Shelter Me Chapter 1

Shelter Me



Chapter 1



How quickly can one human life unravel?  In my experience it had taken fully around nine months and three weeks. Roughly the gestation period for a human being, funnily enough.  I sat in an over brightly lit room full of hard plastic chairs, industrial gray, lest they lend either color or spark to the utilitarian room.  Kafka-esque my literature professor would have said. 

I sighed deeply and shut my eyes.

I needed this job.

I needed this job, but had little hope of it. Cleaning dirty plates in a dining hall and cleaning old folks dirty bottoms as a nurse's aide hardly qualified one for the post of recreation aide at a child welfare shelter.  But as my college career had been cut short at the faltering end of my junior year, I was hoping that my previous intention of getting a degree would be good enough.



I needed this job. I had never known unemployment since the age of fifteen.  Having somewhere to go and work regularly alongside my studies is the only normal I had ever known. 

Now that my 'real' life as a student had evaporated along with my family's peace and stability, not having a job was unbearable...and unthinkable.

I shifted in the hard seat.  I stared at the grey linoleum flooring.  Grey and beige....boy, someone was sure trying to be sure no one got too excited in this room.



As if on cue, the glass doors burst open, and a youth who was all sound and motion brought the missing life/presence with him.



"Oh, HELL no!  I ain' gon' go backa that place, no WAY, Miss!"  Rage echoed in the colorless room.



Accompanying him was a tired, but pretty woman, dressed in dun brown, reached out for the sleeve of his jacket as if to try to way lay the escalating outrage and hurt.



For the hurt was plain to see.  Pain and anger in his flashing eyes, his obscene words his only weapons for all the unfairness of his young unsheltered life.  Even as she reached, he pulled away, making the space between her and himself bigger.  Distancing himself. 



She was acting like his friend.  He wanted her to know she was not his friend.



"Damont,  Damont, listen.  This is not forever.  This is not... forever, I promise you.  I will keep trying to find you a place...but for now, hon, for now..."  Her words trailed off.



"Awwww.....FUCK!"  Damont sank into another beige chair, depleted.  He put his head down on the little desk piece arm rest.  I sensed, rather than heard, or saw tears.



How long does it take for a life to completely unravel?  I had been pondering my own life, with its many sorrows, but in the presence of such ragged hurt, my own pain was pushed down.



I had a place to sleep tonight.  In a house my father had bought with money he earned at his job.  Which he had done since before I was born.  I would have clean bed clothes, I would eat hot food.  Pain.  Yes our family was experiencing new and unprecedented pain, such as we had never known and were certainly not prepared for.  But, we were a family.  Still.



That pain, the asteroid that was my mother's illness that had collided with our heretofore happy life had not, as yet, shredded the bonds that held our hearts together.  If it had, there would not be this throbbing, aching unstoppable heaviness where my heart had once been.  If the asteroid had indeed destroyed them, there would be numbness, not pain.



Oh, God, the pain.



The woman in brown looked up and seemed to notice me for the first time.  Glancing warily at Damont, lest he re-erupt, she approached me.



"Hello, may I help you?"  Her best professional demeanor, as if Damont's anger still did not hang in the air surrounding us.



I straightened in my seat, smiled, (but not too broadly...I did not want her first impression of me to be insanity.) 



"I am here for the job?"  Hopeful, but not too cheerful.  Cheerful would have been the wrong tone in this situation.



"Job?"  Looking me up and down as if trying to assess which position I was going for.  I saw puzzlement in her eyes.  A frilled cotton blouse under faded farmer jeans, which were my uniform at the tender age of twenty one, my face still rounded with youth, and a long, lanky braid barely catching all the fly away wisps around my face.  The blouse and loafers were my concessions to this being a job interview.  My entire career experience previous to this had been dining hall duty at college, and endless summers at a pool. I had yet to acquire the appropriate attire for 'real life job.'





A life.  Unraveled. 



With a shake of my head, I helped her.  "I am here apply for the job of recreation aide."



"Recreation aid??  There is budget to hire more rec-aides?'" She seemed incredulous.



Damont stirred in his chair.  "Miss, I'm hungry, miss....when I'm gon' get to eat?"



'Miss' looked her watch, glanced at me apologetically and made a move back toward Damont.



"So sorry, he is right, it is nearly dinner time, I will have to get him back to his hall before the food is served."



"No...no, that is fine.  I have an appointment with a Frank Herald?" I was trying to fill in the blanks, hoping the late afternoon sun shining low through the glass doors did not mean my window of opportunity was waning away as well.



I really needed this job.



"Frank?  He usually isn't here much in the evenings..?"



Just as she spoke these words, the glass doors flashed open again.  This time, a tall, nervous looking white man entered, carrying a scuffed leather brief case, and a swathe of papers, which looked dangerously close to coming out of his control of as he pressed them against his tan vinyl jacket.  He moved his elbows this way and that, trying to keep the documents under control.



