Homelessness – Beltane 2020

Thirty-eight years ago, I was standing in the driveway of the house where I grew up when a Rockledge cop said to me, “We can absolutely arrest her and charge her with battery right now if that’s what you want. She will go to jail. But either way, you need to find a new place to live.”

He had just finished examining my arm to confirm the teeth-marks that had resulted in my call. His partner was inside, talking to my mother, getting her side of the story. Ultimately, she heard the same thing, that she could be sent to jail immediately. All I had to do was say the word.

I didn’t.

Like many choices I made that day, I am not sure why.

I don’t remember exactly how the fight kicked off, or really what it was about. There had been friction between my mother and I since I’d turned eighteen a few months earlier, some of which stemmed from my father no longer paying child support even though I was still in high school. But I don’t think she liked me asserting any of my newfound independence.

What I remember is waking up with her screaming at me. I was on my feet when she burst into my room in a rage. I’m sure prompted by something I had or hadn’t done, though I can’t for the life of me remember what that might have been. Or maybe I’d been out late the night before and sleeping in, which she never liked.

What I do is remember standing in my underwear wondering what the hell was going on when she started pounding on me with her fists. This wasn’t the first time she’d gotten physical with me. A year or so before, she’d slung a frozen roast across the counter into my chest, cracking a rib or at least tearing cartilage, because she said I “was being sullen.” My father told me a horrific story that I only remember peripherally from when I was four.

Unlike then, this time I had a moment of crystal clarity. At the time I still had a very skewed impression of my mother, and the allocation of power and size between us. I remember having been afraid of her for a long time. Up until that very instant, I still saw her through a younger child’s eyes, as much bigger and more intimidating than she really was.

It was only as her fists were raining down on my chest that I finally realized that I was a 6’ 1” male and she was a 5’ 4” female more than twice my age. Though I wasn’t strong, I was stronger than she was, and had reach and at least 40 pounds on her. Even though I was barely awake, something clicked in my head that said I no longer had to take her abuse.

So, I grabbed her wrists to prevent her from hitting me anymore. I remember holding them firmly but not squeezing. I could stop her and there was not much she could do. With that epiphany, I remember feeling really proud of myself for having figured that out.

That lasted for a full second until she switched attack vectors and started kicking for my balls. Thankfully, most women overestimate this tactic. Most guys are really good at defending the boys unless they are taken by surprise. I was no different. I turned my hips to shield them, then outstretched my arms to full length.

Once again, I briefly thought I had the situation under control. I just needed her to understand it and calm the fuck down. Once again, I underestimated why in the Irish pantheon two of the three gods of war are female.

Up to now, she surprised me but hadn’t really hurt me, though that had absolutely been her intent. Her next move made that abundantly clear. She clamped her teeth on my forearm and bit down. Hard. The sudden pain got my full and undivided attention.

I still have no idea why I didn’t throw her into a wall. All I wanted to do was stop her, not hurt her. But this tested my patience. Instead, she got what she exactly wanted. I released her wrists, and took a step back, my fists now clenched to defend myself if she came at me again.

When she didn’t, I cautiously examined my arm to see what she had done. I was stunned to find the very clear, deep impressions of her teeth. Just short of breaking skin. This from a woman who was the teacher of sometimes young children and had zero tolerance for biting.

I glared up at her and said I could call the cops for that. She dared me to. She said they’d laugh when they arrived. She mocked that I’d been bitten and bested by my 42-year-old mother. Another mistake on her part in a series of bad decisions. I dialed 911 and told them what had happened. The dispatcher said a cruiser was on the way.

When it arrived, I recognized one of the two officers who got out of the car. He frequented the restaurant where I worked. He and I had talked a number of times. He’d pulled security duty at my boss’s wedding reception. He was personable but no-nonsense and showed no favoritism. He’d made that abundantly clear before.

He interviewed me in the driveway, his partner my mother inside the house. They separated us, per protocol, to see how our stories fit together, then compared notes. When he came out of that conclave, he told me my mother had confirmed most of what I’d said. She’d basically confessed, enough that they could charge her. But not me as he made it clear that I’d done nothing wrong. The marks on my arm were enough. They were still clearly visible after the fifteen minutes it took for the cruiser to arrive. His partner had informed her that her fate was in my hands.

As tempting as it was to have her thrown in jail just to make sure the message sank in, I knew there would be repercussions if I did. But I took his warning seriously. Domestic abuse never ends well where the abused and the abuser continue to cohabitate.

So, I told him they could cut her loose, got in my car and left. I had keys and planned to come back and collect my things the next day while she was at work.

But where to go? Where would I sleep that night?

Those were suddenly existential questions. I drifted around, still in shock, not knowing exactly where to go or what to do.

At some point, I called my grandparents in Cape Canaveral. My grandfather, my father’s father, made it clear that I could not go there. I sensed my grandmother was less than pleased. But it wasn’t in her nature to defy her husband. My other grandparents were fifteen hundred miles away, with the rest of my extended family. My sister was three thousand. My father at least a couple hundred, but I had good reason to doubt he would welcome me.

All my high school friends still lived at home. I could picture none of them being able to offer me a place to stay. Most of them had no inkling of my situation. Some still didn’t until just a few years ago. I’ve said before that when I was younger, I’d learned not to discuss life at home because of the long looks, the awkward silences and the distancing I’d received when I had. Society often values and rewards secrecy over safety in that regard.

Eventually, I ended up at my friend’s place in public housing. Yeah, the one from the 2 o’clock news. By then it was dark and I was desperate. I begged him to crash on his couch just for one night. Hell even a few hours. My only other option was sleeping in my car on the street outside. I didn’t know where else to go.

