In the Secret Service

by Jerry Parr

  A few days later she went out back to take out some trash. She saw a sign that said “P Street.” Then she looked back at the building, and she recognized the one in her dream. She had seen the back of 2025!

  That’s her story, and she told it to everyone. I believed her.

  One of the most difficult street persons was simply known as “Mr. Green.”[88] Unless someone had prevailed on him to take a shower at Christ House, he reeked of sweat and urine and was usually drunk. He talked loudly to himself. Most of the coffee shop’s customers understandably avoided him, though they sometimes quietly told Thelma they’d buy his lunch. But even if anyone did try to engage with Mr. Green, the only one he’d talk to was Thelma.

  One day he went through the line, got a sandwich, and sat down by himself to eat it. He began to talk loudly to his invisible voices. Then he shouted with a string of curses that turned the air blue. Conversations stopped. Everyone in the coffeehouse stared, but no one moved—except Thelma. She came out from behind the cash register, walked over to him, touched him gently on the shoulder, and said lovingly, “Mr. Green, you don’t seem to be yourself today.”

  Mr. Green looked up. For a minute he seemed to be thinking over what she’d said. Then Mr. Green said, “You’re right. I’m not.” He finished his sandwich without another word and quietly departed.

  One day word came that someone from Mrs. Reagan’s staff would be paying a call on the Potter’s House. Elizabeth Dole, a member of Reagan’s cabinet and wife of Republican Senate majority leader Robert Dole, had a friendship with our writer and member Elizabeth O’Connor. We supposed Mrs. Dole may have mentioned that the Potter’s House operated without government funding. Since the Reagans wanted to encourage private charity, a White House staffer decided to scope us out for a possible visit by the First Lady. Such a visit might help with fund-raising, which we always needed. The Potter’s House staff and volunteers were excited at the possibility.

  The advance person was due to arrive around ten o’clock, when we opened. But nobody told me about this. I planned to come in closer to noon. Thus I was not an eyewitness to the following events, but I heard about them the minute I checked in. A mission group member volunteered to meet Mrs. Reagan’s assistant and show her around. But the guest arrived early, so the volunteer said, “While we’re waiting, would you like to see one of the Jubilee Housing buildings?”

  Just as they rounded the corner behind the Potter’s House, sirens wailed, tires screeched, police jumped out of cruisers and surrounded the “Ritz.” A cop screamed, “Stay back!”

  Not waiting to learn whether they’d interrupted a drug bust or something worse, our guide quickly led the visitor back to the Potter’s House. There was Mr. Green, drunk, sprawled across the entrance with his pants down around his ankles.

  They stepped over him, and everyone pretended not to notice.

  The First Lady did not visit the Potter’s House.

  The Potter’s House was sometimes chaotic. Sometimes the relationships were messy. But it was—and is—a place to encounter God’s redeeming love in action. I would eventually move on to other missions, but during my two years there as manager, I was proud to claim it as my own.

  CHAPTER 11

  DESCENT INTO JOY

  Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

  MATTHEW 25:40, KJV

  1988–1993

  As Carolyn and I pulled into the long driveway leading up to the Gift of Peace, we had no idea what to expect. Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity had taken over an unused convent in northeast DC and turned it into a hospice for homeless men and women dying of AIDS. The large two-story white wooden building rested in the center of a broad green expanse of lawn and trees at 2800 Otis Street.

  We had come to offer our services to Sister Dolores, the Indian nun in charge. The year was 1988, a time when 100 percent of people who contracted HIV died—in those days mostly gay men or needle-sharing addicts. AIDS struck terror in every heart. Researchers were working desperately, but no effective way to prolong life had yet been discovered.

  Dentists refused to treat AIDS patients, and many doctors and nurses also avoided them. Children who contracted HIV through blood transfusions were banned from school.[89] Employment was out of the question: no one would knowingly risk placing an infected person in the workplace. Even patients with money could not find medical care or shelter outside of their own families. There were two exceptions. One was the gay community, who did the best they could to care for their own.

