Halloween and some updates

As you know from the last post, I went to YANA armed with (overly) elaborate plans and bags full of supplies. And. . . . .almost no one came in. The few who did were not our more high functioning clients. We tried anyway. Jennifer did a good job, introducing Poe as "a guy from my neighborhood." I talked about the uses of fear and got a little thrill from the way the most ancient of the Pammys nodded and sent me understanding looks from beneath her cascade of gray hair as I said that sometimes our emotions are so big that we can't describe them with everyday words. We need to talk about demons and monsters just so that we can explain how bad something is. Pammy, and for that matter the entire room, seemed to know exactly what I meant.

After Jennifer read Annabel Lee out loud, we tried to do the group poem. I started it off with a line about a demon "on my back." Most of the people who wrote were the volunteers, however. Other, more articulate groups at YANA have done better with this sort of thing in the past. Then, as we talked about Halloween, one of the newer clients said her husband used to dress her up as a princess and the like. She made a few more, grim faced, inarticulate references to this dressing up before I asked her how she felt about it. "Not good," the woman said. "He had a gun to my head." As Sid pointed out later, you know somebody has problems when she forgets to mention that part of the story.

The new client, Mary, held forth for most of the rest of our hour or so together. She had been a military brat herself. Her husband was a traumatized vet. who did terrible things to her and then didn't remember later. He gave her black eyes and a jaw that had to be wired back together. Her parents called to ask if she was all right. She said she was because she was afraid, then she was more afraid that God would punish her for lying. At last a general came to the house and made her husband stop. In court, her husband jumped over the table to attack her, but this time she fought him off herself. The weeping female judge told the bailiffs to stand back and let her do it. Later, her jealous sister got her put away in a psychiatric hospital for two years, but she found a way to do good there. She listened to others and tried to help them.

For Mary's sake at least, we turned out to have exactly the right group of people. They weren't talkers. They weren't judgers. They weren't interested in drawing attention to themselves. They listened in quiet support. Our Sister Mary said the right things about how well the woman had done and what a long process it is to forgive an abuser. I don't think Mary the client could have spent a better hour. She told me so many times afterwords how relieved and happy she felt about being able to talk that way. She said she couldn't usually tell people what happened to her and that we "just drew it out of" her. For myself, I was feeling a little sick from too much peanut brittle and candy, a little disappointed that we hadn't produced a collection of meaningful poems, a little foolish and annoyed with myself for caring about the poems, and more than a little depressed from the experience of listening to the drawn out ramblings of a mentally ill woman with no idea at all of how to help her. Even I couldn't help but notice, though, the relief that filled that woman by the end.

For the rest of the clients -- I don't know. There were so few of them that they got a lot of candy and Halloween socks and little toys. I'm sure they liked that. They could have left at any time, but they stayed. My guess is that actual community, rather than an art project and discussion of metaphors, probably did them good. The point of YANA, after all, is to listen and support. Maybe, in their quiet ways, all the women there felt a little more like family.

UPDATES:

I forgot to mention that Tina came in Wednesday, dressed as her usual rag doll self. She had gone to the funeral, but stayed only briefly. She said that her cousin was so heavily made up that he didn't look like himself. The backs of his crossed hands were more or less flesh colored, but the palms were purple. After she saw that, she had to leave. Tina hadn't talked to Sister Catherine yet, and Catherine wasn't there when Tina came in. I told Sister Mary about her as well, and now there are two vigilant nuns primed to find Tina and reassure her of God's love.

I asked the youngest of the Pammys if she would mind telling the room about her HIV status. She didn't mind people knowing about the disease at all, though she was rather floored at the public speaking aspect once I announced that she had something to say. Pammy was diagnosed about seven years ago with HIV. This past February she became AIDS-defined because her t-cell count had gone below 200. She got on the "cocktail," and her t-cell count went back up to 359. Her viral load is so low that it's undetectable. There may not be a cure for HIV, but apparently you can come back from full blown AIDS. The room applauded her.

Best of all -- I asked Diane if she'd heard anything about the client that the little mean woman said had been arrested for arson and murder. "I haven't heard anything," Diane said. "Since she went into the program." According to Diane, the client had been hospitalized again, then moved directly into rehab. The client really was very sick. This move from hospital to rehab. happens. It makes a lot more sense than the client having been let out of jail. And Diane knew the client much better than the little mean woman did. Of course, I didn't repeat the rumor to Diane. I have the feeling it's nothing more than that.

A Day at YANA

For me a YANA day starts before I reach the building. I drive up Wilkens Avenue in Baltimore between Monroe and Gilmore Streets, peering into the faces of the women who sit slumped on the steps or walk the streets of the neighborhood. Prostituted women in Baltimore rarely dress for their jobs. They wear the same no-makeup, hair pulled back, jeans and t-shirts look that every other woman there does. Even so, just driving by, I usually have a pretty good idea of whether they prostitute or not. Our women are often seriously underweight. At 10:00 in the morning, they can be so exhausted or so doped up that they stagger. Look into their faces, and there's the sort of vulnerability a child might have if she were forced to do a grown-up's hard job and had no hope of relief. Recognizing the prostituted women on Wilkens doesn't take any great perception -- or if it does, then the middle aged men who wash their new cars and excitedly cruise the same strip are all gifted intuitives.

