 One evening Alice was entertaining Uncle Fred, her daughter and her daughter's friend Maryanne. They were playing cards and drinking coffee and passing the pipe around her kitchen table. It was the kind of social evening that made Alice feel warm and cozy inside, seated at her round table. It was raining fiercely out, the way it can in Baltimore, when sometimes trees tip over because their roots pull up from the rain-drenched mud and the wind. Uncle Fred was waiting out the storm before taking his long trek home to Pennsylvania.
He wasn't really Uncle Fred. Alice's daughter-the Sasgrrl-just called him that name one day and it stuck as a family moniker, in Alice's group of mainly pagan, mostly young friends in Baltimore. They had all been to his home in Pennsylvania more than once for campouts and rituals. He had a farm with belligerent goats, multitudes of blue-gray kitties, camping sites and fire circles enough to host large gatherings, and a circle of huge standing stones on the top of a hill that was a perfect sanctuary for Beltane and Samhain, the largest rituals of the pagan year. Sometimes these rituals attracted as many as 200 celebrants to the hilltop, to be warmed by the Beltane fire, which consumed the space of a fair sized bathroom.
Uncle Fred was a man of many parts, generous by nature and sometimes given to emotional extravagance. He was, like Alice, an old hippy, and unlike her, a biker at heart. Alice always enjoyed his visits, which were more frequent in winter when she reckoned he just got a little stir crazy on the farm with no visitors. He had a dear and devoted wife, who Alice treasured. For this reason, as well as her own distaste for alcoholic behavior, she was careful never to offer Uncle Fred much to drink when he visited. Putting aside this prohibition, the two of them would spin tales for at least two or three hours without pausing, remembering the wild times of their youth, the sticky situations, the wanton disregard for social mores, and the remembrance of being part of a dream of community.
It was a good education for her daughter, thought Alice. Her daughter's generation seemed too frightened to dream much.
Their tummies were full of Alice's Egyptian-style chicken soup (sans matzo balls and seasoned with cardamon, chock full of veggies and orzo). They had drunk a little bit of mead and were ruminating over a recent discussion between Uncle Fred and Alice's upstairs tenant concerning the mating of goats and pigs-more particularly the fact that pigs have corkscrew cocks like their tails.
The tenant, Louisa, was pagan also. She lived her "real life" in Ireland, where she knew the population of counties and small villages, even though she had only visited for three weeks, but she had spent much of her mundane life in Iowa as a small farmer. Her final tale of the evening was of a neighbor in Iowa who, although a stout member of the church, had been observed near the highway one afternoon apparently trying to hump her billy. Louisa, trying to help her neighbor persuade the billy to be more obedient, had suggested this remedy to make him more submissive. Louisa's picture of this woman, straining to hold on to the billy while rubbing up against his rump, while other neighbors were passing and honking, was just the kind of stuff that brought out the giggles in everyone.
The tenant had retired upstairs just a few minutes before the doorbell rang, and everyone was content when Alice went to answer the bell. Alice thought maybe her tenant forgot something.
At the door was a short, strangely shaped woman whose hair clung wetly to her cheeks. She was shivering. And she had these box-shaped boobs under her raincoat. Alice didn't know her, but quickly concluded from the look of her eyes, in which Alice read a mixture of fear, shame and fanatical hope, that she was probably harmless and maybe a tad mad.
"May I help you?" inquired Alice."I sure hope so," replied the square breasted woman. "My car is dead, and I want to call my minister to come help me get it started. Can I use your phone for a couple of minutes?"
Alice had her doubts about the likelihood of rousing a minister out in the cold and wet at nine in the evening to fix a car, but what did she know about the ways of Christians? She opened the door, led the apparition into her living room and showed her the phone. She hoped this wouldn't take long.
The woman unwrapped her arms from around her midriff and produced a gargantuan bible from under her coat. Resting this on the coffee table near the phone, she took off her wet coat and dropped it on the floor. Flipping open the bible she produced a small notebook containing scribbled notes.
Even without the bible under her coat, her visitor cut a strange figure. Her belly looked like she had swallowed a good-sized box under her gray shift.
Although Alice felt hesitant about intruding on the woman's phone conversations, she decided to stay put in the living room while her guest used her phone. Alice didn't want any long distance charges to heaven on her bill! This woman was just strange enough to warrant supervision. Besides, Alice was curious about someone who would wander the streets in the rain with a large, maybe eight or ten pound, bible clutched fiercely to her breast and belly.
