I knew her by reputation before I met her.
It was an ugly situation. Mom (Darla) had transferred from another county and Teresa, our director, believed that mom was trying to elude child protective services. She was allowed to come to Chrysalis, but only with the understanding that we would contact our local agency, Childrens' Services, to continue the case with her daughter. I think there were allegations of sexual abuse.
Tina was a slip of a girl, only about 4 years old. But I heard rumblings from fellow staff that she was a handful with a mouth on her.
One day I was alone in the office when I turned around to see Tina standing on top of one of our filing cabinets. I don't even know how she got up there. It was a pretty tall cabinet, about 4 feet tall. I went over, held up my arms, and asked her sweetly to let me help her down, I didn't want her to get hurt. She looked down at me.
"F**k you," she said.
Somehow I was the lucky staff member who took Tina for her intake interview at Childrens' Services.
The problems started in the reception area. Tina was a Tasmanian devil, darting around the waiting room and trying to scale the wall that separated the receptionist from the clients. That woman must have seen it all, because I don't even remember her reacting. Then Tina bolted out the door. Fortunately we were in a largish administration building so I caught up to her in the catacomb of cubicles that was the child support agency across the hall. I carried her back to Childrens' Services and held her on my lap.
She began kicking my shins. Hard. I wrapped one of my legs over hers so she couldn't. I had my arms wrapped around her so she couldn't escape. She started biting. I kept one arm wrapped around hers and used the other to hold her under her chin. That is how the social worker found us.
He was an earnest, kindly young man who led us into an interview room. When he asked Tina what had happened, the transformation was remarkable. All the spirit drained out of her. The former ball of energy sat quietly, did not raise her eyes from the floor, and said she couldn't talk about it. And she didn't.
The nice young man fetched one of his co-workers, an older, grandmotherly woman hoping that this would make Tina more comfortable and open to sharing. It didn't. The interview was a bust.
I don't know what ever happened to Tina. Her mother was a streetwise piece of work who always seemed somewhat bemused by Tina's behavior. Darla ended up in local public housing and managed to disappear into the underworld. I don't think Childrens' Services ever caught up with her.
So now I find myself getting back into shelter work some 20+ years later. It's unlikely that I'll encounter the same clients, it's more likely that the abuser this time around will be sweet little Tommy,
Martha's son.
And maybe my client will be Tina.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Collateral Damage
When I started out in the shelter biz, I didn't have children. In fact, at 22 years old I was really a kid myself. And the fact that I was the youngest of all my siblings made me even less aware of typical child behavior.
What amazed me, then, about the kids I met at the shelter was how normal they seemed. Mostly. But what did I know?
Children are remarkable creatures. Their lives can be pretty dysfunctional but, hey, if that is their frame of reference they somehow just go with it. Mom whisked them out of their homes to an unfamiliar house with complete strangers, but as long as there were toys and a TV they managed to adapt.
In retrospect, I realized that this was actually a manifestation of their chaotic lives. They would adapt almost TOO well. It showed how accustomed they were to instability, to mom being upset and tearful.
I think it was the exception to see a kid really act out what they were learning at home. I do remember one girl in particular, I'll call her Tiffany. She was in the neighborhood of 6 - 8 years old, and already something of a demon. Her mom was trying to get her ready to leave the house one day, and Tiffany didn't want to go. She kicked her mom while she was trying to put her boots on and, as I recall, called her names that I don't think I can reprint here. In fact, I think she even spit on her mom. I don't think this girl was much better with the shelter staff, either.
Fast forward a few years...I happened to catch a TV news story about a house fire in a nearby town. There was a tragic fatality, a sweet young girl had lost her life. Yes, it was Tiffany. A horrible fate, I know, and not one I would wish on anyone. But their description of her nearly made me choke. That child was hateful.
Then there was Martha, a woman who came to us from straight from prison as I recall. I think she had set fire to her house when she was drunk, the details are hazy. But she had been in a violent relationship and had a young son who I think stayed with abuser's mother while his mother did time. Martha was trying to get back on track. She was sober and faithful to her AA program. She was thin, pale, quiet, and as fragile as a piece of paper.
Her son, Tommy, was only about 4 years old and a cutie. Mostly. But when he got angry he would tell Martha he hated her. I've since learned that kids do that, but this tore Martha up. I remember her eyes welling with tears while telling me about an incident in which he had tried to hit her with a TV antenna or some such thing while again telling her how much he hated her. She never knew what to do, but always told him that she loved him. Her guilt and pain were palpable.
Eventually Martha and Tommy did move to their own apartment. I can only pray that it worked out.
The most memorable child was Tina. She deserves her own entry.
