by Curtis Bunn
We walked back toward my car.
“Depends on what?”
“I don’t know. How I feel, I guess.”
“You can’t like how things are for you right now. Why—”
“Don’t say, ‘Why don’t I do something about it?’ I’ve heard that before. Too often.”
“I don’t mean any harm, Micah. It’s Micah, right? I just want to know, since we’re talking and all.”
“If I tell ya, I have to kill ya.”
That didn’t go over the way he planned it. It was not funny. I stopped and stared into his eyes, trying hard to not show the fear that ran through my body.
In looking at him, really looking at him, I saw a man with pain covering his being. There was something dark that had happened to him, something deep and lasting. I had seen it before in my Uncle Charles. He was a Vietnam War veteran. I had eavesdropped as a child when he’d told my daddy about the horrors he’d witnessed in battle: Friends blown up not ten feet away; comrades losing limbs; charred bodies after explosions. It scared me and made me cry years later when my cousin said he would enter the Army. I feared for him.
“That’s not something you say to anyone, especially a woman you just met,” I told Micah.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I was in the war . . .”
A chill came over my body.
“You were in the war? What war?”
“Desert Storm. Lot of stuff happened over there. I seen too much. Too much death. Too much hurt. I think I’m the same person, but everyone says I’m different. And, well, I guess I am because I’m out here.”
“I’m so sorry. I have heard that America doesn’t do enough for the vets. How can you fight for this country and then not get the care you need?”
“You asking the wrong person.”
“I wish I could help you. I really do. I just don’t have any money.”
“It’s OK. You helped me by talking to me. Wait. Hold on a minute.”
Micah turned to another homeless guy who was saying something to me from his seat up against a building wall. He began to yell.
“Don’t make me crack your head open, nigga. You see me here with this woman. Don’t disrespect me and don’t disrespect her. I’m surprised you’re alive. You the type of nigga who will get killed, acting like some kinda damned fool. Mess around again and I’ll be the one who does it.”
The man said, “You better go on. You ain’t killing nobody.”
Micah took a step toward him, his fists balled up.
“Micah,” I said. There was desperation in my voice. “Please, don’t. Let’s just go. Please.”
How was I caught up in that street mess? I just wanted to go for a walk. And yet there I was, in the middle of an argument between two homeless men. It was crazy.
Micah took one more step toward the man and stopped. He turned to me. The man scrambled to his feet.
“You’d better go on,” Micah said to me. “I don’t want you to see what’s about to happen to this guy.”
Part of me wanted to run. But I had seen my Uncle Charles in Micah. I wanted to help him. At least, he could end up in jail. Worse, he could kill the man—or get hurt.
“No, let’s go, Micah,” I said. I tried to sound stern, as if I had some power over him. I wanted to grab his arm, but I wasn’t sure the last time that jacket had been washed or where it had been.
“Let’s go.”
Finally, Micah turned and we resumed our walk. But he was not quite done with the man. “You’d better not be here when I get back.”
I had no idea if my words would register with him. “You don’t need to be fighting that man or any man. Please tell me you won’t go back there and beat that man up. It’s not worth it. Nothing happened to warrant a fight.”
“The man has a problem. This isn’t the first time I had to get on his ass. He sees me with you; he needs to keep his mouth shut.”
“That’s true, but you shouldn’t let him get you so upset. We were talking nice and calm. Now you’re yelling.”
And I thought: Jekyll and Hyde. I also thought: I need to get the hell away from this man.
Micah would not look at me. He walked looking straight ahead. But I noticed he was sweating. And the look on his face dramatically changed. It was tight and tense.
“Can I buy you a soda?” I asked. “Or anything cold. I think it would help you calm down.”
I said that as much for me as I did for him. I wanted to get away from him without enraging him.
“You don’t have the money to buy me a soda,” he said. “You feeling sorry for me? Please don’t.”
“I have a card I can use. Please, let me get you something. It’s not about feeling sorry for you. It’s hot. I just thought you’d like a soda or water. We both can use something.”
Micah didn’t speak. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
It took me about five minutes to purchase two Pepsis and a bottled water. I had the cashier give me cash with my purchase also. When I got back outside, Micah not only had not moved, but seemed frozen in the same position I had left him: standing with his left hand in his jacket pocket, staring straight ahead.
“Here you go,” I said tentatively. I held out the bag with a soda and water for him. He didn’t move. After several seconds, I got frustrated. “You want this?” I asked with an edge.
“Now you yelling at me?” Micah said.
“What was that? You stood there like a mannequin.”
“I was recalling a battle situation. The enemy closing in, you know? That happens and you’re in a bad position, you have to be still. Can’t let them know you’re there.”
“You know we’re in downtown Atlanta, right? You’re safe.”
He finally looked at me. He had a confused expression on his face. He looked down at the bag.
“What’s this?”
“I went into the CVS and bought you a soda and water.”
“When?”
