by Janet Dawson
“Mind if I tag along with you?” I asked Denny. “Just on the off chance you might spot Rio.”
I unlocked the Toyota’s hatch so Denny could remove his duffel, then we walked the half block to the church. It was not quite four, but people were lining up for the work brigade he’d described, ready to trade labor for the “quarter meal.” I saw a handful of women among the assembled men.
Denny ran his eyes over the ragged line and shook his head. “He’s not here. If I do see him, how do I get ahold of you?”
I gave him one of my business cards and he turned it slowly in his hands. “If you don’t have money for a phone call,” I said, “you can relay a message. You know The Big Z, the electronics store on Telegraph?” Denny nodded “The owner is a friend of mine. His name is Levi Zotowska. He’s a big guy, with blond hair in a ponytail. You need to contact me, you tell Levi.”
“Right.” Denny nodded again, then he stuck out his hand. “Thanks for the sandwich, Jeri. It was real nice talking with you. Not often I talk to a regular person, one who treats me like a human being.”
I reached into my purse for my last twenty. Then I slipped it into his hand. The skin of his palm was roughened and calloused. “Get yourself a hotel tonight, okay?”
He looked embarrassed and thanked me again. The hour or so we’d spent together had punctured a lot of my preconceptions about the homeless. I hoped he could stay warm and dry for a couple of days.
I watched him walk over to the straggling line outside the church, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, head down, body huddled inside his layers of clothes. I glanced at the men in the line, one more time, but didn’t see anyone who matched the description of Rio I’d gotten, first from Serena, then from Denny. I started to walk toward Telegraph, thinking I’d take a stroll around People’s Park. Just then the sky opened up once again, and what had been a steady drizzle became a gray curtain of rain.
To hell with it, I told myself. I’m going home. At least I have a home to go to.
As I passed the church again, the homeless people in line were sheltering under anything they could, newspapers, tarps, even a couple of umbrellas. I headed for my car. Just as I reached the corner, I heard a woman’s voice call my name. It was Nell Carlton, Levi Zotowska’s wife, wearing a tan raincoat and carrying a blue polka-dot umbrella. I joined her under the umbrella, no mean feat since Nell is about five feet tall. She elevated it to accommodate my five feet eight.
“Jeri, what are you doing down here? Working on a case?”
“Yes. What about you? Have you been to see Levi?”
She shook her head. “I help serve, at the church.”
“Then I need to talk with you. Got a minute?”
“Let’s get out of this rain,” she said. We moved up the sidewalk and entered the church through a side door. Cooking aromas wafted toward us from the church’s cafeteria, and I heard conversation and clatters from the kitchen.
I’d once teased Nell Carlton about keeping her own name. She had rolled her brown eyes and laughed. “I’m not about to give up a name that starts with C for a Z. And being hyphenated as Nell Carlton-Zotowska is a bit much, don’t you think?”
She was in her mid-forties, a small-boned woman whose curly dark hair was liberally streaked with gray. If you didn’t know her, she looked small and fragile, especially when seen with Levi, who dwarfed her by a foot and a half, and her four children, who were taking after their father’s side of the family. But Nell was one tough, independent woman.
Now Nell lowered her umbrella and shook it. Water spattered the rugs spread out on the linoleum floor of the foyer where we stood. Then she looked up at me as she stood her furled umbrella in a corner and removed her raincoat. Under it she wore faded blue jeans and a checked flannel shirt. She hung her coat on a row of hooks near the door.
“What are you doing over here in this rain?” she asked, her hands moving to tuck an escaping strand of hair into the loose knot at her neck. “No, wait, Levi told me you were in the store the other day. Asking questions about homeless people on Telegraph Avenue.”
“Yes. He told me you were accosted and shoved around a couple of weeks ago.”
Nell shrugged it off. “Levi’s overreacting. The man was drunk, I didn’t have any spare change. It’s the first and only time it’s happened. Most of the panhandlers I encounter are polite.”
