Across the Great Divide

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Roxanne, a Native woman known to the Peace House Community, fell on some train tracks last weekend and had both legs severed. I'd heard about it on Tuesday and checked during the week for a news story with more information.

Searching, I found plenty of contemporary stories about a boy who lost a leg playing on tracks near Webber Park in April, and more about a Minneapolis lifeguard who had his lower legs taken in 2014. But nothing about Roxanne, even when I searched by her name.

Back at Peace House on Friday, I asked Ellie what she knew.

Roxanne was drinking with a guy on a hill above the tracks, she said. The guy shoved her when the train came by.

Did they catch the guy?

Roxanne says she doesn't remember who it was. Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she doesn't want to say. A guy tried to run over her in the park last year. His car hit the bench she was sitting on. If people hadn't seen him and pulled her out of the way, she could've been killed then.

What happened to that guy?

Oh, they caught him. He was driving on his rims by the time he left the park. But they were all drinking, and the cops didn't talk to all the witnesses. They let him go.

I told her I couldn't find out anything in the news about Roxanne being hurt.

They never report what happens to Natives, she said. Six people died of overdoses last month in the Cedar projects. It's getting real bad and nobody cares. Nobody  says nuthin. 

***

While the floors were being mopped, I went to the porch where the smokers can hang out. One of the men, who had a cigarette roller, made a cigarette for Ellie. He has a job on the cleanup crew at the new Vikings stadium and was waiting until three o'clock when he could pick up his first paycheck. He'd walked the seven miles from Richfield and would be walking back.

There was some stadium discussion up and down the porch about upcoming events. It eventually got sorted out as terms were defined: football vs. futbol, American football versus soccer. 

A man came from the alley and joined us, sitting down and setting a small shopping bag at his feet. He pulled out a piss-colored liter bottle of Listerine and quickly upended it, glugging down a significant amount.

Hey, my friend, I said. You can't do that here. People come here to get away from that stuff. The others joined in, saying they wanted no part of it.

Oh, he said, this is my first time here. I thought you were just hanging out. He stood up, sheepish, not belligerent, and moved to the edge of the group. Maybe I'll come back some other day.

Come when you're not drinking, I said. You'll be welcome then.

The Listerine is 26.9 percent alcohol. Dollar store brands have less alcohol but are substantially cheaper. (Dollar General advertises a 1.5 liter bottle for $3.00.)

Someone said the drug stores in the vicinity wouldn't sell mouthwash to Natives because they knew it would be misused. I suspect a couple of the men looking down on the mouthwash drinker were nursing hangovers themselves. Drinking itself doesn't seem to be responsible for the caste lines that sometimes emerge.

Rather, it's knowing when to stop. How to avoid a fight. How to keep a room and a job.

How not to push a woman down a hill when the train's coming.

Come back next week, friend, and listen to some different people.

 

This blog started in 2004. In 2009 I began writing about my experiences as a volunteer in the preschool at People Serving People, a Minneapolis family shelter. In the years since, I have volunteered more places and Across the Great Divide has evolved to share the stories, perspectives and lives of the people I've met. 

The Peace House Poets.

Calvin told me his brother was going for a job interview this afternoon. (Sometimes, I need to get to a job interview is a way of asking for gas money, which is a way of getting money for... you get the idea.)

But this is apparently legit. His brother just got out of prison and hopes to get the first job of his life at age 58. Technically, it's his second job. He was hired at a steel mill as a young man and a week later the company shut down the mill.

After that, he thought, what's the point of working for a company? Next he worked for Spot and Steal, Calvin said.

The job interview is in the housekeeping department in a hotel.

I used to work housekeeping, Calvin said. He told me about a contest for the staff. The worker who could make up bed the fastest and pass the inspection would win $100.

He practiced all week perfecting his technique, popping the sheets so they'd drop in place and he wouldn't have to fuss with smoothing them.

He scared off a few competitors by letting them watch him practice. There was one guy he knew was fast who he'd eventually face, so he didn't let anyone know about his secret weapon.

In the finals, the two men were close as they completed one side of the bed. As his competitor raced around to the other side, Calvin unleashed the secret weapon, leaping over the bed.

The move saved him a second or two, but it was the surprise factor and the whooping audience that made the other guy hesitate just enough. 

Calvin collected the hundred.

I've met a number of intelligent people at Peace House during my first month. Their full-time job, it seems, is to manage an overflowing mind, thoughts that race, memories that won't fade, pain that sends signals all night. 

The words come in long streams or they come out of nowhere, as from the man who sat down and wrote this one afternoon. 

 

We Don't Try to Make Sense of it.

Tom is heading to St. Cloud where two twins are throwing surprise birthday parties for each other.

This makes total sense and it's crazy, too.

Yes, I'm at Peace House. 

