Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Day Five

*****NAMES CHANGED TO PROTECT PORTLAND'S STREET KIDS***** 

There's this girl in shelter who looks so young and vulnerable every time I see her I feel an urge to protect her. She looks 15 though she must be older to be in shelter. We'll call her Sally. This morning her long blonde hair was a rat's nest so she wanted to find a brush. I went to get mine out of my bag for her but by the time I got back someone had already given her one.

“Do you do drugs?” Sally asked me.
“No.”
“Don't ever start.” She said, “My whole life revolves around heroin. My three kids have been taken away from me. I have nothing but drugs.”

She continued on a bone chilling rant about how her life revolves around drugs and she has nothing. Her first two kids live with their father. The third was taken by DHS when she was born. I didn't know how three kids could come out of such a tiny body. Nor did I know what to say. It's not like you can just say, “Stop doing drugs.” I know it's not that easy. She needs help. Rehab. A better life. I don't have any of that to offer.

I'm not sure what I said. It was probably some mumbling about how in the end everything will be okay. As if I actually know this to be true. I can't promise her a future of “okay”. That's about as good as offering little children Santa Clause or adults religion. It just doesn't work that way. There's no way I'll ever know if she's going to be okay or if she dies someday of an overdose and becomes a picture tacked to the wall of the shelter until eventually she's forgotten.

She told me Meth was safer and some other jargon about the differences of drugs that I don't understand. I left things with, “Just please be careful. Please.”
“I will.”
“Thank you.” I mumbled it so quietly I don't know if she heard me.
They've started calling me “mom”. I scold them when they're being douchey or unnecessarily rude. Surprisingly, it actually works.

“You don't take shit from anyone,” Jesus said, then asked for Gushers. I told him no for the fifteen billionth time, “See you passed my test. You really don't take shit from anyone.” 


And now they come to me for advice. Advice I'm not sure how to give but I try. Jesus asked me once why I get involved in their drama. All I could say was, "Someone needs to care." And I do care. I do what I can. I feel responsible for them. I feel the need to take care of them and help them even though most of them are the same age as me. I try my best, even when they are calling me a bitch and threatening to beat me up.

Fuck you John Simmons, I will be a good mother someday.

----


After breakfast I had to call Salvation Army which is never fun. It took fifteen minutes for her to tell me that my meeting with my case manager had been rescheduled. I was so frustrated I for a fleeting moment I thought of chucking my phone at the wall behind me but I decided not to. Hooray for better anger management! (I broke 3 phones before I reached enough control to manage this.)

Jesus and I went to the library to use the internet there. I remembered (after all this time) that I do in fact have a library card so I can use the real computers. After we were timed out  we settled down to watch the original Spiderman cartoons from the 90s. We giggled when Spiderman said, “A thousand dollars? I could use that to buy a motorcycle.” Oh 90s.

By the end of the episode we were both falling asleep. We decided to go back to Hell to try and sleep without Redneck this time. I set my laptop up on top of my suitcase to play Coraline and curled up on the same patch of concrete. It was much colder than I remembered and even wearing extra jackets and laying down a skirt to sleep on didn't help. I didn't fall completely asleep but got enough rest to get me by.

At lunch I met with one of the case managers for #1. We discussed a general plan for me of getting transitional housing and counseling as well as what to do for Spencer. She said to meet again for dinner. Jesus and I along with another random girl decided to attempt to build an Obama puzzle but it was more complicated than expected and we gave up after a few minutes. PDX Playdate just seemed more fun than Obama's face.

For those that don't know PDX Playdate is a cafe meant for parents and their children. However, it is more awesome than words can describe. It has giant slides and a ball room where you can shoot balls at each other. There are punching bags, things to swing on, and a light up room where you can play dodgeball and pong on the floor. It's is spectacular. What makes it even better is it is free for adults.

Now, in theory it's free for adults but generally speaking they expect you to have a kid with you. Jesus and I, though we did not admit it until later were nervous about going without a child present, especially with our bags.
“If anyone asks we are married and have a kid name Daniel.” Jesus said.
“But I want a girl.”
“Fine, we can have a girl. What do you want to name her?”
We decided on Angelica. From Rugrats of course.

However, we went right in without a problem. We didn't need to worry about the no kid situation for very long. We were quickly adopted by several little ones. In particular a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes became attached to our hips. His small hands kept grabbing onto mine and when it came time to go down the tall bouncy slide he slid into my lap with so little hesitation it surprised me. I felt like myself again with all these little kids climbing on me. I actually forgot I was a street kid. I was just a nanny again.

After being adopted by the little boy we were adopted by a little girl with blonde hair and pink glasses. She had such a cute little kid voice that I swear she could do commercials. Jesus and I were getting her to talk just to listen to her. When we would move from room to room of the play place she would ask, “Can I go with you?”

The kids kept multiplying. By the time it we needed to leave to get back for dinner just about every kid was following us. They led a revolt that consisted of every child attacking Jesus with foam balls. He pretended to be the Hulk and Spiderman. They chased him all over the play area; all I could hear while I played with my little Angelica was the sound of small feet chasing after two big feet. I was laughing hysterically.