Tan. Dun brown. Beige.  Does no one in this place wear color?



"Oh, good, Frank, this young lady is here to see you.  I have to be going..."



"What? Oh, hi...no....uh...that's fine..."  Papers were falling now.  He had been distracted by the pretty lady in dun.



With a sigh, the last one finally landed in a pool at his feet.  He stooped to begin to retrieve them, still not giving even a glance in my direction.  He seemed completely unnerved by the woman who was guiding young Damont, who by now seemed like a helium balloon which had lost most of its air...out the door.



"Bye!"  Frank stood, briefcase in hand, gazing out after her.  After them, but I could sense in an instant that Damont had not even registered on his radar screen.  As, indeed, nor had I.



I stood.



"Um....hello?"  I held my hand out. 



Frank, started, then turned, looking at me for the very first time.  His long face had an almost weasel like quality.  His eyes, brown and wary behind heavy rimmed black glasses.  A nervous little smile appeared.



He put his briefcase down, alongside the still strewn documents on the floor.



"Oh...hello!  I'm Frank Herald....and you must be...?"



"Delia Grant."



He looked at me sternly before taking my hand.  Fish hands.  Eeesh.  I hated fish hands on men.  Nothing good ever came of men with weak hands, mom used to always say.



Mom.  Oh!



Frank Herald was unlocking his office and proceeding to his desk.  I followed, uninvited, into the ordinary and somewhat disheveled space.



{size:4'}So,' I thought. ' This is headquarters central'  I was not impressed.  Not one bit.



Schedules and calendars hung helter skelter from various walls, some even out of date, long forgotten but not thought of enough to be taken down.



As in keeping with the external office, this space, the center for recreation at the number one child welfare shelter in Allegheny County, was a drab and bleak as its owner.



Frank fished around among the papers on his desk.  He looked through the papers he had brought with him, straightening them with a tap, and laid them down.



As an afterthought, he looked up at me again.  Finally focused.



"Well, do you have any experience with children?  Crowds of children?  Controlling them, keeping them in line?"



I felt like I was interviewing for bus patrol.



A bit nonplussed, I nodded my head, handing him my resume that I had typed up earlier that week at Dad's office. 



"You will see there, I was a life guard, for five years in a row...and pool manager for three of those years."



He looked over the brief carefully, his eyes darting to my face from time to time, as if to ascertain how sturdy a character I had.  Was I indeed, capable of crowd control?  Could I motivate angry and troubled youth to participate in activities?  Could I stop them from burning the place to the ground?



For we were not yet out of the 1970's, only a decade past the angry years, when the streets were filled with anger, and fire, and smashed cars.  When dreams were shattered along with shop windows.  When the hope of peace and dignity had been taken from us, shot dead on a motel balcony. The hot anger had passed to smoldering embers, but in its place was an ever deepening recession, and Pittsburgh was the epicenter of that economic plunge.  Men, who had worked all their lives in smoke filled mills and poured lava hot steel, were now to be seen, sitting on porches, drinking beer, or sometimes something harder. Waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting for life to return to normal, but as the months passed it became more and more evident, that there was no more normal.  Or maybe that there would be a new normal.  And the days of a sure paycheck to pay the bills and take the family to Kennywood every summer now faded with their ending unemployment insurance.



Marriages failed, homes were lost, and children were forgotten in the face of debt, anger, and upheaval.  This in addition to a new scourge, cocaine with its quick and unforgiving addictive ways was bringing destruction upon the family unit of the inner city.  Now, more known as, 'the hood.'



The children of this shelter were the losers at the bottom of every barrel.  Abused, abandoned, neglected, run away and truant.  Age two years to seventeen.  A family whose birth pangs were pain and rejection.



What a place.  What a job.  No wonder Frank Herald looked at me so carefully.  He was right to.



I looked this thin and nervous man straight in the eye.  " I know I am young, but I have done some coaching and teaching,'  I said, ' not only that, but I was studying therapeutic recreation at Penn State until this past spring, when I came home."



Franks eyes dropped back to my resume.  "But...it says here you did not finish..."  The question hung in the air.



"I ran out of money and my mom got sick."  Quickly said so as not to invite further questions.



Still, my three years of studying the development of recreational programs for special needs populations seemed to have sealed the deal in my favor.



"Fine."  Frank gave a nervous tight lipped smile.  "Report for work on Monday at intake, 2:00 pm.  Your shifts will run 2 - 10, five days a week.  Minimum wage, sorry for now, that is all that is in the budget."



He seemed to realize that I might be somewhat of a find at that price.  I did not want him to think much more about it.  I jumped out of the plastic chair and once again stuck out my hand.  Fish hands or not, this guy was getting a hand shake. 



I had really needed this job.