Chapter Twenty-One
I was back at the shelter in time for supper. One of the larger staff members, a daunting man whose job, I believed, was to intimidate troublemakers, informed me while I was eating that he wanted to see me in the office. He bent over and said, “Finish eating and then hustle your butt.” His breath was hot on the back of my neck and that bothered me. I wanted to tell him that he could take his foul air off my person. I remained mute though and continued eating, not wanting to rock a broken-down boat adrift in waters that were churning.
Not much later, I was told, “You are this close to losing your bed.”
He was holding his index finger and thumb close enough together that I had to make sure that they weren’t touching.“Don’t look at my hand you fool,” he snarled, “you were supposed to go to Social Services and get your two week renewal. You’re lucky it’s the Christmas season. Everyone’s in a good mood – we all agreed to give you until tomorrow.”
“Well, Merry Friggin’ Christmas,” I said, doing my best to scowl and growl right back, “Has it occurred to you that I’m sick and tired of going to Social Services and begging, for what? This! Three cold meals, a bed full of bugs and if I want to clean myself, well, there’s precious little hot water to be found around here.”
“If you don’t go to Social Services, you’re going to be one cold son of a bitch.” When he said that I had, for some reason, a murky image of the prick leading me by the hand to a cold and barren field full of elephants, where I would be left to freeze. I gave my head a shake.
“Let me think about all this,” I said and stood up, “Give me until tomorrow.”
“Alright man, I already told you that you had one more day.” He started shaking his head and making a clicking noise in his throat. “Remember, its bloody cold out there. If you freeze, I’m not responsible and I won’t feel guilty, no way, not in the least. I’ve done my best and that’s all I can do.”Jeez, I thought, I’d hate to see his worst.
Waiting for sleep to come, I half-heartedly wrestled with my latest problem until I detected a strange odour. Though the stink was vile it was a godsend as it mercifully took my mind from myself. It seemed to be coming from my bedside locker, the kind you have in school, minus the dents and scrapes. I’d always believed that there were many safer places I could put the things I valued or needed. Anything that was of worth to me I kept on my person or hid under my covers.
I looked inside my locker for the first time and saw a bag of rotten vegetables and fruit, some old dirty clothes that seemed from another time and a worn out pair of boots.
“You’re going somewhere where the poverty is far worse than that,” a voice said, but this time the voice was inside my head.
After this chilling premonition an audible hallucination put in its two cents worth. Its words were unintelligible but the derision behind them was very clear. I shut the door to my locker softly.
I’m going somewhere, I thought, but I don’t know where. I don’t want to go anywhere without a little money. A line from a song played in my mind, something about bad times. I walked to the window. The snores and mumbling of the dormitory went with me; in every bed was a destitute man fast asleep, except for the guy at the end who wasn’t destitute, but a spy who was also faking sleep. I looked down at the snowy streets and sidewalks. A line of blue cars drove by and somebody honked their horn. It played part of the traditional Wedding March.
“You will be my bride and I will be your king,” a voice decreed and in my mind I saw my husband and she was a woman with long, brown hair. It seemed that I had ended up in a place where things were backwards.
I made it to my bed before the same dread that had slain me in the barn stunned me into unconsciousness again. When next I woke it was morning and my first thought was that I would soon have a woman for a king.
Immediately following breakfast The Salvation Army gave me a dishonourable discharge. They began by asking me if I planned to stay. I replied that I didn’t know, wanting to add that the guy working the night before had been a prick and I didn’t want to stay anywhere that was run by people like him.
Someone explained the deal all over again: “Every two weeks you are given bus fare, in the form of bus tickets. We don’t trust you with cash. Your tickets will get you to welfare where you wait to receive papers saying that the city of Winnipeg will pay for two more weeks at the hostel. The remaining ticket will get you back to the shelter along with your paperwork.”
“I’m not going up there with my hat in my hand again,” I told them. They looked around and at each other. One guy looked at me sadly, started whistling and then puffing out his cheeks started shuffling the files on his desk.
“Look, we’re giving you one last chance,” spoke a man whose face seemed somehow familiar, as though it was one you see wherever you happen to go, “I mean, at least it’s warm in here.”
“You know what,” I replied, “I always found it too warm in here. You freeze all day long and then you come in here and it’s just too bloody warm.”
That was the last straw. “Okay, since you won’t go along with the program, we’ll have to ask you to leave.” When I left it was snowing lightly and it occurred to me that it was only a few days until Christmas.
It was only natural that I ended up at The Main Street Project, the last refuge for refuse like me. On Christmas day I was lying on my wooden palette, on a cold cement floor, surrounded on all sides, it seemed, by drug addicts and alcoholics. Someone moaned and another cried. Not exactly turkey and could you pass the turnip please. No one said grace – you were lucky if you got your hands on a blanket. The evening of Christmas Eve, though, had been even worse than the Christmas day I found myself enduring. It was a night that I hit one of my personal lows.
There I sat at the airport while the planes took off and landed, patiently waiting for Santa Claus. I sat in a plastic chair by a window looking out on a street where cars drove slowly by, one after another. “Pick one and it’s yours,” a voice said and I looked around. Someone was peeking around a corner and abruptly disappeared. Everyone seemed to be missing teeth.
All the cars looked so nice that I couldn’t make up my mind. People walked by with suitcases full of gifts for me, their eyes made shiny by the delight they took in giving. Perhaps they are from my spouse, I thought. My king and I had been wed in a telepathic service.
I found an ashtray filled with long butts and considered it my first gift, not what I would have chosen, but better than nothing. I watched young men and women around my age as they hugged and laughed with their friends and relatives. I smoked while I waited for everyone in the airport to yell, “Surprise. It’s been a joke. You’re one of us.” I took people in and tried to look at them knowingly.
Eventually, I had to admit it. Old Saint Nick wasn’t coming that year; it had been a hoax. I saw my “husband” at the other end of the building looking for me and, after grabbing a few choice butts, I went out and jumped on a city bus going downtown. I thought momentarily, that this was the way things would be forever. It was a cold idea to grapple with.
When people looked at me, they saw a walking mess. A weary, rundown man talking to himself, dressed in dirty old castoffs, haggard, smoking a stale cigarette butt and looking in garbage cans for treasure.
Some people were particularly disgusted; they found me detestable. These were usually the ones who might threaten me or try to make a joke of me in front of others. Sometimes people who thought I was bent on evil attacked me. In truth my thoughts harmlessly meandered, considering the mystery of Santa Claus, for example, when he was in season. I believed my thoughts were sometimes a conduit for the majesty of God, and this to me was a source of hope and encouragement. The Creator didn’t see murder in my eyes. Those who glared as if to keep me in line, in their self-righteousness, seemed to think I was living the life I deserved.
So I ended up lying on a piece of wood that Christmas while someone’s son cried and another’s daughter moaned. I closed my eyes. A car horn blared, the door banged shut, someone cried more intensely. Outside, I sensed, children whose parents were slumming, chased each other.
Someone had a radio out of which Christmas music was dripping, like the tears of the man that couldn’t stop crying. Maybe he missed his turkey and gravy like me. Maybe he was sad because no one had given him a present; maybe no one ever had given him a present.
I rolled over as though to shut it all out. Mentally I toiled, looking for an agreeable perspective regarding the airport, my spouse and her fleet of blue cars. She was obviously rich and that being so, why was I where I was? It wasn’t long until I exhausted the subject, it became Lilliputian for the time being.
There was nothing to do but sleep. The crying man had stopped doing so and just before I dropped off I heard the sweetest sound of the day – wise, mysterious, and almost deafening was the silence that caressed my ears.