  And the other was Mother Teresa.

  On a visit to the United States in 1985 she encountered people dying on the streets, a sight she knew well in India but never expected to see here. She’d been called by Jesus to the “poorest of the poor,” in whom she saw “Christ in his distressing disguise.” Who could be suffering more than a homeless person, abandoned by family and friends, dying of AIDS? On Christmas Eve 1985 the Missionaries of Charity opened the Gift of Love residence in New York, followed by the Gift of Peace a few months later in the nation’s capital. If Mother Teresa and her sisters couldn’t save these people’s lives, they would at least ensure that these “least ones” died with dignity, surrounded by love.

  We rang the bell and were welcomed by a quiet, brown-skinned young woman wearing a white gauze sari with blue trim, the Missionaries’ trademark. She ushered us into a small office, where Sister Dolores rose and took our hands. Our interview had been arranged by Don McClanen, a volunteer and Church of the Saviour member.[90] He’d warned us, “Don’t be offended if Sister Dolores turns you down. As far as I know, I’m the only non-Catholic working there. But I gave you a good word, so she wants to see for herself.”

  Sister Dolores appeared to be in her forties. She was an imposing figure, big boned and direct. I guessed she had little patience for dilettantes. “Why are you here?” she began.

  “We have friends,” I explained. “A couple whose world-class concert pianist son with AIDS had no place to go when they grew too old to care for him. Desperate to find a peaceful place where he would not be shamed, they asked us to take him in. After struggling with what this might mean, we felt we had to refuse.”

  Carolyn interrupted, “I was still working full-time, and we felt incompetent and afraid. At least I did. It seemed overwhelming.”

  I finished the story. “The family had to move to Arizona, where they found a gay couple who would take their son into their home, along with five others. He died there.”

  Our refusal had haunted us, we explained. In some way we hoped that working at the Gift of Peace would be redemptive.

  Apparently satisfied, Sister Dolores had one more question. She focused on Carolyn. “Can you change a diarrhea diaper on a grown man?”

  Carolyn caught her breath. She paused. She wanted to answer truthfully and searched her heart and emotions. She’d changed plenty of diapers on our three kids but never on an adult. Finally she stammered, “I’m not sure, but I’ll try.”

  Sister Dolores had one final test. She lasered in on me. I must have looked grim, thinking about the harsh reality of what we were taking on. “Can you smile?”

  She continued. “I tell my nuns, ‘These men and women are grieving, and they have too much to feel sad about. They don’t need to see your tears. You must bring them joy. If you can’t smile when you see them, you can’t work here.’”

  We promised to smile. We passed Sister Dolores’s scrutiny.

  What I hadn’t mentioned was that as a rescuer and risk taker this assignment fit me perfectly. Carolyn’s attitude was slightly different. Back in the car she said, with a kind of gallows humor, “If I have to die for Jesus, I guess AIDS is better than being burned at the stake.”

  We drew the Sunday night shift, 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. once a week. Five women and two babies with AIDS shared the first floor with the office, kitchen, nuns’ living quarters, and a chapel. Men and another chapel occupied the secon
d floor, where Carolyn and I worked.

  The first night Jack, a Third Order Franciscan, taught us how to use gloves. Scientists had identified HIV as the virus that caused AIDS. They knew it spread through exchanging body fluids, most commonly through sexual activity, blood transfusions, dirty needles, and mother’s milk. They believed the virus was not concentrated enough in tears or sweat to be dangerous. The jury was still out on saliva. So we’d wear gloves when we changed diapers or fed patients, but not in normal contact like handshakes or hugs. We’d also carefully cover any cut places on our own hands.

  Jack taught us how to change sheets with a patient in the bed, drawing up his legs and using leverage to roll him from side to side.