“I guess he’s coming at it from a different place,” I told her. “He’s concerned about the panhandlers scaring off his customers.”
“My Levi.” Nell smiled. “Who’d have thought he’d turn into such a capitalist? But that’s what pays for the house and the kids and the very pleasant middle-class lifestyle we have.” She shook her head and the smile left her face, replaced by a sad frown. “Levi and I have very different views on this subject, Jeri. He sees the homeless in People’s Park as a threat. He thinks they’ll bother the customers at his store. I come down here two days a week to help serve hot meals, and all I can think about is how lucky we are to have a roof over our heads, plenty of food, money in the bank.”
“Maybe Levi has compassion fatigue,” I suggested.
“A convenient catch phrase. I’m not sure how accurate it is.”
“I think a lot of people are frustrated by the homeless situation.”
“We get frustrated because there aren’t any easy answers and we can’t fix blame.” Nell moved toward the church cafeteria, where people were preparing to serve dinner to the others lined up outside the church.
“Some say it’s the booze and drugs, some say it’s simply housing, some blame the bureaucrats for closing mental hospitals. It’s just not that easy, Jeri. To figure out why or to solve it. So we blame the victims of poverty for the situation in which they live. Or we slap Band-Aids on suppurating wounds.” She gestured at the tables and the kitchen beyond. “Short-term solutions, whether it’s feeding these people or giving them a handful of change.”
Someone in the kitchen called to Nell. “I’ll be right there,” she replied. “Guess I’d better get off my soapbox and get to work. I was so busy ventilating I didn’t give you a chance to tell why you’re here.”
“I’m looking for a homeless man named Rio. He may be a witness in a missing persons case I’m working on.” I gave Nell a quick rundown of why I was looking for Rio as well as the brief description I had thus far been able to piece together.
“I think I’ve seen the man, but not recently,” Nell said, hands in the pockets of her jeans. “If I see him again, I’ll call you. Sounds like you plan to hang out on street corners until you find him. Keep your mind open, Jeri, as well as your eyes.”
She reached out and gave my arm a brief squeeze, then crossed the cafeteria to the kitchen.
Twenty-two
RAIN POURED STEADILY FROM A GRAY SKY. IT WAS getting dark fast, though it wasn’t yet five o’clock. As the winter solstice approached, the days shortened. I got up in the dark and came home in the dark, and right now my mood was just as black. At least I had a home to go to, I thought, unable to shake the sights and smells and sounds of one day spent on the periphery of Berkeley’s homeless.
When I reached my apartment, it too was dark. The automatic lamp timer hadn’t yet switched on. I turned on the lights in the living room and bedroom, where I found Abigail curled up in a ball on my bed, burrowing into the warmth of the down comforter. She followed me to the kitchen, hoping dinner might be in the offing. Once there, I flipped on the light that illuminated my patio. Outside I saw the black kitten, huddled beneath the bush at the fence, watching the door.
Wouldn’t let a cat out on a night like this, I muttered to myself as I dished up two bowls of cat food. I set Abigail’s bowl on the floor near her water bowl and went to the hall closet where I kept the cat carrier. When Abigail heard the rattle of the carrier’s latch, she quickly abandoned her food and vanished into the bedroom closet, thinking a trip to the vet was imminent.
Back in the kitchen I set the cat carrier on its back
end so that the door faced the ceiling. My experience with Abigail has taught me that it’s easier to maneuver a protesting cat into a carrier if said cat is off balance, in this case going in head first. Of course, Abigail was so fat I had to push her through the carrier’s door. The kitten was a good deal smaller. It shouldn’t be much trouble to get it through the opening. Assuming I could catch the little wraith in the first place.
