Street outreach was excellent last night! Traci is still on vacation, so my buddy Nick and I cruised Detroit from one end to the other and back again. We have greatly extended our outreach areas. We’ve been able to spend more time on the East Side because of the longer daylight hours.
We went to see some of my favorite people while we were there. It was mostly men there. I’d say at least ten, maybe fifteen, men came out to see us for food and clothes. There were a couple of females, so I made sure they each had a pepper spray. I made sure to buy at least a few cans of it while I was in Meijer buying bread and oranges for meals.
My Raggedy Ann Lady is ready to be done now. She’s getting the ‘t’s’ crossed and ‘i’s’ dotted to get herself admitted to a rehabilitation facility. I made sure she had my card so that she could contact me as soon as she got out.
“I have to leave this place, Kayla. If I go to rehab, I can never come back here. I’ll have to find another place to live.” She told me with confidence.
“I know, baby girl. You cannot heal in the same place that hurt you.”
She promised to keep in touch with me. Keep her in your prayers or at least wish her good luck. She’s quit before. She can do it again. It’s just physical agony and mental torment, but she can do it. She’s survived worse at this point.
I gave her my last can of pepper spray, hugged her tightly, and told her I would pray my heart out for her.
We cruised around the vast ghetto, servicing random people in random places trying to exist. We are very good at discerning which people are homeless and which women are sex workers. We found a few of each.
One such lady we saw was out working that afternoon. She was very pretty, clean, and in a flattering outfit. We pulled over to see if she was alright. The medical team spent a long time with her. I brought food and hygiene supplies over to the medical team while she was inside getting treated. She was there for a while. I was correct to assume the worst.
When she was done being treated, she emerged from the ambulance with a stone-hard look on her face. I asked her to come over so I could talk to her for a minute. As soon as she locked eyes with me, her character broke. She was just a small woman trembling beside my van. She took off her sunglasses and her eyes were filled with terror. I took her hand and opened myself up to her. She was trying to hold back the tears to tell me that she had been raped- twice- that week. The medical team told her that so far, she wasn’t testing positive for anything. She was relieved by that news.
I’m crying for her as I type this. I just passed out my last can of pepper spray. I gave her the one that I keep in my purse. It was worth more than a gold brick to her. She thanked me from a deep and genuine place in her heart. I told her, “I love you, little sister.” She was so pretty.
We drove around some more. We found three ladies we recognized. One of them, we’ve known for the past five years that we’ve been doing street outreach. As soon as she saw me, she ran to me, and she cried while I held her for a long time. She is a character! She thought Traci and I were lesbian partners. She was asking what happened to the lesbians who had food and clothes. She has since learned that we are both married to men and have children. I was glad to see that she’s still alive, and still as feisty. She’ll always drive me nuts, and I will always love her.
She asked me, as so many people do, if I have ever been in recovery. Honestly, no. I have never been in recovery. I have never had the misfortune of an addiction like that. Sure, I still smoke cigarettes on and off, and I drink too much coffee, but that’s not the same thing these people are enduring.
I was able to tell her that I haven’t. But I have been to too many of my friends’ funerals who died from crack and heroin. A couple of people made it out alive; but most of them did not. I told her how the father of 2 of my children died alone behind a gas station.
Then I told her the story of my introduction to crack when I was a runaway in the South Bronx, New York City at 14 years old. There were all these people huddled together on the stairwell. Their clothes were tattered, even in the winter. Their lips were white, and their eyes were hollow.
When I asked my new friend, Mitchell, about who they were, he told me, “Oh, those be crack heads. You don’t want nothing to do with them.”
Huh.
Then, my friend Virgil told me a story about a young woman addicted to crack, and the lengths she was willing to endure for more. It’s too crazy yo print here. You’ll have to ask me, or Mary, personally to tell you THAT story. It was enough to shock my friend who asked me. But it was effective. I never, ever, ever, did hard drugs. Not if they could make you do that. I am my Grandma’s Baby.
If anything like happened to me, it would dishonor my grandparents sacrifice and efforts to raise me. It wasn’t even about me. I owe them my life. It’s not mine to throw away. Understand? That’s why I could be there amongst all those gang- bangers and crack dealers and not get sucked in. I already knew that the journey always ended in the same place.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets a Mitchell, a Virgil, and a Kareem. Not everyone will be saved by angels like my grandparents.
We ended the night at an abandoned building that is filled with men. They found out I had socks in my van and the crowd swarmed like it was a Kansas City barbeque. I had lunch meat instead of pb&j. There was supposed to be cheese on the sandwiches, but I forgot to take the cheese out of the freezer in time. So, ham or turkey. I tried. But I loaded it up with oranges, too. I had a killer donation of doughnuts and peanut butter cookies, again. That was pretty exciting. a bag of chips, and a bottle of water rounded out the meals. Feel free to drop any of those things off on my porch if you would like to contribute.
There are a lot of men out there. So many more than you realize. Many of them work. They fell between the cracks and now live at the bottom of the hole.
There are a lot of women out there. I weep for them. They have to deal with everything that the men do, too. And they are constantly subjected to violent sexual encounters that the men are not.
Men need more food, socks, and pants.
Women need pepper spray more than anything. That’s why I’ll take it out of my own purse to give to them.
Now you know.
That’s how we do it in Detroit.
Amen.
