A Story That Needs to be Told.
November 28, 2015.
It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Many Americans get extended time with family
over this long holiday weekend; eating leftovers, watching movies and football
games inside tucked away from the cold, maybe bonding with cousins or little
nieces and nephews, or spending special time with Grandma or Grandpa. On this Saturday, some were already traveling
back to their Monday-Friday lives, maybe on planes or in cars with loved ones.
In Salina, Kansas, it was Laundry Love Saturday at Quick
& Clean Laundromat on the West end of town.
Thanksgiving brought with it a severe ice storm this year; there were
some power outages, many traffic accidents, and wind-chill temperatures that we
were not prepared for.
It was a small red car that drove up to the laundromat that
afternoon, shortly after I arrived, carefully making my way across the
still-frozen sidewalk and parking lot. I
was bouncing with excitement at the privilege of spending a few minutes saying
hello to my friends; I work a second job on Saturdays, and hadn’t gotten to
participate in 4th Saturday Laundry Love in about a year.
Out of the small red car walked two young men, one shorter
than the other, both wearing thin hoodies and jeans. I noticed the shorter young man’s shoes
first, as I watched him make his way through the icy parking lot. They adequately covered his feet, but didn’t
look like something I’d want to wear in snow and ice.
While I was talking to a friend, Debbie came and got
me. She had started to offer quarters to
the young man, but he didn’t speak English, so she came and got me so I could
talk to him in his native Spanish. I
explained what Debbie was trying to offer; a few quarters to pay for your load,
something we offer to everyone we see in the laundromat today. He gratefully, but hesitantly, accepted, and
he and his friend moved their laundry into the more spacious machines so they
wouldn’t have to cram it into regular-sized washers. They were washing mostly bedding, their
thick, soft blankets that I recognized as being sold in Mexican stores or
outdoor markets in the Southern United States.
I had the feeling that maybe the two hadn’t been here long.
I began talking to the young man, whose name, I learned, was
Carlos. Carlos had been in Salina for three weeks. He moved here from Texas, for work, he told
me. “Oh”, I said, “what kind of work?”
and he told me, “Restaurant business…I work at Pancho’s.”
I love Pancho’s, so I enthusiastically kept talking to him,
and found out that he was working night shift.
His friend who was with him turned out to be his cousin, Emmanuel. Emmanuel was working two jobs at fast food
places. Emmanuel had been in Salina for
about 6 months already, so he knew a bit more about the lay of the land.
“Wow, you moved here during the worst weather,” I told
Carlos, “this must be very different for you.” He told me yes, it was,
especially because he had to walk to work every night. He and Emmanuel worked opposite and overlapping
shifts, and Emmanuel was rarely available to give him rides to work. “Oh my
goodness”, I said, “Did you walk to work the other night when the ice was
falling?”
“Yes,” he said, “and yesterday I fell twice in the morning
while I was walking back home”.
I remembered while I was sitting there talking to him, what
it was like my first winter in Kansas.
I’m originally from the desert southwest in Arizona, so my heart went
out to him because I knew how harsh the change can be.
“Well do you have a coat, are you keeping warm enough?”
He said the hooded sweatshirt on his back was all he had,
but he had one other long sleeved shirt on under it.
“What about shoes? Are these the shoes you walk in?”
He nodded yes. I
could see the struggle and stress his eyes.
“You’re going to get sick! Are you feeling sick already?”
“It’s starting a little bit…”
I said, “Oh, no. Let
me go talk to my friend. We’ll have some
clothes and stuff for you.”
So I went to Debbie and I believe my exact words were, “Red
alert, red alert….” I told her what I knew (I had already gotten shoe and shirt
sized from Carlos).
So next, I found out where they lived, and got Emmanuel’s
phone number. We couldn’t stop thinking
about these two young men, and I went straight home and threw a pile together
of my own stuff out of my house that I thought might be useful to them: jars of
peanut butter from my pantry, a couple long-sleeved sweatshirts, a pair of
gloves, a face mask. I stopped by K-Mart
and bought three bags of ice melt; two for them and one for me.
I met Debbie and her husband at the boys’ apartment later
that evening. Debbie’s husband went in
with me and Debbie stayed with their baby granddaughter in the car. The apartment was the size of my living
room. I couldn’t see the bathroom, but
I’m pretty sure there was no kitchen.
There was a hotplate on the ground, and a full-sized mattress on the
floor.
The coat we brought for Carlos fit well, and he opened his
backpack from Debbie: socks, hand warmers for his coat pockets. The pair of running shoes we brought him
fit. I explained to him how to use the
ice melt; their parking lot at their apartment complex was in as bad shape as I
feared. He walked out with us to the car
to thank Debbie, and he gave her a hug.
We said our goodbyes and got in our cars to leave.
I watched Debbie drive away, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think about anything other than
how Carlos was sitting by himself in that tiny apartment, with nothing to do,
no one to talk to until Emmanuel came home.
I thought about how he probably had no idea how to walk in the snow and
ice to avoid falling, how he might not think to pack an extra pair of socks in
case his feet got wet walking in the snow, about how the ice storm from the
other day was literally the first time these boys had experienced this type of
weather. I thought about how I was once
new to Kansas winters, and how scary and foreign it was.