So I'll just end this by saying that I left the shelter swearing that I was never going to have kids. I was so adamant about only having cats that when I did end up pregnant a few years later, there were people in my social circle convinced that it would be a litter of kittens.
What amazed me, then, about the kids I met at the shelter was how normal they seemed. Mostly. But what did I know?
Children are remarkable creatures. Their lives can be pretty dysfunctional but, hey, if that is their frame of reference they somehow just go with it. Mom whisked them out of their homes to an unfamiliar house with complete strangers, but as long as there were toys and a TV they managed to adapt.
In retrospect, I realized that this was actually a manifestation of their chaotic lives. They would adapt almost TOO well. It showed how accustomed they were to instability, to mom being upset and tearful.
I think it was the exception to see a kid really act out what they were learning at home. I do remember one girl in particular, I'll call her Tiffany. She was in the neighborhood of 6 - 8 years old, and already something of a demon. Her mom was trying to get her ready to leave the house one day, and Tiffany didn't want to go. She kicked her mom while she was trying to put her boots on and, as I recall, called her names that I don't think I can reprint here. In fact, I think she even spit on her mom. I don't think this girl was much better with the shelter staff, either.
Fast forward a few years...I happened to catch a TV news story about a house fire in a nearby town. There was a tragic fatality, a sweet young girl had lost her life. Yes, it was Tiffany. A horrible fate, I know, and not one I would wish on anyone. But their description of her nearly made me choke. That child was hateful.
Then there was Martha, a woman who came to us from straight from prison as I recall. I think she had set fire to her house when she was drunk, the details are hazy. But she had been in a violent relationship and had a young son who I think stayed with abuser's mother while his mother did time. Martha was trying to get back on track. She was sober and faithful to her AA program. She was thin, pale, quiet, and as fragile as a piece of paper.
Her son, Tommy, was only about 4 years old and a cutie. Mostly. But when he got angry he would tell Martha he hated her. I've since learned that kids do that, but this tore Martha up. I remember her eyes welling with tears while telling me about an incident in which he had tried to hit her with a TV antenna or some such thing while again telling her how much he hated her. She never knew what to do, but always told him that she loved him. Her guilt and pain were palpable.
Eventually Martha and Tommy did move to their own apartment. I can only pray that it worked out.
The most memorable child was Tina. She deserves her own entry.
So I'll just end this by saying that I left the shelter swearing that I was never going to have kids. I was so adamant about only having cats that when I did end up pregnant a few years later, there were people in my social circle convinced that it would be a litter of kittens.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Pearl
Time for another story. Pearl. She wound-up being a classic Katy Intake.
Working the shelter was a lot like working in an emergency room. Long periods of boredom punctuated by heart-thumping intensity. You never knew what to expect when the phone rang.
In the early days the phone set-up was pretty crude. When I started out at Chrysalis we only had 2 phone lines, one for each major populated region of the county. That necessitated having two phones, the "old-fashioned" sort with a dial pad and a receiver connected by a curly cord. Do they even make them anymore? At least they didn't have a rotary dial! They may have been advanced enough to have a "hold" button. I really don't remember.
What I do remember, as I said, is that we only had 2 phones lines. There was no dedicated office line or personal resident line. That meant that a phone call could be anything - an administrative matter, a personal call for a staff member or resident, or you would answer the phone and be ushered straight into some one's worst nightmare. Some women would call and ask for help with the abuser fuming in the background. We had a policy. If the threat was immediate the caller was advised to call the police and/or get to a safe place BEFORE talking to us. We never tried to "talk down" the abuser or defuse tense situations. I never did it, but if the situation seemed really bad the staff would try to keep the imperiled person on one phone while calling the police on the other.
Most often, though, the women would call when it was safe - immediately after an incident or when the tension was just starting to build and they were alone. They would call looking for support, legal advice, or a shoulder to cry on. Many never came to the shelter.
What I remember about Pearl was that she was so sad. Her voice was timid, she was often tearful, and she just sounded like a lost soul. She was so broken-down she couldn't see any way out of her situation.
A quick word about abusers. (NOTE: in my world the abuser will be "he" and the victim "she." Same-sex relationships really weren't on the radar yet, I don't remember encountering any at the shelter, and while I know there are women who abuse men I still believe it's not as common and has a somewhat different dynamic. So there.) Abusers, like most things in life, occur on a spectrum: what I liked to call "ignorant drunk" through "crazy son-of-a-bitch." The ignorant drunk is usually none-too-bright and only acts up when drinking (hence the name) or presented with some other external pressure such as money problems. They may actually feel remorse for their actions but just don't know how to cope. The crazy sons-of-bitches are the scary ones. They seem to enjoy inflicting pain and get off on dominating their partner. They are dangerous.
