In one sense Lilian seems to be doing better -- she is more talkative and more vibrant than she once was. I suspect that this is the result of some change in medication. Either she's sober now after taking some street drug that numbed her, or she's on some different combination of medicines prescribed for her. Maybe she's taking fewer meds, or maybe she's on a good antidepressant (we had a client the other day who announced, "I'm feeling good! That antidepressant is working!"). I don't get the impression that she's coming to YANA wound up on crack or the like, but, then, drugs affect people in different ways, and I'm no expert. At any rate, she is increasingly charming and fun to be around, while just as oblivious as she ever was to the larger issues in her life.
This week she showed us the two or three large bruises on her arm and complained about having 18 vials of blood taken from her. She said it was because the doctors believed she'd had a mild stroke the week before. "They think that's why I'm leaning to the right and drooling," she told the room. And then "Look at those bruises!". But before anyone could express any sympathy, for her, she triumphantly delivered the punch line, "But guess what?! They took so much blood they gave me a $10.00 Walmart Gift Card. That's a Christmas present right there!" Lilian burst into gleeful laughter over having been given a present by her doctor and seemed finished with the conversation.
I asked her to look directly at me for a second and confirmed that one side of her mouth was sagging. I fell completely into Lilian mode in telling her this. "Not much!" I assured her. "I never would have noticed if you hadn't told me about it!" She had a follow up appointment with her doc. -- I didn't feel required to say anything more than that. Besides, I don't feel capable of battering down that weirdly powerful invisible shield she's managed to erect between herself and the horrors that seem to lie in wait.
As Lilian was leaving later, she stopped to tell the other ladies the latest bit of gossip. "You know that 14 year old boy that got raped and then the guy cut his throat?" Everyone but me seemed to know quite a bit about it. One woman wasn't sure whether the killer had been caught and the rest quickly told her that he'd been caught the next day at a 7-11. "Well, his grandmother is in my house," Lilian said. "She was holding up well until the funeral yesterday. Then she fell apart." Lilian delivered this news kindly, the way one woman will tell the others about the well being of someone else from the church or the neighborhood. Grandmothers in rehab, people whose children get killed, women like our women so often know one another. It was community news for them. And the reaction was a community reaction. Even after Lilian was out the door, the clients were still reassuring me and each other of the tortures that would befall the child killer in prison.
"They're going to do to him worse than what he did to that child," a woman said.
The rest nodded like they were in church, hearing hearing the God's honest truth.
"That's right. That's right," the women affirmed.
"That's what we always did!" Jessie said.
"You don't know how fast news travels in prison," one woman told me. "They're going to know before anyone. They're going to be waiting for him."
This prompted another round of "that's rights."
Then one of the women made the mistake of telling us what she personally would do to the man if the 14 year old had been her son. I didn't think anything of that. Most parents I've known would be talking about dismemberment if they imagined their children raped and murdered. Unfortunately, Jessie took the opportunity to point out that while she used to think the same way, she had been "working on her spiritual side." One's spiritual side is very, very important to our women, especially once they get into rehab. Embarrassed, the speaker began a rapid fire explanation of just how important her own spiritual side was to her and how much she was learning in her bible class.
"For example, did you know that when you're asleep you're dead?" She smiled proudly delivering this bit of knowledge to people who obviously had no idea. "That's right! Your pores open up, and your immune system doesn't work, and everything goes in and out of you. You're dead! King James is the truth!" There wasn't a woman in the room foolish enough to touch any of that, and in a minute or two we were all restored to the usual low hum of conversation. Sad stories. Small victories. A nearly endless supply of improvised strategies so everyone could get by.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Tina Gets a New Dress (The Lord Provides)
Tina came in Wednesday sober and coherent, as she's been for the past few weeks, but obviously sad. Her cousin had died. He had been released from prison a few days earlier and had already been found dead of an overdose in an "abandominium." She had come to YANA to find a black dress for his funeral. In the strange way that things so often work at YANA, there was one black dress in our little donation closet. It was an absolutely gorgeous Liz Claiborne, and it fit her perfectly. Tina looked through our 7 or 8 pairs of shoes and found a very cute black pair that also fit her perfectly. Ditto for our one black blazer.
