Blogorrhea Junior: Mercy Chain

Worldwearymoi There are just some times when I should not be let out of the house. I mean, I'm moody enough, but after years of training I can generally manage not to snarl at people even so (inanimate objects are another matter), even when I'm PMSing like now. But sometimes I just can't freaking stop crying, and today was one of those days. I hate doing that in public. At the same time, I feel like I had a good reason, though I wish I knew whether I were crying out of frustration or empathy. Maybe both. Maybe it had something to do with Kurt Vonnegut's death too. And yet, at the same time, there was something oddly comforting about what set me off, which was this:

After going in for my quarterly lab tests in Chelsea this morning at the crap of dawn, and in one of those miserable, frigid, horizontal spring rains that leave you soaked from the bottom of your coat to your (supposedly waterproof) shoes, I headed to Starf*cks for a hot chai and something gooey for breakfast. No go. The place is full. Grumbling, I trudge back out into the rain and wind up across the street at the slightly grungy but somehow far more welcoming Paradise Cafe with a chai and a blueberry scone.

So I'm sitting there unsuccessfully trying to squeeze a poem out of my brain while I wait for the rain to subside a bit, when in walk an obviously homeless couple—well, not so much walk as sort of creep in, obviously thinking they're going to be unwelcome. It's clear they've both been on the street for a while because they have that weathered look to them that so many people street people do. She's in a good, warm coat and hat, but wet from the rain, but the man she's with is just sodden. He's wearing nothing but a thin shirt and rolled up chinos. No shoes, no socks, no coat. He's dressed for clamming in high August and it's 38ºF. Needless to say, neither has an umbrella. They shuffle over to the only open table, the one at the back, next to me, which is probably the warmest one in the place, since the door is propped open.

The moment he stops moving, he starts to shake in that bone-rattling way you do when you're cold to the core. "I've been that cold, but for fun," I think, remembering the snowmobile safaris I used to go on when I was a kid. If you think you can't get that cold in the rain, you've obviously never been drenched to the skin in midsummer. When you're that cold, the shivering is almost like a seizure. There's no controlling it because you're hovering on the edge of hypothermia and your body is doing anything it can to generate some internal heat. After a couple of minutes watching him shake out of the corner of my eye, I can't stand it anymore and I get up and buy them a big cup of coffee apiece. It's not enough, but at least it's something. I get a heartbreakingly polite, barely audible thank-you as I sit down again. They both have heavy Eastern European or Russian accents.

A couple minutes later, one of the counter guys comes out and tells the man he has to leave because he doesn't have any shoes on. Counter Guy is young, in his early twenties and it's clear he feels bad about what he's doing. And I hear myself saying, "At least let them stay long enough to warm up." I get an anguished look from him as he says, "If someone from the Department of Health walks in, we could get fined, or even shut down, or, look, geeze, I don't want to be an asshole about it, but . . ." and I just turn away, starting to tear up with frustration at how stupid those fucking rules are. It's not even like they're scaring business away.

But I feel bad for the counter guy, too. DOH has been hammering restaurants since the KFC rat fiasco, closing them down for the smallest infringements. Closing a place this small even for a couple of days can put a huge hardship on the owners and, by extension, the people who work there. Counter Guy's really between a rock and a hard place. But there are times when the rules are not only meaningless, but life-threatening, and this is one of them. I'm not sure Counter Guy realizes that. Anyway, I've managed to make Counter Guy feel enough like a jerk to leave them alone for a while.

And then something cool starts to happen. Somebody else buys them a muffin. A guy in a yellow slicker who'd been at the counter when I bought them coffee comes back in a couple of minutes later with a big quilted moving blanket and helps her tuck it around him.

She gets a straw for his coffee because he can't hold the cup. She spoon-feeds him bits of muffin for the same reason. She looks at him with a mix of adoration, sadness, and resignation. I get the feeling she will follow him anywhere, but not that they are a "couple." He hasn't stopped shivering. Customers drift in an out, some watching warily and with suspicion, some with a little disgust, some with pity—the usual reactions to the odd and homeless. They're quiet though, and as unobtrusive as you can be sitting wrapped up in a blanket in a cafe. As I start to pack up my stuff, they call me over to thank me again, for such a small thing. "Do you want me to call the EMTs?" I ask them. "They'll make sure you get to somewhere dry and warm."