Pearl's husband tended towards the latter. He was quite violent and had her pinned psychologically.
Pearl would call to talk but resisted coming to the shelter. She did agree to meet with a staff person once. Pearl's husband had attacked her with a pair of scissors and she had fended him off, suffering cuts on her arms in the process. Cindy, the staff person who met her, suggested that she come to the shelter, but insisted that she get medical attention for her arms first because the wounds were not particularly fresh and they were, well, disgusting. Pearl refused.
It was a beautiful, sunny September day when she called me. If I remember correctly it was my future husband's birthday, so I was probably all a-twitter about making celebration plans and hoping to skate through a reasonably easy work shift. Then Pearl called. Her husband had just beaten her and then had left the house. She wanted to leave. She agreed to come to the shelter.
Keeping a secret location was part of our security, so we always picked women up at the local police station or any public location they could get to. There was a shopping center near where Pearl lived. I agreed to meet her there.
OK. She was not what I expected when I pulled up. Imagine, if you will, a size 16 person wedged into size 12 stretchy, leopard-skin print pants topped with a striped shirt. There may have even been a ratty fur coat involved in the picture, also. She clutched a few possessions in a plastic grocery bag. She was distraught.
As stated before, she had been beaten up that morning. There were no marks on her face but I remember her telling me that her husband had kicked her in the ribs. As we were riding in the car she started complaining that her chest hurt, and she was having trouble breathing. I tried to remain calm but in my head I started speculating whether maybe she had broken ribs and a punctured lung. Then her eyelids fluttered and she passed-out. I called her name repeatedly and she didn't respond.
Now I really was fighting panic. I was driving, so I couldn't just reach over and check for vital signs. My imagination started getting away from me. Now it wasn't just a punctured lung, but horrible internal injuries. Was she even still alive? "OH MY GOD, A WOMAN MAY HAVE JUST DIED IN MY CAR AND IT'S MY BOYFRIEND'S BIRTHDAY, NO LESS!"
I decided it would be faster to just drive to the hospital rather than pull-over and look for help. Cell phones did not exist yet.
I think I pulled up to the ambulance entrance and raced into the hospital babbling about an unconscious woman in my car. She was trundled into a wheelchair and we were directed to the registration room with all of the other sad cases. Still on overdrive, I breathlessly explained that I was from the shelter and this woman had been assaulted and she was having trouble breathing and...
The attending nurse calmly checked Pearl's vital signs, started wheeling her away, then turned to me scornfully and snapped "she's DRUNK!"
Oh.
I think Pearl had some bruised ribs, but her injuries weren't too severe. She may have come to the shelter but I'm pretty sure she didn't last there.
The Katy Intake strikes again.
Working the shelter was a lot like working in an emergency room. Long periods of boredom punctuated by heart-thumping intensity. You never knew what to expect when the phone rang.
In the early days the phone set-up was pretty crude. When I started out at Chrysalis we only had 2 phone lines, one for each major populated region of the county. That necessitated having two phones, the "old-fashioned" sort with a dial pad and a receiver connected by a curly cord. Do they even make them anymore? At least they didn't have a rotary dial! They may have been advanced enough to have a "hold" button. I really don't remember.
What I do remember, as I said, is that we only had 2 phones lines. There was no dedicated office line or personal resident line. That meant that a phone call could be anything - an administrative matter, a personal call for a staff member or resident, or you would answer the phone and be ushered straight into some one's worst nightmare. Some women would call and ask for help with the abuser fuming in the background. We had a policy. If the threat was immediate the caller was advised to call the police and/or get to a safe place BEFORE talking to us. We never tried to "talk down" the abuser or defuse tense situations. I never did it, but if the situation seemed really bad the staff would try to keep the imperiled person on one phone while calling the police on the other.
Most often, though, the women would call when it was safe - immediately after an incident or when the tension was just starting to build and they were alone. They would call looking for support, legal advice, or a shoulder to cry on. Many never came to the shelter.
What I remember about Pearl was that she was so sad. Her voice was timid, she was often tearful, and she just sounded like a lost soul. She was so broken-down she couldn't see any way out of her situation.
A quick word about abusers. (NOTE: in my world the abuser will be "he" and the victim "she." Same-sex relationships really weren't on the radar yet, I don't remember encountering any at the shelter, and while I know there are women who abuse men I still believe it's not as common and has a somewhat different dynamic. So there.) Abusers, like most things in life, occur on a spectrum: what I liked to call "ignorant drunk" through "crazy son-of-a-bitch." The ignorant drunk is usually none-too-bright and only acts up when drinking (hence the name) or presented with some other external pressure such as money problems. They may actually feel remorse for their actions but just don't know how to cope. The crazy sons-of-bitches are the scary ones. They seem to enjoy inflicting pain and get off on dominating their partner. They are dangerous.