  Showing us the medicine chest, Jack warned us to keep it locked at all times and to wear the key on a cord around our necks. The only meds in the place were given by mouth; no syringes (so no fear of needle sticks, a relief to us), no IVs, no machines. One of the nuns may have been a nurse, but as in all hospices, care was palliative, designed only to make patients comfortable in their waning hours.

  Jack alerted us about “Rufus,” one of the few residents who did not have AIDS.[91] He was a homeless alcoholic on whom Sister Dolores had taken pity. Jack said, “Rufus will cough and pretend he needs cough syrup. Don’t give him any. He just wants it for the alcohol content.”

  The Gift of Peace was low-tech in the extreme. Everything was clean and bright but simple, some would say primitive. I supposed this was partly to save money, partly to keep the nuns in touch with the physical labor of the poor, and partly perhaps to preserve the planet. Whether she knew the term or not, Mother Teresa believed in making a low carbon footprint.

  Patients’ dirty sheets, towels, and hospital gowns went into specially marked bags to be picked up daily by Georgetown University Hospital, which washed and sterilized them to meet the DC Department of Health requirements. The nuns did their own laundry by hand and hung it out to dry.

  Floors were swept, not vacuumed. There was hot water only one hour a day, between six and seven in the morning, for showers. No dishwashers. Dishes were soaked, then washed in cold water, detergent, and Clorox—the only agent known at the time to kill HIV.

  There were no intercoms. If a patient needed attention, he would shout, “Volunteer!” and we were to go to him quickly so as not to wake up others.

  Except in rare circumstances (like the Super Bowl or a special program) the sole TV was locked up. Many people offered to buy TV sets for the patients, but Mother Teresa refused; she didn’t want them distracted from their prime task, which she believed was to get right with God before they met face-to-face.

  Aside from the laundry rules, city officials were pretty lax with the hospice because they had no viable choice. At first the Health Department tried to require Mother Teresa to install an elevator, ramps, and other handicap-friendly features. But there was no money. The convent was donated and had been built long before. Mother was a tough negotiator. She listened patiently, then said that if DC insisted, she would just have to look for another city that was more hospitable. Since the alternative was sick people dying in the streets, the city caved.

  With no elevator, if bedridden patients had to be moved out from upstairs, two nuns would carry them down on chairs. We practiced: with a person strapped to a high-back wooden chair, I held the back and Carolyn grasped the chair legs. This provided a good grip and sufficient leverage for two people to carry a patient.

  When we arrived on a Sunday night, the nun on duty would brief us on new developments: who had died, who had arrived, who could no longer walk, who might need extra attention. Then she disappeared and we were on our own.

  We quickly saw firsthand the brutal reality of AIDS. AIDS is called “slim disease” in Africa because most patients lose weight from diarrhea and nausea. Large purple skin cancers called Kaposi’s sarcoma may appear. Many patients have a white film on their mouths from thrush. Some go blind. Some become demented. They become too weak to walk. They lose bowel and bladder control. Not everything happens to everyone, but we observed all of this.

  The greatest suffering was the loneliness of abandonment.

  And yet, at the Gift of Peace, the spirits of many residents thrived even as their bodies were wasting away. It was the first time some had experienced love in many years, if ever. Observing changes in the patients from week to week was like watching the opening of a flower or the growth of a fetus in time-lapse photography.

  When they first arrived, men would be either deeply depressed or terrified or angry—or all of the above. A week later they were more calm and beginning to trust caregivers. Even as they grew weaker, smiles emerged and peace set in. Soon they were reaching out to console newcomers. The Gift of Peace lived up to its name. It was amazing and almost miraculous to see.

  Little changes on the outside sometimes signaled bigger ones on the inside. One man freely expressed hatred for women, so I served him, not Carolyn. But one day when I wasn’t there, he allowed her to feed him. His hostile look was gone. He could have been fed by another patient instead, so this felt to her like a great victory.

