Maria Espinosa

NEW YEARS EVE IN MELAQUE

For months I have been staying in Melaque, just over a few hills from Cuastecomate. This is a larger town, and it comes alive with long term visitors, most of whom are Canadian, between Christmas and Easter.

I live at the outskirts of the town, on the northern end of the bay where fishermen launch their boats and the waves are calmest for swimming. My small apartment, called a bungalow, faces steep green hills on one side, and is only a few hundred years from the ocean. Each day, long before dawn, cocks will begin crowing, a melodic back and forth chant. At seven a.m. sharp, an awakening bugle sounds from the nearby military academy.

New Years Eve was alive with fire crackers exploding everywhere. Along with this was loud music that would last until the early hours of the morning.

At midnight, I wandered down to the beach, where fires were visible all along the shore, as well as a dazzling display of fireworks in the distance from Barra de Navidad, to the south. A group of Mexicans had gathered in a circle. They held lighted candles, along with narrow fluted champagne glasses as they welcomed the New Year.

I went invoked the New Year in my own way. It involved burning slips of paper on which I had written qualities I wanted to relinquish of, then casting the ashes into the ocean.

At dawn the sun began to infuse my bedroom with a golden glow. I felt unusually happy and calm. Drank coffee and ate a bolillo. Ran down to the ocean for a quick swim. Then back for yoga, meditation, and work on a long abandoned novel. Here on the shore, where the pace of everyday life is much slower than in San Francisco, where the sun warms and the sea refreshes, at last perhaps I can begin to create some kind of form out of the chaos of scribbled notes and drafts written over the years.

Several years ago I read a book that sticks in my mind: NEW GRUB STREET, a turn of the century novel by George Gissing. The London literary scene he depicts with merciless clarity has such parallels to the contemporary world. On cleanliness: “It is often said by people who are exquisitely ignorant of the matter that cleanliness is a luxury within reach of even the poorest. Very far from that. Only with the utmost difficulty, with wearisome exertion, with harassing sacrifice, can people who are pinched for money preserve a moderate purity in therir persons and their surroundings.” A homeless woman told me how she tries to give herself sponge baths in Wendy’s bathrooms.. Yesterday I read of a famous Russian writer who is living out of his car in Sacramento. On money. “….A great fortified of self-respect. Since she had become the owner of five thousand pounds, Marian spoke with a steadier voice, walked with a firmer step. Mentally she felt herself altogether a less dependent being…” And on literary fame, one of the less scrupulous characters says, “We know that a fairly good book will ….receive fair treatment from two or three reviewers…but more than likely it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week…the struggle for existence among books nowadays is as severe as among men…”

Two concepts described by the famous and controversial Tibetan Buddhist teacher,
Chogyam Trunpa, have deeply impressed me.

One is the concept of emotion as energy, essentially clear like water. Our thoughts-emotions color the water with different pigments.

The second concept is that of carrying the projector–like a movie projector–inside one’s mind, but eliminating the screen (ie, eliminating the object).

I first clearly experienced emotions as energy–transmutable with different pigments–on a Buddhist retreat years ago in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One cold grey day, having had all I could take of meditation, I fled to the women’s restrooms. A woman called Susan followed, to bring me back to the fold. Filled with rage, I strode towards her and then suddenly something transformed. I felt the energy shift. I hugged her!

She understood, and she hugged me back.

It was pure energy, transmutable.