I was worried the yuppie parents might frown on this or worry we were going to sell their yuppie kids on Ebay. I didn't need to. Even after we explained that we came to play without having a kid they smiled and even laughed. I think they were happy to have someone else in the play place to break up the fights, do potty monitoring (I had to ask a little one if she needed to pee and then told her to go to her mommy), and help siblings find one another (we called these endeavors quests). 


I wonder though if they would have been smiling so much if they knew where we were going to sleep tonight or that the laps their kids were sitting on were with jeans that had been worn everyday for over a week without being washed. I highly doubt these yuppie parents who can afford gymnastics and ballet lessons would have appreciated that much. Their yuppie kids are so innocent and trusting now but unfortunately they won't keep that forever and in 20 or 30 years they'll be the yuppie parents with yuppie kids looking down on the next generation of street kids. 

I told the kids we had to leave to go eat dinner with our mommies and daddies.
“If only they knew we don't have parents.” Jesus said.
I shrugged, “It's not a lie. We do have people cooking dinner for us. It just so happens it's a lot of mommies and daddies.”

"That's kind of true I guess." he shrugged. 

We were surprisingly un-hungry for dinner. We were almost too tired to eat and it didn't help that dinner was highly unappetizing. The staff lady I'm working with (we'll call her Mother Goose) helped me fill out a referral for counseling. She told me she couldn't find anything for Spencer but that she didn't want to encourage me to go a place I was uncomfortable. Instead, we are to focus on getting me more permanent housing. I'm okay with this for now.

After dinner Jesus had band practice. I had nothing better to do than tag around like a lost puppy. While he played keyboard I wrote on my computer. I had made a pretty good dent on my writing when they shut down. We migrated to Safeway for our last hour to kill before shelter opened. I wanted to finish my blog post on their wifi but Jesus wanted to finish Coraline. I was going to try and look over my post quickly but some how managed to forget EVERY email password to every email account I own.

I was getting frustrated when Jesus made a rape joke.  Having no tolerance for rape jokes I grumbled, "Not funny," still focusing on getting my email account accessed again.

"Oh come on. Like you've never made a crude joke before." Jesus said.
"Not about rape."

Mario started ranting about crude rape jokes and how some kinds of rape are not "real" rape. Disgusted I snapped, "This conversation needs to end now. You don't want to argue this with me." He continued on his rant so I slammed my laptop closed and left. Feeling dirty I got into the shower first thing when I reached shelter. Jesus started banging on my door.

"What?"

"What."
"What?"
"What."
"What do you want? I'm naked."
"Come talk to me when you're done in the shower."

After I had showered and thrown my stuff on my bunk I went out to the common area. I was still not hungry so I heated up a roll with butter to have something in my stomach for my night meds. 

"What did you want?" I asked Jesus.
"Nothing. I just wanted you to hang out when you were done in the shower."
I rolled my eyes, "Miss me so much I can't take a shower by myself?" 
"Yes."

We sat down to watch Star Wars with everyone. Nazi Man kept yelling at everyone for talking in the television area. We ignored him. Emo Kid came in crying. I tapped his knee with my foot. 

"What's wrong?" I asked. 
"I broke up with Vampire Girl." he said. 

We ended up going to the corner to talk. Jesus followed us after awhile. We tried to pep talk Emo Kid which was harder said than done. Cheering up emo kids has got to be mission impossible. I gave him some Gushers and told him he will be okay. I told him to take her suspension as time to think without her bothering him. He told us he was worried he'd start cutting again. This made me uncomfortable. I couldn't gauge whether he was saying it for attention or if he was actually scared. All I could tell him was, "It's not worth it."

I found one of the girls crying in the girls' dorm.  I sat on the floor by her bed to see what was wrong and what I could do. She was crying because she's going to rehab for six months and she was scared. I found this to be a legit reason to cry. I told her the best thing that ever happened to me was being sent to a mental hospital; this is mostly true. If I had to make a list of the best things that have happened to me it would be up at the top if not #1. I offered her Gushers and told her to get rest as she would need it. 

The weird thing is that the person happiest last night was Drama Girl. This really freaked Jesus and me out. We went and sat in the red chairs where I sat when I first came to shelter. I let Jesus draw on my arm with sharpie to keep him from drawing on the chairs and getting us in trouble. 

"I really don't like rape jokes." I told him, "I wasn't mad at you for telling the joke. I just wanted the subject to change. I was mad at Mario for carrying on like that."
"Yeah that's him. He's really crude." 

We dropped it and moved on to different topics like past significant others and why we didn't want to date. I guess that conversation was going to happen sometime as every one keeps asking us if we are together. I'm not interested in being involved with anyone though. Not for a long time. Not until I'm stable. I will not make that mistake again.

He asked to finish Coraline. We decided it would be easier to watch it on the floor so we wrapped ourselves in blankets and laid on the floor. After Coraline we almost passed out to an episode of Ducktales. This was much to the envy of many people in shelter as only two people are allowed in the red chair area at a time and every time someone passed they mentioned it. By the time we finished Ducktales we were mostly asleep so we shuffled to our dorms and called it a night. 

--mm

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