I thought I’d take
a look at the files Claudia was bitching about. I had just sat down when I realized I’d be in a much better frame of mind if I got some nutrition in me. Being a human service agency filled with overweight, issue-filled professionals, there were always large quantities of simple carbohydrated, fat-laden treats in arm’s reach. I once thought that if you could somehow deep fry sugar and salt you could keep many social workers happy for a very long time.
This particular morning I was in luck. There was an in-service in the multipurpose room with an outside trainer on “Multicultural Nonverbal Communication.” Technically, I was supposed to attend, but Trina the office manager always hooked me up with the attendance sign-in sheet just before she turned it in to Claudia. I figured being on the attendance sheet entitled me to a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee.
Just before the trainer started his exercise—breaking the room into discussion groups of threes to make nonverbal multicultural hand puppets—I slipped out of the multipurpose room and headed to my often little-purpose cubicle. Before I left, I waved to the trainer who clearly never quite disengaged from the sixties. He was bald on top of his head but maintained a brownish-gray ponytail. He had on army fatigues with lots of pockets and his gut hung over the top of them. The best part was his sandals with the separate loop for his fat and hairy big toe. Topping off the look was a toenail on the hairy big toe that looked like it was last trimmed right around the time Richie Havens left the stage at Woodstock.
I grabbed a stack of about ten files, took a sip of the lukewarm, brownish, cardboard-tasting coffee, and looked at the first file. I opened Eli Allison’s chart and noticed that the last session note I charted was eight weeks ago. Eli is a fifty-one-year-old black guy who keeps getting arrested after he’s had a couple of Olde
Englishes
, the potent malt liquor found in drug stores and gas stations in ghetto neighborhoods. With that added alcohol content, two forty-ounce bottles are equivalent to more than a six-pack of regular beer.
Eli’s last arrest came six months ago when, after his customary two or three OEs, he asked the Pakistani owner of the Mobil station where he got the forties if he and his wife wanted to have some sort of three-way sexual Twister game. When Mr. Endou declined, Eli got so pissed he knocked over the Slurpee machine and took off all his clothes. The judge released him into counseling.
While I was trying to make up some notes for the four times I met with Eli in the last eight weeks, the phone rang. It was Mike Kelley, my cop friend.
“Duff, you better get over to Walanda’s house,” said Kelley. “We have to arrest her and she’s losing it. Worse than I’ve ever seen her.”
Walanda is a thirty-four-year-old crackhead with a dash of schizophrenia. She has a tendency to get loud and more than a bit wacky.
“Why are you arresting her?” I asked.
“Outstanding warrant for shoplifting. The DA is having one of his crackdowns. She’ll probably have to do thirty days.”
“She stole some hair extensions from the Dollarama, for crissakes.”
“Duff, we can talk about it later,” Kelley said. “Right now I could use some help.”
Kelley was good people. He wasn’t a bleeding heart, but if he could do his job just as easily by being decent, he did. He called me when he was involved in an arrest with someone on my
caseload
and he needed a calming influence. I filed Eli’s and the rest of the unopened charts and headed to Walanda’s house. She lived in Jefferson Hill, about two and a half miles from the office. It is the kind of neighborhood where you’re better off not stopping when you hit a red light. I was in a hurry so I didn’t plan on stopping anyway.
In the early part of the century, “The Hill,” as it is known, was home to the city’s blue-collar Irish and Polish. The city went through its own version of the Newark riots in the late sixties and the early seventies, suffering through the growing pains of the civil rights movement. Today there’s only a handful of old Irish and Polish on The Hill, the ones too old, poor, or stubborn to leave.
My ’76 Eldorado convertible’s V-8 had plenty of power, but it was a tad temperamental. Just the same, to me there was no finer automobile in the world than this car. Burnt orange body, velour seats, and a deep-pile orange carpet, it was a little heaven here on earth. The eight-track player made it tough to get new music, but that didn’t matter. I only listen to Elvis and while he was alive, so were eight-tracks.
The King was getting into his second chorus of hunka-hunkas when I came up on Walanda’s house. It was a mess, as only ghetto houses paid for by welfare can be. The screen door on the porch was banging off the wall, three of her four front windows were broken, and there was a washing machine on what there was of a front lawn.
Walanda was rolling around with Kelley near the washer, screaming a slew of expletives that would’ve made Nixon blush. Kelley’s uniform was covered in dirt and gravel and his hat had found its way to the middle of the street. At a less than solid two hundred thirty pounds, Walanda was no easy restraint, at least not at first. Her stamina wasn’t the greatest, even when she was getting wacky, so she would tire before long.
