I was at the Community Center helping out—I twisted a damp, tattered rag until a few milky drops sputtered out. I dropped it onto the granite countertop and scrubbed at the white coffee-creamer granules. When it was speckless, I crumpled up the rag and brought it over to the sink. While I washed it, a man stepped up to the counter.
Sam was busy heating some donuts, so I turned off the water and smiled at him, gesturing him over.
“Hey. Can I get some coffee or whatever?” His voice was lazy and self-assured.
“Sure thing.” I stepped to the coffee machine and picked up a freshly filled kettle, poured into a styrofoam cup. I turned around and he wasn’t at the counter anymore. I surveyed the room and spotted him sitting at one of the small red tables. He was hunched over a spread of white papers, nose almost to the ink. He made deliberate strokes with a blue pen next to his cheek, then suddenly straightened up and slid the piece of paper into a black cloth briefcase leaning against his chair.
When I reached the table with his coffee, he was already at work on another piece of paper.
“Thanks,” he drawled. He peers up at me with those huge sunglasses glinting red and yellow.
“No problem. What are you working on?”
We talk for a while that day, and greeted each other when we met eyes over the next few weeks. Finally, he had the time to spare for a longer conversation.
This was definitely the hardest story to write so far. He tends to stop in the middle of his sentences and sort of say, “Whatever whatever,” “blah blah,” and all varieties of filler words (“um,” “like,” “yeah,” etc.) more than he says words with meat in them. I can’t deny that I got a little frustrated during the conversation because of that, and especially as I sat at home and tried to piece together his story. Transcribing the audio was actually easier because of his speech patterns (there was less rewinding and scrubbing to do), but searching for the threads of sense that string together his story and making sense of it all was very difficult. Some of the contradictions and blank spaces in his telling were another reminder that people ultimately have jurisdiction of their own stories and may choose how little or how much to share. I can only do my best to work with what a person does share with me. What a journalist usually would do (go find family members, shelter directors that know the person, etc. to fill in gaps) seems unethical if the person doesn’t want some things publicly known.
I’m so grateful to him for sharing so much with me. I’m slightly concerned about his wellbeing, and I definitely noticed the sense of bitterness he seems to have towards the world. To be fair, the world seems to have messed with him just a little bit. Hearing about the reality of his childhood… I don’t know how to say this, but I’d never viscerally felt the fact of my privilege to grow up in a stable household. People do grow up in horrible circumstances, but here was a face an arm’s-length away that had been through suffering I can’t actually comprehend.
I really do wish him all the best.
Chao,
Isabella, 3/12/17
← Read Grant’s Story