In the last essay, I alluded to the vagaries of public housing. Here’s a more concrete example of their Byzantine, if well-intentioned, rules.

As kids, most of us remember sleepovers. You know, where you and one friend or many get together for a night at one or another of your houses, either in guest beds or in sleeping bags on the floor. Usually you stay up late playing games or watching movies, then whisper even later into the night until a host parent somehow convinces you all to go to sleep.

Most people see it as a completely unremarkable childhood activity. When we were very young, staying a night away from home was a kind of rite of passage. Most parents I’ve talked to view it as a small, sometimes necessary break. Unless, of course, they are hosting.

That wasn’t really a thing in public housing. It couldn’t be. By rule of the Public Housing Authority, having anyone unregistered stay even a single night was a violation that could see the entire family evicted. Immediately.

My friend’s mother informed me of all that in no uncertain terms. I had no desire to put anyone at risk but, like a child, I was already shutting down mentally, unable to think clearly. I desperately needed time to reset and regroup. I’d run through every possibility I could think of.

My friend’s mother was torn in a way I’d rarely seen. She called me an adoptive son and I knew she meant it. I could see she truly wanted to help but felt constrained by circumstance. She quizzed me to see if I really had exhausted every other possibility. She looked stricken and horrified when I told her my grandparents had refused me shelter even for a single night.

But she was one of the few adults in my life who was familiar with my situation and not uncomfortable with knowing about it. In the past, she had called my mother, and talked with her woman to woman, trying to help smooth a situation out. She had been told, in no uncertain terms, to mind her own business and to never call again. She understood the anguish, the fear, the complete uncertainty I was going through.

That’s when she made a decision. I could see it on her face. True to her unique, pragmatic style, she turned away from me, looking instead at her son and informed him that she was going to bed. That she would be getting up at a certain time in the morning, which I’d never heard her do. That she wouldn’t come out until then. My friend nodded and repeated back the time. That was her tacit permission for me to stay as long as I was gone by then.

It was one of the bravest things I’ve ever witnessed. She put her family at risk. For me. It’s only with time that I’ve fully understood to what extent. Not something I am ever likely to forget.

But one night was all I needed. The next day, through good fortune and a little generosity, I signed a lease on a basic, furnished apartment. I received a small donation of bedding, towels and other household goods. I adjusted my hours at my minimum-wage job from part-time to full-time. That summer, I cooked and cleaned and paid my bills, day to day and month to month. In the end, my finances were roughly even, no more saving than I’d started with but no debt either. Not exactly the way I intended to spend the summer between high school and college, but life is what happens while we’re making other plans.

Some people will read this and say, it was only one night. Well, I would respectfully point out that’s hindsight. I didn’t know how things would turn out a priori. And I will never forget that feeling of uncertainty and heart-freezing fear. And I know that not everyone has that choice. If you wonder why so many people continue to live with abusers, to an extent many have no other good option.

“We are all just three bad breaks away from seeing throwing scud missiles as a valid career path.” (author unknown)

More importantly, we are all just three bad breaks away from being that person so many in our society like to look down on. That person caught in a downward spiral. That person who struggles. That person who needs help.

That could be from your attention wandering for a split second too long in a parking lot with a pedestrian, your birth control failing under normal parameters in high school or college, or that lump that you thought was a sebaceous cyst instead being something malignant. It could be an identity theft. It could be getting laid off from your job. It could be the family or circumstances you were born into. It could be a mental illness. Stack three of them together and you could be almost anyone.

Your life and circumstances can change in an instant, not always because of poor planning or poor choices but rather because sometimes random things happen to random people. If you've avoided them, you are exceptional in that you're lucky, not superior.

The day you forget that is the day you put your first foot into the grave. Because your sense of compassion and empathy has begun to die. And with it, your humanity.

Three bad breaks. My first was being assaulted. I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t intend it or provoke it. It came to me. In my room. In my underwear. My second could have been not having found a safe place to stay for a night and shake off the shock so I could decide what to do next, what needed to be done. Because I did, I got a shot to turn things around. My third could have been not finding help in nailing down a place to live that I could afford. Without it, I would likely have had to crawl back home. Had that happened, one of us living there might have eventually ended up dead.

My outcome was only possible because someone took a chance and gave me a night to catch my breath.

So when I see that homeless person crouched beside my local Outback, or get accosted by a vagrant in St. Pete on my way from a restaurant to my car, or I hear about people in desperate need of a social safety net, my first thought isn’t “hey, I bootstrapped myself, and so should you.” No, even if I don’t always spare a dollar, I spare a direct look in the eye and a nod of acknowledgement. I spare a vote to get society pointed in the right direction even if it impacts me. I spare a donation to a local shelter.

I know it’s not much, but more than some. Because I’ve been there, if only for one night, and remember how it feels. I walked away with a lesson and a lifelong perspective. A lesson I was lucky to learn so cheaply.

But having that lesson defines the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes, thinking about how they might feel and acting accordingly. Empathy is relating to their situation by drawing on your own experience, even tangentially. Sympathy is an important part of the social contract but sometimes drifts into unproductive pity. Empathy is more powerful, yet often more difficult to maintain. Fundamentally, the difference is one between imagination and experience, no matter how small or remote.

I suspect that when the coronavirus crisis ends, a number of people who started with a bootstrap attitude will have a broader understanding of what three breaks might mean. While I wish nothing ill upon anyone, I hope we as a society will use that newfound perspective wisely.

© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III