“Just now. A few minutes ago.”
He took the bag and looked inside. “You bought this for me?”
“You don’t remember?”
He didn’t respond. “Here,” I said, handing over a five-dollar bill. “I got some cash inside. I wish I could do more.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
He stared at the money and I started to walk away. “I wish you the best, Micah. I will pray for you.”
“Yes, pray for me, please. Thank you.”
I walked to my car as fast as I could, ignoring another man who sat wrapped in a blanket on a slate of cardboard. I’d had my fill of feeling uncomfortable. And yet I felt so bad, so sorrowful for the men I encountered and so inadequate that I could not do more.
My few dollars would help them for a short time, a very short time. Then what?
CHAPTER TEN: HISTORY
RODNEY
I slept in front of the church many times because my faith had been tested. It was hard for me to believe in God when I had lost my whole family. If there were a God, He would not allow me to live through this. He would have just taken me, too. But I wanted to believe in Him.
What I saw in the streets in almost two years, though, was evidence of the devil’s works more than God’s. That’s how I felt.
I wasn’t always that way. I grew up in the church. I didn’t want to be there, but my parents insisted on it—even though they didn’t go. They made me go, and I had to report back to them what I learned in Sunday School and the message from the sermon.
It became part of my routine as a child, all the way through high school. None of my friends went to church. None of them. Growing up in Southwest Atlanta was more about survival than anything else. And survival did not mean calling on God. It meant staying out of the wrong situations and being able to defend yourself if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I got to college, the idea of church faded away like a childhood memory. For the first time in my life, I had freedom to go to bed when I liked, to co
me and go as I pleased. It was liberating. It was fun.
I worked in the financial aid office, so I could have a little money to eat outside of the campus cafeteria from time to time. College was learning, but it was more interesting for me because I always had been a people-watcher. I didn’t realize it at the time, but living on the streets gave me time to think about everything, and that’s one of many things I discovered about myself.
I could see in certain classmates that they would not make it out of college. There was something in their DNA or background—or both—that prevented them from maxing out their potential.
Some just were not bright enough. Some were not committed enough. Some were destined for underachievement.
And I was the one who ended up on the streets.
It was hard for me to admit something about myself: I was sick. I was fine for a long time, until I was twenty-eight. I was so determined to be the best, to make my way, to succeed, that I worked long hours and rarely took off. Most days I would be the first to arrive at 6 a.m. and the last to leave at 9 p.m. After three days of working pretty much around the clock on a project I believed would take my career to another level, something happened.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I later learned that sleeplessness was one of the triggers of bipolar disorder. And stress was a factor, which I certainly felt leading that project.
Not everyone who can’t sleep or feels stress will get it. I was predisposed to it. I didn’t learn it until years later, through family screening, but grandfather had it. I never knew him, but studies showed that if someone in your immediate family had bipolar disorder, you were prone to getting it, too.
No one else in my family was diagnosed with the condition that I knew of. But those three days, when I couldn’t sleep because I was so hyped up and stressed about work, set off whatever gets set off to make the bipolar disorder kick in.
And so, instead of going to work that day, I shut down. I felt sad, depressed, like my world was over. It scared me because I had never felt that way. I couldn’t get out of bed. I had no confidence in all the work I had done. I was frozen in fear.
All day I stayed home in bed. Did not call my office. Would not answer the phone. Finally, that evening, out of concern, my boss sent someone to my apartment and the property manager let him in to find me in the dark, covered in bedding. They thought I was dead.
Thing was, I was alive—but I would never be the same.
It took more than a year before I was properly diagnosed. First, doctors figured I had given in to the stress of the job, and the combination of no sleep messed me up. They considered it a sort of stage fright.
Finally, when the other end of the bipolar spectrum hit—sudden and extended euphoria—my family took me back to the doctor. I had an episode during the funeral of a cousin. Instead of mourning, I was happy, singing and laughing, talking to anyone in my path.
It was embarrassing, but I could not control it. That was the disease—it took over and I could do nothing about it. There were extremes that went both ways. It was then that I had to learn about the disorder and how to handle it. Or try to handle it.
First, I had to believe something was wrong with me. I could not understand it. I was fine, perfect . . . and then I wasn’t. It was confusing to hear doctors tell me, essentially, I was out of my mind, that I needed medication and therapy to “control” myself.
That news alone was depressing. And scary. And unbelievable. What was wrong with me? I heard all the technical stuff from the experts, but it didn’t make sense. I had all my senses. How could I be bipolar or PPD or whatever they called it?
So I learned all I could about the disorder. But the more I learned, the scarier I became. Research said most of us bipolar could have attacks—manic episode or bouts with depression—nearly every day.
I took it all in and was almost manic about learning the medications that could help. But they were called “antipsychotics,” and that was a jolt: olanzapine, quetiapine, risperidone, ariprazole, ziprasidone, clozapine.