Suddenly we're in a conversation. His doctor, his insurance, his everything, is Jesus. He won't take medical treatment. He's been here in the states for six years. He used to live in Massachusetts. He makes me think of holy fools, mad hermits subsisting on honey and locusts, those people who believe so hard that there is a thin line, if there is any, between faith and delusion. This is familiar ground. "Maybe Jesus sent me to help you get warm and dry today," I tell him. He's at a disadvantage with his poor command of English and it clearly frustrates him that he cannot explain to me that he believes God will take care of him. There's no reasoning with this kind of thinking, but it does have its own kind of logic. The lilies of the field. The sparrows. As I said, this is familiar ground.

As we're going around in our circular "God works in mysterious ways" conversation, the guy who's been sitting at the table in front of them turns around and says, "Hey, I've got a bunch of clothes I can get to and bring back in five minutes. I'll be right back." So I stay and talk. He really is a holy fool, I think. It's sort of beautiful, if I weren't afraid that he's going to have pneumonia in a couple of days. His earnestness makes me weep, right there in front of him. "Listen," he says, "I know you have good heart." That makes it worse. I touch his hand; it's a cold as a corpse's, nearly as bloodless. He's still shivering after 20 minutes or so. I call 911.

I spend a couple of minutes explaining the situation to various emergency personnel, including the fact that counter guy is hovering around again and insisting they leave. I use the word "hypothermia" repeatedly, with urgency. Counter Guy comes back again, when I'm off the phone, to tell them they really have to leave. I tell him I've called the EMTs and they're on their way. "Let them stay until the EMTs get here." Counter Guy seems both annoyed and relieved. The guy with the clothes comes back with a big sack: hat, umbrella, shoes, shirts and pants. I'm so sad and so drained that I can't stay anymore. I hand them off to the guy with the clothes, tell him the EMTs are on their way. He promises to stay until they arrive.

And he does. From across the street, I hear a siren, see the truck arrive just as three figures shuffle out of the cafe, one of them wrapped in a blanket.

The one thing that makes me feel good about this whole encounter is that I wasn't the only one doing something, and maybe something I did started a snowball rolling. Maybe all those people would have done what they did anyway, but it might also be true that it just took one person to make the first link in the chain for the others to fall into place: clink, clink, clink.

Then there's the question of motivation. We like to think we're capable of altruism, but I wonder if we are? Even if we're not doing something with a conscious thought of gain or pain avoidance, our internal, subconscious motives are seldom pure. Sitting in that cafe with my dryish coat and built-in extra layer of insulation, I was cold, but not freezing. I have a warm place to go to, with a hot shower and dry clothes. So there's a There but for the Grace of God element of motivation. Simple gratitude in action. There's the fact that I believe that what goes around comes around and that I should make regular deposits in what my friend Matt used to call the Karma Bank. There's my own fear that I might someday be in that position and no one will help me and this is a magical-thinking solution to staving off that possibility. There's the Golden Rule, and the later injunction to care for "widows and orphans" metaphorical and otherwise that I grew up with. There's my new-found sense of the importance of compassion that I'm coming to embrace. And, of course, the little self-aggrandizement I get out of writing and posting this for millions of people to read. No, the motives aren't pure at all. But sometimes, I believe, it's also just the doing that matters.

None of us did very much: a cup of coffee, a muffin, a blanket, some clothes, the summoning of some "official" help that might be refused in the end. It's easy to fall into self-congratulation in a situation like this, until you remember that nothing got solved, only temporarily averted. And maybe not even that. No problems got solved in a permanent way, but perhaps they never do. And perhaps that's just a cop-out, to say that. There are people who think that big, and turn those thoughts into action, but I'm not one of them. Faced with a problem as big (or as small, depending on your perspective) as two cold homeless people, I don't really know what to do, besides what I did. Maybe that was enough, maybe not. But for a half hour or so, a few people gave a shit about a couple of complete strangers. There must be something good about that.

Maybe it's not so bad to let me out in the world when I'm PMSing and weepy, if this is what comes of it.

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None of us can solve all of the problems in the world. It would have been better if this man hadn't been on the verge of hypothermia, or could take care of himself with Western medicine rather than faith, or that we had a social system that cared enough to keep people from winding up in his situation. But you and the others did something meaningful and merciful when it was needed. That is a beautiful thing.

Posted by: Kristin | April 13, 2007 at 01:06 AM