***

Bill hasn't had electricity in his room "for some time." It went out last fall, then came back on over the winter. Now it's out again. He stays out late rather than be in a room with no light.

Maybe the bulb's burnt out, said Calvin. You should get a ladder and check it.

I have a ladder, Bill said.

In your room?

Yes.

Later I asked Bill why the landlord hasn't restored his power.

I haven't told them yet.

Why not?

My room's in a bit of disarray, he said. You know, tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow.

***

On other weekdays, youngsters from local schools come in to get a dose of reality. They are sweet but they don't quite see everything.

One girl told Calvin it was her last day, and he said, it that case, you should go to Mel and ask him for your street name. He gives everyone their street name after they have finished here.

At the end of the day, she told Mel she had come for her street name.

It was a gentle prank, of course, aimed at putting Mel on the spot.

He didn't blink.

Snow White, he said.

***

The topic of guns somehow crept into our discussion about whether protests are effective.

One man said, "With my extensive mental record and extensive criminal record, it's easier for me to get a gun than it is to get an apartment or a lawyer to help me with my problems. So how do you think I am going to help myself?"

Do have a gun with you? Curt asked. 

No, the man said.

***

Ellie says her sister was a bootlegger on the Pine Ridge Reservation. One day a man came in and screwed off his artificial leg as security for his purchase. A one-eyed man left a whole case of glass eyes in different colors. Yet another paid with his false teeth.

Why did you take those teeth? Ellie asked. What if he doesn't come back for them? 

Someone will use them, said her sister.

Our Lesson Today is: Spare Us the Lessons.

"Do you work here?" he asked. We'll call him Joe.

I'm a volunteer, I said. 

Joe stared at me but I couldn't see his eyes. They were squeezed between a squint and full closure. The gaze of a man shutting out as much of the world as possible. 

"What does that mean?" he said.

I help out once a week... Talk to people. 

A terrible answer but what more could I say? That I am being present? That I am working out some strain of guilty privilege? That I am trying to tilt the universe in a more benign direction? 

A lunch for the price of a meditation. A fresh-baked roll. Salad with some greens from the Peace House garden. Lentils. Brats with StoveTop Stuffing that fooled me because it was so tasty. I cleaned my plate.

Joe didn't say anything. He did not want a conversation. He was looking for someone in charge, someone who could authorize him to get something to eat, although he had arrived too late for the free lunch.

In the middle of the five hours Peace House Community is open each weekday, we lock the doors and conduct a group discussion called a meditation.  A meal is served to those who attend the meditation. Afterwards, the doors are opened to those who choose not to participate and trickle in later.

Usually, the subject for the meditation is introduced by a volunteer. Last week I led one based on the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we make up about others, and whether it's permissible to share stories that might not be ours to tell. Some meditations may have a more spiritual or inspirational tone. Current events are a recurrent topic.

This Friday, I was sure the volunteers were prepared to talk about the terrible week of graphic shootings that began in Baton Rouge, followed by the deaths of Philando Castile and the Dallas police officers. But when one of us expressed her concern, there was a quick reaction against discussing it.

"We'll talk about this among ourselves," said Calvin, "but there's enough negativity when you're homeless. Let's have the meditation be something positive."

Mel, a burly employee who functions as something of a sergeant at arms, then led a game that was a cross between an AA meeting and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," in which people were encouraged to tell three things about themselves, one of which could be lie. The rest of us were to pick out truth from falsehood.

The tales ranged from positive moments (a year of medical school, appearing as a schoolboy on the front page of a newspaper) to humorous declarations (I'm not a lesbian but I like to hit on women) to police chases, claims of drug convictions and prison stints, and surviving a hammer attack.

Mel said his game was pointless, but it posed a reminder of the resilience in the room without going all heavy. There are lessons to be found at Peace House without some volunteer circling them with a Sharpie.

***

With the help of a Native woman who's a regular, Joe got some food from the kitchen—a sandwich and a frozen pasta dinner for later. He left the packaged food on a table and went outside, where he managed to get the sandwich stolen before he could eat it.

When Joe returned, I was sitting on the porch. Once again looking for something to eat, he denied he'd been given any other food. Maybe he'd forgotten. Maybe I was mistaken. I went inside to sort things out.

I came back out to tell him the pasta was still there and it was his. I didn't expect my little intercession to be met with cold fury.

"Don't ever go in there and talk for me, understand?"

I think I do.

Here I was, dragging in my politics, my sincerity, maybe my need to expiate. Trying too hard to be the good guy.

Joe doesn't want a savior, he wants something to eat, and he felt capable of sorting it out himself. Of course, he is. He knows more about finding food in this town than I ever will.

Mel doesn't want a heavy discussion, he wants to give people in the room a chance to say, I've been through hell, I've made stupid mistakes and kicked away chances, but here I am.

None of them came to hear comfortable old white people say how much we care, even if this week we badly need to hear ourselves say it.