Scratch Beginnings

by Adam Shepard

  Well, naturally, with a building full of homeless guys, word had spread quickly that the Baptist Church on the corner was serving hamburgers and hot dogs at their outdoor mass baptism. It was a common theme throughout my time at the homeless shelter when churches wanted to increase attendance at their outings: cook food. They’ll come for the hamburgers and stay for the service.

  And they were absolutely right.

  Of the two hundred or so people at the baptism, at least forty percent were, or had the appearance that they were, down and out, while the other sixty percent or so wore shirts inviting me to follow them to heaven. Six of us from the shelter had arrived together, and we spent a majority of the time in our own corner munching on meat fresh off the grill. A group of us were working on our third plate before we even realized that the baptism had begun.

  This wasn’t just any baptism, though. Some big-shot professional baptizer was in town, so six churches had come together to invite members of the community—at their own inclination—to be baptized. The audience consisted of representatives from each of the six churches, there to lend their support, some singing, and a few “amens.” A stage with a huge tub of water was set up in front of rows and rows of chairs. The setup reminded me of an outdoor concert. Those who had been convinced to be baptized, a majority coming from the streets or the shelter, lined up behind a curtain that was set up behind the stage, which completed the outdoor baptistery. They were then introduced by first and last name as if they were being announced among the starters at an All-Star game.

  “Ladies and gentleman, it gives me great pleasure to present to you…Miriam Andoluci!” the professional baptizer said. The crowd went wild and Miriam emerged from behind the curtain, timid at first, but then excited that the attention was all on her. She smiled and waved at the crowd as ushers directed her to the center of the stage where the miniature swimming pool was set up. This was her moment and nobody could take it from her. She stepped into the water, shivering with chills, as if she wasn’t prepared for it even though the ten people who had been baptized before her had reacted the same way. The crowd looked at each other and laughed, just as they had laughed along with the previous people that had set foot in the water. “Man, that must be some cold water!” A moment of silence was observed, and then the mass baptizer said a few words and dipped Miriam’s body back into the frigid water. The crowd went wild, again, with “amens” and “hallelujahs” as they accepted yet another one of God’s children. Someone—anyone—broke into hymn, and the rest of the crowd followed suit. Miriam continued to wave at the crowd as she was handed a towel and rushed off stage, the whole time smiling from ear to ear. People congratulated her and hugged her and told her how proud they were of her. For those couple of minutes, she was the Queen of Chucktown.

  And then it was Rashid Carraway’s turn. And then Craig Wilson. And then Kara Norville. And then Vicky Gondola. And then and then and then. They would herd them on stage and off stage like cattle, their newfound assembly of God’s children.

  But the generosity of the congregation did not diminish once Vicky and Rashid and Kara were led off-stage. Those who had been pegged as homeless were given additional special treatment. One guy, Joseph, who had been living on the streets since his time had run out at the shelter, was given a bag full of clothes, food vouchers, and the invitation to come live in a vacant room at one of the churchgoer’s houses. I couldn’t believe it! There were these people—strangers, homeless people—armed with who knows what kind of background, and members of these churches were reaching out to offer assistance. Not just a few dollars here and there or a pair of pants, but a place to live! I couldn’t believe it. You can call it God’s will or whatever you want, but I saw it as the most noble act of selflessness I had ever witnessed.

  But did the men I met take advantage of the services that were offered to them by the church? Did the baptisms and altruism of the church jump-start them in the right direction? As much as I would love to report, “Yes! They were saved by these saints sent from heaven!” most of the guys were back to their normal selves before we even left the parking lot of the church. They walked a block back over to their perch at Marion Square, cup in hand, asking for a dollar to get something to eat. Or drink. Or smoke. Just as I had seen many times in my life before, one simple act of kindness could never hold up against the lure of the vices of such a freelance lifestyle. They needed repetition to get off the streets. While some were self-motivated and had merely stumbled through a tough time in their lives, most of them needed someone constantly in their ear telling them:

  Hey, buddy! You in there? Cuz, uh, I don’t know how exactly to tell you this, but, uh, you’re screwin’ up. Big time. But I tell ya what…All is not lost! There’s plenty of opportunity for you. Help is on the way, my friend. But check this out: I’m gonna need a little extra effort coming from your end.

  And that’s where Crisis Ministries came in. That’s why the system at Crisis Ministries had proven, and would continue to prove, to be so effective. In the world of homelessness, perhaps one act of kindness or one attempt to adjust someone’s attitude could be dismissed or even forgotten, but that’s not what Crisis Ministries was offering. They were offering help, day in and day out. There was no escaping it. Everybody—from the director of the center to the front desk staff to the families from the churches that served us food in the kitchen—was there to help us get out.

  At the heart of all the work at Crisis Ministries were the case managers. Every week they evaluated our progress, letting us know what we were doing right and wrong. They pointed us in the right direction for the services we needed—medical care, employment, counseling, child care, and more. We set goals and followed up on those goals. Every week. It wasn’t a situation where we met with them once and they moved on to the next guy. They were there for us until we were out. Even before my Wednesday meeting with Kazia, I had already heard so much about the value of the case management services. Easy E, a self-made man in his own right, had even told me that without his case manager, he might have fallen through the cracks already. And with his drug addiction, who knew where he might have ended up.