Today, I didn't stop for any of them. I didn't recognize any of our friends, and, though I saw several women who would probably be prostituting later in the day, I didn't see any who looked approachable at the moment. I went on to Hezekiah House, where YANA is currently located, and where I was soon swamped by women from the drug rehab. program next door. These women who came were all pretty new to YANA. For the moment, at least, they weren't prostituting. Many hadn't prostituted for a long time; almost all are sober. They were poor, though, and fragile, and they knew we had good things to give away. Keeping a semblance of order when you're the only person between five such women and fresh bags full of unsorted donations isn't easy.

Crabby, clerical start to the day, in other words. I heard myself saying, "I've told you repeatedly to write down the toiletries you need. . . " and heard a forty-something African American woman apologizing like a child for having touched without permission. Instead of cringing, all I could think was I was glad a fight wasn't breaking out. In over 12 years of dealing with clients who are often seriously traumatized, emotionally disturbed, and drug addicted, we've never had an actual physical fight, though there have been plenty of threats. The closest we ever came to one was when a lot of donations came in. I somehow imagined it would be a good idea to let everyone grab what she wanted.

The only part of the morning I enjoyed was introducing the concept of YANA itself. I told several, seriously interested women that YANA was formed when a social worker, Sid Ford, noticed that there was a population of women who were isolated from the rest of the world -- prostitutes. I tell them she wanted to create a sense of community. While it was very hard for me in the beginning to believe that this was the thing they needed most, it is never hard at all for the clients to understand. They nod like they're in church when I talk about isolation. "YANA stands for You Are Never Alone," I tell them, and some don't react in the least. Others look like they've just found out they're getting a pony for Christmas.

I go on to tell them we offer services: lunch, clothes, Thursday visits from the Health Care for the Homeless, a volunteer psychologist on Wednesdays, help with referrals into treatment programs, a place to rest on a hot or cold day. I finish by telling them that the main thing we offer is the community so many never had. YANA women themselves make up the program, and they make their own decisions to survive the way they always have or to make new decisions about their lives.

The rest of the day, we talk, we eat pizza, Health Care for the Homeless does its magic for the many women in need of care. The women try on warm clothes, and all admire the one young girl who models a gorgeous new suit on her tall, healthy body. "I can wear this to church or a job interview," she says several times, then leaves with a boyfriend. One woman tells me she often sees our "old clients," the ones who came more often when we were located on Pratt Street, close to the part of Wilkens I drove coming in. She mentions several women, including Trina who has not come to YANA in the year since we've moved. Trina believes she can't -- or else she is angry. It isn't clear, but somehow her not coming has something to do with a man who was dangerous. I break the rules and talk about Trina to another client. "We've missed her!" I tell the woman. "We want her back! Tell her to come." The other woman says she'll bring her next week. I'm not holding my breath. There's something else going on with Trina, and how could things not be complicated, angry, filled with a sense of abandonment for Trina? She began living with her molesting uncle when she was still a child. I believe her parents decided to give her to him, knowing why he wanted to take a young girl off their hands. She's middle aged now, and still lives with him. She'll be the first to tell that she made the choice to live the way she does.

When there are only a few of us left, Dolly (a new client, in rehab, sweet, obviously a little emotionally disturbed) turns her attention to Sister Mary, one of the Sisters of Mercy nuns who helps us. Dolly wants to know if "Sister" means Mary is a nun. Mary answers that she is. Dolly has a lot of questions about being a nun, but she gets through them rapid fire until she reaches the main one. "Are you a virgin?" she asks. She has to ask it several times because she is mouthing the words, with her hands cupped dramatically around her mouth. Once Mary understands her, she readily answers that she is. "You are?! Really! I've never met a virgin before!" Dolly can barely contain her delight.

Endlessly good natured Mary, who celebrated her 50th year of being a nun a few years ago, answered all the questions that followed. No, she'd never slept with anyone. She wanted to be a nun. She couldn't marry and still be a nun even if she only slept with her husband. If a man asked her out for a drink, she would explain that she was Sister Mary, and that would probably keep things from going any further. One man had asked her to marry once, but she thought he just wanted to get a green card. Mary was soon laughing. Dolly, realizing at last, that Mary really meant the virginity thing, suddenly began making desperate efforts to console her.
"There are some advantages!" Dolly said. "Child birth hurts! You never had to do that. And, and you never had to mess with men that don't treat you right. Those are advantages!" Dolly repeated her list several times, then thought of another, and pointed out to Mary that she never had to bother with birth control either.

"That's right!" Mary agreed. "I never had to!" She was still smiling. So were Dolly and the rest of the room. In my nearly five years at YANA, I've never heard virginity discussed or a nun grilled on her choices, but it was a YANA moment just the same. A weird little moment of delight as we all got to know one another a bit better.

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Next Posts: We'll meet many more of the individual women and continue to follow them, and we'll talk more about Hezekiah House, Health Care for Homeless, our many volunteers, and the indomitable Sid Ford who founded YANA by driving the very mean streets of Baltimore at night, talking to prostituted women and believing that something good would come of it.