Once she had been young and hopeful. Once she had lived in an apartment, and she had shopped for groceries. Now she panhandled for money to buy food. “Jack in the Box on Seventh Street and Wendy’s on Market have 99-cent specials. I won’t go to the shelters for food. They don’t treat me right in the lineup.”
There was a drop-in shelter near Van Ness and Market where she could shower, but she had trouble getting there with her heavy shopping bags, and her dirtiness embarrassed her.
“I wash in restaurant restrooms, with sponge baths. I don’t wear a bra because it hurts my chest. For underpants I wear pantyhose, from which I’ve cut off the feet. I wash them in a sink at Wendy’s. I wring them dry with a paper towel and put them on wet. But first I put Noxema on my skin. It keeps me from getting a rash. I’ve had a skin rash so bad I had to go to the hospital.”
Finding bathrooms was a major problem.
“They don’t want us homeless people in restaurants or bars. They just wish we’d disappear … Wendy’s on Market closes at ten p.m. If I have to urinate at two a.m., I put on my shoes, rush up the BART steps, and have to go on the street.
“Once for eight weeks I didn’t shower or brush my teeth or hair. Then I bought Noxema, washed and dried my clothes in a laundromat on Sixth Street while I wore a plastic bag for a dress. I washed myself at Wendy’s.
“From walking I’ve had blisters and corns on my feet so bad that they crack between the toes. I cut off calluses and corns by myself with a razor.”
When she had the money, she would buy a new sweatshirt or sweatpants, pantyhose, or a pair of shoes at Woolworth’s.
She suffered from emphysema, cirrhosis, skin diseases, infected scabs. She had arthritis, a bad heart, and needed glasses to read, but had lost them.
On the first of each month, when her SSI check came, she would vanish. She would rent a cheap hotel room, drink, perhaps do her laundry, buy some new things at Woolworths. Or she might take the bus to Reno and rent a room there, where she said it was quieter and cheaper. In Reno she would gamble. Eventually, she would reappear on her familiar corner in San Francisco.
“I will be leaving my job soon,” I said. “How can I contact you?”
She wasn’t sure how. She mentioned a General Delivery Postal address, but she wasn’t sure of the street or the zip code.
At times she would be very drunk. Then she would shout out angry words and curses from her ledge on the corner—to herself, to God, to whomever was passing by.
“Let me help you find a room,” I said. I reasoned that her SSI check would be enough to pay down a month’s rent at a rooming house and still leave her cash for food and laundry and other things. But she was reluctant, even though she expressed enthusiasm. “Let me get my laundry done first. I’m too dirty to go the way I am,” she would say. But then she wouldn’t do her laundry, and she would fail to show up.
Sometimes she was just too tired, or her money was gone.
I realized she was afraid of being alone in an enclosed room. Somehow, the streets felt safer.
“Oh honey, I want a room so bad.”
“Okay, we’ll get you one when your check comes … You say it’s automatically deposited in your bank. Good. We’ll go and look that same afternoon.”
In preparation, I would call various cheap hotels. But then she would be too tired, not feel up it, and afraid. “I don’t want them to see me so dirty like this. I’ll wash up, and then we’ll go tomorrow, honey. My feet hurt too bad today.”
Some hotels she did not like. At others she’d had bad experiences, or she’d been thrown out for drinking. Still other hotels were always filled at the beginning of the month with people in situations like hers. I calculated that with a little over half her SSI check she could pay a month’s rent. “No,” she said. “It costs too much. I’d rather just pay for a few days.”
The last time I tried to help her find a room, she just couldn’t manage walking to a nearby bus with her bags, even with my help, and no taxis were in sight. She didn’t dare leave her few possessions for even a moment. She said that occasionally she would rent a locker on Eddy Street or at Mason and Taylor for a couple of dollars a day.

I left my job in San Francisco and went away for several months. When I returned, she was no longer on her corner, and none of the shopkeepers had seen her. I continue to search for her, but I have not ever seen her again. Maybe she has moved to another block. Maybe she has moved to Reno. Maybe she is in a hospital. Is she still alive?
I wonder at the harshness of prevailing public policies. It would be so easy to make people’s lives a little easier.
A few examples:
Eve spoke of how old-fashioned park benches were built so that one could lie on them full-length. Newer ones are built with a divider in the middle, expressly to prevent this.
There used to be public bathhouses (not erotic clubs but real bathhouses) where for a few coins one could take a bath, dry off with a clean towel, and emerge refreshed.
Amenities that used to exist have vanished..
What about protecting people without homes, rather than hassling them? What about building some free public bathrooms, showers, baths, places to wash clothes, to groom oneself? What about creating shelters where one doesn’t have to leave at dawn? What about less claustrophobic shelters, perhaps in the open air—casual places with unobtrusive protecting guards, where people could just could lie down and sleep safely for a few hours, or sit and collect their thoughts? What about free places to check their belongings?
We punish victims. Years ago Eve might have been in a mental hospital. But these hospitals were closed, and patients were put onto the streets.
What has become of Eve? Where are you now?