Pearl's husband tended towards the latter. He was quite violent and had her pinned psychologically.
Pearl would call to talk but resisted coming to the shelter. She did agree to meet with a staff person once. Pearl's husband had attacked her with a pair of scissors and she had fended him off, suffering cuts on her arms in the process. Cindy, the staff person who met her, suggested that she come to the shelter, but insisted that she get medical attention for her arms first because the wounds were not particularly fresh and they were, well, disgusting. Pearl refused.
It was a beautiful, sunny September day when she called me. If I remember correctly it was my future husband's birthday, so I was probably all a-twitter about making celebration plans and hoping to skate through a reasonably easy work shift. Then Pearl called. Her husband had just beaten her and then had left the house. She wanted to leave. She agreed to come to the shelter.
Keeping a secret location was part of our security, so we always picked women up at the local police station or any public location they could get to. There was a shopping center near where Pearl lived. I agreed to meet her there.
OK. She was not what I expected when I pulled up. Imagine, if you will, a size 16 person wedged into size 12 stretchy, leopard-skin print pants topped with a striped shirt. There may have even been a ratty fur coat involved in the picture, also. She clutched a few possessions in a plastic grocery bag. She was distraught.
As stated before, she had been beaten up that morning. There were no marks on her face but I remember her telling me that her husband had kicked her in the ribs. As we were riding in the car she started complaining that her chest hurt, and she was having trouble breathing. I tried to remain calm but in my head I started speculating whether maybe she had broken ribs and a punctured lung. Then her eyelids fluttered and she passed-out. I called her name repeatedly and she didn't respond.
Now I really was fighting panic. I was driving, so I couldn't just reach over and check for vital signs. My imagination started getting away from me. Now it wasn't just a punctured lung, but horrible internal injuries. Was she even still alive? "OH MY GOD, A WOMAN MAY HAVE JUST DIED IN MY CAR AND IT'S MY BOYFRIEND'S BIRTHDAY, NO LESS!"
I decided it would be faster to just drive to the hospital rather than pull-over and look for help. Cell phones did not exist yet.
I think I pulled up to the ambulance entrance and raced into the hospital babbling about an unconscious woman in my car. She was trundled into a wheelchair and we were directed to the registration room with all of the other sad cases. Still on overdrive, I breathlessly explained that I was from the shelter and this woman had been assaulted and she was having trouble breathing and...
The attending nurse calmly checked Pearl's vital signs, started wheeling her away, then turned to me scornfully and snapped "she's DRUNK!"
Oh.
I think Pearl had some bruised ribs, but her injuries weren't too severe. She may have come to the shelter but I'm pretty sure she didn't last there.
The Katy Intake strikes again.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Sanity is in the Eye of the Beholder
Back to the beginning. As I said at the outset, I started at Chrysalis House as a practicum placement my senior year in college, and, as I also stated earlier, that education really did nothing to prepare me to work at the shelter. Being almost 22 years old, however, I didn't know that.
The first few weeks were somewhat awkward since Theresa, the director, didn't really know what to do with us. One time we hung posters around town advertising the support groups. Since the college loaned us a car to get to the shelter, we were also asked to run the residents around on a lot of errands. It felt like busy work to Cynthia, my fellow intern from the psych practicum, and me.
At one point we decided we would hold a parenting group for the shelter residents. Today I'm amazed at the chutzpah it took to think that we could do that. We were two idealistic college students who clearly did not have children or any similarity to the residents' backgrounds. I think we only tried it once and learned our lesson.
We must have said something to Theresa about feeling underutilized. What we didn't know at the time was that taking people on errands was actually a fairly significant chunk of the real job since there was no effective mass-transit system. The other thing we didn't know was that Theresa had a sweet, passive-aggressive edge. I remember her turning to us one afternoon and saying she had a special task for us. There was a woman at the homeless shelter who reported being in a violent relationship, so the homeless shelter, Safe Haven, wanted to know if she could come to Chrysalis. The problem was that, although she was receiving treatment, she was schizophrenic. Theresa wanted us to go talk to her to ascertain whether she was appropriate for the shelter.
This was a big issue for us. None of the staff at Chrysalis had the credentials or training to handle a mental health crisis. Plus the fact that the residents lived in very close quarters. It was probably stressful enough to be in the shelter without living with someone who was prone to outbursts or hearing voices. There was a public mental health agency we could turn to, I'll call them The Help Center, but we didn't hold them in very high regard. Mostly they seemed to go out of their way to NOT travel to meet any potential clients. Active mental illness, therefore, meant being a DNS - Do Not Shelter.
