Homeless and Human

At the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft in Berkeley sits a guy, crosslegged, as if he is meditating on the countless pedestrians that rush by on their way to the Berkeley campus. The man has a dirty face, a scraggly beard and tattered clothes. He is homeless, needs a good bath and a nice warm meal. Yet none of the passers-by seem to notice him even though his life is just as sacred as that of the success-bound college students with their Cal gear and khaki shorts. If you listen carefully, you will hear this man utter a greeting and a “God Bless You” which, at times, sounds more heartfelt than when the US President says it to conclude another State of the Union Address in which not a word or a new policy is devoted to end the war on homelessness and poverty.
When I came to this country eleven years ago, I was shocked by street scenes with homeless people. In the Netherlands, few people are homeless and those you do see lingering in the streets at night are probably homeless by choice. So coming here I stared out of fascination—why were these people living under bridges and in the unyielding corners of monumental buildings?
“Look away, don’t make eye contact,” was the usual advice, for making eye contact was synonymous with getting into trouble. The last thing you want to do is provoke a homeless man—he could be mentally ill, after all. “Don’t mess with homeless people,” was a mantra of indifference which seemed justified by the general perception that homeless people were probably there for a reason…So I looked away and lived the American Dream in a quaint suburban house with an American husband and two blond cherubs, my Dutch-American children…on our trips into the city, I no longer stared at the toothless faces and the grimy hands that were extended from the sidewalks. I even told my children to look away and ignore the problem. Homelessness was as far removed from our quiet middle-class lives as the moon was from the sun…
But then, on a glorious suburban day our polished world caved in during the dot-com crash and within months we saw our reserves dwindle. It became increasingly difficult to pay the bills and after two and a half years of unemployment and scraping by, doing menial jobs and surviving on macaroni & cheese, I realized how easy it was to lose everything if fate turned against you. Homelessness was not privy to the losers, the outcasts and the mentally ill. Homelessness could happen to people like us, boring suburbanites who hit a patch of bad karma.
We still had a house but thoughts of selling the house and holding onto our health insurance were the demons that kept us awake…we were anticipating the abyss, an abyss I had become all too familiar with as I had started helping out in a soup kitchen that catered to homeless people. At first I was too busy helping out with the cooking and serving but as these became more routine, I had time to observe the haunted souls that dropped in. For the first time in eleven year, I actually did not look away but stared and registered.
There was a single mother with three children—children that, like my children, should have been in school at this hour. They were all coughing and in spite of the fact that they were probably living out of their car or sleeping in a flee-infested shelter, the mother insisted on manners, the manners of a society that had completely abandoned them.
“Johnny, put your hand in front of your mouth when you cough,,,”
“Ellen, darling, use your napkin…”
“Paul, say thank you…now listen, let’s pray and thank the Lord for this food.”
The children put their dirty hands over the white paper plates, closed their eyes and surrendered to the tranquil moment ordered by their mom. My eyes wandered off to a boy my son’s age, who walked in alone. I filled his plate and asked whether his parents would be coming. He looked at me, both suspicious and afraid. We were instructed by the staff not to ask questions. The boy was silent, so I did not press for an answer. I was curious though, and bringing a second dessert, I sat down with him and asked him about school.
“Don’t go to school much anymore,” he grumbled, “Both my parents work…but there is little food in the house and my mother thinks it more important to come here. This is my first hot meal this week.”
I look up, when at the end of the meal, a woman walks in: impeccably dressed, pearl necklace, high heels—the kind of woman you expect in a bistro downtown…I send a meaningful glance at our staff guy for the day, a Vietnam vet who has stories to fill a novel with but who never talks about ‘Nam anymore—not even with fellow vets. When the woman walks away and finds a private corner far away from all the other people, some of whom seem to be constantly enveloped with a urine scent that still makes me gag, the staffer tells me: “You know, we’re not here to judge—we’re here to feed. God knows where she’s at,” as he gives a careful nod in the direction of the woman “—maybe she lost her job and has to pay her parents’ nursing home bills, while also having to provide for her own family. Judging is easy—feeding a whole lot harder.”
As he’s saying this, I see another man scrape off his plate into a plastic bag under his table, then he comes over again, has his plate filled up again and repeats the exercise. This is against the rules, but I don’t report it, for it is a way of judging, too, and if the bag with the potpourri of food will hold him over for the rest of the day, I don’t care about rules.
I strike up another conversation with a couple who hold a newborn baby. They live in the streets and are remarkably upbeat about raising a newborn while they are exposed to the elements. I avoid politics (another staff rule) but ask how they cope.
“We’re okay really,” says the nineteen-year-old woman with five piercings in her ear. Her eyes are bloodshot. I make no judgments, just listen,
“The worst is that people in the streets don’t look at us anymore—they look away as if we’re dirty, or worse, as if we’re air. The baby attracts more attention, but as soon as we catch someone’s eye, they look away again. We might as well be dead…” Then she laughs and takes a bite from her salad which is dripping and greasy from her having used too much Ranch dressing. She needs the fat, for nursing that baby, a little boy who will most likely be homeless for the rest of his life.
An elderly woman walks out and thanks us for the meal; her mouth has holes where there should be teeth and her hair is a tangled web. ‘Proud to be an American,’ her t-shirt says.
“Interesting t-shirt you’ve got there,” I cannot help but be flippant in this basement of America’s downtrodden. She catches my irony and says, “Honey—I never bought it. Got it second-hand. Don’t care much for the text but I like the colors. God bless you.”

A month later my husband lands a job with a software company. We have slowly been crawling away from the snake pit of potential homelessness and hunger but I feel I know a bit better what this country hides under its veneer of patriotic platitudes that tout liberty and justice for all. What’s more, I make eye contact with every homeless person I see and if I happen to carry food, I give some to the man who’s sitting at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph. He is always grateful and has the grace to acknowledge me, even when I don’t carry food or have nothing to give him. He’s just homeless after all, and still human.