I’d seen her go off before, but something was really getting to her this morning. She kept screaming something over and over, but it was hard to make out because of the wrestling match between her and Kelley.
“Mornin’, Kel,” I said. “What’s new?” I was standing above the two of them, not sure how or if I should intervene.
“Thanks for the help, Duff,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Kelley and I had done this before, but on this particular morning it was going to take a little more than humor. Walanda was wound up.
“Duffy, my baby’s gone,” Walanda half screamed, half growled at me. “That Webster’s got my baby, Duffy.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she kept screaming it over and over and over.
“Fuckin’ Webster! Stop him!”
Kelley finally had her flipped over face down and was sitting on top of her ass, bending her arms to cuff her. I think fatigue had gotten the better of Walanda. Kelley’s chest was heaving, his shirt was ripped, and he was covered with dust, gravel, and dirt.
Walanda was crying so hard it looked like she was going to choke. Her chest was heaving as she continued to cry, and she had bits of gravel from her front yard stuck to the tears on her cheeks. In the doorway to her house, a big, fat, long-eared, short-legged hound appeared. The hound saw what Kelley was trying to do and started to howl with his nose pointed to the sky. The howling was loud enough to hurt your ears.
“Al-lah-King, Al-lah-King, don’t worry. Mommy’s going to be all right.” Walanda suddenly calmed herself for the sake of the dog. The dog, whatever his name was, stopped howling, started to whimper, and he waddled his fat self down the two steps of her porch and went over and licked the tears from Walanda’s cheek.
“Duffy,” Walanda said, “promise me something, right now.” The craziness had left her voice and was replaced with a desperate but calculated take-care-of-business tone.
“Tell me what you need, babe,” I said. Kelley had her up and heading toward the car.
“You got to find my stepdaughter Shondeneisha.” Kelley was putting her in the car. “She’s gone and I think the Webster got her.”
I didn’t have a whole lot of time to get details. I also couldn’t ask much from Kelley. He had had a bad morning himself and he wasn’t going to appreciate a lot of social work mumbo-jumbo.
“Duff, you can catch up on the finer points of these issues when Walanda gets situated. I’ve kind of had it for this morning,” Kelley said.
“Gotcha,” I said.
Walanda wasn’t through yet. She started crying and yelling again.
“Take Allah-King while I’m away—promise me,” Walanda was back to wailing. “He needs someone and there ain’t no one else. You gotta, Duff—you gotta.”
I had no time to think and I panicked.
“Don’t worry—I’ll take care of him,” I heard come out of my mouth.
“Don’t feed him no pork—he’s Muslim,” Walanda yelled as Kelley hit the siren and pulled out.
“Assalaamu alaikum,” I said
to my new best friend, Allah-King.
Assalaamu alaikum is the respectful way Muslims greet each other. I knew a couple of guys from boxing who were members of the Nation of Islam and I admired the discipline in their lives. I think the greeting means “peace be with you,” or maybe that’s what us Catholics say in response to whatever the priest says. I don’t know if it mattered much at all to Allah-King. Judging from his appearance, he would have been more pleased with a greeting of “Salami and bacon.”
He was sitting there whimpering, watching Kelley’s patrol car disappear. Long after it was out of sight, he cocked his head in my direction as if to ask, “What next?” I’ve never had a dog, let alone a Muslim one, and I didn’t know the first thing about having one. I wasn’t really thrilled about having this fat stepdog to take care of for a month until Walanda got released, but I told her I’d take care of him, so I would.
“Let’s go, Al.” I made the decision to go with the shortened version of his name, not out of disrespect to his faith, but rather out of convenience. I headed toward the Eldorado, and a somewhat reluctant Al followed along. I opened the passenger-side door for Al to hop in, but he just sat there on the curb.
“C’mon boy, up you go,” I said.
Not only did Al not move, but he also growled a little and had a look on his face like he resented being called “boy.” Suddenly, I felt a bit like a white devil. I leaned over and grabbed Al under his front paws and hefted him up.
Al probably weighed about eighty pounds, but it wasn’t a neatly balanced eighty pounds, and his back legs hung down while I kind of flopped his front legs onto my front seat. The landing caused a rush of flatulence to escape out of Al’s ass, which was perfectly positioned a mere eight inches from my face. Judging from the fragrance of his landing, I thought maybe Al’s diet would be enhanced with some pork. We headed back toward my place when I realized I was going to need some dog supplies, so I changed directions and drove toward PetSmart. Al had his eyes closed and looked to be making his lifestyle adjustment by sleeping. A pool of slobber gunked up the velour on my front seat.