An aside - this was, and probably still is, a gaping hole in our mental health system. There needs to be emergency shelters that specifically cater to people with mental issues who may not require full-on hospitalization.
So Theresa innocently asked us to assess this woman's mental status because we were, after all, psychology students. I swear there was a glint in her eye. She probably knew all along that we were pretty ignorant of the real world.
So Cynthia and I did it. We went to the homeless shelter and talked to Mary. (Visiting the homeless shelter was in itself an adventure since it was in a pretty intense housing project.) Mary was a petite, upper-middle-aged woman with bottle-blonde hair. What I remember about her was that she was pretty quiet. She was stretched out on her bed clutching a pillow. I have no recollection what we talked about, but there was no loosening of associations, tangental speech, or word salad, so we thought she was fine. We returned to Chrysalis and reported to Theresa that she should come to the shelter.
Mary lasted less than 24 hours. She got kinda freaked-out her first night there and returned home.
She was the first of what came to be considered "Katy Intakes." My co-workers learned to be wary of Katy Intakes. The people I cleared for shelter had a higher-than-usual chance of having mental problems. Mary did return to the shelter at least one other time. There was also Donna, the developmentally disabled woman with bulemia, Christy, the wide-eyed waif with bipolar disorder, and Holly, who actually did get hauled from the shelter to the psych ward by The Help Center after having a conversation with herself in multiple voices. And these are only the ones I can remember right off the top of my head.
I apparently lack what can only be called "crazy radar." I have a high tolerance for different behavior, I guess, and so it rings no warning bells. What some people would call pathological I consider to be merely eccentric. What does that say about me?
I'm still pondering that one.
The first few weeks were somewhat awkward since Theresa, the director, didn't really know what to do with us. One time we hung posters around town advertising the support groups. Since the college loaned us a car to get to the shelter, we were also asked to run the residents around on a lot of errands. It felt like busy work to Cynthia, my fellow intern from the psych practicum, and me.
At one point we decided we would hold a parenting group for the shelter residents. Today I'm amazed at the chutzpah it took to think that we could do that. We were two idealistic college students who clearly did not have children or any similarity to the residents' backgrounds. I think we only tried it once and learned our lesson.
We must have said something to Theresa about feeling underutilized. What we didn't know at the time was that taking people on errands was actually a fairly significant chunk of the real job since there was no effective mass-transit system. The other thing we didn't know was that Theresa had a sweet, passive-aggressive edge. I remember her turning to us one afternoon and saying she had a special task for us. There was a woman at the homeless shelter who reported being in a violent relationship, so the homeless shelter, Safe Haven, wanted to know if she could come to Chrysalis. The problem was that, although she was receiving treatment, she was schizophrenic. Theresa wanted us to go talk to her to ascertain whether she was appropriate for the shelter.
This was a big issue for us. None of the staff at Chrysalis had the credentials or training to handle a mental health crisis. Plus the fact that the residents lived in very close quarters. It was probably stressful enough to be in the shelter without living with someone who was prone to outbursts or hearing voices. There was a public mental health agency we could turn to, I'll call them The Help Center, but we didn't hold them in very high regard. Mostly they seemed to go out of their way to NOT travel to meet any potential clients. Active mental illness, therefore, meant being a DNS - Do Not Shelter.
An aside - this was, and probably still is, a gaping hole in our mental health system. There needs to be emergency shelters that specifically cater to people with mental issues who may not require full-on hospitalization.
So Theresa innocently asked us to assess this woman's mental status because we were, after all, psychology students. I swear there was a glint in her eye. She probably knew all along that we were pretty ignorant of the real world.
So Cynthia and I did it. We went to the homeless shelter and talked to Mary. (Visiting the homeless shelter was in itself an adventure since it was in a pretty intense housing project.) Mary was a petite, upper-middle-aged woman with bottle-blonde hair. What I remember about her was that she was pretty quiet. She was stretched out on her bed clutching a pillow. I have no recollection what we talked about, but there was no loosening of associations, tangental speech, or word salad, so we thought she was fine. We returned to Chrysalis and reported to Theresa that she should come to the shelter.
Mary lasted less than 24 hours. She got kinda freaked-out her first night there and returned home.
She was the first of what came to be considered "Katy Intakes." My co-workers learned to be wary of Katy Intakes. The people I cleared for shelter had a higher-than-usual chance of having mental problems. Mary did return to the shelter at least one other time. There was also Donna, the developmentally disabled woman with bulemia, Christy, the wide-eyed waif with bipolar disorder, and Holly, who actually did get hauled from the shelter to the psych ward by The Help Center after having a conversation with herself in multiple voices. And these are only the ones I can remember right off the top of my head.
