N.B: This story includes the context of the conversation and my reflections on it.
‘Dana’ is light-skinned, baggy in dust-choked jeans and a worn grey t-shirt. Her face is broad, flat, speckled with a deep sunburn-red. Tight ripples of wrinkles scrunch around her eyes, radiating across her cheeks and forehead. Her hair and eyes are brown, pinched, loose-stranded, dusty. Radiates a kindliness braced by urgency.
11/13/2016
While I walk with Alex to see his car, we pass a concrete pillar and curb, and a wizened lady cackles out to me:
“Nutcracker? I saw the original Nutcracker!”
The first Nutcracker was in 1962; whoa. I tell her I’ll come back to talk to her.
Walking back, she’s in a heated discussion with another woman, ‘Dana’—a short, aged woman. She’s clutching a red leash, looped around her fragile fingers, swaying with the pacing of its silky-haired puppy.
“Is that Max?” the first woman hollers.
“No, this is Bandit,” Dana replies, smiling. “Max has only got one side of his face tan. Though they could be brothers. But I’ve had several people think he’s Max.”
Dana is white, baggy in dust-choked jeans and a worn grey t-shirt. Her face is broad, flat, speckled with a deep sunburn-red. Tight ripples of wrinkles scrunch around her eyes, radiating across her cheeks and forehead. Her hair and eyes are brown, pinched, loose-stranded, dusty. Radiates a kindliness braced by urgency.
She turns to me and explains, “There’s another dog in town that looks like him, but he’s only got one side of his face tan like this.”
She crouches down and ruffles her puppy’s ears.
“Ain’t that right?” she coos. “Say no, I’m Bandit!” Bandit sneezes.
She laughs and stands up. “I just got him for my birthday, actually.”
The first lady yells, “You didn’t get new shoes? That dude grabbed that whole damn bag of shoes.”
“Yeah I know. I know, it’s alright.”
“Grabbed that whole damn bag of brand new shoes. He grabbed the whole bag.”
“That’s terrible.” Dana turns back to me and gestures to her worn-through Skechers: “These are getting too small for me. The left one’s ok, but my right foot is too tight.” She sighs. “They just said somebody took a whole bag.”
She looks down. “Well, I’m trying not to get too much stashed. We’re actually running away from an abusive man.”
***
I don’t have much time with her, so her story is slightly abbreviated.
***
“In 2009, I was almost murdered. I was in a really bad relationship, and I got out of it. But the man came back, broke into my home. My son was seventeen at the time and he saved my life.”
Dana was employed and studying at the time, she said.
“I worked for Texas A&M University, and I was going to college at — Texas. And I lost everything. My home, everything.”
She’s been homeless ever since her ex-partner’s attack, she said. (I’m not exactly sure how).
“I’ve just been bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, Dallas to Houston to, San Antonio, to Corpus, to here.”
Life on the streets is dangerous, and she sought protection in companionship, she said. Most recently, she has been caught in another relationship.
“We have a little camp over there, where we’ve been staying for the last three months. But like I said, he’s abusive, and… can’t take it.”
She’s on the run from this man.
“He’s a Vietnam War veteran, and he should be on top of his business, getting his VA straightened out. He’s a procrastinator. He’s a talker, oh I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, I’m gonna do that, but he starts drinking and nothing gets done.
He’s okay until he starts drinking. And then once he gets that three or four beers in him… and God forbids if he gets a hold of some whiskey. That’s it. He goes from Mr. Nice, Wonderful to Mr. Horrible Devil. Just like that. That Jekyl and Hyde thing. That’s exactly what he’s like. He doesn’t even see it. And within the next morning, he’s fine.”
She’s had a case manager since September of 2015, and they’re working together on her situation. After working on her housing since February, they’ve finally secured a residence at Community First! Village, a community run by Mobile Loaves and Fishes that provides affordable housing options to the chronically homeless.
She’s excited beyond belief, but stuck in a living hell until she she can move in.
“I’m getting ready to move into my little microhouse. I got two weeks. But I can’t take any more abuse from this man. The closer it gets to my time to leave, the worse it’s getting. He beat me in the head five times the other night. And threatened to kill my dog. Just can’t take it.”
She’s fleeing, fighting the temptation to go back to her camp—a familiar place to sleep, with the relative protection of her man, and where many of her belongings remain—and risk being abused.
“I’ve got Bandit, that’s all I have to stay. We did good yesterday, didn’t go back. But I don’t know what to do.”
(She starts crying.)
“So it’s just me and [Bandit] right now, so I’m just scared, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want to go back. But I’m afraid to be out here by myself, it’s just… I’m frightened.”
It’s so unsafe, huge, in the open—without a safe space.
“Somebody gave me a sleeping bag, and a blanket, and I’ve got it stashed, I’ve got a good coat stashed. And so I’m trying to find a safe place, as safe as I can, to sleep. We just slept on the road last night, in a field. Thank God, God looked over me.”
She’s struggling to hang on.
“I’m ALMOST there, almost there. If I can just get in there, [into my microhouse], I’ll be okay. Get back to work, and try to rebuild my life.”
***
She apologizes and says she has to go, tears still pooling in her large eyes. I hug her one last time.
***
I imagine my room. It’s a comfortable space, jutted with white-paint furniture and smoothed with fiber carpet. I try to imagine being dropped into the Austin night, finding a legal place to sleep. A sidewalk here, Zilker Park there (off limits, illegal to loiter). I’d have to hide; I try to, and can’t, imagine being raped and beaten. And that’s that. That’s a reality of suffering.