  Among our duties was making and serving food to the residents. What was in the refrigerator for dinner depended on what DC Central Kitchen delivered that day or what some church group had brought. On a good day there might be chicken or lasagna or some kind of casserole, maybe some expiring vegetables from which a salad could be gleaned. On a bad day we might have to make soup from a can or scramble eggs or make peanut butter sandwiches. But like manna in the wilderness, there was always something. As I recall, the convent did buy milk and eggs and a few basics. Fresh fruit was very rare. Donated brownies were abundant.

  “Armando,” a blind man, always asked hopefully, “Tienes jugo de mango?” There must have once been mango juice, but now there was only Kool-Aid. If not for the prohibition on gift giving, I’d have brought him some mango juice myself.

  We set the kitchen table for the eight or nine guys who were still ambulatory, delivered food to the bedridden patients who could still feed themselves, and hand-fed the others. Often the healthier men would help us.

  “Franklin,” a tall, thin, very dark-skinned man with luminous, depthless eyes, was especially kind and helpful to others. Once Carolyn was trying to get a very sick patient to take a little soup, but “Tyrone” wordlessly clamped his lips together. She coaxed and coaxed, but he would not open his mouth, even to speak.

  Seeing her frustration, Franklin offered, “Let me try.” He said, “Come on, Tyrone, this is Franklin. Take a little soup for me.” Tyrone opened his mouth and took a bite, then another and another. Franklin patted Tyrone’s arm and said, “I love you, man.”

  And Tyrone, who had not spoken a word for days, said something he may have never said (or heard) before: “I love you too.”

  After everyone was fed, Carolyn and I would sit down with the men in the kitchen, drinking coffee together and swapping stories. The men spoke of lost opportunities and lost loves, of survival in the streets or prison, and sometimes of regret. The stories were often sad but others were hilarious. I told lineman stories and sometimes lineman jokes that the men loved, not least because they’d have made the nuns blush. Carolyn and I talked about growing up in the South or our kids or current events.

  We became friends with the men in every sense of the word. On Sunday night we loved being greeted with big smiles. “Hi, Carolyn! Hi, Jerry! We missed you. How’s it going?”

  Most but not all of them were young. “Jeremy” was a tall, thin, gay white man who had lost most of his teeth. He was ingratiating and tried to con us into smuggling in a copy of The Blade, a gay-oriented newspaper that the nuns wouldn’t let him have. (Patients were allowed to read, but nothing the nuns considered salacious.) Rufus would cough and ask for cough syrup, until he realized we were on to him. Then he laughed as he told us a story.

  He said, “Sister Dolores is tough!” Like other patients who were well enough, Rufus could leav
e during the day, but there was a strict curfew of 6:00 p.m. And regardless of where they went, they were not to use drugs or alcohol. “Once,” Rufus said, “I came back late—and drunk. It was winter and freezing outside. I knocked and knocked on the convent window, begging to be let in. Finally, Sister Dolores took pity on me: she threw me a blanket.”

  But we all had our secrets. They never talked about how they got the virus, and Carolyn and I never revealed our work lives. Every Monday morning at 6:00 a.m., Carolyn would shower at the hospice, throw her jeans in a backpack, change into a dark suit and pumps, and drive to the United States Tax Court, where she was a judge. Only Sister Dolores knew about her day job. And no one at her court had any inkling about the Gift of Peace.

  There were good reasons to keep our double lives secret. Most of the residents had spent time on the dark side of social acceptability, if not the law. Carolyn and I feared that our current and former jobs would come between us and serious friendship with patients. We worried they would be afraid and suspicious of our motives. Here at the hospice we wanted to be known for ourselves, not our job titles. We wanted to be real.

  It’s hard to imagine now, but in those days when AIDS was always fatal, Carolyn also feared that her colleagues would be terrified and perhaps even scandalized. She imagined they’d be afraid to shake her hand or sit beside her at the communal table in the judges’ dining room. They might even think she and I had lost our marbles. I sometimes wondered myself. Neither of us had ever before, to our knowledge, touched gay men, addicts, or criminals in such an intimate way. I had never knowingly exposed myself to a fatal disease.