I apparently lack what can only be called "crazy radar." I have a high tolerance for different behavior, I guess, and so it rings no warning bells. What some people would call pathological I consider to be merely eccentric. What does that say about me?
I'm still pondering that one.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Sweet Jane
OK. Now I've gone and done it. I just had to unlock the memory box and now they are tumbling out. My plan, such as it is, is to record these stories as I think of them, in no particular order.
I'm not certain why I start with Jane except for the fact that it's a good story.
In two respects her story was not typical. For one, she did not have children. For another, most women we dealt with did not have visible injuries. It is amazing the different ways there are to hurt a person without leaving marks.
She arrived at the shelter at a point when I was employed there and had some experience under my belt. We had a big dry erase board in the office on which we would write the names of the residents and in which room they were staying. The shelter was (theoretically) staffed 24 hours a day. Part of the morning routine was checking the board for new intakes from the previous night.
It's important to point out that this was a group living situation, thus a certain amount of regimentation was necessary to assure the smooth running of the place. The families did not just hang around doing nothing. There really wasn't time for that. The house itself needed to be maintained, so there was a rotating chore list for cooking meals, doing dishes, and cleaning bathrooms. There really is no escape from housework! The women also had a limited amount of time, 30 days, to figure out what to do and where to live.
The full-time staffer I worked with, Wendy, was the daughter of a state trooper and an enforcer of the rules. She came in that morning and noted that the new resident was not yet up and about, so she sent me upstairs to rouse her.
That's when I met Jane.
She was awake, but still cowered under her blanket. She had two of the worst looking black eyes I think I have ever seen. With her small frame and swollen face she bore an uncanny resemblance to ET. I'm hoping that I remember correctly that I didn't have the heart to make her get out of bed. Once Wendy saw her I think she agreed.
Jane was a ghost of a person. Petite and soft-spoken with a gentle southern drawl. I swear she trembled all the time.
But the clock was running. She had to move forward in putting a life back together.
A rite of passage for coming to the shelter was applying for Welfare (aka Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), now known as TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families)). It was a simple equation. Women in the shelter were classified as homeless. Unless you had the money to hire a civil attorney, or good grounds for an arrest, you were not going to be returning to the home you came from. The shelter only received funding for each resident for a 30 day stay. In that time these women, most of whom didn't work, had to come up with a regular income and enough money for a deposit, first month's rent, and utilities. Welfare, for all its headaches, took care of that.
I took Jane to the Welfare office. Imagine your most stereotypical image of the place and I'm sure this place was worse. The building it used to be housed in, it has since relocated, was an old school which had not been remodeled very well. It retained a certain oppressive, dusty, institutional atmosphere. The long waiting room had no windows, just big overhead fluorescent lights. The walls were painted a color that must have been called "Bureaucratic Dinge" on the paint swatch. I also used to joke that the receptionists were raised on a special farm. They were large women parked behind the glass who, I swear, absolutely never cracked a smile. Not rude, exactly, but any attempts at pleasantry made no impact on their demeanor.
This was torturous for Jane. Not only was it humiliating to have to apply for public assistance, but she was convinced that everyone was staring at her. Truth be told she was right.
I don't think she stayed at the shelter very long. She was too fragile and returned home. This happened a lot. Unless the resident had been a complete nightmare to work with, and some were, we always let the women know that they were welcome to call or come back to us if needed.
Fast forward about a year.
Sharon came back, and it was amazing. She was a new woman. I think it happened that she was returning home from shopping one day, and, aside from the grilling she was sure to receive about where she had been and what she'd been doing, she'd realized that she'd forgotten to buy her husband's cigarettes. She knew she was probably headed for a beating and something in her just snapped. She never went home. She left with only the clothes on her back.
And she came back a new woman infused with strength and energy. It had finally broken through for her that she didn't need to take it anymore, and she preached this gospel to her fellow residents. She was happy. She was funny. Now that her face was back to normal she was cute as a button.
She wound up relocating, and, sweet person that she was, she even sent us a letter to let us know that she was okay. Still happy that she had left. Told us, though, that one day she was walking in high heels, slipped on a slick floor and fell, banging her nose against a doorknob on her way down.
Yep. Once again she had two black eyes.
I'm not certain why I start with Jane except for the fact that it's a good story.
In two respects her story was not typical. For one, she did not have children. For another, most women we dealt with did not have visible injuries. It is amazing the different ways there are to hurt a person without leaving marks.
She arrived at the shelter at a point when I was employed there and had some experience under my belt. We had a big dry erase board in the office on which we would write the names of the residents and in which room they were staying. The shelter was (theoretically) staffed 24 hours a day. Part of the morning routine was checking the board for new intakes from the previous night.
