The Panhandler

Another story for Faithwriters. The topic was "Discern".

A slight drizzle was falling as Jim hurried down the street next to the wharf, pulling his ball cap low over his face and hunching his shoulders to ward off the drops. He had worked late and was tired. In this area of downtown Seattle there were usually a fair number of people walking along the harbor and watching the sunset; but now, in the rain, only a few scattered people were out to look at the water. “Hey, spare some change?”

Jim turned to see a man on a bench next to him. He was young – probably in his teens – but prematurely aged. His face was thin and his cheek bones jutted out sharply. Dark strands of wet hair slicked down across his forehead and stood out starkly against his extremely pale face. His eyes were dark and menacing, gazing at Jim with a wild, hungry light. His clothes were dirty and ragged, hanging loosely on his bony frame.

Jim shook his head and hurried on. The teen stood up and stepped after him. “Come on, man. You can spare a little change for a hungry man.”

“No.” Jim said, speeding up.

The youth stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Why not?” His voice was flat, hardly making a question.

Jim shrugged. “I don’t have to tell you.”

The teen stopped, “No. You don’t. But I know why not, and you’re wrong.”

Jim shrugged and pushed past him to continue on his way. Behind him, the boy’s shoulders sagged dejectedly and he collapsed back on the bench.

Jim reached the corner and got on a warm, dry bus. He rode the bus to a warm, dry house. The boy remained on the corner, staring with angry eyes at the stream of cars going past, each with its wipers sliding back and forth, back and forth. At last he got up and sauntered away into the damp darkness.

Washed in Rain

This was another one that I wrote up for faithwriters.com. The topic was "The Sense of Touch". Sorry if it's a little overly brutal.

Dawn glimmers over the edge of city of Caracas and shines into my eyes. I squint into it, then look away as it grows too bright. A light rain is falling and I’m sopping wet. I run my fingers through my black hair and shake my head, sending drops spinning in every direction. I sit up and shiver in the slight wind. Bianca is sleeping beside me, under the skimpy protection of a stone archway. I pull the blanket up around her shoulders. The streets were empty and quiet. Too quiet. I stand and walk the length of the block, looking for the cause of the silence. My heart beats faster and I run back to where Bianca is. It begins to rain harder and she stirs. “Tiago?” She calls.

“I’m here.” I answer.

She rubs her eyes and opens them. Beautiful black eyes framed with long lashes – beautiful, but sightless. She lifts her head and listens. “Rain.” She sniffs and smiles, “It’s so pretty, Tiago, so clean smelling.” Poor child, she doesn’t really know what pretty is. “Rain is God’s way of washing away all the bad in the city.”

“Yeah.” I mumble, glancing up the street again.

Bianca pushes her hair away from her face, then stops and cocks her head to listen. I think she’s hearing the rain, but now her face grows puzzled. “There’s shouting.”

I look out, but see nothing. Listen, but hear nothing above the drumming rain. Suddenly a jeep roars onto the street and squeals to a stop. Soldiers pile out, unslinging their guns as they hit the ground. From up the street, rapid gunfire rips the quiet to shreds. The communist revolution has come to Caracas. I look down in concern as Bianca jerks sharply, but it is only in surprise at the sudden blast of noise. “What’s that?”

“Fighting.” I answer, trying to move farther back n the archway. “The communists have reached the city.” With all her seven years, Bianca knows nothing of the danger behind the explosions. The sound means no more than hammering to her.

She lifts her head and sniffs the air. “It’s bitter.” It takes me a moment to realize that she is speaking of the smell of the gunpowder.

As I grow more nervous, she slowly relaxes. Suddenly a bullet tears through my shoulder and I barely manage to keep from screaming. I clench my fists and grit my teeth, I gasp with the pain. Don’t scare her. Don’t scare her. Blood quickly soaks into my shirt and runs down my arm. Bianca looks up at the sound of my labored breathing. “Tiago? Are you ok?”

“I’ll be ok.”

She nods, oblivious to my pain, and reaches out to feel the rain running off roof. The battle rages around us, but she sees none of it, it’s nothing but noise and strange smells. Shouting? She hears it all the time on the street. Her hand follows the line of drips from the roof a slight smile lighting her face. Her hand comes under my elbow and my blood flows onto her hand. She starts and pulls back in surprise at the sudden warmth. She puts her stained hand to her face and sniffs it curiously. “Blood?” She guesses.

“I’m – shot.” My voice holds pain and Bianca picks the tone out immediately.

“You hurt your arm on something?” She asks. “Don’t worry. Just hold it under the rain. The rain will wash it all clean.”

