Over the past year life seems to have settled down for quite a few of the formerly incarcerated Massachusetts women whom I first met a decade ago. In a few cases, the stabilizing force was their adult children. In some cases, long waits for housing finally bore fruit. Other women, however, continue to cycle through homelessness, the streets and jail.
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Ginger has finally received housing! It’s just a studio apartment and it’s located in the heart of a neighborhood that is home to multiple homeless shelters and substance abuse treatment programs. But it’s her own space and she is delighted to have it.
Moving in was a bit of a project. Having been homeless for her entire adult life, she did not own a a lamp, a chair, a table, a bed, a broom, a dustpan, a mop, a dish sponge, a dish rack, towels, sheets, a kettle, pots or pans, dishes, cutlery, salt, pepper, oil, sugar, coffee, toilet paper, soap … Helping her obtain these items opened my eyes to how many purchases one needs to make in order to set up house.
With a place to call her own, Ginger has resumed a relationship with a man with whom she had been romantically involved years earlier. This time around, however, she has power in the relationship. She can invite him for dinner and to spend the night, or she can tell him that she needs her own space. As a consequence, he is treating her far better than he had the previous time they were involved.
Ginger’s biggest problem at this time is boredom. It is not feasible for her to get a job. She has less than a high school education and has never held a proper, above board job — her most recent job was standing outside a bar and enticing customers to come into a drag show. (See Out of Jail, Out of Work, Out of Luck for more on jobs.) Without a place to go on a regular basis, Ginger feels that she has too much time on her hands. And she knows from past experience that trouble tends to fill up empty hours.
Conversations with Ginger have helped me think about work as a human right. She very much wants to “give back” (her words), especially because she has received so much help from various social service agencies over the years. And when a rare opportunity to help out a disabled or elderly resident of her building comes up, she is thrilled to pitch in.
I know that Ginger is highly motivated to keep her housing, but I fear that without some sort of meaningful and structured activity to shape her days, the call of the street will become too loud to ignore.
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Daisy continues to stay out of trouble (most of the time) living in the room that her adult children arranged for her in an SRO (single room occupancy) in a suburb relatively far away from the neighborhoods in which she used to “get into trouble” (her term for being drunk and disorderly in public.)
Daisy’s really big news is that her daughter convinced her to go to the dentist. When I first met Daisy ten years ago she had about half of her teeth, and the ones she had were visibly crooked and rotting. Over the years, the situation only became worse.
It turns out that Daisy was afraid to go to the dentist – she was afraid of being hurt. But her daughter’s encouragement, bribes and gentle threats (as well as research into a dentist who seemed able to handle Daisy’s physical, mental and emotional challenges) paid off. Daisy proudly called me after the first appointment to tell me that “it didn’t hurt.” Over the course of two months the dentist extracted Daisy’s remaining teeth and fitted her for dentures. When Daisy and I had lunch together last week not only did she look great but her speech was far clearer than I’d ever heard her. I now wonder if what I had always perceived to be cognitive impairment was in fact mostly a matter of Daisy’s teeth interfering with her ability to articulate her thoughts.
Over the past year and half, while my father had been ill, Daisy called me regularly to ask how he was doing. Since he passed away (three weeks before this writing) she has called to make sure that I am okay.
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Kahtia finally was able to move from her fourth floor walk-up to the first floor of the same building. For over a year she had been lugging a portable oxygen tank with her up and down the stairs every time she left the apartment. Needing to stop and rest at least on each landing, Kahtia had all but stopped leaving home other than to see her children at the allotted weekly visit.
The Court has not yet announced a final decision regarding regaining custody of her children. For the past two years, Kahtia’s life has revolved around meetings with social workers and lawyers, frequent urine tests to prove that she is not using drugs, attending twelve step meetings, and scraping together money to buy treats for her children so that each visit will feel special.
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Francesca has been having a tough time with her health. Over the past year she has had bouts of severe abdominal pain and vomiting, as well as kidney stones and post-surgical complications.
After she moved out of her son’s apartment she lived with her boyfriend for several months. The situation was not ideal: he lives in a rural area with no public transportation and she does not have a car. While he was not abusive (unlike her previous boyfriends), she felt isolated and vulnerable. After a series of arguments, she moved out and went to live with her granddaughter’s other grandparents. This arrangement is worked reasonably well – allowing all of the grandparents to pitch in and care for the child when Francesca’s son is at work. Then she moved in with a friend of her other son. This friend has cerebral palsy and two young children, one of whom is autistic and one of whom is experiencing serious bullying at school. Francesca helps in the house and with the children.
Francesca’s health challenges over the past year include neck surgery to repair damage caused by her abusive ex-husband more than a decade ago. For many months following the surgery she was in constant pain both in her neck and in her hip from where the surgeons took bone fragments to repair her neck. The neck surgery has not eliminated the pain as of this writing.
A few months later she suffered from kidney stones, a recurring problem. Because of her history of opioid abuse, the hospital did not give her pain medication. To deal with that pain as well as the post-surgical pain Francesca became expert at doctor and pharmacy shopping, each time wrangling a few pills.
The biggest challenge has been Hepatitis C. While the Hep C epidemic does not receive the attention of the AIDS epidemic, it is as serious a problem. Francesca is now undergoing a course of treatment for Hep C. The side effects include hair loss, vomiting, and joint pain.
Carly has been in the hospital for much of the past year. She suffers from congestive heart failure and pulmonary hypertension.
The last time we spent a day together she could barely walk — she had to stop every few steps to catch her breath. It seems that her efforts to take care of her health have been put on hold now that she has lost custody of her daughter (a toddler) who is now calling her new parents “Mommy” and “Daddy.” The adoptive parents, with the child, have moved to the other side of the country. Carly doubts she’ll be able to see her child for a long time.
To me, her whole situation is extraordinarily painful. Carly is bright, personable, and she is not an opioid addict (her drug of choice is marijuana). In the decade that I have known her she went from completing her GED and applying to college, looking for a job, getting an apartment and having a child (whom she deeply wanted), to losing her apartment, her child and her health.
Joy has been in prison, detox, psychiatric facilities and the streets. Her pre-teen daughter has been sent to live with her aunt on the other side of the country. Without hope of being in her daughter’s life, Joy seems to have lost the will to live.
To read previous updates click on: Fall 2017 Summer 2017 January 2017 Summer 2016 New Years 2016 Summer 2015 Christmas 2014 / 2015 Fall 2014