Thanking Alice profusely, the woman began calling numbers from her notebook. All in all she called four different ministers. The conversations went similarly.
"Hello? This is B..., I went to your service at M.... Mission, and I was wondering if you could help me. I'm stuck here in Baltimore City in the rain. My car ran out of gas, I don't have any money, and I need to get home."
"You can't come out tonight? It won't take long! I don't want to spend the night in my car in the rain and cold! Please, in the name of the Lord, help me! I promise it won't take long."
"Sorry I bothered you at night. I just didn't know where to turn."It appeared that most of the four simply hung up on her repeated pleas for help. Finally, she informed Alice she was going to make one last call, this time to her son, where she lived. Alice wondered why she hadn't called him first?
Alice could sense by the relative silence emanating from the kitchen that her three guests were listening, growing restive and also wondering about this strange sad case seated on her living room floor. This saga was getting tiresome after about a half hour of failure.
The visitor put her hands on her bible and uttered what appeared to be a prayer, closing her eyes and moving her lips soundlessly. Then she heaved a deep sigh and opened her notebook again. "I am going to call my son now," she informed Alice.
This call ran along much like the others, except this time the plea was familial instead of religious; laced with generous dollops of guilt, and repetitious promises not to be a "bother." Alice felt badly for this bible-toting refugee, and she needed a better understanding of what she was dealing with. It didn't smell right that her son wouldn't help.
Interrupting the tearful diatribe the woman was carrying on with her son, Alice asked, "Can I speak with your son?"
"Son, the lady here who is letting me use her phone wants to speak with you, hang on."
Alice put the phone to her ear. "Hello there, I am Alice, and your Mom appeared here about a half hour ago, dripping wet and asking for help to get her car started. She's made several calls to her "ministers" and no one seems able to help her. It seems, from the drift of her conversation, that you won't help her either, but I'd appreciate it if you would help me to understand her situation a little better."
"I don't know quite what to tell you," replied the male voice. "In some ways I hardly even know the woman. She arrived at my door about four months ago and I hadn't seen her for 22 years. I haven't heard from her since I was seven. She told me she had been living in Las Vegas and someone gave her the new car she is driving and Jesus told her to look me up. She said she needed some help to get a job and get settled. I agreed to let her stay three months, and I've regretted it ever since. I just can't take it anymore! She is whacko with her bible and her missions. Somehow she is convinced Jesus will help her find a job and a place to live. Meanwhile, I am at my wits end. I know it sounds weird, but I just can't do this anymore. I told her she had to leave."
"I see," replied Alice, not knowing what else to offer with the woman listening to every word she spoke. Indeed, she could sense this young man's dilemma. His story was credible in that he was neither rude nor unfeeling in his manner on the phone.
"Have you tried finding a place for her in a homeless shelter?" Alice inquired.
"Yeah, I did some research and got some numbers for her to call, but she keeps insisting that it will be only a couple days until she finds work - though how she plans to find work without looking for it, and where she could work when she is so out of it, I'm sure I don't know. I have reached my limit, she needs help but she will just have to find it herself. I am done!"
"Ok. I hear what you are saying. Thanks for speaking with me," Alice returned the phone to his mother. She really couldn't fathom the details of why this young man had become so callous, but clearly he wasn't just being a punk, and she felt she had to respect his position. In fact, she was grateful for the information he had shared. This lady wasn't simply in distress, she had been in trouble for a long time.
Her son had hung up, the phone emitted a plaintive dull dial tone.
The square breasted woman stared at Alice helplessly, tears in her eyes. Alice returned eye contact, clueless as to what to do next. All Alice could think was that she didn't want to hang up just then. She couldn't share this woman's pain, and she didn't know its genesis, but she could honor it.
Her guest began, painfully slowly, retrieving her coat from the floor."Have you had anything to eat today?" asked Alice.
"I had a cup of coffee and a donut at a Mission this morning. Since then I have been sitting in my car most of the day. I don't have any money."
"Ok. Let me at least get you some soup. Hang on a sec." Alice returned to the kitchen and, making wide eyes at the assemblage, started reheating the soup. Maybe something to eat would help restore her visitor's brainpower. Besides, chicken soup beats donuts all to hell.
"What am I going to do now?" Alice sighed, looking her friends and her daughter.