The other women all began to fuss over the sight of our usually woebegone little stick figure in rags transformed into a runway-way thin model with the great outfit. "Is someone going to take her picture?" Jennifer wanted to know. Heather, our volunteer psychologist, got her cell phone. Tina hurried to the bathroom to fix her hair, and another client said, "Let's do it professionally!" and set up a screen to serve as a backdrop for the shoot. Heather took a few pictures; the room admired Tina, and Tina, staring at the images on the phone, asked if she could get copies. She said that her mother would probably want to enlarge the pictures and hang them on her wall.
Tina's mother tried to hang Tina when she was eight. Tina's brother stopped her, but to this day, when mom gets drunk, she tells Tina, "I should of kicked that chair out from under you when I had the chance!" She curses Tina and hits her when she lives with the family. Much of the time Tina survives on the street or in shelters. And, I can imagine that Tina's mother really would hang up the picture proudly. Our clients have very complicated family relationships.
And, certainly, all the women at YANA were delighted with Tina's good fortune in finding such good clothes. Again, I heard the word "blessing" and the explanation "This is how God works" far more than I would have cared to, and, once again, I managed to restrain myself from saying anything along the lines of "Halli-fucking-luah a 22-year-old is dead, but Tina has nice clothes!" For all that Tina really was pleased with both the outfit and the attention, she was still grieving deeply.
She got me aside a bit to talk again about her cousin's death, and for the first time in the nearly five years I've been at YANA, I heard what one of our women thinks about the afterlife. It was every bit as bad as I'd feared. Tina said that since her cousin had died of an overdose, he had committed suicide, which meant that he was in hell. She said that Jesus suffered and died for our sins, and instead of finishing that sentiment with anything about forgiveness or redemption, she said contrasted his goodness with her own evil and shook her head, grim-faced. Tina told me that she wanted to be with Jesus and the angels, but she didn't think she had much of a chance. After all, she explained, there was no excuse for the things she did.
I didn't know what to say to Tina. We don't tell people how to feel about religion at YANA, and we especially don't do it if their belief in the damnation of addicts who overdose might be what's saved their lives so far. Add to that the very real possibility that smashing through a fragile person's self definition might have more consequences than I know what to do with. . . and I decided to fob off the whole problem on someone else. I asked Tina if she would like to talk to Sister Catherine when she came back, and Tina eagerly said she would. I figured that Catherine's decades of comforting the downtrodden would serve her in good stead.
I also didn't know what to say to Tina about her grief for the loss of her cousin. She said she worried about going to the funeral. She said her last funeral was for her grandfather she'd only seen once in her life. She said she tried to pull him out of the coffin because she didn't want him to leave her. How do you comfort someone who feels her losses that deeply? My answer was to give her a couple of bucks for bus fare and to accept her hugs and thanks for having done "so much."
The other women all began to fuss over the sight of our usually woebegone little stick figure in rags transformed into a runway-way thin model with the great outfit. "Is someone going to take her picture?" Jennifer wanted to know. Heather, our volunteer psychologist, got her cell phone. Tina hurried to the bathroom to fix her hair, and another client said, "Let's do it professionally!" and set up a screen to serve as a backdrop for the shoot. Heather took a few pictures; the room admired Tina, and Tina, staring at the images on the phone, asked if she could get copies. She said that her mother would probably want to enlarge the pictures and hang them on her wall.
Tina's mother tried to hang Tina when she was eight. Tina's brother stopped her, but to this day, when mom gets drunk, she tells Tina, "I should of kicked that chair out from under you when I had the chance!" She curses Tina and hits her when she lives with the family. Much of the time Tina survives on the street or in shelters. And, I can imagine that Tina's mother really would hang up the picture proudly. Our clients have very complicated family relationships.
And, certainly, all the women at YANA were delighted with Tina's good fortune in finding such good clothes. Again, I heard the word "blessing" and the explanation "This is how God works" far more than I would have cared to, and, once again, I managed to restrain myself from saying anything along the lines of "Halli-fucking-luah a 22-year-old is dead, but Tina has nice clothes!" For all that Tina really was pleased with both the outfit and the attention, she was still grieving deeply.
