Writer’s Comment: The people and their lives in “Crash Course” were inspired by my year working on Skid Row in Los Angeles in 1992 and subsequent years volunteering with the unhoused population.
***
Skid Row, Los Angeles
“Sup?” I keep my tone nonchalant so I don’t spook Frank.
He shrugs. Broad shoulders hunch. Slim dark fingers tap, tap, tap a rhythm on his leg. Then rub, rub, rub in the same spot.
I set a Styrofoam cup of coffee within his reach. Sit down cross-legged three feet away. Catch a glimpse of the July sun rising from between the empty dilapidated warehouses across the street. Air warms a bit, the cement beneath us, still cool.
He sneaks a glance at me. “Why you here?”
“I like it?” Seems a safe answer, even though it comes out a question.
He laughs. More of a bark that turns into a cough.
I offer the handkerchief I keep in my pocket to tie my hair back.
“Nah.” He wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Nobody likes it here.” Next to his blanket lengths of colored wire sit in straight rows. He scoots closer when he sees my interest.
“What are those?”
He shrugs again.
Seconds tick by. Downtown LA this time of morning is almost but not quite still. Beginning to wake up. I’m aware of my breath, the rustles, mumbling, cursing going on down the sidewalk. The stink of things I can’t identify. “You ever come to get soup?”
“Hippie Kitchen.”
Yep. He knows.
“How ’bout the clinic? Open tomorrow. No questions asked.” I keep focused on a sweater-layered woman as she slipper-shuffles by with her shopping cart. Try to ignore the red-streaked gash on Frank’s muscled forearm. It looks bad.
I push myself up, legs stiff after just five minutes. “See ya.”
He’s busy rearranging wire by colors. No response.
I look back. He’s tossed the coffee out, kept the cup.
Across the street the hippie kitchen’s truck is in front of the Department of Social Services where people are already lining up. A couple of volunteers stacking cups, sugar dispensers, and stir sticks in boxes on the back seat of the cab. My thoughts circle around the question, “Why you here?” I can’t explain. Two weeks into this internship and I’m doubting everything. The comfortable apartment I left, all the belongings I gave away, filled with the idealism of living without. Where did that idea come from? Am I trying to prove something to myself? To friends, family? To prove or to shock, one of the two. Or both. But now that I’m here, I’m drowning. It’s hard to breathe.
Split pea soup isn’t as popular as the others. Word gets out about the day’s menu, so the Skid Row kitchen is slow. The most desperate come through the line first no matter what’s on the menu. All of the workers and volunteers take turns at different jobs. Refill the buttered bread pan. Ladle out soup, hand off. Offer salad. Pick up empty bowls from tables in the yard, throw away. Wipe down tables with wash cloths soaked in bleach. Chat with the regulars. Sweep.
“I’m gonna take bread to the Park.” Sam says, holding bags of leftovers. A full-time worker at the hospitality house and head cook in the kitchen, he’s one I’ve connected with most.
“I’ll go, too.” I set aside the broom. Grab the other bags and follow him out the gate. Passing by the door to the clinic, I see Frank sitting inside waiting. I smile, wave. No response.
I smooth my strawberry curls and brush the crumbs and whatever else is clinging to my jean shorts, second guessing my apparel choice for the day. Are the shorts too short? I wish I could blend in but that’s impossible here. I catch up to Sam with a few quick strides and we walk through the “Park” the only area for miles that has a speck of green. Two mini-tube top women lean against a fence, smile, but refuse our offerings. We scoot around a man in an overcoat, no shoes, prone, half on half off the sidewalk who looks dead, but Sam assures me isn’t. Heads poke out of tent flaps, some accept, not many.
Sam’s good looks and charm disarms most everyone. He’s been around a couple of years and often gets “Homeboy!” shouted from the other side of the park. Like today. Sam raises is arm in acknowledgement.
The rattle of shopping cart wheels comes from the corner of Stanford. Droopy eyes, stringy hair, track-marked arms, takes two bags from Sam and throws them on top of semi-crushed cans that fill his cart. Sam nods to him as we pass and I whisper, “Will he really eat it?”