It's important to point out that this was a group living situation, thus a certain amount of regimentation was necessary to assure the smooth running of the place. The families did not just hang around doing nothing. There really wasn't time for that. The house itself needed to be maintained, so there was a rotating chore list for cooking meals, doing dishes, and cleaning bathrooms. There really is no escape from housework! The women also had a limited amount of time, 30 days, to figure out what to do and where to live.
The full-time staffer I worked with, Wendy, was the daughter of a state trooper and an enforcer of the rules. She came in that morning and noted that the new resident was not yet up and about, so she sent me upstairs to rouse her.
That's when I met Jane.
She was awake, but still cowered under her blanket. She had two of the worst looking black eyes I think I have ever seen. With her small frame and swollen face she bore an uncanny resemblance to ET. I'm hoping that I remember correctly that I didn't have the heart to make her get out of bed. Once Wendy saw her I think she agreed.
Jane was a ghost of a person. Petite and soft-spoken with a gentle southern drawl. I swear she trembled all the time.
But the clock was running. She had to move forward in putting a life back together.
A rite of passage for coming to the shelter was applying for Welfare (aka Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), now known as TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families)). It was a simple equation. Women in the shelter were classified as homeless. Unless you had the money to hire a civil attorney, or good grounds for an arrest, you were not going to be returning to the home you came from. The shelter only received funding for each resident for a 30 day stay. In that time these women, most of whom didn't work, had to come up with a regular income and enough money for a deposit, first month's rent, and utilities. Welfare, for all its headaches, took care of that.
I took Jane to the Welfare office. Imagine your most stereotypical image of the place and I'm sure this place was worse. The building it used to be housed in, it has since relocated, was an old school which had not been remodeled very well. It retained a certain oppressive, dusty, institutional atmosphere. The long waiting room had no windows, just big overhead fluorescent lights. The walls were painted a color that must have been called "Bureaucratic Dinge" on the paint swatch. I also used to joke that the receptionists were raised on a special farm. They were large women parked behind the glass who, I swear, absolutely never cracked a smile. Not rude, exactly, but any attempts at pleasantry made no impact on their demeanor.
This was torturous for Jane. Not only was it humiliating to have to apply for public assistance, but she was convinced that everyone was staring at her. Truth be told she was right.
I don't think she stayed at the shelter very long. She was too fragile and returned home. This happened a lot. Unless the resident had been a complete nightmare to work with, and some were, we always let the women know that they were welcome to call or come back to us if needed.
Fast forward about a year.
Sharon came back, and it was amazing. She was a new woman. I think it happened that she was returning home from shopping one day, and, aside from the grilling she was sure to receive about where she had been and what she'd been doing, she'd realized that she'd forgotten to buy her husband's cigarettes. She knew she was probably headed for a beating and something in her just snapped. She never went home. She left with only the clothes on her back.
And she came back a new woman infused with strength and energy. It had finally broken through for her that she didn't need to take it anymore, and she preached this gospel to her fellow residents. She was happy. She was funny. Now that her face was back to normal she was cute as a button.
She wound up relocating, and, sweet person that she was, she even sent us a letter to let us know that she was okay. Still happy that she had left. Told us, though, that one day she was walking in high heels, slipped on a slick floor and fell, banging her nose against a doorknob on her way down.
Yep. Once again she had two black eyes.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Chrysalis
What I will always remember is the laundry.
The house that was Chrysalis was as much a character in the story as anyone I ever met there.
The theory of a shelter is to be a safe house, therefore we kept our location confidential. But it was a house in a neighborhood. We were hiding in plain sight. The neighbors had to know something was up, but there were various types of group homes around so we blended in suprisingly well.
It was a large, faded beauty of a house on a small lot. There was no front yard to speak of and the back yard was taken up with a decrepit garage and a small gravel parking lot. We only used the back door, never enjoyed the porch on the front of the house.
Walking in the back door led to two sets of steps. One went straight ahead and led to the door to the kitchen. The other went down to the right and led directly to the washer and dryer in the basement. They were always, and I mean always, running. It would be the first thing to greet me when I walked in the door.
I'll give a quick tour. Past the kitchen was a small hallway. There was a bathroom to the right and what once must have been either a dining area or pantry to the left. The room to the left was our office, separated from the hallway by a swinging wooden door. Straight through the hallway there was a living room to the left and a foyer with a large wooden staircase on the right. In between the two was a small room, perhaps a small study, that had been converted to a bedroom. Upstairs there was another bathroom and an additional four bedrooms, two of them interconnected. The upstairs bedrooms all had multiple sets of (very uncomfortable) bunk beds.