Walanda had been a client of mine on and off for five years. There was no doubt she was nuts and addicted. Of course, if I had her background I don’t know if I could function as well as she, at least sometimes, did. She was sexually abused all through her childhood by her stepfather and several of his friends, got into prostitution at thirteen, and was addicted by fourteen. Her five kids by four different men were taken away from her six years ago because she was whoring and using, and she didn’t have a chance at getting them back.
I had never heard of a stepdaughter, but she lived the kind of lifestyle where family was a broad term. The interesting thing about people like Walanda was that most people write them off because they don’t ever seem to get better and because they just continue to do shit that gets them in trouble. Somehow, that qualifies people to devalue the Walandas of the world by calling them “hos” or “crackheads.” The reality is that these folks are flesh and blood, and from a very early age, the cards they were dealt weren’t winning hands.
That’s not to say that they have no responsibility for how their lives turn out, but it means you’ve got to do some thinking when you look at people and the places they have found for themselves in life. It would be simple to suggest that they should just pull themselves out of their miserable existence and better themselves. I tend to think that if your existence has been miserable enough, then you may not have what it takes to pull yourself out of it.
Unfortunately, it’s much easier to devalue folks, and some people take great pride in looking down their noses at folks like Walanda. Giving them a label like “ho” or “crackhead” makes it easier to not see them as being human. Most people would much rather head to the mall, watch
Survivor
, and get in their SUV than give this shit any thought at all.
All of Walanda’s men were abusive and at least two of them pimped her out on the street for their drugs. There was a brief period when she joined the Nation of Islam, and for eight months she was clean, sober, and working. I don’t know if she ever even understood the principles of Islam, but the discipline and structure sure made a difference in her life. Then she found out her oldest son had been stabbed and killed in the boys’ home he was in and that was it—Walanda went back to her old lifestyle.
She keeps about half of her appointments with me, which means I see her about twice a month. Most of the time we just shoot the shit, but that’s an hour when she’s not getting high or turning a trick. Sometimes in her sessions, she actually sets some decent goals for herself. Recently, she was talking about getting some training to be a nurse’s aid. That was before the Dollarama arrest and lots of crack. I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks, which probably meant she was on a binge, getting into that ugly cycle of getting high and whoring around the clock. Walanda knew what happened when she got into the crack and though she could compartmentalize her behavior to a degree, it left scars on her psyche and, more importantly, her soul. Though often hard to recognize under the addiction and the craziness, Walanda cared about things and valued her family. It would be easy to say that she valued crack more, but that was an oversimplification of what was going on.
Al started to make a low humming noise and he shifted position. Anything he did seemed to require intense effort because of his belly. He stretched a bit, seemed to yawn, and then barfed into my carpeting. Once he got things out of his system, he shuffled about in the front seat until he was comfortable and then, when he was convinced he had found the exact right spot, he laid down and started a new puddle of drool on my front seat.
It was fun having a pet.
I got the essentials for Al, made sure he had a bowl of food and water, and headed back to the office. The Michelin Woman confronted me the second I walked in.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Home visit with Walanda—she got arrested and was having a tough time,” I said.
“Considering our discussion this morning, Duffy, that’s not a good use of time. You need to focus on your records.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t want the people on my caseload to get in the way of writing about them in their records,” I said.
“Duffy, one of your issues is your inability to set appropriate boundaries. You don’t let your clients feel the responsibility for their self-defeating behavior. They seek attention and you give it to them,” she said.
“Gee whiz, boss. I never thought of it that way. Let me get after those records,” I said.
Fortunately, Trina buzzed Michelin’s phone, giving me a bit of a reprieve. As Claudia left to get the phone, I looked around the corner and gave Trina a thumbs-up and mouthed a “thank you.” She winked at me and seemed to hold her eyes on mine for a second or two longer than she had to. It was summer and Trina’s skin was smooth and tan and it contrasted nicely with the plain white collared shirt she wore. Her dark brown, almost black hair seemed to gather light and her teeth were flawless, as were most of her body parts.
I grabbed some records and headed back to the cubicle, ready to start on Eli’s chart again. Monique, the caseworker whose cubicle was just across the small aisle made by the partitions, rolled back in her office chair.
“Why do you bait her like that?” Monique said. “It only makes it worse for you. Can’t you just let it go?”
“If I can piss her off and not cave under her bullshit, I feel a little redeemed,” I said.
“Talk about self defeating …” she said.
Monique was all right. She’s a forty-two-year-old black lesbian with a cold veneer. She had her shit together and somehow was able to balance being good with her clients, getting her paperwork done, and keeping the Michelin Woman off her back. Monique tended to wear baggy clothes, often with an African print, which offset her almost midnight-black skin.