She got me aside a bit to talk again about her cousin's death, and for the first time in the nearly five years I've been at YANA, I heard what one of our women thinks about the afterlife. It was every bit as bad as I'd feared. Tina said that since her cousin had died of an overdose, he had committed suicide, which meant that he was in hell. She said that Jesus suffered and died for our sins, and instead of finishing that sentiment with anything about forgiveness or redemption, she said contrasted his goodness with her own evil and shook her head, grim-faced. Tina told me that she wanted to be with Jesus and the angels, but she didn't think she had much of a chance. After all, she explained, there was no excuse for the things she did.
I didn't know what to say to Tina. We don't tell people how to feel about religion at YANA, and we especially don't do it if their belief in the damnation of addicts who overdose might be what's saved their lives so far. Add to that the very real possibility that smashing through a fragile person's self definition might have more consequences than I know what to do with. . . and I decided to fob off the whole problem on someone else. I asked Tina if she would like to talk to Sister Catherine when she came back, and Tina eagerly said she would. I figured that Catherine's decades of comforting the downtrodden would serve her in good stead.
I also didn't know what to say to Tina about her grief for the loss of her cousin. She said she worried about going to the funeral. She said her last funeral was for her grandfather she'd only seen once in her life. She said she tried to pull him out of the coffin because she didn't want him to leave her. How do you comfort someone who feels her losses that deeply? My answer was to give her a couple of bucks for bus fare and to accept her hugs and thanks for having done "so much."
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Prostitution and the Church
The church was beautiful, small with stained glass, polished wood, built to look like a ship with something precious inside, making its way through a community that looked like it was filled with storm-tossed debris and monsters of the deep. The occasion was tragic, a memorial service for a young woman murdered as she tried to leave prostitution. The dead woman, Cindy, had graduated from a YANA program designed for women on the brink of change. She had done community outreach, given away condoms, tried to do better, tried to turn her back on the darkness of her life and become one of those thousands of points of lights that politicians like to talk about. Instead, someone broke her neck when he threw her down the stairs. I'm not sure whether the murderer was supposed to be a boyfriend or another trick, but she was dead either way, and the little church that she liked to visit sometimes was filled with teary-eyed mourners.
It soon became clear that the minister was not one of them. As we sat there in increasing amazement, he pointed out that she had been a prostitute, then he lectured, with grim matter-of-factness, her children, her mother, and her friends on the hellfire and damnation that await sinners. It was blindingly obvious that he saw no reason to mention heaven or salvation or anything else of comfort in a sermon about someone like her. He said almost nothing else about Cindy or her life, though he did take the time to announce that a couple of her mother's other children were dead as well. Having discharged what was clearly an onerous little task, he moved on to a much more interesting topic: graffiti had been scrawled on some churches in California. In a service nominally devoted to the murder of one of his flock, this man's outrage and, apparently, genuine grief poured forth on the subject of petty vandalism. After we left, Sid told me that Cindy had sat timorously in the back when she attended that church. She'd been afraid to talk to people. Wonder why?
So, that was one experience our women have had with organized religion. We've had a few other negatives: belligerent, self-styled preachers who've called us to schedule a time to come and "save" our clients. Those types have never gotten through the door, which is too bad for them. They probably would have found a little cluster of women easily abashed, ready to admit their guilty natures, eager for salvation. Our clients could have offered them a rich opportunity to feel morally superior.
Yet, moral superiority is not the usual response we get from churches. During our time of wandering through a fiscal wilderness, the churches have been our salvation. They give us money. Ministers preach about YANA from the pulpit, and their congregations send us bags full of supplies. We have a church (I believe of the same denomination as poor Cindy's minister) that makes up elaborate and expensive Easter baskets for the women every year. There's another church that tried to give us space for YANA until they ran into insurance problems. A group of young adults from a Korean mega-church worked very hard with our women. We gave them space to put on dinners and offer gentle sermons to the clients Thursday evenings. They drove out to our neighborhood and picked the women up for Sunday church. They took them to picnics, visited them in the hospital, prayed with them, looked after them until we worried, unnecessarily as it turned out, that they would be become enablers rather than helpers. The leader of that group was a young male engineer who became almost tearful with gratitude for the opportunity to serve God by serving the women of YANA. He was simply stunned by the thought that people could call themselves Christians and still turn their backs on the downtrodden.
