SWAT sells authorized internal travel permits—a hundred bucks a pop. You can’t buy one if you’ve got an outstanding warrant, or you’re undocumented, or don’t have a legal residential address. That means homeless people can’t purchase them. Decently forged permits are half the price but don’t always see you through the checkpoints. Having no travel card is murder—if you’re on the bus and get caught without one, it’s a year in county jail. I think that’s what happened to Sugar Child.
An excessive heat warning has been issued for today. Children and seniors are advised to remain indoors. I’m eager to catch the afternoon Christmas traffic. So I set up shop in Pioneer Park, eight blocks south of McDonald’s. The park grounds are rife with flies, the air smells like ten days in jail.
I play the tambourine with consummate skill.
But I’m not raking in any dough.
Begging for donations is psychological warfare. Some folks can’t give alms. I hear their rejections all day long. Sorry, Pastor. I don’t have no cash. I lost my job. My dog is sick. My children have the flu. My wife has boils. I have leukemia. Leave me alone. Get out of my face. Asshole. Faggot. Leech. Fuckhead.
You name it—I get an earful. But I’m a child of Jesus. Vaccinated by his gospel. Ordained by Blessed World. I am spiritually immune to rancor.
A wheelchair-bound man rolls over to me. His hand is out, a bloody bandage wrapped around his blackened fingers. A crusty blue bandanna slants over his left eye. Jailhouse tattoos bifurcate his forehead. The rest of him is bundled inside an oversized North Face goose-down parka held together with duct tape. I suspect he’s a recent graduate of Patton State Hospital, the nuthouse by the orange groves in Highland.
“What’s up, Pastor? You have a cigarette for me?”
“No, my son. I don’t.”
“Why not? Everybody smokes out here.”
“I don’t smoke. It’s not salubrious. For body or soul.”
“I wasn’t asking for a speech. I was asking for a cigarette.”
“Well, my child. I don’t have any. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. So, you got a quarter I can have?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Come again?”
“I said I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have a crummy quarter?”
“That’s correct.”
“You’re nothing but a goddamn liar.”
“Then we should pray together. To heal our spiritual rift.”
“Don’t get sarcastic with me, mister. You’re here all day hustling cash. You got money. What makes you think you’re better than the rest of us? That fucked up uniform? You being a religious figure and shit? You think it makes you superior to me?”
How do I tell him I’ve eaten nothing since yesterday, other than a pint of nonfat yogurt? That I’m an injured soul just like him? I vent: “Use your fucking eyes. There’s nothing in the bucket. When there’s nothing in the bucket, there’s nothing in my pockets. And when there’s nothing in my pockets, I’m in the same damn boat as you.”
He does a three-sixty in his chair, and says by way of a farewell before wheeling off: “You don’t have to get weird, dude. Shit, I was just talking. Take a break.”
I am aggravated. Which is not kosher. I’m usually a barometer of human kindness. But now the barometer is very low. I should pack it in for the day. There is nothing in the bucket. Nothing in my belly.
Then I see Sugar Child.
She’s heavily medicated, drifting over the sidewalk with little to no forward motion. Each step the journey of a thousand miles. The walk of patients just released from General Hospital’s acute psych ward.
The look on her tired face is interplanetary, as though she dropped off a spaceship onto E Street. It’s clear she doesn’t know where she is. She’s a visitor from outer space who wants to take off for the stars again. The sooner, the better.
Her eyes struggle to read my face, but she’s forgotten the language that once came so naturally. The ability to flirt, to find a place in herself by connecting with strangers.
She tries to remember me—her mouth is pursed from the effort—in the same way a fish comes up from the bottom of a deep pool. Only to reach the top to find out it can’t breathe there. That it might be better to go back down the way she came, back to the bottom.
I ache to take her in my arms—but people on psychotropic meds hate to be touched. I chirr: “You okay, girl?” I laugh nervously. Tuning in to my discomfiture, she laughs back: “I’m fucked. You know?”
Slow as glue, Sugar Child moves on. I can’t stop her. She doesn’t want to be stopped. To stop her from walking away, I have to stop the world.
I stammer: “Merry Christmas, baby.”
She gives me the saddest smile, a smile that lets me know it’s taking everything in her heart to make the gesture. She’s doing it for me, with a grace that seemingly comes from the earth itself.
“Merry Christmas, daddy.”