  Surely, throughout the course of the baptism, any churchgoer that walked past me would have noticed the stench radiating from my body after such a dirty day of work with George. They probably would have loved for me to assume the position on stage to get baptized just so I could rinse off in the pool, but artificial acts like those had always come back to haunt me in some form or fashion later on, so I decided against it.

  By Sunday night—just my sixth night in the shelter—I had become part of the “in” group. I was checking in to the shelter a half hour early because of my participation on the morning clean-up crew, so I was able to pick out any spot to put my mattress. And nobody was giving me a hard time. I couldn’t tell exactly how I had come to be accepted (or perhaps merely tolerated) within just a week of my time at the shelter, but I suppose it had a lot to do with the fact that I had come in and, essentially, kept my mouth shut. I let them come to me. If I had come in and acted like I was somebody special—somebody superior to the life at the shelter, just as many before me had done and many after me would do—then my story might have turned in a different direction. People would be shunned and picked on if they came in and acted like they were above the shelter, like they didn’t belong there. I had reached my decision to remain in the shadows mostly out of fear of the unknown arena in which I found myself, but by Sunday evening, I had realized that this indigent world was, if you were able to blend in, harmless. By Sunday evening, I had already developed an in-depth system for how to get by in the homeless shelter. By Sunday evening, I was no longer “the outcast.”

  As the previous week had passed (from the train ride on Tuesday until dinnertime on Sunday night), I had been brainstorming ideas on how I could pick up extra cash—any extra cash. The airport was an hour away by bus, so I had thought about collecting luggage carts and returning them for the 25¢ deposi
t as I had seen other guys doing in my past travels. It would have been a great plan at LAX or Dulles. But then I was told that the tiny Charleston airport services about seven flights a day to about two destinations throughout the Southeast, so returning twelve carts a day wouldn’t even be worth making the trip uptown.

  Going door-to-door cutting grass had worked wonders when I was ten years old, so I figured that soliciting the same service in Charleston could translate into easy money. I kept that idea in my back pocket as a last resort in the event that I was really hard up.

  Then, at dinner on Sunday night, some of the guys started talking about donating plasma, which they had been doing for months. The process, as I was told, was simple and would yield an easy $30 if I could put up with a needle in my arm for an hour or so.

  So, on Monday morning after breakfast, I decided to accompany Marco to SerumOn, where he donated plasma twice a week. Before I left the shelter, I showed the nurse that I didn’t have the spots on my arm from the TB injection, and she signed me off as qualified to remain a resident. Then, using the voucher that Ms. Evelyn had given me, we were able to stop by to obtain my official state identification card. Conveniently, the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicle was along the same long bus route that went to SerumOn, but even with their remarkable efficiency, it was 12:30 before we arrived at the front steps of SerumOn.

  Situated west of the Ashley River (“West Ashley” for the locals) in an office complex with a host of other doctor and dentist offices, SerumOn sets itself apart with neon posters radiating out of the front window.

  “Donate plasma here!”

  “Save a life and get easy money at the same time!”

  “Refer a friend and get $25!”

  Despite the satisfaction that I would walk out with a check in my pocket, the atmosphere at SerumOn had already made me feel sleazy. Even before I knew how the process worked, I felt like I was selling a part of myself. I was inviting the doctors and their assistants to have their way with my bodily fluids for a price. I was a plasma whore, and for $30 plus, I didn’t mind at all.

  Eight people were scattered throughout the lobby, waiting for their number to be called to go make their donation. Marco already had his donor number, so he signed his name and went about waiting with the rest of the donors, but I had to go through the burdensome process of filling out forms and then getting a physical. A full physical, where they check your entire body for any health issues that could inhibit your ability to donate. But I played along. Besides, it had been quite some time since I had a full physical, so I saw it as getting a bonus check-up with a doctor to go along with my $30.

  I was led back to the lobby where I waited for five minutes.

  “Adam Shepard?” the attending nurse announced.

  I stood up. “That’s me.”

  “You’re up.”

  Before they took me into the donating room, we detoured by a holding area where routine tests were performed with each of the donors before each visit. The doctor’s assistant began by testing my blood pressure. Interestingly enough, my blood pressure was a little high, but I figured that could only work to my advantage in pumping the blood out of my system quicker than everybody else’s normal blood pressure would. The assistant then checked my body weight and tested my blood for proper iodine levels. Finally, she asked me a series of twenty-five or so questions, determining my qualification to donate.

  “Have you tested positive for AIDS or HIV?”

  No.

  “Were you born or have you lived in or received medical treatment in any of the following countries since 1977: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger, or Nigeria?”

  No.

  “Have you injected illegal drugs with a needle in the last three years?”

  No.

  “Have you had surgery in the last twelve months?”

  No.

  “Have you had sex with another man, even once, since 1977?”

  Man, ’77 was a rough year, eh? No.

  “In the past twelve months, have you had sexual contact with anyone that can answer ‘yes’ to any of the above questions?”