And we've gotten the most help of all it from the organized Catholic Church. The Sisters of Mercy were one of Sid's first funders. They've regularly helped with small grants, and the nuns themselves volunteer at YANA. They are always well liked by the women, easy with them, and kind. Hezekiah House itself is owned by the Catholics, and they are the ones who took us in when we couldn't afford the rent. I'll probably never forget our first meeting with Brother Joe. We poured out stories of our women's suffering, and he responded immediately with plans for YANA days at Hezekiah. Midway through the meeting, we realized, with more than a little shock, that Joe wasn't clear on the fact that we planned to come with the women. He was so appalled by their circumstances that he was ready to have their little staff add YANA days to their schedule. For those of you who've been reading this blog, how would you like to squeeze an extra responsibility like that into your work week?
Still, for all the help we've gotten from the churches, I believe that the most important relationship between our women and the church is the women's love of God. At least if you measure religiosity in terms of gratitude to God, belief in having been blessed, and the absolute certainty that a literal God exists, then the prostituted women of YANA are -- by a long shot -- the most religious people I've ever met. Especially after they get a few weeks' sobriety under their belts; then they start praising him for everything. Ask them how they are today, and half the time the answer is "blessed." They thank God for a two-day janitorial job, for miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner, for a blanket in the winter. They remind each other of his importance. But they rarely go to church. And they never talk about heaven.
Maybe most of their experiences were like Cindy's. Maybe the contempt her minister felt for her was the norm, and all the helping churches have been the exception. How can they risk the pain of being told by a messenger from God that they are contemptible in his sight? Maybe the women don't think they deserve to go to a place that good. Maybe, and I suspect this may be the case for at least a few of them, the experience of going even to a welcoming church would be too powerful for them. If they believe they have walked into God's house, and they feel impelled to think about what God wants them to do with their lives, how do they go on living the way they do? And how much help can they get from a traditional church if they want to live differently? Thinking about what I wrote in the second How Much Money do Prostitutes Make? section, how would they be able to take it in the message they are valuable. They are loved. They are important in the eyes of God? I believe a message like that would be intensely painful for some of the YANA women. And maybe the concept of heaven is too. Despite their sickness and despite the fact that almost all of them grieve over the loss of someone they've loved, they never mention heaven. I'm pretty sure they believe it exists. Maybe they just don't think it's for the likes of them.
It soon became clear that the minister was not one of them. As we sat there in increasing amazement, he pointed out that she had been a prostitute, then he lectured, with grim matter-of-factness, her children, her mother, and her friends on the hellfire and damnation that await sinners. It was blindingly obvious that he saw no reason to mention heaven or salvation or anything else of comfort in a sermon about someone like her. He said almost nothing else about Cindy or her life, though he did take the time to announce that a couple of her mother's other children were dead as well. Having discharged what was clearly an onerous little task, he moved on to a much more interesting topic: graffiti had been scrawled on some churches in California. In a service nominally devoted to the murder of one of his flock, this man's outrage and, apparently, genuine grief poured forth on the subject of petty vandalism. After we left, Sid told me that Cindy had sat timorously in the back when she attended that church. She'd been afraid to talk to people. Wonder why?
So, that was one experience our women have had with organized religion. We've had a few other negatives: belligerent, self-styled preachers who've called us to schedule a time to come and "save" our clients. Those types have never gotten through the door, which is too bad for them. They probably would have found a little cluster of women easily abashed, ready to admit their guilty natures, eager for salvation. Our clients could have offered them a rich opportunity to feel morally superior.