“It’ll probably grow into a mold experiment worthy of a sixth-grade science fair.”
“Why do you give it to him then?” I ask.
“It doesn’t work that way. You don’t question,” his strides are even, steady and calm. “We’re just here to give.”
“I took a cup of coffee to Frank yesterday and he tossed it. Kept the cup, though.”
“A lot of these guys are jittery to begin with. They don’t need the caffeine. Makes it harder than it already is.”
We keep walking down Stanford toward Seventh. Faces at once distinct and a blur. Whistles, shouts, groans, screams fill the air. Three high-heeled, well-endowed theatrically made-up beauties cross the street against the light. Honking ensues. One has a near miss. They laugh it off. The first lifts the flap of a giant tent enclosure, waves the others through, strikes a pose. “You comin’? One of our girls is missing today. You’d add some variety,” she offers in a sing-song sort of way.
“Not today, Brenda.” Sam smiles, keeps walking.
She winks at me. The flap closes behind her.
We’re almost to the corner. “Do you get offers like that often?” I ask.
“For sex and shootin’ up? Every now and then. They tease ‘cause they already know my answer.” Sam turns onto Seventh. It’s even noisier here, cars speeding, rushing to get through this part of town as quickly as possible. I look at drivers sitting at the light at Crocker, all facing front, ignoring the tattooed young men on kid bikes with shorts hanging at their hips, underwear in full view, who zig zag through the streets with no thought to cars or pedestrians. And the older black men sitting in lawn chairs on the sidewalk. Tent after tent after tent. Heat shimmers in waves and the glare is blinding.
Sweat trickles down my back. I hate myself for thinking of a shower walking by people who can’t get one. At the other end of the block, the Rossyln Hotel’s neon sign flickers. An alley, eerily silent comes up on the left. Yellow police tape cordons off the entrance. On the alley side sit two squad cars, numerous cops mill about, a body bag on the ground.
A lump forms in my throat. My steps falter, but Sam grabs my hands and pulls me on.
Once back on Gladys Street, we’re barely in time to catch a ride to the hospitality house.
Stories fly in the cramped car six of us have piled into.
“Manny stepped into the street and got hit by a car.”
“It’s his third time. One day he’s gonna get killed.”
“Did he do it on purpose?” I whisper to Sam, but everybody hears anyway.
The driver, Meredith, catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “Hospital has a bed and food.”
“How bad was he hurt?” I ask.
“Serious enough. He’ll get a cast, and depending on other injuries he may be there a day or two,” Saul answers. Another full-time worker, he runs the clinic, gets nurses and docs to volunteer and manages the donated medical supplies.
I’m quiet, not joining the banter about who’s buying beer for the evening hang-out. I try to fathom why anyone would intentionally step in front of a car. What makes one so desperate? The pain worth it? And the body bag? Sam doesn’t mention it and neither do I.
Over the first street bridge heading east, it’s a short five-minute ride to the house. An old three-story Victorian on a hill. Surrounded by trees, the yard overgrown, with porches in the front, back and side. Floors of worn wood and mismatched ramshackle furniture in every room. I’ve been given a room in the back house basement along with the other summer interns. Olivia’s across from me, Daniel and Kurt down the hall. Cool and quiet, one can barely hear the music blaring from one of the neighbors down the street. I strip off my sweaty clothes, lie down on the lumpy mattress on the floor in my small room. The heat, the tiredness of mind and body are wearing me down. Hours later I wake, shower, and find my last pair of clean jeans and a tank top from the mess in the dresser drawer, not bothering to fix it up. Which is so unlike me. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.
In the kitchen I take a bowl of rice and beans from the counter that’s been set aside for anyone who missed dinner. The back door slams. Olivia wanders in, her jeans and tee skin tight, her brunette hair loose and long. She grabs a bowl and we stand watching Joe, one of the hospitality guests, wash dishes. He’s slow and methodical with the task. Seems to enjoy it. Olivia takes big bites, finishing in seconds. I pick through the beans to get to the rice.
