The face of homelessness: Can you recognize it?
As I walked through Capitol Park on Griswold in downtown Detroit I heard a voice call out,
“Hey you”
“Hey you”
I turned and a finger was pointed at me and I pointed to myself and she said,
“Yes, you”
I made a u turn and walked towards the bus stop that I had passed only a few seconds before.
In my mind I was sure that she wanted to know why I was asking people questions and taking their photos. It’s not uncommon for me to hear those questions. However, once I made it inside the bus stop area I wasn’t prepared for what I would encounter.
Inside the stop she sat with a man who she immediately nudged and said,
“Talk to her, go ahead and talk to her, she’s pretty and might even be your type”
He sat silent. His silence made her angrier. So in a louder tone she said,
“F-talk to her!”
Embarrassed he turned away and she looked me up and down with a grim face, lips curved and in an aggressive tone she said,
“Since he wont talk, you talk to him!”
I glanced around my surroundings and next to her I spotted the suspect. It was peeping out of a dirty brown paper bag with the label miller light stamped across it. Immediately I understood and told her he’s not interested in me and wished her a good day.
I knew her type. It takes insecurity to call a man out if you notice him glancing in another direction. How do I know? Because, I’ve been there.
She gave me a shocked glare when I didn’t respond to her lack of sobriety.
As I turned to walk away she asked,
“What are you doing with that camera?”
I told her I was asking citizens like her what issues they would want candidate Barack Obama to address if he became president. She asked,
“Who is that?”
I told her a black man running for president. She replied with a gentler tone and expression,
“that would be great.”
Her expression symbolized a truce and that’s when I learned her status and her perspective.
To look at her you wouldn’t assume that she was homeless. I think too often we associate homelessness by torn and weathered clothing and a sign that says please feed or help me. She had neither, but despite her drinking she was very articulate. She had a lot on her mind and I gave her the mic, which I call my ear.
Housing was at the top of her list and how people are being discriminated against because they receive government assistance. She also talked of the things that weren’t available to her as a child. In the middle of the conversation she went silent and her eyes became distant for a second as if she had been taken back to a haunted memory. I dwindled in the momentary silence until she came back and with compassion she said,
“I see a lot kids going through the same cycles that I did. They need more programs that parents can actually afford in order to get kids off the streets.”
She pointed to a group of teens that were on the opposite side of us and said,
“They should have things to do, but they are getting into the wrong things.”
After listening to her it was as though another person had emerged, someone she hadn’t been a few minutes before. Someone who I didn’t recognize as homeless. As she elaborated on the issues that concerned her I began to really understand why she was sitting at the bus stop. It wasn’t to catch the next bus, but because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
It’s a struggle to keep many of our own people from drowning. The drowning state is where I found her, however by the end of the conversation she was open to take a photo and before I knew it she had wrapped her arms around me and whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry.” I hugged her back and said “no problem just don’t give up and keep the faith.” She stood back and smiled and told her boyfriend “come on” leaving behind the can that had taken her to another state of mind.
As I walked away I realized that she and others are the invisibles that we often ignore. Maybe it’s because they are not holding signs or begging. This experience showed me that homelessness comes in all forms and the spirit within these individuals is broken and needs to be encouraged not just by words, but also by actions.