And I thought about the language barrier on top of all
that. Yes, people can learn English if
they move here, but that’s not the point.
The point is, what must it feel like to be alienated from your family,
working a night shift at a fast food place, walking to work in ice and snow, in
a new world where you can’t even understand what the person in line in front of
you at the grocery store is saying?
So I got back out of my car and knocked on the apartment
door again. He answered it still wearing
the coat we just gave him. And we walked around the parking lot together and I
taught Carlos how to throw down the ice melt.
And when I left, I fought back tears and told him, “Stay encouraged,
it’s all gonna be okay.”
Part II: Sunday
I had texted Emmanuel the night before when I got back from
dropping things off to his cousin.
Sunday morning came and I was looking at the forecast, knowing there was
more ice and snow coming that week.
Through text message, I asked Emmanuel if they had ice scrapers for the
car. He told me no, they hadn’t been able
to get any yet. How they managed during
that ice storm, I don’t know, I told myself.
After church, I was on a mission: find these guys some ice
scrapers. Of course, everyone in town
was on the same mission for themselves and their families because our recent storm had told us that winter was
hitting early. So I had to go three
different places before I found any ice scrapers, and of course they were big,
fancy, and not the dollar-store kind. I
kept telling myself, these guys deserve something that’s going to work
well. And I kept thinking, “What else
can they do to outsmart the weather?”
I thought of tarps. Tarps,
so they can cover the windshield when ice is in the forecast overnight, genius,
Gilda! So I picked up three of those: two for them, and one for me. I liked how in shopping for my own
winter-prep items, I could make sure someone else was taken care of as
well.
I went home and packed up the pile I had thrown together the
night before; the sweatshirts, peanut butter, long-sleeved shirts out of my
closet, the extra coat I only ever wore when I had to shovel snow. This time when I visited the apartment, both
boys were there, and I explained to them how to use the ice scrapers and what I
thought the tarps could be helpful for, and how I hoped the sweatshirts could
be useful. I also got Emmanuel’s shoe
size so we could try to find him a pair of winter shoes, as the running shoes
he wore were worn through. Both boys
were so thankful, yet still seemed hesitant.
But you could feel the trust between us.
I texted Debbie about every detail from that day. She wanted to know more. What did they have? What else did they need?
Did I think they could use (item A, B, C)?
I tried my best to answer her questions and help brainstorm about how
else we could help.
Monday came and went and all I could think about was those
two boys. How do people in their
situation get help, I asked myself. How
do they go to the doctor if they get sick? How do they set up utilities in
their apartment? All things I had little control over, yes. I couldn’t sweep in and save these boys from
anything, I knew. But the desire was
there to just try and make life easier for them.
Part III: Tuesday
On Tuesdays, I usually work at my second job in the
evenings. I met Debbie at the Salina
Shares building late that afternoon and helped her pull random stuff that we
thought the boys could use. We found a
little wooden nightstand that had been in our building for too long without
finding a home. A couple odd-end pots we
thought were good for the hotplate; macaroni and cheese; some fleece sheets for
the bed; bars of soap and washcloths; a pair of boots for Emmanuel. We drove it over and left it at their front
door, secluded from the rest of the apartment complex by a second door and a
little hallway, after texting back and forth with Emmanuel and realizing they
weren’t home, but we weren’t going to be able to go back that week.
We got a text from Emmanuel the next day saying they had
received everything and that the boots fit, and that they were very
thankful. They were so sorry to have
bothered us for so much. The thing was, they had never asked us for anything in
the first place.
Part IV: Two Weeks Later
On the third Tuesday of December, I texted Emmanuel to
invite the boys to Laundry Love at Speedy Wash on Iron Avenue. He texted back, “Thank you…but we’ve actually
moved back to Texas..thank you again for everything, we were so lucky to meet
you ladies.”
I stared at my phone for a few seconds, re-reading the
text. Yes, they really left, my brain
registered. Yes, we really spent all
that time worrying about them and finding them stuff, and now they’re
gone.
I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t disappointed. But mostly, I wondered, “Was life just too
hard here for them? Did they not have enough help? Did they feel totally
unconnected, and up the creek without a paddle? How did other people treat them
while they were here? What made them decide to leave so quickly?”
And then I realized that none of this mattered. What mattered was that we were obedient to
the still, small voice in our heads and hearts that told us, “Clothe your
neighbor. Feed your neighbor.” What
mattered was that we were willing to connect, willing to put our vulnerability
right next to theirs, and step alongside some complete strangers on their
journey, trusting that our paths intersected for a reason.
For me, it was life-altering. I had never felt that much of a sense of
urgency for complete strangers, never felt so involved in someone’s story. Maybe it was the fact that I could
communicate with them and offer that connection. Maybe it was that both of these boys could have
been my younger brothers, and I felt a sense of responsibility. Maybe I wanted to experience a little bit of
what Debbie did so often, in the earlier days of Salina Shares, when she was
getting stopped in her tracks by all these immediate needs, with no plan, no
funding, and nothing but the compassion in her heart to guide her
decisions.
I’m thankful for that cold November day. It, along with the days that followed,
reminded me that I’m part of a huge human Family. And no wind chill can take that warm feeling
away.
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