“You see Frank?” Joe asks, breaking the silence.
“Yesterday, yep, and today.”
“That’s good.” Joe dries his hands and turns. “He give you one yet?”
“One what?” I ask.
He holds out an arm. Two bands of woven colored wire adorn his wrist. One is yellow and green the other blue and red, the patterns intricate.
“So that’s what he does with those.” Olivia steps closer to admire, but Joe is skittish. Doesn’t like anyone getting too close. He backs up against the fridge.
“Sorry, Joe, my bad.” Olivia catches my eye and nods toward the dining room. “You comin’?”
“Sure.” I wash my bowl carefully, knowing Joe’s watching me like a hawk. “I like your bracelets, Joe.”
“If Frank likes you, he’ll give you one too.”
I smile. “Hope he does.”
Olivia and I join everyone on the third-floor balcony as the sun is setting. I opt for a wine cooler and sit cross-legged, leaning against the house hoping this old porch will hold all eight of us squeezed in like sardines to watch the view.
It takes to the end of my melon-flavored Seagram’s to really relax. The sun settles in a brilliant show of crimson and tangerine, gone moments later. Freeway noise is a constant muted background to our conversations. Meredith and Saul who’ve been running this small community for twenty years excuse themselves, leaving more space for the rest of us. Olivia grabs Kurt’s arm, another two beers, hides them in her shirt, and they leave too.
“As if we all didn’t see that,” I murmur to Sam who’s now sitting next to me.
He finishes what’s left in his bottle. “There’s always one or two summer interns who sneak beer to the back.”
“What about all the shouldn’ts we were told?” Me, the rule follower, asks. There aren’t many, but alcohol only on the third floor where the community members live is a big one.
“I doubt they’re going to give them to any of the guests. Wanna go for a walk down Brooklyn?” Sam asks.
“I’m game.”
“You been yet?”
“Nope.” This Boyle Heights neighborhood is completely new territory.
“You gotta see it at night. C’mon.”
Lights blaze and TVs blare as we stroll toward the main drag. It’s a well-worn neighborhood, loud and flashy. Like Mars to me. Brooklyn Avenue is crowded. Girls too young to be mothers push strollers dressed like club dancing is happening later, couples enter and exit restaurants. Norteño music comes from the electronics store and skimpy dress shops with sale racks line the sidewalk. Carts sell fresh fruit cups with chile and lime, others paletas for a dollar.
Sam points to a cart with long pieces of fried dough covered in cinnamon and sugar laid out on a tray. “Here, try a churro.”
We bite into warm chewiness and lick our fingers and lips.
“These are amazing.” I take the napkin Sam offers. “My new favorite.”
“I grew up with these. Sunday afternoon treats after mass at La Placita.” Sam smiles at the memory. “You been there, yet?”
I shake my head, mouth full of the last bite. Haven’t made it to that old town area of downtown either.
“Next field trip. You got some history to learn.”
We walk for a long while, taking in the scene. I’m a stranger in this world but I try to relax, allow myself to be. Here. At this moment. I can’t even remember why I wanted to in the first place. But I did. And I’m here. A few short months ago on a night like this I would have been on my way to a party, a club, a beach hangout. Now look at me.
Monday morning we’re back serving coffee at the break of day on Fourth Street and serving soup every other day at the kitchen. The schedule creates a routine. I get to know the interns, the workers, the volunteers. Everyone here for different reasons. Running from something, searching for answers, seeking truth or looking for God.
I sit on the wobbly kitchen stool some nights while Joe does dishes and we talk. He towers over the sink, his thick hands scrubbing and rinsing in automation. He tells me about the son he hasn’t seen in years in a low, slow way like he’s reciting poetry. He mentions the drug deals, the prison time, his regrets. The way he holds his body tells me he’s not well. Some mornings I ask, “How you feeling today, Joe?” but he never answers. Turns it around to ask about someone else. “You noticed Sam? Not been himself lately. Wonder what’s up?”