The rain had let up a bit when I stepped out the back door carrying the kitten’s food bowl. I shivered. My hooded jacket didn’t provide much warmth. I hoped this wouldn’t take long. I sat down on the shallow step, the cold damp concrete chilling my butt through my jeans. I set the food bowl down near my feet and waited. All I could see was the uneven white mask across its face as the kitten stared at me across the patio. Then the white forepaw moved as it left the shelter of the bush and headed for the food bowl. I let it eat for a little while, then I reached out and stroked it gently, as I had several times before. It quivered a little, then kept eating, its need for nourishment outweighing its fear of me. I stroked the kitten a second time. On the third pass I tightened my fingers on the loose skin right behind the kitten’s neck, that fold its mother would have held in her mouth not so long ago.
The tiny scrap of black and white fur suddenly became a spitting, hissing bundle of flailing paws, all of which ended in sharp slashing claws. I hung onto the scruff of the kitten’s neck, raced through the kitchen door, and shoved the wriggling creature into the cat carrier. I shut the door and made sure the latch was secure, then I righted the carrier. Now the kitten cowered in the bottom, hissing wildly.
“Trust me, it’s for your own good.” The kitten spat at me. Now I felt a sting and looked down at my hands. Blood oozed from several scratches. “So you got me, little one.”
I rinsed off my hands in the bathroom and dabbed alcohol and antiseptic on the scratches. Then I picked up the carrier and headed out the front door. I made it to Dr. Prentice’s office before she closed at six.
“Congratulations, it’s a boy,” the vet told me as she gently held the shivering kitten and inspected his rear end. He wasn’t hissing and spitting now. He was too scared.
“I thought as much. I’ve been calling him Black Bart. Guess I won’t have to change his name. How old is he?”
“Just a baby.” She inched her little finger into the unwilling kitten’s mouth and examined his tiny white teeth. “Maybe twelve weeks. Good thing you rescued him. He wouldn’t last long on the street, what with cars and other animals. We’ll need a stool sample so I can check him for roundworm. I’ll draw some blood to test him for feline leukemia. I suggest you leave him overnight so I can do all the tests and give him a bath. We don’t want to pass anything along to Abigail, whether it’s fleas or germs.”
“Good idea,” I agreed. “Of course, Abigail’s not going to be thrilled about this.”
“I know. We’ll talk about that tomorrow when you come to spring Black Bart.”
Dr. Prentice cuddled the kitten in her arms, a black smudge against her white lab coat. As she opened the door of the examining room, heading toward the back of her office, the kitten stared back at me with wide frightened eyes, as if to ask why I’d done this to him.
Early the next morning, fortified by coffee, I got dressed, putting on a set of thermal underwear I’d last used on a ski trip to one of the Sierra resorts. On top of this I put on a grungy pair of jeans I’d tossed into the discard bag at the back of my closet. I added several T-shirts layered over one another and a ragged sweater with the yarn unraveling at the cuffs. Yesterday, while making the rounds of the shelters, I’d decided I was dressed too well. I stood out as a stranger. Now, as I looked in the mirror, I figured I’d fit right in.
Two pairs of socks, I thought, and a sturdy pair of shoes. I recalled what my friend Sister Anne at the homeless shelter in Oakland had said. Being on the streets was hard on your feet.
I had an old blue parka with a hood and lots of zippered pockets. In these I put the few things I’d need, my identification, some money, my keys. Thus attired, I headed for Berkeley. I parked the Toyota in a residential neighborhood near Willard Junior High School and walked the few blocks to People’s Park.
God, it was cold today. It wasn’t raining, at least not yet. But that was small comfort as the chill seeped through the layers of clothing I wore. When I reached the park, it was just after seven, night reluctantly giving way to gray morning. I saw a long line of people queuing up next to a white Chevy Suburban. These must have been the Catholic ladies Denny had mentioned yesterday, the ones who served breakfast every morning in the park. On the steps of a church across the street I saw a woman and two men extricating themselves from a tangle of sleeping bags and blankets. Lauren had told me that there was a ten P.M. curfew in the park, one enforced by the U.C. police. So the park’s denizens slept elsewhere, in whatever yards or doorways they could find.