  No and no.

  “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”

  Huh?

  “Just making sure you’re paying attention.”

  I was in.

  After proving I was worthy to donate, I was led to the donating room, an expansive area with stations lining every wall. While the process was certainly much more scientific than it appeared, for me, the donor, it was actually quite simple. One of the three or four attendants on duty would finally get around to coming over to service my donation. He or she would stick a needle—a thick needle, not the type they use to inject the flu shot—into my forearm. Blood was drawn from my arm through sterile tubing into a centrifuge. The centrifuge would spin, separating the plasma from the cells and platelets of the blood. The plasma was then fed through another tube into a quart-sized plastic bottle, while the remaining blood components were fed through a second sterile tube that was connected to the needle and back into my body.

  It would take four or five cycles to fill the bottle with the yellowish liquid. The length of time averaged around forty-five minutes and depended upon a variety of factors, including whether or not we were fully hydrated and whether or not our plasma was loaded with protein and iron. The more meat and water we had consumed, the more fit we were to donate.

  The process was safe and secure. All of the materials—needles and tubes—used in the donation procedure were sterile and disposed after our donation. Our body would re-supply itself with plasma within twenty-four hours, and we could come back after forty-eight hours for another shot at $30. We were allowed two visits within a seven-day period, although some people would abuse that privilege by donating at the other plasma donation center in North Charleston in between their visits at SerumOn. By the end of the week, they would have twice as much money as the rest of us, but I could only imagine that it took its toll on their bodies.

  While we were in West Ashley, Marco and I had the opportunity to apply for several jobs—two restaurants and a grocery store. The opportunities were just as sparse as they had been downtown, if not worse, although the manager at O’Charley’s restaurant told us to come back on Wednesday as he should have a couple of openings for dishwashers. We continued our search with the idea that we could always come back there.

  Since Marco had the day off and I clearly didn’t have any better plans, we made the trek up Rivers Avenue on the No. 10 bus. Spike (who didn’t have a single strand of hair on his head), one of the guys at the shelter, had told me to stop by the car wash at the top of Rivers Avenue.

  “The turnover at car washes is ridiculous,” he had told me. “They’re always hiring. You just gotta show up.”

  And boy was he right. The manager, a gentleman with a Slavic name that I couldn’t re-spell now or even pronounce at the time, offered us a job on the spot. No questions asked.

  “Herde are your shirts,” he announced in his heavy accent. “Be herde tomorrow at seven thirty.”

  I was a bit overwhelmed at first, with both the satisfaction that I was getting a job and with the idea that it seemed a little too easy. I retracted a bit and asked him what the pay was. He said that all his workers started at $6.50 an hour plus tips and received raises based on their performance.

  “Sometimes you get quvick raise, sometimes you stay at six-fifty. You verk hard, you get raise.”

  Marco wasn’t interested at all, although he tried to sneak out with the shirt. Even though I was in no position to be greedy with my salary, $6.50 was lower than I was looking for, so I deferred, deciding that if I didn’t have a permanent job by Friday, I would join the crew at the car wash.

  That first Monday touring the Charleston area by bus was when I really began to discover that Marco was unique. We had plenty of time to talk, during which time I grew to really appreciate that he wasn’t like the other guys
that I would meet at the shelter, or, to be honest, like many people I had met in my life.

  “I screwed up, man,” he would tell me. He had this good job or that good job and one day he would just get fed up with his circumstance and either quit or cause himself to get fired. “I had a great job at Fresh Pickins. Nine dollars an hour. ’Bout to get ten. Then one day I just got into it with the owner, and I walked out. Worst mistake ever.” He looked down. “They were ’bout to promote me up to assistant manager, and I’d only been there three months.”

  Marco took full responsibility for his actions. He knew that whatever cards he’d been dealt in his life (which had begun with promising potential, but had then gone downhill), it wasn’t anybody else’s responsibility but his. It wasn’t his mom’s or his dad’s or anybody else that had helped him or turned their back on him. It was his, and he knew it.

  “But I’m on course now, dog. I’m on course. We ’bout to get outta this bitch. We know what we gotta do.” He was telling me things that I had learned over the course of my own twenty-four years, an attitude that I hadn’t imagined I would confront during my year in Charleston, especially in the shelter. “It don’t matter what happened yesterday, dog. Today matters. Even if we fucked up yesterday, today is a new day, and we can seize today. What do they say? Carpe diem or some shit.”

  Monday was the first night at the shelter that I didn’t get the opportunity to go back through the dinner line for seconds. The shelter was packed to “capacity,” and after running out of the evening’s first meal, they had to dip into the walk-in refrigerator to dig out more chicken to cook for the last fifteen or so guys who went through the line. Since I usually saved up my appetite throughout the day, I was disappointed that I was stuck eating only one plate. Man, how greedy was that? I was already getting a free meal and free accommodations, and there I was discontent with not getting seconds. But Marco never had that same problem. By way of barter he always came out on top with a roll traded for rice, or the like and inquiries of “Hey, dog, you gonna eat that?” He never left the table hungry.