Ah, child, if only rain could scrub out the stain of battle. The battle continues around us, but Bianca smiles and puts her hand back under the rain drops, feeling the splashing water with delight.

Ulma-aeyo

“Ulma-aeyo? (How much is this?)” I ask, holding up a carrot.

“Ee Chun.” The old woman answers.

That is more expensive than the other venders’ prices, so I lay it back down and straighten up. This is Garak Market: a vast sprawling open air food market with vender after vender selling everything from apples to squid to barley to spinach. Each seller sits with their wares spread on the ground before them and hawks them loudly as trucks rumble by and the buyers straggle from one awning to the next. I take in the scene for an instant, but in my mind’s eye I am no longer in Seoul. The buildings grow poorer, the street turns to dirt, the chatter around me blurs into Spanish. In front of me I see a ragged boy with tousled, dark hair looking longingly at the fruit spread out on the sidewalk. “¿Tienes hambre? (Are you hungry?)” I ask him.

“Sí, Señorita.” He answers.

In my imagination, I turn to the vender and buy him something to eat. He smiles and thanks me for his new wealth. “Odiae-gayo?” The venders around me call the greeting in Korean, trying to get my attention. Once again the street is paved and the venders are oriental. The child has vanished.

“Martha, come on, let’s go.” Mommy tugs on my sleeve and we move on. “What were you thinking about?” She asks as we make our way past the grain section to the green veggies.

What was I thinking about? How can I explain that? “Nothing.” I answer.

I’ve always had a vivid imagination, maybe too vivid. I can really create a scene so real that I almost live in a different world sometimes. I feel as if I’ve really walked the streets of Chicago, wandered in the slums of India, lived in Morocco, visited Brazil, and (most recently) been to Colombia when in reality, I’ve only imagined it. Why these certain places? Street children. Los niños de las calles. Since I was a little girl of five or six I’ve dreamed of working with street kids. The country I’m thinking of has changed, the age of the children has shifted over the years, but the focus remains the same. For years I’ve imagined the city streets, thought up plans for starting farms for them to live on, organized feeding programs in my mind, and talked to imaginary children. “I’m going to start an orphanage” I remember telling people when I was five. “It’ll be nice orphanage with lots of games. I’ll teach them to read and all about the Bible.”

Now that I am almost ready to go out on my own, the dream has grown stronger than ever. The children of the street are calling to me. But here I am in Korea. Do I wish Korea had street kids? No of course not. But I know that somewhere there are orphans running the streets and they need someone to come and help them. How I wish I were there! Now, I bide my time and create dream scenes as I walk the streets of Seoul, but someday the dreams will be real. Someday I’ll get my hands into the work that God has raised me up for and called me to.

Forming Dreams (essay written for the U of A application)

“Either a nurse or a teacher” was always my answer when someone asked me what my plans were. That answer was fine until I entered my senior year and panic set in: “Mommy, I HAVE to know what I’m going to be, but how can I choose?”

I’ve loved anatomy ever since I can remember, but then I’ve always had a heart for working with children. Actually, I was on the job at the Drew County Boys and Girls Club when I got a call from my older brother, Peter: “Hey Martha, why don’t you come with me to an Urban Health Missions Conference in Los Angeles? Then you can see all the cool stuff you can do when you are a nurse like me.”

“How am I going to get out there?” I asked.

“I’ll pay your way.” He answered.

“Well, that sounds great to me!”

A few days later, when talking with my older sister Esther (also a nurse), I mentioned the travel plans. “Why don’t you stop by in Tulsa for a few days and shadow me at work? I can arrange it with my supervisor,” she suggested.

So a plan was formed for an amazing trip to discover nursing—from small-town Monticello, Arkansas to Tulsa to Los Angeles! I packed my bags in a flurry of excitement, impatiently waiting the three weeks until the travel dates rolled around.

For three days, I shadowed my sister in the ICU. I looked at chest tubes and saw blood transfusions in progress, examined heart monitors print-outs and x-rays of collapsed lungs, talked with confused old ladies and ultra-paranoid young men – and loved every minute of it!

Then the day came to fly from Tulsa to Los Angeles. Peter and I had tried hard to coordinate our arrival times, but I still had to wait an hour for him to arrive. Fortunately, everything went well (thanks to cell phones) and we were leaving in our rental car for our lodgings by nine p.m.

