brought on my friend, Mitzi. Short, with long, wavy hair and a bubbly personality, Mitzi also had a sharp mind. We knew each other from the neighborhood, and she had been my entrée into the world of forgery. We’d been in and out of prison together, and now we were both on the path to turn around our lives. As I divvied up the clients, I began to envision how I could build my own agency to care for seniors. I even came up with a name: Susan’s Angels.
When I’d been at CLARE, an inspirational speaker, Dena Crowder, offered a class about finding your life’s work. At the time, the idea of a life’s work seemed frivolous—work was where you could get it; the job that paid the most was the job you took. But now, I was thinking differently. I enrolled myself in the class to learn how to make Susan’s Angels a reality.
A third-generation Angeleno, Dena was glamorous and vibrant, wearing a cocktail dress the way others wear jeans. Though black, Dena seemed to defy ethnicity—you couldn’t easily put her in a box by looking at her. The class went far deeper than mere job skills. As Dena had me plot out the steps to starting my home care agency, she brought up things I hadn’t considered: licensing requirements, insurance coverage, incorporating as a business. Overwhelmed, I realized I wasn’t yet ready for this path. But I soon came to appreciate having learned early on what I was up against, rather than finding out after having sunk a lot of time and hope and money. Still, I stuck with the class, even though the others who’d abandoned their business ideas stopped showing up. I was learning about seeing things through, that it wasn’t about what you started, but what you finished. At the end of the session, Dena offered me a scholarship to continue on with her private class, called Essential Woman, which she taught from her home.
Dena lived in a beautiful old mansion in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. The other women in the class were highly successful—movie producers, doctors, attorneys. When they discussed their everyday issues and problems, it often sounded like a foreign language to me. But with this exposure, my mind expanded. Dena encouraged us to set not just daily goals but big life goals, and I felt myself moving from a place of impossible to anything’s possible. After each class, I’d drive back to Ms. Andrews’s house and my senses were heightened—colors looked brighter, food tasted better, I was aware of the fragrance of foliage and the sight of a beautiful moon. I was finding a connectedness within myself.
But as my world was awakening, Ms. Andrews’s was narrowing. Her diabetes worsening, she had a wound on her leg that wouldn’t heal. One day, I unwrapped the bandages to discover maggots infesting her leg. I called her doctor, who said to bring her to the hospital.
“No matter what, Susan,” Ms. Andrews said, “I don’t want to lose my leg. I’d rather die than have my leg cut off.” I felt helpless, wondering whether I could have done something earlier if only I’d had more skills.
There was a community college I often drove by, with a banner out front that promoted their nursing program. I stopped in to ask about applying. I was directed to a counselor and told him about the caregiving I’d been doing and how I wanted to advance my skills. He asked about my background, and I stumbled through some answers, which prompted him to ask if I’d ever had a felony conviction.
“Yes,” I said.
He put down his pen. “You are not eligible to take nursing courses,” he said. “You can’t be licensed as an RN or certified as a home health aide with a criminal record.”
I felt like the air was knocked out of me. I wanted to say, But Ms. Andrews might lose her leg, and maybe I could have done something. I asked, “Can I take nursing courses just to learn?”
“You should forget about being in health care,” he said. “But you could take a computer course or a business class.”
I walked out with a receipt for two night classes, Intro to Computers and Business Math. When I returned to Ms. Andrews’s, I closed my bedroom door and cried. I’d naïvely thought that if I got my life together, things would manage to fall into place. Like Leslie said, When you show up, life shows up. I was showing up, more than I ever had, and feeling, for the first time, that I was putting something good into the world by helping people who were helpless. Only, it hadn’t occurred to me that my path to advancement couldn’t go much further, that I’d be denied the opportunity to learn, to gain skills, to better myself. Would Intro to Computers and Business Math take me someplace I wanted to go? Where would I find myself in ten, fifteen years? Were my dreams not meant to be bigger than minimum wage, Section 8 housing, and a Social Security check?
I began to read. In prison, I’d read thrillers and romance novels to escape. Now, I was reading to learn. I had collected books that passed through the CLARE thrift store, and I read Diet for a New America about how food choices affect your health, which opened my eyes to corporate greed and taking a stand for what you know is right. I thought about how the prison system was a part of corporate greed, too. I read Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, about the two men who founded the movement in the 1950s. I read The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth, which got me thinking about the importance of living a more principled and less materialistic life. I read Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, and as I did the exercises in the book, another layer about how I saw myself and the world was revealed.
The books prompted me to consider other ways to help people. I thought about women like myself, cycling in and out of prison. I thought about my Living Amends. An idea began to take shape. I envisioned a recovery home for women getting out of prison who, like me, needed a safe, sober place to live.
I talked about the idea with Mitzi, and then with Beverly, who was herself newly out of prison and trying to start over again. She and Melvin had gotten back together, and Beverly and I were trying to support each other, going to AA meetings together and holding each other accountable for staying clean. “What if,” I posed, “we pooled our money to buy a house? I could live there, and we could take in ten other women whose contributions would cover the mortgage and expenses.” Profits weren’t a part of it—at least not for me. They eagerly supported the idea, and we began looking for a house.
As Ms. Andrews grew progressively worse, her son made plans to transfer her to a nursing home. In the nine months I’d been living with her, I’d managed to save $11,000. But more than that, I knew I had made a difference—and I now knew what it was like to feel valued.
Beverly and Mitzi and I found a house in Watts: a three-bedroom, two-bath bungalow, complete with a lovely yard and a lemon tree, on a residential street lined with trees shaped like gumdrops. Though Beverly had more money to put toward the down payment, I would be the one to live in the house with the women. Mitzi didn’t have money, but she would cook for everyone—something I felt passionately about since that time I got stuck in the kitchen when I should’ve been focused on my recovery. There was one problem: none of us had the credit to get a mortgage.
We went to Melvin’s son, Lamont, my nephew and Beverly’s stepson, and asked if he would sign for us. Lamont had gone straight to work from high school, never having gotten caught up like the rest of us. He had a good job with the Department of Water and Power, was married, and had learned well from Melvin how to be a good father. Only years later, once I had signed for other people, did I fully understand to what lengths Lamont had gone to put up credit for us.
Beverly and I purchased five sets of bunk beds from Ikea, and I asked some men I knew from my twelve-step meeting if they’d help us assemble them. I wasn’t used to asking for help, but I discovered that when you’re trying to do something good, people want to help. My niece Tamara, Beverly’s daughter, and I brainstormed a name to call the recovery home. In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous a line is often repeated about finding a new way of life. We decided A New Way of Life was exactly right.
Ms. Andrews and I said a sad goodbye and, as she moved out of her home, I moved into mine. It was 1998, and I had no idea I was on the brink of something that would become larger and more meaningful than I could ever have imagined. My first night in the house in Watts, I stared up at the ceiling. I was alone, but the least lonely I’d ever felt.