The Bills Between Us
Poverty is a slow-walked demolition of the human spirit. Extreme poverty, not so slow. Those who have not experienced want at this level lack capacity to conceive and to empathize beyond a basic understanding of the meaning of words.
Forced choices driven solely by financial considerations. Choosing between paying a power bill and traveling to see your children. Using baking soda to brush teeth, solve digestive ails, clean stains and laundry, and more- not because it works but because it costs less. Hunger and the terrifying frustration of not being able to satiate it. Ever-present insects- on walls, floors, ceilings, and, yes- even yourself while you sleep. Choosing between food and medicines. Impossible choices- simultaneously wrong and right. The food you have access to is not the same food supply from which those with resources choose. The feeling of being STUCK carries the weight of a thousand moons and becomes its own tide. Ebb and flow. Out to the same point and back to the same place. Never beyond. Incapable, but not for lack of trying. Stuck.
Humans are hardwired to aspire. Poverty takes brutal aim at the core of this purpose.
In the neighborhood where I live, I see lots of people hanging onto our mutual society by the skin of their teeth. I'm one of them. One man in particular stands out. I don't know his name, but he looks like me. Same facial features. Same style of dress- shorts, tshirt, flip-flops, hat. Maybe his name is Jeff or Chris or Tom. He is Everyman here in this place. I used to see him in the mornings and evenings when I would leave for work and return at the end of the day. He stood on the corner of 25th and Herring. His cardboard sign said "Anything Helps". Some days, I would see him walking to or from his station at the corner. He lived in my neighborhood, just down the block. I imagine he lost his car somehow and was unable to adapt to life without. Maybe he lacks relevant skills. Maybe he cannot find work. I do not get the impression he is solely complicit in his plight. Clearly, mental health issues are a mainstay in his existence. But he looks like me. Everyman Normal.
I observed his slow, agonizing descent into hell. When I first saw him, he was clean shaven with clean clothes and clipped hair and a smile to every other Everyman in their passing Normal cars. My heart was touched and I regularly gave him my cash tips whenever I had them (which isn't often). A few dollars passed from a window to a trembling hand. "Hang in there, Buddy," I would say. "Thank you so much," he would reply in breathy Earnest. His eyes never met mine...they locked onto the Bills-Between-Us as though each were a life-saving pill sent to end a terminal pain. My dog barked at him once. My dog isn't aggressive, he just could not read the energy of a man from another reality.
It didn't last. Over a period of three hot, summer months, he changed. The observable slippage from our shared society into a shared psychosis with others who have similarly slipped was profound. Salt and pepper stubble became gray and white beard. The same old T-shirt was no longer fresh. His skin grew leathery from overexposure to the Texas summer sun. No more smile. But the worst...were his eyes. Something in them was growing feral in the most frighteningly visible way. The smooth skin around his eyes was stretched and wrinkled. The eyes themselves, while sunken and dark were simultaneously wide and Afraid. Pinpoint pupils. Desperation, Shame, Terror, and Pain lingered there.
At some point he was no longer on the corner. I saw him a few days later at the market down the street, sitting on the curb watching Consumers of Convenience come and go. As a lady got into her car, two coins fell from her purse or car door or pocket. She did not notice, but he did. As she pulled out of her parking space, he pounced with a quickness that surprised me, gingerly retrieving the coins, brushing them off, and putting them in his pocket. I had no bills to give that day.
Then he was gone. Weeks passed. I imagine he lost his home- took about 90 days. Yesterday, I saw him again, but on a different corner. This one, at the corner of Waco Drive and I35 frontage road in Bellmead. He had a long beard, a slumping posture, dirty clothes and skin, and was nearly unrecognizable. He was seated on the searing cement behind the curb of the turnaround. He had acquired a bicycle- probably from someone's trash on the curb. Panhandling at that corner is obviously a more profitable venture, as he now has the company of several others, all competing for the same Bills-Between-Us.
A panhandler on a busy intersection can generally earn between $25 and $100 a day. In that reality, such a haul is adequate to sustain the body for a time. The mind, however, is a different story. As a delivery driver in the gig economy, I see a hundred people like this man. All of them Everyman. Everywoman. As someone who runs errands for other people...who buys their food and delivers it to them...I can tell you there is a very real difference between the choices of those who have and those who don't. At the bottom end of the spectrum are the streets, where very few real choices exist. Those who have been on the streets for a while have the raggedy look of sweat-seasoned pros, with mangled hair and stained beards and dirty clothes. They'd just as soon talk to themselves as talk to you.
We call them transients and vagrants. Homeless. Bums. The words ooze out with distaste and contempt. They have a shared experience not unlike our own societal experience, but with very different rules, aspirations, and consequences. When humans no longer aspire- whether by choice or by affliction- purpose evaporates. When a bird can no longer be a bird, what does the bird do? Likewise, when a human being can no longer aspire to the greatness of humanity, what does that human do? Without purpose, without aspiration, there is only "today and getting through it".
And so they do until they don't. They are the Downtrodden. There is a thin, green line that separates me from them.
The king will answer them, “I tell you this: You did all these things to help other people. They were not important people, but they were my friends. When you helped them, then you also helped me.” - Matthew 25:40
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