After food pickups or serving days, I spend my afternoons with Carolina. Another long-term house guest for reasons she doesn’t share. She’s petite, plump, with a long braid, always in a skirt and blouse. Usually holding a duster or broom. Her smile holds sadness as she watches her son play in the yard. Her patience, infinite, as I practice phrases of Spanish and she corrects me. Sweep the floor. Barrer el piso. Make lunch. Preparar el almuerzo. Take care of the children. Cuidar los niños. We don’t speak about the whys or hows. Just the now. Her ball of energy son, Alex, is the only kid in a house full of adults and we spoil him with attention and affection. He likes to make wild bets with me, like who can hop on one foot longer. I always lose.
“How do you say, ‘I love you’?” I ask Alex one day.
“Who’s your boyfriend?” he asks.
“I don’t have one. I just want to know, that’s all.” I grab him in a bear hug and tickle him until he says, “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you!”
“So what is it?”
“Te quiero.”
“Te quiero,” I repeat. I let him go and he runs to his room.
Frank doesn’t stray much from his one rectangle of concrete on Main. His piece of cardboard, blanket, tarp he tied to the fence behind him. A couple of bags full of I don’t know what next to him, and the colored wire. He’ll leave it all to get food or use the public restroom on Sixth, except for the wire. He bags it up every time and takes it with him. His arm eventually heals. On coffee truck mornings, I start taking hot water in a Thermos I found in the back of one of the kitchen cabinets. After serving all the unemployed lined up in front of Social Services,
I pour the hot water into a cup and set it down with an herbal tea bag by his blanket like an offering. I walk away, sneak a look back. The bag’s in the water. He sips, holding the cup with both hands.
One Friday morning Sam asks if I want to learn to make soup.
“For tomorrow? What’s on the menu?”
“Black bean soup. Your favorite,” he teases.
It’s served so much at the house and kitchen, that everyone knows by now I can’t stand them. I try not to look disappointed. “Okay, sure. Why not?” It’s sort of like a promotion in this hospitality world.
Beans need to soak overnight, so later that evening Sam drives us down to the kitchen to do the prep. He opens the gate, pulls in the truck, locks it behind us. The kitchen is mysterious in the dark. The door slams shut, closes off the world of the streets. I get on the ladder to pull the giant vats from the top shelf of the back room and hand them down. He directs me, step by step.
Once the vats are set up on the stove, the beans soaking, I sit up on the counter and chug a bottle of water.
“Did you ever hear about what happened in the alley by the Rosslyn Hotel?” I don’t know why this suddenly pops into my head. I’d pushed it from my mind cause my imagination would go down some very brutal places.
Sam wipes the already clean sink. Then again. He finally turns, leans back, looks at me. I return his gaze, and things start to click into place. Sam’s occasional brusqueness. Frustration. Not showing up to dinner some nights. Joe saw this news, whatever it is, sitting inside him. It must be bad.
“You remember Brenda. The offer when we went through the park handing out bread?”
I nod, thinking back, remembering her words, the wink.
“She said one of her girls was missing. They found her, knifed to death. All cut up. Her breasts a few feet away from her body.”
My mind pictures this. The horror, the violence.
“Did you know her? Did she ever come to the kitchen?”
“Soup, no. Clinic, yes.”
I feel sick to my stomach.
“Come on. Let’s get outta here.” We close up, lock up. August nights are only slightly cooler than the days. Windows rolled down; the return drive is quiet. Even the streets seem lulled to sleep. Maybe I’m just used to the noise now and it doesn’t register. We pull into the driveway, sit in the cab with the engine off, the house windows dark, only a lone porch light left on.
“Are the cops trying to find who did it?”
“To the cops it’s just another homeless crime they don’t really care about. There’s so much of it there.”
“I don’t think I can sleep now.”
“Sorry.”
“Well, I did ask.”
The Why you here? is back, a neon flashing billboard in my head all night long.