Yet, moral superiority is not the usual response we get from churches. During our time of wandering through a fiscal wilderness, the churches have been our salvation. They give us money. Ministers preach about YANA from the pulpit, and their congregations send us bags full of supplies. We have a church (I believe of the same denomination as poor Cindy's minister) that makes up elaborate and expensive Easter baskets for the women every year. There's another church that tried to give us space for YANA until they ran into insurance problems. A group of young adults from a Korean mega-church worked very hard with our women. We gave them space to put on dinners and offer gentle sermons to the clients Thursday evenings. They drove out to our neighborhood and picked the women up for Sunday church. They took them to picnics, visited them in the hospital, prayed with them, looked after them until we worried, unnecessarily as it turned out, that they would be become enablers rather than helpers. The leader of that group was a young male engineer who became almost tearful with gratitude for the opportunity to serve God by serving the women of YANA. He was simply stunned by the thought that people could call themselves Christians and still turn their backs on the downtrodden.
And we've gotten the most help of all it from the organized Catholic Church. The Sisters of Mercy were one of Sid's first funders. They've regularly helped with small grants, and the nuns themselves volunteer at YANA. They are always well liked by the women, easy with them, and kind. Hezekiah House itself is owned by the Catholics, and they are the ones who took us in when we couldn't afford the rent. I'll probably never forget our first meeting with Brother Joe. We poured out stories of our women's suffering, and he responded immediately with plans for YANA days at Hezekiah. Midway through the meeting, we realized, with more than a little shock, that Joe wasn't clear on the fact that we planned to come with the women. He was so appalled by their circumstances that he was ready to have their little staff add YANA days to their schedule. For those of you who've been reading this blog, how would you like to squeeze an extra responsibility like that into your work week?
Still, for all the help we've gotten from the churches, I believe that the most important relationship between our women and the church is the women's love of God. At least if you measure religiosity in terms of gratitude to God, belief in having been blessed, and the absolute certainty that a literal God exists, then the prostituted women of YANA are -- by a long shot -- the most religious people I've ever met. Especially after they get a few weeks' sobriety under their belts; then they start praising him for everything. Ask them how they are today, and half the time the answer is "blessed." They thank God for a two-day janitorial job, for miniature bottles of shampoo and conditioner, for a blanket in the winter. They remind each other of his importance. But they rarely go to church. And they never talk about heaven.
Maybe most of their experiences were like Cindy's. Maybe the contempt her minister felt for her was the norm, and all the helping churches have been the exception. How can they risk the pain of being told by a messenger from God that they are contemptible in his sight? Maybe the women don't think they deserve to go to a place that good. Maybe, and I suspect this may be the case for at least a few of them, the experience of going even to a welcoming church would be too powerful for them. If they believe they have walked into God's house, and they feel impelled to think about what God wants them to do with their lives, how do they go on living the way they do? And how much help can they get from a traditional church if they want to live differently? Thinking about what I wrote in the second How Much Money do Prostitutes Make? section, how would they be able to take it in the message they are valuable. They are loved. They are important in the eyes of God? I believe a message like that would be intensely painful for some of the YANA women. And maybe the concept of heaven is too. Despite their sickness and despite the fact that almost all of them grieve over the loss of someone they've loved, they never mention heaven. I'm pretty sure they believe it exists. Maybe they just don't think it's for the likes of them.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Halloween
"A woman who's on her period can't hold a rose. If she tries, the petals will all fall off." The forty-something YANA client who told me that was dead-serious. So was the woman who explained that her daughter's ghost never visited her because the girl understood that her mother was "afraid of dead people." Her daughter restricted her appearances to other family members out of consideration for her mother's nerves. As far as I could tell, everyone else in the room seemed to believe that this was an immanently reasonable decision on the part of the ghost.
YANA women tend to be pretty literal. A rose is beautiful. A period is nasty. So, never the two shall meet. Or something like that. And people you love don't just live in your mind as abstract ideas. They're real people. So, if the mother never walks in the girl's old bedroom and sees her sitting on the bed ready to talk, the way her uncle has, it must be that the daughter is a good daughter, respecting her mother's wishes.
Their language, too, shows a surprising level of respect. Almost all YANA women are Christians, and I can't think of a single time I have ever heard any of them take the Lord's name in vain. Generally, they try not to swear at all in YANA, but when they do, they say bitch or the "f" word. Even little Tina has been known to announce that she "don't play that shit" when she thinks she's been insulted. No blaspheme, though. They don't mess around with God. They don't wear skull and cross bones motifs, get devil or hell fire tattoos, or dress, even remotely, Goth. And they certainly don't like Halloween.