I can't remember what our capacity actually was, probably about 18 beds. There were times we went over that, usually we'd be under. Having four to six families, women and their children, at a time seemed typical. We'd shoehorn them into the rooms however they would fit.
As I mentioned at the outset, it had been a beautiful house. Inside it had wooden trim and floors that were probably oak. The office was separated from the living room by wooden pocket doors that were kept permanently closed. The furniture was shabby, the plumbing temperamental, and the walls had suffered much from the number of children passing through. But it still retained a certain aura of coziness. Instead of feeling like an institution, it could feel like a home.
Here is how it worked. Most often a woman would call and request help on her own either because she was fearing an attack or had just been through one and was at her wit's end. After an initial phone intake, if shelter was determined to be appropriate, we would arrange to meet her in a public place, preferably the local police station. From there we would pick her and her children up and bring them to Chrysalis.
There was a certain similarity to the arrivals. We'd pull up to the back door with the family, their belongings, if they'd brought any, in garbage bags. The women were generally quiet - stunned, overwhelmed, and exhausted. The kids never seemed to be as freaked out. Some were too young to appreciate what was happening, and I think many of the older ones were simply too accustomed to chaos.
It's hard to express what a momentous time this must have been for these women. Terrifying, really, especially if this was the first time she'd ever left. But imagine a woman walking in the back door. She would be greeted by the dull roar and clean scent of laundry. Then she would walk into the kitchen with its ever present pot of coffee and perhaps the aroma of dinner cooking. (The residents took turns cooking for the whole house.) I'd like to think the sheer normalcy of the setting brought some comfort.
I was still working at Chrysalis when it moved to a larger, more institutional, setting and it really wasn't the same. In the house the staff and residents were constantly in each others' spaces. It literally, and figuratively, brought us together.
The house still exists. I think it has returned to being a private residence and appears to be well cared for by its new owners. I still give it a silent salute if I happen to drive by.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
An Introduction
All people are a fascinating collection of stories.
This is the story of what happens when a young do-gooder with boundary issues of her own tries to save the world. In other words, it's about the 3 years (approximately) I spent working at a battered women's shelter fresh out of college.
When I was in high school I interviewed my French teacher and wrote a story for the school paper about her harrowing childhood in World War II France. Her family home was bombed, and she talked about how sometimes she would develop a bump under her skin from a long-buried piece of shrapnel rising to the surface. That is how I would describe my memories from the shelter. A name, a face, a story will pop into my head at odd times, and now I feel compelled to let them out.
Writing these stories is a ticklish business. First and foremost is the fact that the work I did was under a tight lid of confidentiality. If we met a former client on the street we generally didn't acknowledge knowing them or, if we did, not where we knew them from. I'm aware, however, that nearly a quarter of a century has passed. The agency I worked for no longer exists, the shelter has re-located and is under new management. I will never use actual names and will work to keep details vague.
Still, I think it is important that these stories be shared. It was a crash course in poverty, justice, ideals versus reality, and the best and worst that humanity has to offer.
It all started my senior year in college. Actually, it starts with the fact that I chose a psychology degree in the first place. Like many people who enter the field, it was about my needing to fix my own issues, something I couldn't have realized at the time. In a department that prided itself on psychology as hard science, I was what I actually heard one of my professors refer to (somewhat disparagingly) as a "do-gooder." It was not a happy fit. I struggled to pass my statistics and computer science prerequisites.
By senior year, however, I could finally take the psychology practicum, a chance to be exposed to actual work in the field. We were placed as "interns" with various agencies in the area. This completely overlooked the fact, though, that a bachelor's degree in psych doesn't qualify one to actually DO ANYTHING in the field. Many of my classmates ended up doing a lot of observing.
I, on the other hand, was eager to wade into the fray. For reasons I can't fully explain, I really wanted to get involved with crisis intervention. The stars aligned, the Fates decided, and I ended up being placed at Chrysalis, the area domestic violence shelter. Being relegated to the sidelines there was never really a problem.
I wound-up staying for 3 years. First as a student, then working from part-time to unofficial full-time, then about a year officially full-time. I feel like I read somewhere that about 3 years is the average life-span for a career in front-line social work. The cruel truth is that caring makes you a better worker, but it also causes you to burn out faster. I cared a lot and burnt to a crisp.
It is also VERY important to note that Chrysalis was in no way a typical shelter being run in a typical manner. It was a very idiosyncratic collection of people (by that I mean the director and fellow staff members) in its own peculiar place. I repeat - the agency and shelter I worked for no longer exist. My recollections should not be a reflection on shelters in general.
OK. Now that I've (hopefully) piqued your interest, I'm tired of writing for now. Please check back soon for some actual stories.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)