Rich in Other Ways

DECEMBER is a great month to get into a shelter. The Catholic men’s shelter on Syke Street is one of the better ones. There is a gym, a TV room, two offices, a shower room and a kitchen. Best of all, the radiators are kept on most of the day.

Like clockwork, every year, in mid-December, city folk get very generous as Christmas approaches; donating hams, turkeys, fresh vegetables, even cake. Waves of generosity and goodwill spill over into this otherwise frowned upon, forgotten corner of bad real estate in Rochester City, New York – the haves – jolted to life by the bitter cold weather – stop in their tracks for one good deed for the have-nots.

Ray, a have-not, is shown to a top bunk and is given the punch code for a locker in a dark interior room. Fixing a photo of his girls with blue tac onto the wall, he lies back on his pillow, reflecting on the day the photo was taken. He can remember every detail. The smell of fairground mustard and ketchup on the hot dogs, how Lily spilled her soda on her white summer dress and got so upset. How Martha changed her face into a clown’s by sticking it into the powdered sugar topped funnel cake, laughing that beautiful soft glass little laugh of hers.

He gets up and walks around, getting a feel for the place; something he always does when in a new environment. Sees pictures of Jesus, Mary and Padre Pio, alongside life affirmation messages like ‘Believe and anything is possible’. A Bible on every dresser, that kind of place.

Ray picks up one, feeling its familiar contours like a blind man reading braille, letting his rough fingers be guided to its centre where he lights on a quote Romans 8:18: ‘The pain that you’ve been feeling can’t compare to the joy that’s to come.’

Ray read the passage when he was in jail and it stuck, becoming his mantra.

The staff at the refuge are efficient and friendly. A black lady gives Ray the warmest smile when he shuffles in from the cold, like a beaten dog.

‘Welcome. Glad you’re here,’ the warm tones of her Tennessee accent enfolding him. ‘I’m Judy.’

‘Like a cup of coffee?’

‘Oh I’d love one.’

‘How ya like it?’ ‘Leaded!’ Ray says, smiling back his awkward, lopsided smile.

It was strange, for him, having no ID, no money – well $93 from prison dishwashing duties and leftover money from his Snacks allowance, his brother and sisters paid into every other week.

Walking outside that first day, he sucks in the petrochemical city air – (the shelter is just off the highway) – gathering his thoughts, as clouds whir by.

‘OK, I’m getting a job. I’m Raymond, not Ray; gotta reclaim myself. Change. By February I’ll get a place of my own. AA five nights a week – definitely Saturday nights at the Y. Counselling once a week. Bankruptcy. Legal aid.’

With every thought, experienced in the chill air, he feels a weight lift from his shoulders. For once Ray knows where he wants to be.

He has happy memories of this city, memories clouded by too many drink and drug stained nights in no hoper bars; the gradual unravelling of his reputation. He has fallen well short of what he had dreamed of for his life. He wants to be like everyone else, wants to be a man in control, but everything he did in his life to date has spun him from further away from the idealised self he dreams of. At every turn a reminder of his failure. His descent into debt, addiction, divorce, became a vicious cycle from which he couldn’t break free.

The street lights come on as he walks back, scanning the dirty snow for money, for anything.

His life had been so empty inside: the dull routine crushing his spirit. He lives and breathed every moment now; is always on the look out, his brain whirring with ideas having been understimulated for so long.

Pushing open the door, Ray hears a familiar voice from inside the kitchen. Craning her neck backwards from the sink, Judy hollers through the open door: ‘Getting cold out there?’

‘Colder than a well digger’s you know what,’ Ray says, walking on into the office where he picks up some booklets on bankruptcy, divorce; and the jobs section from the local paper.

‘Well, it’s great to have snow on Christmas Eve again. I know of a job going in Burger Hut – that fancy new burger place down town. Fifteen bucks a patty, imagine the tips you’d get! I know the manager,’ Judy says.

‘Great,’ Ray replies, Do you think they’d be interested in hiring me, what with my record and what not.’

‘Well you never killed no one or robbed them, did ya?’

‘Not guilty on the first count,’ Ray smiles, looking for a sympathetic smile back. ‘You’re hilarious, Ray,’ Judy says, smiling that buck toothy smile of hers that seldom leaves her face. Suddenly Ray laughs out loud, realising, as he does, that it is the first time he had managed a real laugh, sober, in years. ‘Put a word in for me Judy,’ he says, before returning to his bunk.

TIM, a tall, thin fentanyl addict in recovery, is in his bunk, opposite; jumping out of his skin to tell Ray about his latest get-rich quick, move down to the Carolinas plan. Ray listens patiently for the tenth time – used to dreamers from his time inside – before deftly withdrawing from the conversation by fanning the air with the booklets.

Wrapping the grey, scratchy blanket around him, he sits back reading the literature, his back against the hard wood of the bed frame. A buzzing noise at the front door announces that it will soon be lights out.

Far away, across the snow covered rooftops, Lily and Martha are being tucked into bed by their mother. In under their pink My Little Pony and Minnie Mouse duvets, sideby-side in a box room he had painted bright pink.

There, beneath the alien green glow of stick-on ceiling constellation (their favourite being the bird-like Ursa Major) stars he affixed, with some effort and after much research when they were one and three – they sleep. The thought of the girls sleeping under the stars he had carefully stuck on, settles Ray, gives him comfort as he dozes off.

‘Good night,’ he mouths, with a smile into the darkness of the dorm room.

‘Merry Christmas.’