I live in Monticello, Arkansas—a small town of ten thousand people in the Arkansas delta. Exploring Los Angeles was an adventure from the start. “Hey Martha, look on the map and find somewhere to eat. I’m starved,” Peter ordered from the driver’s seat. The place I found was a Church’s Chicken in the middle of a downtown, rough neighborhood. “If we get mugged, it’s your fault.” Peter informed me as we looked at the bars on the windows and surrounding the cash register.

“Oh, thanks a lot!” I answered sarcastically.

The conference lasted for two days, but I would say that it was the conference together with the city that convinced me to be a nurse. I’ll never forget the experience of sitting through a session about healthcare for the homeless and then watching a ragged man panhandle outside of the Starbucks where we ate. Or listening to a lecture on gang youth and then wandering through the fringes of the tough barrios and seeing the graffiti.

That trip showed me the realities of life in the inner-city. When I told people at the conference that I wanted to be a nurse, but also wanted to work with children, the answer was “Why not both? Why not become nurse AND a Children’s Pastor? Both are desperately needed!”

So a plan formed to become a nurse to fulfill physical needs, and then go to Bible School to be better equipped to fulfill gaping spiritual needs. And that is my dream.

Grass Stains

Kaleb rolled over and stared at the sunlight shimmering through the green leaves of the hedge he was sleeping in. What time was it? Traffic rolled by just inches away from him, shaking the leaves around him. He reached up and brushed a leaf out of his shaggy brown hair and began to struggle out from between the tangled twigs, finally emerging into blinding daylight. A passing pedestrian stared at the strange figure in ragged clothes covered in grass stains, but Kaleb paid him no mind. Now, breakfast. Where should he look for it? He felt in his pocket and pulled out all the money he had. Fifty cents. Enough for a Coke or some Ramen noodles not both. He set off walking fast to the nearest store. It was a routine by now, panhandling, stealing, going hungry half the days – and he had just passed his sixteenth birthday.

At the store, a boy in a dirty sweatshirt and ragged jeans was crouched by the door smoking a cigarette. He stood up as Kaleb came near, “Hey.”

Kaleb nodded, “What’s up?”

“Found some newbies down at the park this morning.” He jerked his head in the direction of the city park. “They slept under a picnic table. Two boys, thirteen and eleven years old.”

Kaleb ran a hand over his face wearily, “Alright, give me a moment. I was just about to pick up breakfast.” He went into the store bought the noodles, then stopped at a Macdonalds on the way to the park for a Styrofoam cup of hot water. He sat on a curb in the parking lot to eat the noodles, sharing them with the other boy – it wasn’t even close to enough to fill the aching hole where his stomach should have been.

The park was nothing more than a group of trees with a couple tables set between them. On one of the tables, two boys were hunched sleepily, watching the traffic pass with bleary eyes. An older boy was leaning against the tree, his eyes bloodshot from Marijuana. Kaleb greeted him, “Hey Sam. You got the details?”

Sam straightened, “Yeah, ran away from their home two days ago and hitched a ride here. Their dad is hammering them at night, so they say they ain’t going home. They’ve been reported missing to the police.”

The three older teens held a quiet conference a few yards from the kids, trying to decide what to do. If they helped the boys, they could be turned in for harboring a fugitive? It was a thin line that they walked every day and especially every time another runaway turned up in their turf. Kaleb walked over to the table, “Hey listen up, kiddos. I been on the streets since I was thirteen; it ain’t a picnic. Is there any home at all you can go to? A grandma, aunt, uncle, sister, brother – anything?”

The younger boy remained staring straight ahead without acknowledging Kaleb’s presence, but the older one shook his head no. Kaleb sighed, “Surely you can think of something. Listen, you may think this life is some kind of adventure, but I swear I ain’t here for the fun of it. I wish I had a house to go to, but I don’t. Is there anywhere, ANYwhere you can go?”

Both boys were silent. Kaleb put a foot up on the bench and leaned forward, his elbow resting on his knee. “Look, you hungry?” Both boys nodded. “Then get used to it. You’ll be that way all the time. Look at my shoes, tied together with string. Look at my clothes, ripped and cover with green stains from sleeping in the hedges. Is that how you want to look? Talk to me, what you planning?”

The older brother hesitated and looked at his brother, then answered finally. “My grandmother lives about an hour south of here.”

Kaleb sighed in relief, “You have her number?”

The boy nodded, “But, I never talked to her before. Could you call her?”

Kaleb raised an eyebrow, “Me?”

The older teens behind him snickered. “Come on you scared to talk to the kid’s grandma?” Sam called.

Kaleb scowled, “Alright! I’ll call her. Someone cough the change for the phone.”

A moment later, he was holding a scrap of paper and tramping to a nearby shop that had a pay phone.