ABOUT EVE:
PART 2

I invited Eve out to dinner to find out more about her, as she mirrored some of my own deepest fears. If circumstances in my life were to change, I too, might be without a home.
She suggested Wendy’s on Market Street. “Have whatever you like,” I said. But she would only order the 99-cent special. As we ate baked potatoes with plastic forks, she talked about how difficult it was to sleep. “In the winter, four or five of us sleep at the bottom of the BART steps next to the gate, where it’s warmest. But we can’t lie down there until they close the gates at one a.m. Big John, Little John, Chris, and Tony—they look out for me when they’re around. Then the BART gates open up again at four am on weekdays, and we have to leave. I’m always cold and tired. Last night I slept in the doorway of Mrs. Fields Cookies on Market Street, which closes at seven p.m. I’m afraid to go to sleep at night. Drinking helps me sleep … I’ve been robbed, beaten, and raped.”
Plastic bubble wrap, when she could scavenge it from garbage bins, served as covering. Cardboard beneath her failed to keep her dry when rained.
What about homeless shelters? I asked.
She didn’t like them. She was embarrassed to go there when she was unwashed and dirty. She felt hemmed in. She didn’t like being crowded in with strange women and girls. And her things were likely to get stolen there.
“Occasionally I go to a shelter to sleep, but I disrupt people when I drink, and I can’t get a blanket. Most of them are younger. Their strong perfumes bother me, and there’s not enough oxygen. The girls broke the new air conditioner at the shelter on Polk and Geary.
“The Outreach people brought me a sleeping bag in Pigeon Park on Mission, but four days later it was stolen from a doorway when I went for cigarettes.”
“I would love a studio apartment of my own. When I had one, I used to read ten books a month, sew, knit, write short stories – daily events—the facts of life, American style.”
She took another bite of her baked potato. Despite living on the streets, her nails were clean and filed. With her ruddy complexion and clothed as she was, she looked like a woman from the country. I noticed how blue her eyes were. Her upper front teeth were missing.
“I have been threatened, hit over the head, robbed, and raped,” she repeated. “Often I can’t sleep because I’m afraid. I’m always tired and cold.”
She was perhaps sixty-seven, and she been born in Nevada. After her father abandoned the family, she was sent to an orphanage as a small child, although her mother kept her brothers and sisters. She spent her last two high school years in a San Francisco convent, and she had liked the nuns. This had been one of the happiest periods of her life.
She attended Heald’s Business College in Sacramento, and in the ‘40’s she held a series of office jobs. “I worked for Blue Cross, for Capwell’s, and as a long distance telephone operator.” In 1951 she married an older man named Morris. “I was a virgin bride … The last time I saw him was in 1954. ‘You can have me back anytime you want, toots’”, he said.
But she didn’t want him back.
In the ‘60’s and ‘70’s she continued to hold jobs. “I was a doctor’s receptionist. I worked for Leeds shoes in Oakland. I was a cocktail waitress.” She moved around between Santa Rosa, Modesto, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as Nevada. She referred to being a housekeeper off and on for sixteen years. Possibly this was a reference to the men she lived with, after Morris.
She had been in and out of mental hospitals more times than she could remember, and she had lived on the streets for many years. She was vague about what caused her breakdowns. In the late ‘50’s and ‘60s’ she’d had electroshock treatments.
How many years had she been on the streets? She was vague about this,
“It’s miserable being homeless. I have no friends. Four days ago I almost killed myself. I wanted to go off the bridge, but I took the wrong bus to Fort Mason.”
She drank to block out the cold and misery and pain.
“Drinking is a haven … They make me drink. My SSI check goes to the Bank of America, but Reno and the bars get it. I drink to help out the others …. when I drink I help all those people whose sexual equipment has been cleaned out … they railroad me to the bars.”
She delicately folded her paper napkin, then excused herself to go to the restroom. When she returned, her face was flushed, her breath smelled of alcohol, and her stories became more bizarre. But were these stories simply psychotic ramblings, or did they contain glimmers of truth? Just what did she pick up of other people’s vibrations?
Over the next few months I continued to meet with her, and I tried to piece together her life.
Apparently trivial memories are sometimes the most potent.
She spoke of a blue flowered blanket from Kress’s that she bought in Marysville. The blanket got lost while she was traveling. “I’ve got nothing to show for all my years of work.”
She talked about a long-ago friend named Mary. They used to go out to dance halls together. She remembered their pleated skirts and a pink sweater that Mary gave her.
She spoke of a man named Fred. “He was my only friend. Fred was always a gentleman. He was Filipino. Two years ago he got sick and they put him into the hospital. I flew in from New York to see him, and I stayed at the Columbia Hotel. The night he flew back to the Philippines, my purse got stolen with his address. After he left, I was devastated.”