My first attempt at soup making goes over well. Barely any leftovers. I end up with sore hands from the constant stirring and a burn on my finger from moving pots. Olivia brings me salve and a bandage from the clinic. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I wince as she fixes me up. “I’m moving up in the world with my cooking skills,” I joke.
“It’s time to do bread run,” Sam says from the back of the storage closet where he’s wringing out a mop.
It’s the cook’s job. Get out of the sweaty kitchen and walk a bit after all that stirring and standing. The other hard rule is stay in pairs or groups when walking the streets. My apron goes in the dirty laundry bag. I grab the bags of bread the volunteers have prepared and head out, Sam following. I’ve gotten better at paying attention. Recognize a lot of the same faces. Some even smile back now. I notice a few regulars are gone.
“What happened to the old suit man who always used to sit on that bench? The one with the fedora?”
“Mike. I heard he got into the Regal,” he gestures to the single-residency apartments behind the kitchen. “Lucky guy. There’s a wait list a mile long. He’ll still come around for meals.”
We walk by a smoker lighting up, cast on leg, crutches under arms. He high-fives Sam, nods to me.
“How’s County?” Sam asks.
“Same.”
Sam leans over to inspect the cast. “It’s a good job.”
“I wanted to stay at the house. This thing makes it hard to get around. Meredith said there’s no room.”
“Yep, we’re full. Maybe next week.”
When he hobbles off, we move down Stanford.
“County?” I ask.
“Hospital. Not jail.”
“Manny?”
“Yep.”
“Do you understand why he did it?”
We proceed in the direction of the encampments all the way down to fifth. “Yeah, I get it. Can you imagine never getting a break from all this?”
I hear shuffling, moaning coming from some of the tents we pass. I try not to think about what’s going on inside. Most are quiet, the stench so overpowering I have to hold my breath. Finally, at the corner, I can breathe again, even if it is car fumes.
“So, how’s your summer going?” Sam’s got his thoughtful look on, so I know he’s serious.
But what do I say? Exhausting. Horrifying. Heartbreaking. So much I’ve never felt before. White picket-fence houses, white-faced suburbia where I come from sure didn’t prepare me for this. These streets are a perilous world where people who had a very dark, very real collision with life, end up. Where no one ever should.
“Why do you stay Sam?”
He doesn’t answer until we see the kitchen’s fence across from us. “I can’t go back to comfortable.”
Workers and interns are hanging out at the long tables in the yard. The volunteers have left, only a few patients waiting by the clinic door. I glance inside. Frank is sitting to one side, eyes swollen closed, his cheeks and right temple bloodied. His knuckles scraped raw. Gashes on his arms and legs. Anger explodes in my belly. I stare, because I can’t look away. I move cautiously inside so I don’t startle him, sit in the nearest chair.
He half opens one eye. Leans down to the bag at his feet, opens it, digs around, pulls something out. Hands it to me. A wire bracelet, blues and blacks twined together with a single red one through the middle.
“Come on in Frank,” Saul says from the doorway to the exam room, his voice no- nonsense yet reassuring. I guess he’s seen it all before.
Tears threaten as I watch Frank grab his bag, hobble to where Saul is waiting.
My hands shake as I try to put the bracelet on.
“Here.” Sam leads me by the hand outside. I swallow to keep everything down. In.
His hands smell like bleach. Which doesn’t help. But I let him twist the ends of the thin delicate wires around my wrist. “He’ll be okay.”
Probably. Why you here? A refrain I can’t escape.
After we unload boxes from the back of the car into the garage at the house, Sam pulls me in, arm around my shoulder. “When Saul gets back later, he can tell us more about Frank.”
Meredith, who’s been on house duty, joins us outside. “Can you check on Joe?” she asks Sam. “He hasn’t been out of his room for two days.”
I’d noticed that too. After what happened with Frank, the tragedies feel never-ending. I don’t go to dinner that night and decline Olivia’s invitation to join her and the others for a movie. “Come on. You need a distraction.” She’s holding hands with Kurt.