I liked and respected Monique and, though she often rolled her eyes at the things I did, I got the sense she respected me. She was for helping people, and she knew I was too. Even though I was Walanda’s primary counselor, Monique had her in group and it was often the case that the client’s group counselor would have different information on the clients. I filled her in about Walanda and her claims about her stepdaughter Shondeneisha and the whole Webster deal.
“In group, she used to talk all the time about Shony,” she said. “She was the kid of one of the men she was involved with but didn’t marry. For whatever reason, Walanda bonded with her, I think, as a reaction to the death of her son. That kid was her pride and joy.”
“I wonder why she didn’t bring it up in our sessions,” I said.
“It’s a motherhood thing, Duff,” Monique said. “She talked about it with other women when the topic came up. She didn’t talk a lot about it because it wasn’t a problem for her. At least not until all this.”
“I’m trying to remember if she ever mentioned the father,” I said. “It’s not easy keeping track of Walanda’s men.”
“You’re right, you just described every single guy she was ever involved with.”
“What about Webster—does that sound familiar in any way?” I asked.
“Webster?” she said. “That doesn’t ring any bells. I don’t remember any men with that name. You got me on that one.”
“Yeah, me either.”
Before Monique and I could do any more problem solving on Walanda’s mysterious ramblings, Trina buzzed me to let me know the Abermans were here for their couple’s session. The Abermans were one of the few Jewish clients we had, which was kind of ironic considering the name of the clinic.
Morris and Michelle had been married for seventeen years and they hated each other, which strangely enough seemed to be what bonded them. Their therapy sessions consisted of them bitching at each other, ignoring anything I said, and then leaving with absolutely no intention of changing anything at all about their lives.
I would like to say that the session with the Abermans would take my mind off Walanda, but it had just the opposite effect. Michelle was droning on about how Morris swam to the opposite side of the pool during adult swim at the Crawford Jewish Community Center and totally ignored her. I couldn’t blame Morris—hell, if I had to swim with Michelle, I’d try to break the record for holding my breath underwater.
I know I’m not supposed to allow it to, but the lives of my clients get to me. Not the Abermans’ chlorinated crisis—shit, that was all their own doing. Walanda never had a chance, and all psychobabble bullshit aside, what was there in her life to be hopeful about?
I stewed while the Abermans bickered. Morris had moved on to the pressing issue of Michelle’s refusal to attend Morris’s college debate team reunion. I decided we didn’t have enough time to tackle such an emotionally challenging issue this week and I politely ushered the lovely couple out.
Right after the Abermans, I had an appointment with Michael Osborne.
“Mikey,” as he preferred to be called, was a flaming gay guy who hung around Jefferson Park taking hits of poppers and engaging in anonymous sex with the crowd of gay men who frequented the park. There was also fairly consistent traffic of straight men that seemed to gravitate to the park to play an anonymous game of kielbasa hockey with guys like Mikey. Mikey spent a lot of time in women’s clothing and some of what he talked about in sessions was the idea of getting the series of operations to get transgendered. He wasn’t terribly committed to it, so it was never really pursued. Mikey favored leather skirts and they were usually of a color not found in nature like electric pink or purple, but it worked for Mikey—that is, if you liked a really hairy calf coming up from a stiletto pump.
Mikey got into treatment because he was forever getting arrested for his park activities and he always had some drugs on him. My concern for Mikey was that he was either undiagnosed with HIV or he was bound to catch it very soon. The goal of treatment was to get him out of the park and out from behind the bushes. His lifestyle excited him and he was addicted to all of it, not just the drugs or the sex—it was all of it together.
Mikey always made his sessions and he usually was fun to talk with. He played the flamer role to the max and with it came a terrific sarcastic sense of humor. Several times when he talked about how his family disowned him or his lifelong failure to sustain any kind of normal relationship he’d break down and sob. He cried so hard one day I hugged him and he shook and cried until he seemed exhausted. When he was done, he broke our hug by goosing me and then winking at me.
That was kind of a microcosm of who Mikey was. There were layers of hurt that he would get to and touch, but as soon as he could muster the strength, he would gather it and assume his role. It was the shell he’d retreat into to feel safe.
Mikey didn’t show for his session, which was very unusual for him. That would’ve given me time to get after some more notes, but I just wasn’t in the mood. That meant that for the day my bookkeeping took a few steps forward and a few more steps back, but I didn’t care. Honestly, it made me feel a bit uneasy, but not uneasy enough to stick around writing.