A
Sabatini Family Story teller Meets the Homeless in Detroit
Family
narratives often involve taking the images of strangers, and trying to make
sense of them, as we share our interesting experiences. Do we really know them?
As Peace advocates we teach about diversity. We work at, and teach others to
see, beauty in the people we see and meet. I cannot be content to believe the
rumor and stereotype nooses that strangle chances for community harmony. I am working against bigotry and
prejudice, erasing in me, predefined categories of dislike and distrust. I deal
with individuals.
Our
community activists showed us to use peaceful tactics and peaceful lessons to
teach one another. Our community story tellers brought that hidden beauty out
for others to see, when looking first at people they did not understand. Black,
White, Hispanic, Mixed, Gay and Straight, Old and Young, Immigrants or
Citizens, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist. Our community was diverse. I live
and share my beliefs on tolerance and sensible peace.
In
high school, I developed a habit of staying on the bus, past my school stop, to
find a good place to sit and watch people in downtown Detroit. I ended up
changing schools in junior year to avoid a serious drop in GPA after devoting
almost a whole term to my self-guided lessons in people watching. My mother was
not pleased, but I legally signed myself out of school (in Michigan, this can
be done at age 16) and devoted my focus to watching my world from the eyes of a
writer, or story teller.
I
wanted my Detroit characters to be understood compassionately. in terms of the
assumptions we make, to tell a worthy tale about worthy people. To do that, I
had to be able to relate.
One
day I was watching out a restaurant window at “Stella,” an elderly homeless
woman who pretty much lived in a doorway of a door boarded up, with a stoop, in
Detroit. My people watching included watching Stella and all the others who
passed through her small world. How did people look at her? What was the body language
of those who glanced up and saw her? How long did they look? Did they smile?
Did they make eye-contact? Some stepped
away from her, pretending not to notice her at all, while compensating for
steps away from her at the same time. Other’s stopped and dropped change. People
create the context of other people’s lives.
This
story is about Stella’s life as a poetic human being. The passers-by are real.
Stella is real. The rose bud was real. Placing myself mentally in her position,
as a writer, I watch her world through her supposed eyes, so others may see
what I saw. For a moment, see the human.
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Stella’s
Time Shadows
Stella
lived in a doorway. She was an older woman, although she no longer kept track
of time .. at least not according to her age. When you are homeless, and take
refuge in a doorway, time only shows its face with the passing of the sun and
the change of seasons. Other than that, time changes its meaning.
In the
morning, Stella watched the sun’s light sweep night’s shadow into pieces, which
crawled into any space that would hide them. There, they would wait quietly
until the light receded, again allowing shadows to flow freely together and out
into the world. By evening, the shadows became a liquid giant, reaching out to
clasp its fingers across the city. Night’s shadow found an eerie voice in the
night breezes and winds. Even still, night gave Stella rest, by offering her a
blanket of privacy from casual eyes.
In the
summer, the sun’s heat was a thing to take cover from. In the winter, its
warmth was the first thing Stella greeted with gladness each day. In fact, the
sun was Stella’s only consistent company, and her activities depended on its
clock. The doorway that Stella lived in was located at the edge of Detroit’s
Greek Town. The door was always locked, and the building behind it was used for
storage. Nevertheless, it sat on the skirt of the posh restaurant circuit, near
Trapper’s Alley, a mall for the wealthy. The prohibitive prices made even
window shopping a discouragement for those who could not do more than imagine
purchase. Even the restaurants were a few and far between experience for me.
The
mornings were the best time for Stella, because they were quiet and still,
except for the sounds of traffic and the passersby who held jobs in the area.
She would be free to scrounge for food another day, away from the eyes of those
who would be repulsed by such a thing. Stella checked the garbage bins for
scraps. If it held its shape, and nothing was growing on it, and it didn’t
smell horrible, it was breakfast. She made sure she was safely back on her
perch by the time the eyes of the afternoon lunch crowd arrived.
Stella
watched most people only from the knees down. Legs with business attire
arrived, usually in groups, and usually in a hurry. Sometimes change would be
dropped to the ground, but Stella would ignore it until the legs moved off.
Even though the lunch crowd ws busy, it was the dinner crowd that the district
spent most of its time preparing for. The dinner crowd was mostly expensive
cars and high-heeled women who never made an appearance without their
glittering jewelry. And then there were the men, who laughed loudly at their
own jokes as they passed.
Mostly,
Stella watched the legs because the faces became a parade of reactions toward
the woman in the doorway. Tattered coat, unkempt hair, leaning on plastic bags
holding her belongings, Stella didn’t care to be gawked at, at all. She saw the
worry and horror pass across new faces as, just for a moment, they were
inclined to imagine what it would’ve been like to be her on that stoop. The
stoop was little bigger than a doormat, but it blocked wind and rain, and so
happily became home for Stella. Then she would watch the faces melt, like hot
wax, into either pity or contempt, and she had little patience for either. So,
she watched legs.
Stella
used to BE a pair of high-heeled feet once, too. But, over the years she had
retreated into her own way of thinking, and she found herself denied access to
sitting at such tables as the ones in Greek Town. They wee bitter choices she
made, thinking to choose her “self’ over her “things.” As Stella chose her “self,”
she found herself saying goodbye to her things, one loss at a time. Sometimes,
on the stoop, she wondered where the advantage of her choices lie. Other times,
she was gaggingly convinced that she didn’t need to repeat it again to herself.
Stella
watched the dinner crowd’s legs, oblivious to the shadow pieces that
progressively came out of their hiding places. Unperturbed, she held a broken
rose in her hand, retrieved from the sidewalk a couple dozen thoughts ago. A
bud, it would never open, broken and left behind by the high-heeled feet that
could’ve taken proper care of it. She saw an ironic similarity between herself
and the rose, as the good care it needed was beyond her. The rose, too, was a
transient. Stella knew it would quickly succumb to time’s shadows.
The edges
would turn black, as it was slowly robbed first of its glamour, and then its
life. The rose could not fight against time’s shadows. Its lifeblood would
continue to drain from it, from the edges inward, oblivious to its own changes.
Stella held the rose to her chest for a moment, thinking. Then she let it drop,
and she closed her eyes. She leaned her head against the doorway, letting the
shadows flow over her without resistance. But, unlike the rose, Stella would wake
to a new tomorrow. With that thought, she slept. Her time shadows were defeated
for another night.
---------*--------------------------------------*-------------------------------------------------------------------
News about Stella from my sister L.A.: The
community eventually took up a collection that put her in a nursing home where
she appeared to be in a healthier and less risky place than to
sleep than her doorway. For years she lived in Greek Town, as a regular stranger
in its midst.
There
are currently an average of over 35 million people in the United States that
are homeless each year. They are real people. They are not strangers in
America, they are us. http://www.google.com/search?q=homelessness+in+America&hl=en&rlz=1T4SKPT_enUS425US425&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=f9RVUfGVL5DM9ASg34CABw&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=1311&bih=588
About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855
About the Author: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nancy-bell/30/231/855
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