ABOUT EVE: Part 1

In the fall of 1997 I began working in an office in downtown San Francisco south of Market. The large number of homeless people on the streets deeply disturbed me. For the most part, commuters ignored them. Certain images stand out: The first is of a couple sleeping in a doorway at dawn, one’s arm protectively around the other. In hooded jackets, their sex is indeterminable. A second image, also early in the morning, is that of a woman slouching over a small boy, whom she cradles in her arms. Both are sound asleep in the middle of a broad sidewalk. Their styrofoam begging cup holds a few coins. Crowds swarm past them at 7:30 a.m., as if they simply were not there at all. The third memory is that of “robots”, gilded human figures who stand in frozen postures near Market and Geary. They, too, hold begging cups. Are they appealing to the crowd’s desire that they be truly inanimate?
A woman whom I came to know as Eve used to sit on a ledge on the corner of Mission Street and New Montgomery. Many mornings she would be there, and then sometimes she would vanish for a few days or weeks. “Thanks honey,” she would call out in a warm, throaty voice whenever someone dropped money into her little straw basket. She would be holding a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. Dressed in a white windbreaker and turquoise sweatpants, her white hair pulled back into a bun with jaunty red barrettes, she intrigued me. She was less frightening to me than many of the others, and I wondered what had driven her to the streets.
During these first few weeks, her belongings consisted of two plastic shopping bags. The cord handle of one was torn, so that she would have to grip the sides of the bag as she carried it. Over time, these belongings would change, as they frequently got stolen. Then with money from panhandling or her SSI check, she would go to Woolworth’s on Market Street and buy herself a cheap backpack or a small baggage cart. In time, these too would disappear.
What was her life like? How did she survive day to day?

“La senora tambien…” – words in rapid Spanish come from the two women sitting behind me on BART I strain to understand, but can only make out a little of what they are talking about. How difficult it would be to live in Mexico, I think. And how difficult for immigrants who come here speaking a foreign language.

Earlier, while I waited for the train at Fifth and Powell, I realized that nearly everyone was wearing black or somber colors. Here and there a red jacket, a pink hoodie and backpack stood out against the drabness of our clothing. People were laden with shopping bags from Nordstrom, Macys, Old Navy. Shopping bags filled with things they probably didn’t need.

I have just come from a demonstration against the 30,000 troops Obama is sending into Afghanistan. A crowd of us had gathered at dusk near Hallidie Plaza on Market Street in San Francisco.  One person after another shouted out passionate speeches through a microphone. A cold night. I was getting hoarse from yelling slogans “What do we want? We want peace.” “Afghanistan attack. We step back.” A man was carrying a placard that read“9/11 was an inside job.” He handed me fliers. I believe him.

A cold raw dark night. Red and blue lights flashed from the motorcycles of policemen who were monitoring our procession. A woman beat a drum that she wore strapped to her body. She was wrapped in scarves, a long skirt, a jacket, her hair hidden. It was so cold. We were dressed in drab – no dancing in the streets. A man shouted through a bullhorn as we walked. Lots of cameras flashed. TV news trucks were here, making the most of a small turnout of several hundred people. Most of the bystanders applauded and shouted slogans in support, but one man jeered, “These are the liberals who voted for Obama.”

I am one grain of sand on a beach – just one grain.

The BART train rolls on. The fluorescent overhead lights irritate me. The two women chatter on in Spanish.