For years, I was on a combination of olanzapine and fluoxetine, an antidepressant, and it kept me on an even keel, for the most part. But I didn’t feel like myself. I felt programmed, restricted, trapped. Sometimes it was suffocating or stifling.
Like I was in a glass box at times, a glass box that could shatter at any time.
I also did therapy, which was helpful at times. Other times it was somewhat of a joke. The idea was to talk about my anxieties. I wanted to forget about them, especially the things I saw that I was told were not there.
That part had been really troubling—seeing things or people that others say did not exist. It felt so real to me.
That’s why I ran from Chester at McDonald’s several weeks ago. I looked up and saw the men in black suits and hats coming for me. I didn’t know what the hell they wanted, but I could tell they weren’t friendly. They came around every month or so. And each time I ran and hid until I lost them.
One time, before I had killed my family, when times were great, I had sat alone at the dining room table. I had looked out the window and seen four Indians with arrows on fire, their bows cocked and pointed at our home. I had ducked under the table, just as my wife had entered the room.
“What are you doing down there?” she’d asked. I could hear the confusion in her voice.
“You don’t see Indians out there, with bows and arrows?”
“If you don’t stop playing around, Rodney. You know good and well there are no Indians outside.”
I had played it off. “Was just trying to see if you would look before reacting.”
I had looked back out of the window and the Indians were gone. I was scared. I knew what I had seen. But I also saw fear in my wife’s eyes.
“I was just playing.”
I’d had another episode years later after I had been diagnosed—I’d scared my daughters when I’d covered my head as we’d watched television. Looked as if the roof was caving in. Darlene was firm.
“Rodney, you’re going to scare us to death. You have to take your medication. I know it makes you feel strange sometimes. But you can’t do this to us anymore. You’ve got to do what the doctors have prescribed. Now be honest with me: Are you going to do what you’re supposed to do? If you can’t tell me that, we’re going to have to leave. You know we love you so much. But, honey, please: I don’t want to leave. But I have to protect our children.”
That scared me more than my illusions. My girls had come to be my life, my pulse. I knew I could not live without them. And once they were gone, I didn’t die. But all that was inside me did. I was not alive.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: IT’S A (HOMELESS) MAN’S WORLD
BRENDA
What was it about me that I had come in contact with more homeless men in the previous several months than men with a job and home? Was I attracting them? And if I was, what did that say about me?
As much as I believed I didn’t need a man, I sure missed the presence of one. Not just for the sex, which I needed too. I mean, two years without feeling a man’s loving was the longest I had gone since William Brunson popped my cherry when I was sixteen.
I used to feel sorry for some of the members of the book club I used to belong to when they complained about not having a man. I was three years into my marriage at that time, and things were going well with Troy and me.
He was a strong man who, without trying, imparted wisdom and philosophies that stuck with me. We met online—a dating site. He said he was tired of meeting “women of no substance,” and I was tired of meeting men who didn’t know what substance meant. But we hit it off and less than two years later, we were married.
He had left me on a Saturday. We had sat at our kitchen table and had lunch that day. Nothing prepared me for his announcement. We had some issues, but nothing that was catastrophic . . . I thought.
When he’d called me, he said: “I didn’t want to leave. I had to leave. You deserve more of an explanation, but
I can’t give you one. I just don’t want to be married anymore.”
I was mad at myself for a long time because I let him walk without saying much more. I was so dumbfounded that my mind was numb.
The idea that I would only hear from him again one time did not cross my mind.
I called him. I texted him. I left him messages. I got no response.
Once I stopped being mad at myself, I felt sorry for myself. I questioned who I was as a woman and wife. I could not stop thinking about what I could have done to run away a good man. It ate at me.
Worse, it made me feel less than a woman, like I didn’t deserve a man. For a long time, I was intimidated to talk to a man. I had no confidence.
Meeting Rodney changed that. We did not have romantic conversations by any stretch. But talking and debating with him, challenging and being challenged by him resurrected something in me.
My confidence in my thoughts grew. Over time, I became self-assured again. And with my appearance, while I still could lose some pounds, I knew I could attract a man. Rodney was homeless, yes, but he was a man, and that came through in how he sometimes looked at me. I was not trying to interest him, but I took notice that he took notice in me.
It was pretty remarkable that he had such an impact on me in such a brief time. Him leaving the hospital before I could see him reminded me of my husband leaving me.
At one point, I missed my husband and Rodney—for different reasons, but I missed them nonetheless.
I missed the passion that came with being married. Many nights, after I got over my anger and hurt, I needed to feel a man’s hands on me. I missed the physical nature of a relationship, the romance, the sex.
With Rodney, I missed the conversations. I missed the banter—minus the insults. Talking to Rodney and learning about him was like energy to my mind. And I missed the opportunity to help him.
I wanted and needed to see him. And then it came to me one evening as I watched Atlanta on TV: Rodney had told me the other places he liked to spend time were near colleges, so he could be around young people trying to better themselves.