Surrendur
At first, he just looked large, like a human pyramid. He was hunkered down from the cold and wrapped up so that I could barely see his face concealed as it was under his hood. On the sidewalk in front of him was a message on cardboard asking for help. I avoided eye contact because I just wanted to get home, and I might have made it, because the hood was pulled around his face so much that I couldn't be sure he saw me . . . I got about 100 feet before I lost the argument and turned back.
"You must be cold," I said, and he lifted his head to look at me at an angle, nodding affirmation. "Are you hungry," I asked. Quietly, he said yes.
Would he like to go to MacDonald's? They didn't want him in there because of his hygiene," he explained. Was there a place he could go eat? Subway, he said. They let him come in there and he sat in the back away from people.
He rose, holding his wraps around him tightly, keeping his face well covered -- I presumed because of the nip in the air. He smelled. Not unbearably bad, but enough that I had to wonder what I had gotten myself into. He turned to pick up a sturdy milk basket, which contained some bags and a polyester blanket he could use to fight off the chill. Subway was within 50 feet. We got inside and into the order line.
I said Tuna; he said chicken. We each got soft drinks and a cookie, totalling $21.46 for the two of us. I was almost within the parameter of a maximum $10 for a meal that I established when I decided to purchase 100 meals. We filled our soft drink containers and walked to the back of the store, which opened out to the lobby of the building hosting the sandwich shop. As we ate and spoke occasionally I noticed the tatoo on the back of his right hand. The "CD" stood for Central District, and the Crown over the letters represented King County, he explained.
Part way through the meal I said I was Robert. Because of the nature of this post, we'll just call him "D." Because of his quiet nature and humility, it only occurred to me as we parted later that, as well as being quite heavy, D was also quite tall. I wondered afterward if he had mastered the art of unoticeability--a way of coming to grips with the reality of not being seen.
His origins; his health
D grew up in Seattle. He has been to Hawaii. His parents were black, Hawaiian, Samoan. He is a big guy. He shuffles when he walks, because he has had diabetes since he was 12. I asked Dre about controlling his diabetes. He's short of money for insulin, but he has a friend who is also a diabetic, and who shares his insulin with Dre.
D's neighborhood"
He has lived on the street for some time now; he had been giving his mother money for rent, and apparently she wasn't paying the rent, because they were evicted. She lived with him on the street. Perhaps she died on the street; we didn't discuss her death.
D has a tent and lives under a bridge. He deals with his mobility challengy by riding free on the bus that serves the core of the downtown. He uses the bathrooms in friendly restaurants like Subway, and he brushes his teeth in his tent.
I asked him if there was anyone he was connected with in his life; he said he had a neighbor. A neighbor? That's when it hit me -- on the street, the man in the tent next to you is what you call a "neighbor." And all this time, I had thought a neighbor was someone who lived in a house near you and maybe brought you his yard clippings to put on your garden.
His scar
As D spoke, I had trouble not staring at the strange broad lump of flesh undulating and riding the lower side of his left jaw. It took me time to discover it, because of his manner -- and the scarf inside his hood, which he admitted using for concealment. Even after we both accepted it as something to discuss he slipped the scarf up over it. The fleshy mass is situated over a scar, he said. (I have since learned that this is a "keloid," This is a condition, most commonly seen in people of African descent, in which flesh grows over a scar; in D's cae, it has left a lump perhaps 3/8 of an inch thick and larger than the back of my hand.
D was tired. He had earned 25 cents as of early afternoon. It's hard making a living when your hygiene disqualifies you from eating in MacDonald's. D had been sitting on the bench a good share of the day. I opened my wallet and gave him $5; I had spent as much for an impressive sea shell in Mazatlan a couple days before. If I had given him $15, he could have purchased some insulin. I wonder afterward whether I should have given him more.
He thanked me for the meal. We walked to the door. He was holding his milk basket with the blanket in one hand and his soft drink in the other. Since he had no free hand to shake, I squeezed his wrist and wished him well. I had waited until after we finished eating before I touched him.
Should I have done more? Enroute home I recalled a Ghandi quote from the Women's March on January 21: " "What ever you do will not be enough, but it it matters enormously that you do it."
Meals distributed so far: 15.
Ubuntu
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