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It's a story about me as a child and then me as a teen. |
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The article that Norman Wickes, Sr. wrote in street roots March edition was very good. He put it so well. People think it can't happen to them. They look upon the homeless as unwanted pests and people to prey upon . Some are even very cruel to the homeless . His article did what all good writing should do , make people think. As it did me. I grew up without a father , and perhaps that gave me more empathy to others . I don't know really. Let me take you back to 1968 . I was eight years old in Tennessee . I was playing ball with some friends when we saw a woman walking down the street who clearly didn't belong there. Her sleeveless, flowered house dress was dirty , and she had really long hair growing from her armpits, and long hair on her legs too. She smiled at us as she passed , showing us her rotting teeth. The other kids began taunting her and laughing . She kept walking. I followed her, trying to decide whether to follow suite with my friends. Or should I do what my heart said to do , and that was to talk to her. I followed my heart because those same friends had taunted me , not long ago, asking me questions about where my father was. They called my mother a word I didn't understand until I was eleven. The word was " whore." I skipped along, and soon the other kids lost interest and went back to their games . As I came up along side of the woman I asked her where was she going. She told me she was trying to get money or some food because she was hungry . I told her to come up and wait on my porch . I got her some food from my fridge when my Granny wasn't looking . I went into my room and got my piggy bank . It didn't have that much in it, about 55 cents, enough for three comic books at a dime apiece and 2 Hershey candy bars . I loved to eat them after dinner when we all watched, " I love Lucy." I made a choice and took the piggy bank out with the fried chicken . I poured the pennies in a pouch she made in her house dress , and she stuffed them by handfuls in the pockets in her sweater . I walked along with her to where a man and two kids were waiting in a big old black car . The kids had their dirty faces pressed against the windows . They were younger than me . The woman turned and smiled at me , and said , " God will bless you, child, God will bless you. " Of course the other kids made fun of me for days, saying that they must have been my relatives. Why would I have taken her to my house if she wasn't ? I just ignored them, you get good at that after awhile. Years flew by and it was now 1977. I was seventeen years old and homeless. My mother married a man and moved to Oregon when I was fourteen , leaving me to live alone on the streets with the hippies around the University Campus . You know the joke, my mother moved away and left me, well it happened to me. Then I was sent out to Oregon since they moved here and they moved away to Florida , again leaving me in the streets at age 15 . I hitchhiked to Florida twice and finally figured it out, I wasn't wanted. She would always tell me she loved me and I thought that love and want was the same , but it wasn't . I had just got back to Oregon . It was winter , and I was told that I could eat free at a mission. It was a rough and tough place . People that picked me up hitchhiking would look at me in surprise and say, " You want off HERE ?" when I told them stop on 3rd Ave and Burnside. At that time , young white girls were rare. Women were rare, and the ones that were there were usually older Native American women that could fight like any man and even better. The first day I went to the Blanchet House to eat . I was immediately picked on, a group of four Native American boys kept pulling my hair and then when I'd turn around they'd look innocent, and roar with laughter when I turned around and do it again . I knew I would not survive without help. I picked one of the largest and of course the best looking man in the line , one who was sober. His name was David, or King Bear as he was called. He would be sober for months, and then drunk for two weeks. He told his friends that I was his woman and assigned certain friends to take care of me when he was off drunk in a bar. I was too young to even go inside . Being around a bunch of drunks when you don't drink gets very tiring . I liked to walk around on my own . During one of these times when David was having a good old time in the bar, I perched myself on the chains that were in between these metal poles . I liked to sit and swing on them, watching the traffic go by on Burnside and Third. A car was coming across the bridge, I could see it weaving a bit. It slowed down at 2nd Ave. There were a large group of men drinking behind me . The car slowed all the way down . I could see young teens inside who were drinking. One hung his body out the window and was laughing really hard. He threw a huge handful of pennies out the window at us and yelled, " Here you go , you fucking dirty bums. " and they drove off , tires squealing. As I watched the winos scattering for the pennies , I remembered that woman that I gave the pennies to. I sat there and just cried, because I realized that I was where she was those many years ago . There was no smiling child to hold my hand and bring me some chicken, only cruel boys that threw out pennies , and a bunch of old drunks who only cared about their next drink. Life revolved around the bottle for them. Upset , I tried to get my boyfriend out of Ericksons Bar, but he was having a great time with his friends and wouldn't come out . There was no place for me to go . There were no women's shelters . Everyone seemed to have a place to go but me , and the ones who didn't , most were drunk . David told me to sleep in between his friends, Bernie Crow, the Apache Indian with horrible dandruff, and his best friend , Ramon. They were laying on cardboard in front of the Portland Rescue mission. I didn't want to lay there , with the smells of wine and urine . I kept walking. There was a huge dumpster behind Import Plaza. It usually has thin clean cardboard inside and no garbage. I climbed the ladder and peered inside. Perfect, nice and clean. I crawled inside and cried myself to sleep . And unlike Normans article where he found he was only dreaming and woke up in his own bed, I awoke in the same place that I went to sleep. In the dumpster. |
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