I walked into the park, past the volleyball courts that had been built by the university a few years back. Their construction had led to violent confrontations between the police and protestors who wanted the park kept the way it was, a monument to the riotous days back in 1969. But this was still the property of the University of California. The courts had been built anyway, though I’d heard they were infrequently used. Somehow I couldn’t blame the students for not wanting to run the gantlet of those who thought this patch of ground should be a shrine.
A shrine to what? From here I could see a hypodermic needle discarded in the sand of the volleyball court. It’s a different world now, and all the activism and idealism that went with the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War resistance seemed long ago, part of some distant past. Now it was homeless people lined up beside a van, hoping to get a meal.
I crossed the park to the jumble of people who were eating scrambled eggs and donated day-old muffins. Everyone I saw wore layers of clothes in an effort to keep out the cold. I knew there was a “free box” here in the park, where people could drop off clothing they no longer wanted, much like the discard bag in my own closet. It seemed like many of the people surrounding the van had availed themselves of the cast-off clothes, which looked as ragged and tattered as such clothing often does.
A city cleaning crew appeared to remove the litter and debris left over from the day before. I wandered past the benches and looked at the planter boxes on the west side of the park, where volunteer gardeners planted vegetables in the summer. Despite the winter cold, several dozen homeless men took up a position on the benches. They looked like old hippies, something Berkeley had in abundance, and as I hovered near them, I caught the sweet scent of marijuana. Near the redwood trees a young woman sat on a sleeping bag, wrapped in blankets, barricading herself from the rest of the park’s occupants with a pile of paperback books. She wasn’t reading them, though. She shivered as she shifted position and tightened the blankets around her, trying to stay warm.
I left People’s Park and wandered along Telegraph to where it dead-ended at the U.C. Berkeley campus. I stared across Bancroft toward Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate. The area near the university union, usually teeming with students, was strangely empty on this December morning. Finals were over and many students had gone home over the Christmas break. Without the leavening of those young faces bustling along the sidewalks with their book bags loaded with dreams, this part of town seemed grim and grimy.
There were plenty of young faces huddled in the doorways as I walked back along Telegraph Avenue, but a closer look showed eyes that were old and wary, eyes that had lived on the street for too long. Teenagers, some of them, like Maureen Smith had been when she ran away from home nearly three years ago.
As I moved along the pavement I looked over every homeless man I saw, hoping to find the one called Rio. I didn’t see anyone who matched the description I’d gotten from Serena and Denny. Rio was tall and dark, with a football player’s bulk. But he wasn’t on the avenue this morning.
There wasn’t much action a
long Telegraph this early. But several of the coffeehouses were open. Inside the one where I’d met Kara Jenner last week, I ordered a large coffee and a roll and nursed the two of them as long as I dared. I needed to be back out on the street, looking for Rio. But before I left, I used the bathroom at the coffeehouse. I’d already checked out the public toilets in People’s Park, but they were so filthy they made my stomach turn and my skin crawl. I was afraid I might actually pick up something that would crawl. Funny how we take things for granted, like having a place to pee. But nothing was certain when you were homeless, not food, not shelter, not even a toilet.
As I left the warm coffeehouse I brushed against someone who was entering. It was Emory, Kara’s friend. He didn’t recognize me, though. I watched him, out of idle curiosity, through the window as he stepped up to the counter. A moment later he took a seat at a table near the window, one big hand wrapped around a coffee mug, the other holding a plate with two pastries. He picked up a newspaper from a nearby table and buried his nose in it as his hand moved a pastry toward his mouth. I turned away and moved on.
For the next couple of hours I walked in a widening circle, back around People’s Park, through the neighborhoods that made up the south of campus area. Still no sign of Rio. By eleven I needed a bathroom again. I headed back along Telegraph to Levi’s electronics store, The Big Z. I saw Levi himself, standing outside with one of his employees, examining the window display. He spoke to the younger man, who went back into the store and shifted a pair of stereo speakers.
As I approached him from the left, Levi glanced at me from the corner of his eye. But he didn’t really see me.
“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t panhandle in front of my store,” he said, sounding gruff and intimidating as he drew himself up to his full height.