"Don't ask me, Mom, I never did understand how you always manage to always get into this "rescue" mentality! It seems like half my life you've been taking on strays and then trying to find homes for them."
This wasn't the first time Alice had gotten mired in the muck of "helping."
Even as an adolescent, when the State of California gave a test of "emotional maturity" in ninth grade Driver's Ed, she'd been distressed to find that her score was lowered because she'd said she would stop to help someone who was stranded on the side of the road with a broken down car. Later, when she lived on Cape Cod, she'd become adept at using the guide published by the United Way to help impoverished friends in distress solve problems. Alice knew what it felt like to feel overwhelmed and alone and the dog-eat-dog world made her angry. And, Bear's memory was right on the money also. She likely resented her Mom's propensity to take on these battles, Alice reflected guiltily, especially the folks she had taken into her home.
Some fifteen years ago, one of them, an itinerant musical genius who was addicted to speed, had attacked Alice when she had finally decided to insist that he move on. Hemorrhaging whole handfuls of blood as she stood with her back to her daughter while telling her that she was okay but that she needed to go back to her bedroom and wait quietly until the police arrived, Alice was mortified that she had subjected her daughter to such trauma. Alice always wondered later whether it would have been better to have hugged Sas and taken her back to the bedroom herself, bloody face and all. Nothing was simple.
After that shameful adventure, Alice had worked for many years trying to understand her compulsion to help. She still felt it, and had come to understand it as vestigial mechanism of self defense. The compulsion was less intense now, menopause had blessedly muted much of Alice's penchant to lie down in the middle of the road and beg to be run over. Her approach to crisis was now was more tempered, more incremental - or so she thought.
"Well, Alice, you can't let her stay here, you've done that before and look where it got you! Let me see if I can get her moving, so I can go home. Do you have a gas can?" asked Uncle Fred. "Yup, it's either in the back of my car or in the garage. I can't remember where it was last. I use it for the lawn mower and it's been a while."
"Well then, do you have a five spot? Since it's not too late I can go to the gas station around the corner." Uncle Fred got up and put on his well-worn Levi jacket. Alice located her purse and handed him a bill.
"Thanks for being so practical, my friend!" Uncle Fred chuckled, patted Alice on the shoulder, and went off through the living room and out the front door.
The soup began to bubble and Alice ladled out a portion. She brought the soup bowl into the living room where she found the woman still wearing her coat and clutching her bible. Her guest was examining the bamboo bookshelf near the door, where Alice kept all her spiritual references, so she could find things when questions came up or she wanted to show her younger friends something relevant.
On the shelf at eye level were a large print Bible, and a very tiny New Testament: also The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Animal Speak, The Red Tent, The One Earth Herbal Sourcebook, Candle Majik. Essential Reiki, The Journey to Ixtlan, Walden, The I-Ching, The Motherpeace Tarot, The Leaves of Grass, Earth Prayers from Around the World and various other volumes of poetry. Even the little red IWW songbook.
It was quite a varied arsenal.
"Here, have some soup. It'll warm you up and help you to feel better. My friend has gone to try to buy some gas. Then we can see if your car will start."
On second thought. "I see you looking at my books. I'm a pagan. Do you know what that means?" Maybe a little witchcraft would get her moving out faster.
"What's a pagan?" asked the refugee.
"Well, it means I'm not a Christian for one thing. I worship many different gods and goddesses and I worship the earth. I guess it means I'm some sort of witch,"
Alice responded blithely, holding out the soup."Oh..hmm..well, thanks for the soup!" She took it eagerly and went over to the coffee table where she set it down with the Bible next to it and then, removing her coat again, sat down on the floor to eat. Too much information, figured Alice. Alice was into sharing, not proselytizing, so that was fine with her. Alice went back to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Her daughter accosted her once the door swung shut. "Mom, don't you dare take on this case! This one is really nuts, and if you let her stay you'll never get rid of her."
"Don't worry, Bear. One way or another, she will leave tonight! Still, even if she is nuts, its sad! How did we create a society that leaves so many people at loose ends like this? Parents that abandon their children and kids that feel they can't support their parents? Others, who, like me, have learned the hard way that it's "smarter" just to turn away? At least I can feed her, I took her in and need to see her out with some small token of kindness. Whether she knows it or not, she too is a child of the earth, and deserves nurture. I can't imagine what she feels like. Nor how her son feels."
Sitting down on the floor nearby, so that she was at eye level, Alice watched the woman spoon down the soup. After a while, Alice ventured, "Your son said that you can't live with him anymore. Have you tried to go to a homeless shelter?"
