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.