I have been wanting to do more in the way of decorations and crafts, but I knew we'd be pretty limited with Halloween. There'd been some thought of getting a Halloween movie for our VCR, but no one was thinking Jason or Kruger. Even so, something that suggested any level of physical danger seemed like it might not work for our ladies, and the things I would consider fun -- like making scary masks or drawing pictures of goblins and skeletons -- well, I had the feeling they would be a problem too. Superstition, after all, is limiting, and superstitious people have limited lives in large ways and small. Then someone mentioned today the rapes that would be coming up soon with Halloween.
Rape is not something I associated with Halloween. Oh yes, several women explained. It's big challenge time with the gangs, big initiation time. Around Halloween, our local Bloods and Crips like to make a competition out of how many people they can rape or kill. Sid confirmed the explanation. That's what the gangs do.
Think of living your whole life in a neighborhood like that. Think of being one of the prime candidates for the raping or killing. Imagine that you're out at night quite often, and that at least once in your life, possibly many times, you've slept in abandoned houses or under bridges wondering whether someone would come out of the darkness to attack you. Then think that images of witches and demons have turned into rallying symbols for the attackers. Revulsion and terror start to sound like very good reactions to me. Amusement and abstraction -- not so much. I've begun to rethink my little syllogism. Maybe it's not that people who are superstitious end up with limited lives. Maybe it's that people with severely limited lives had better end up superstitious if they want to survive. They might miss out on holding roses at certain times of the month, but they also might find a place to hide when the wrong person or the wrong holiday draws near. And if they find comfort in their dead children's continuing acts of respect, good for them. That sounds like another good way to survive.
YANA women tend to be pretty literal. A rose is beautiful. A period is nasty. So, never the two shall meet. Or something like that. And people you love don't just live in your mind as abstract ideas. They're real people. So, if the mother never walks in the girl's old bedroom and sees her sitting on the bed ready to talk, the way her uncle has, it must be that the daughter is a good daughter, respecting her mother's wishes.
Their language, too, shows a surprising level of respect. Almost all YANA women are Christians, and I can't think of a single time I have ever heard any of them take the Lord's name in vain. Generally, they try not to swear at all in YANA, but when they do, they say bitch or the "f" word. Even little Tina has been known to announce that she "don't play that shit" when she thinks she's been insulted. No blaspheme, though. They don't mess around with God. They don't wear skull and cross bones motifs, get devil or hell fire tattoos, or dress, even remotely, Goth. And they certainly don't like Halloween.
I have been wanting to do more in the way of decorations and crafts, but I knew we'd be pretty limited with Halloween. There'd been some thought of getting a Halloween movie for our VCR, but no one was thinking Jason or Kruger. Even so, something that suggested any level of physical danger seemed like it might not work for our ladies, and the things I would consider fun -- like making scary masks or drawing pictures of goblins and skeletons -- well, I had the feeling they would be a problem too. Superstition, after all, is limiting, and superstitious people have limited lives in large ways and small. Then someone mentioned today the rapes that would be coming up soon with Halloween.
Rape is not something I associated with Halloween. Oh yes, several women explained. It's big challenge time with the gangs, big initiation time. Around Halloween, our local Bloods and Crips like to make a competition out of how many people they can rape or kill. Sid confirmed the explanation. That's what the gangs do.
Think of living your whole life in a neighborhood like that. Think of being one of the prime candidates for the raping or killing. Imagine that you're out at night quite often, and that at least once in your life, possibly many times, you've slept in abandoned houses or under bridges wondering whether someone would come out of the darkness to attack you. Then think that images of witches and demons have turned into rallying symbols for the attackers. Revulsion and terror start to sound like very good reactions to me. Amusement and abstraction -- not so much. I've begun to rethink my little syllogism. Maybe it's not that people who are superstitious end up with limited lives. Maybe it's that people with severely limited lives had better end up superstitious if they want to survive. They might miss out on holding roses at certain times of the month, but they also might find a place to hide when the wrong person or the wrong holiday draws near. And if they find comfort in their dead children's continuing acts of respect, good for them. That sounds like another good way to survive.
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