"No, I figured I'd just stay in my car."
"But, if you park your car too long in Baltimore, or in the wrong place, they will tow it, you know. Then you won't have a car, and it seems to be pretty important to you. Besides, aren't you cold?"
"I wasn't cold until the battery ran dead this afternoon. I had the heater going. I just don't see why I can't stay on with my son."
The doorbell rang again. The Sasgrrl ran out to let Uncle Fred back in. "Okay. I got gas. Tell me, where is your car?" he queried the visitor.
"It's a white Taurus, fairly new, parked on the next block down on the other side of the street."
"She just informed me that her battery ran dead," said Alice ruefully.
"Oh Shit!" said Uncle Fred. "And I don't have my jumper cables with me! You got any?"
"Naw, I don't need 'em. The mechanic at the corner only charges me five bucks when I need the occasional jump because I live so close. But he won't be there now, it's too late."
"Well, what a fine pickle this is! No gas and no battery...Maybe we should call the police and see if they can help?" suggested Fred.
So, Alice told the woman she thought she should call 311. At the very least she could tell the cops why the car was parked where it was and that she would get it tomorrow, so they wouldn't tow it. It wasn't legal to park where she had stopped. Also, maybe the police could help her start the car, or find a shelter?
Finally, unable to persuade the woman to do it herself, Alice made the call.
The dispatcher didn't sound very optimistic about finding a solution, but she said that since it wasn't very busy tonight, she would send an officer round in a while. Alice and Uncle Fred decided to play another hand of cards, figuring on a wait, leaving the woman reading her bible at the coffee table.
A nice young black cop arrived about 15 minutes later. Alice pulled him out in the driveway so she could talk to him out of earshot. At least it had finally ceased raining. She told him what had happened since the woman's arrival, that she was worried for the woman's welfare and didn't know where else to go for help.
"I can sympathize with your problem ma'am," he said, "but the shelters here in Baltimore close their doors at five pm. And, technically, I can't help anyone jump a car while I'm on the clock. The only way I could justify picking her up and transporting her would be if she was injured or committing a crime."
"Sheesh, that's a little nutty isn't it? How can they close the shelters at five? What if someone has a job or something? Look, Officer, I live here alone. While I think this lady is probably harmless, she can't stay here, and my friends have to leave soon. It just seems pretty cruel to send her back out on the street. What do you think I should do?"
"Tell you what, Ma'am. I'm off the clock for a break in five minutes. If you can hang on that long, I will come back and try to jump-start the car. That's the best I can offer."
"Thanks so much! That would be great! I sure do appreciate you volunteering your own time to help."Uncle Fred agreed that cops like that don't show up every time you need one. True to his word, the fellow returned in about ten minutes. Everyone trouped out to watch. Uncle Fred helped to get the woman settled in her car and emptied the gas can into her tank. He opened the hood while the cop got his cables and attached them to his battery. Then the policeman attached the jumpers carefully to her terminals and started revving his own car. He shouted to Uncle Fred to tell her to try the key. Nothing happened. A big fat nothing.
Uncle Fred stuck his head in the door and looked at the dash. "Lady, you've got your heater on, and your headlights as well! Of course it won't start! Turn off those headlights and the heater and we will try again."
"But, I can't turn off the headlights!"
"Why not?"
"Well - I'll lose my connection, my connection to the Lord, that way!"
"Look, Lady, you're about to lose your connection to your ride if you won't let this nice policeman help you!" Uncle Fred was getting exasperated. "We are trying to help, but we can't if you're going to insist on keeping the lights on!"
Uncle Fred reached in and shut off the headlights. "Now...try the key!"
Miraculously, the car chugged to a start. "Keep feeding it a little gas for a while...there that sounds better. Looks like you are good to go!"
"Thank you!" said the square breasted woman. "I guess I can go now." She rolled slowly off towards the intersection and turned down Belair Road.
The crowd on the sidewalk sighed collectively. "Well done!" said Alice. "I sure hope she gets a few miles down the road before she runs out of gas again! Thank you, everyone, for your help!" "Amen!" said Uncle Fred, right in unison with the cop. They shared a short sympathetic smile. Alice hoped the lady made it at least far enough that she could get a free breakfast in the morning. Everyone knew that the problem was far from solved, but at least for the time being, it was out of the living room and in God's hands. |