“Nah. I’m gonna finish my book.” The one I haven’t even started yet. “You go on.”
I sleep half the day Sunday, too tired to do much. Not even to use my ten-dollar-a-week stipend on a churro run. I find a shady spot in the yard to journal. My thoughts run amok. Can’t concentrate. Or write a coherent sentence. So I wander the porch, the empty kitchen, quiet living room, to the small area off the dining room that’s used as an office. Cramped with two desks, an old metal file cabinet, and a fan that blows stale air. Meredith is there, her short gray hair limp in the heat and sweat on her brow. Looking at some receipts, jabbing numbers into a calculator. She’s got the unenviable task of balancing the books. The donations and expenses.
I peek around the doorway. “What’cha up to?”
“Bills.” She finishes one last notation and sets the ledger aside. Straightens the desk a bit.
“You wouldn’t wanna lend me a hand, would you?” She hands me a pile of cards. Smiles. “I have some errands but thank you cards to donors need to go out tomorrow. Addresses are there,” pointing to the stack of envelopes.
“No problem.” I’d done this a couple of times so knew the ropes.
Meredith hesitates. Adjusts her jeans. Brushes eraser bits from her shirt. “You’ve really taken to Alex, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m the youngest in my family so never had a little sister or brother to do things with. I like the kid. He’s sweet.”
“He went to the doctor on Friday.”
Uh oh. Here it comes.
“He’s gonna be in the hospital a while. Leukemia. Thought you’d want to hear it before everyone else.”
How does this happen? Where little boys get cancer and men like Joe looking for salvation and a second chance when they get out of prison get nothing but chronic diseases? I sit staring out the window for I don’t know how long after Meredith leaves.
I look at the clock. Time for my weekly call home. “How are you, honey?” Mom’s gentle tone is almost my undoing. She wants to share the family news and even though I mostly just listen, it tethers me to the other world. The one I came from. I can’t find the words to tell her about this world. What I see, hear, feel. But if I could, what would she say?
We commiserate about how hot August is. She shares about who’s about to have a baby, who just announced a wedding date later in the year. My thoughts drift back to the streets. Frank’s injuries. Brenda’s friend slashed up, dead. The drugs, the slipper-shuffle misery. I think of the guests at the house. Joe bedbound for the past two days. Alex, sweet, eight-year-old Alex.
“Honey? You there? Everything okay?” Mom’s worry carries through the line.
My worlds crash like a T-bone I should’ve seen coming. But didn’t.
That evening at Sunday check-in meeting, the topic is end-of-summer. Two months have passed since I came to this internship. Labor Day around the corner. The crash that left me stunned and in shock this afternoon, has turned into a maelstrom inside me. Of rage and despair and a hundred other emotions I can’t name. But I force myself to listen to Sam give updates and Meredith talk about who’s doing what for the week, and the storm subsides. I’m able to breathe through the pain of broken glass embedded under my skin. The acts of feeding others, of standing witness to the wretchedness of the streets, like Sam and Meredith and Saul do every day, rescues me from dying in the crash. Or worse, fleeing the scene.
“Hey, there. You were quiet tonight.” The meeting’s over and everyone but Sam leaves the table one by one.
If there’s anyone I can say this to, it’s this man.
“This afternoon I wanted to run from here, as far away as I could get.”
“I know.”
The persistent voice in my head that’s pushing me to flee fades to the background.
“There’s a battle going on inside me. I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s inside me too. It’s part of this life. Just remember, nothing is forever. Be here right now and choose minute by minute. See where that gets you.”
I look down at my wrist, Frank’s bracelet dark against my skin. A talisman? A sign? The remnants from the crash burrow deeper.
“All right then. This minute I choose to stay.”
*****
Michele Wolfe’ s writing includes a novel, The Three Graces, published by a small press, a personal essay in LA Affairs of the LA Times, and short stories in Lunch Ticket, Five of the Fifth and Black Fox Literary Magazine.