“Miss, this is your fourteenth day here. You were supposed to be up and gone by 4:00 a.m. This bed belongs to someone else now. I need to have it changed and the sheets and blankets washed. Please respond so I know that you hear me.”
Sleep, that’s all I had been doing since the death of my kids. My kids were dead, which meant I wasn’t a mother anymore. I hadn’t been much of a mother anyway. I couldn’t even afford to bury my own kids. The State had to cremate them. I felt dead too. I was no good to do anything.
“Miss.?” The shelter staff member continued her efforts in trying to get me to respond.
I rolled over onto my back and blinked a few times before looking up at her. The middle aged black woman, who worked at the homeless shelter, stood over me and took a deep, exasperated breath. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “You have to leave.” Her tone was so cold.
“Who is that you over there fussing at, Clare?” An older and shorter black woman came and stood next to the woman whom she called Clare.
“This client, Ma’am. She won’t respond to me. It’s like she’s dead. I get so tired of these women of the night selling their souls to the devil and then coming in here for down time. They’re taking a bed from an innocent child.”
She was right about that, I felt dead but the women of the night thing? Whatever. “Go on and tend to something else. I got this,” the other lady told her.
“All right, Mrs. Hope,” the lady named Clare said to the old woman.
I stared up at the older woman whose skin was so wrinkled that she looked like she had to be 100 years old.
“I am,” Mrs. Hope said to me.
I shook my head. “Excuse me?” There was something different about her expression than Clare’s.
“As old as I look,” she responded like she’d read my mind.
I offered a tight smile.
“Don’t mind Clare. Her and her husband got into an argument last night. That’s why she got that ‘tude.”
I nodded.
“But she is right; you should have been out of here already. I’ll give you a few minutes to get dressed.” Mrs. Hope turned and walked away.
I sat up in the bed and proceeded to put on my clothes so I could get out of that place. Only thing was, I didn’t know what I was going to do because I had nowhere else to go. Joshua had been arrested and locked up after what had happened with our kids. I can’t remember exactly what the charges were; something about endangering a minor-having a gun without a license and some other stuff I think. All I knew is that no matter what they charged him with or how long they locked him up, my babies were gone.
Shortly after that, I was evicted from my place. Since my kids were deceased I no longer qualified for government assistance. Mr. Baker could care less about what I was going through. Rent was due, and I was in no state of mind to be “good to him” so he evicted me. He had the Sheriff’s Department put me and all my stuff out on the streets. I slept on Valerie’s living room couch until Mr. Baker found out and threatened to kick her and her kids out, so I had to go.
For the past two weeks I had been living at the homeless shelter. Maybe my fate was to now be a woman of the night, like the lady, Clare, had accused me of being. Maybe she knew my fate.
When Mrs. Hope came back, she had a mug in her hand. “Here’s some coffee. It should get you moving and shaking a bit.”
“Thanks.” I took a sip of the warm liquid that tasted like everything else I had attempted to shove in my mouth before pushing it away: nothing.
“You’re the first I ever seen in here black, with red hair and freckles, child. Where you come from?” she joked.
I shrugged and sipped the warm brew again while the old woman with hair so gray it looked white studied me.
“‘Cause of course you know this ain’t the first time I’ve seen you.” I narrowed my eyes at her trying to see if I recognized her. I was sure I’d never seen her before. I figured she’d probably meant that she’d seen me at the shelter before today since I’d been there so long. But to my surprise, that wasn’t the case.
“I seen you in church with them handsome kids. Boy, you sure used to sing them songs, girl!” I thought about all those times during praise and worship I used to sing hard like I was up in the choir stand singing to the Lord Himself. I never thought anybody heard me; not even God sometimes. “I thought for sure one day you’d join the choir,” she added.
“No, Ma’am. Not me.” I shook my head.
“You never got involved in the church activities, meetings, and Bible study. You just came to praise the Lord, huh?” She smiled and clapped her hands together. “That’s all right too, my sista.”
Mrs. Hope was right. I did. It was the only time in what I was going through that I allowed myself some type of joy when I was at church. But now… I didn’t share the same joy about church anymore. I simply mumbled, “Thank You,” and handed her the now empty mug.
She rushed away quickly; guess ’cause of the awkward moment; her throwing me out and knowing good and well I had nowhere else to go but to the streets. This was a moment she probably didn’t want to be a part of.
I looked down at the floor for my beat up sandals. One strap was hanging limply and was about to give out any minute. I pulled them on as best as I could. I pulled the blanket and sheets off the bed, balled them up at the edge like they instructed me to and walked out of that place. Clare watched me as I exited, shaking her head.
Once I stepped outside, the cold morning wind hit me in a gust. I shivered, then wrapped my arms around myself. The early morning was still dark. It made my heartbeat speed up. I took one step, when I felt a hand on my back stopping me. I jumped back and spun around. I took a deep breath when I saw that it was Mrs. Hope that had touched me.
“I was wondering...I have a small room in my home. Nothing special. I use it for storage. ’Cause Lord knows over the years…” Her words trailed for a moment. “I have acquired a lot of stuff from me and my late husband. And for the next couple days, ‘till you get on your feet, if you want to, you can stay there. Now if you want meals too, then you gonna have to work for those. Laundry, cleaning, and what not, whatever you see needs to be done, you can do it. You ain’t too old. What, you in your thirties?
I nodded.
“Well, that means you’re able to clean.”
I nodded again, glad I wouldn’t have to sleep on the streets.
“My house is on Kornblum. The house number is 1943. It’s the fourth to last house on the corner. Here’s an extra key. Go ahead and let yourself in.”
I stared down at the key in complete disbelief. I mean, this woman didn’t know me from Adam. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to play some cruel joke on me. When I reached out for the key, was she going to snatch her hand back and say, ‘Syke?’ But she was too old to be playing games. This had to be real.
I slowly reached out and took the key from her hand.” Thank you, Ma’am.” I was shocked that a complete stranger would do something like this for me, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Still thinking in the back of my mind that she might have a change of heart and confiscate the key at any minute, I just stood there.
“No I don’t trust you,” she said, once again reading my mind. “But it’s God I do trust, and if He led me to invite you into my home, then I’m gonna be obedient because God will never lead His sheep astray.” She winked with a smile. “Now go on. Walk down two blocks. Make a right. Pass Yukon Street, make a quick left and you there.”
I nodded and made a mental note of what she had said and walked off. I didn’t just make a mental note on what she’d said about how to get to her house, but what she’d said about God too. I sure was glad she trusted in God. Hopefully she had enough trust for the both of us.