The Mysterious and Tragic Death of Yusely Verdecia Reyes
First, a little about your writer… though it wasn’t planned that way.
“I need to speak with you. It’s important.”
It is May, 2021. Eight days since I last saw Yusely.
For over a week the words from Yusely Verdecia Reyes have been bouncing around in my head.
She’s so young, just turned 18, on the streets.
She needs my help.
I’ve known her for nearly three years now, and she never once asked me for a single thing.
Today, I rise, on the eighth day. I finally have a free schedule, at least free enough to go back to The Cut encampment in which Yusely lives, to try and find her.
I have worried about her for the entire time I have been away, since she whispered those words into my left ear.
“I need to speak with you. It’s important.”
I worry about all the folks out there, the houseless, the ones I have grown to know and love so much in the last years. The humanitarian crisis here, now the sixth year, as officially declared by the Portland City Council.
In winter, when it is cold, and some freeze to death. Not just from the cold, but from the uber-rude treatment they get from the housed, city and county officials, sweeps that come through to take all their belongings, and sometimes in how they treat each other.
I have learned that souls can only take so much of this sort of rejection, during winter months, and then they just quietly... freeze to death.
In the spring and summer I worry when drug use goes up, and the drama that it brings, inevitably, violence.
It’s a crap shoot.
I wonder each year: whom am I going to lose, of those I have been tracking since my series on homelessness began in 2019?
I try to brace myself each season. For the casualties of weather, in winter, and those from the culture arising when society at large discards people, for one reason, or another, sweeps them into de facto concentration camps.
Then (like Germans did about Jews, unwanted “aliens" and Nazi resistance fighters in World War II) forget about them as best they can.
Last year I counted two, and they were difficult losses for me.
So far this year, I have lost over 26.
I say “over,” because I know of more deaths from people than I personally knew.
Friends of friends.
From drug overdoses with fentanyl-laced heroin, suicide, untreated infections, etc.
Nothing prepares me for today, however.
Nothing in my life.
Having covered the houseless for so long, I know there is extreme danger when I hang out with my friends and acquaintances there.
I rely solely on my instincts, and by this time, I believe they are infallible.
As life does, whenever we seem to think we know something too well, curve balls commence.
Today, I was about to be thrown one will change my life forever.
I check in with myself, try to infuse a little intentional consciousness into my day with focused thought: I am grateful for all that I have, my health, and for all I am able to do. Today, I will be strong, I will be compassionate, I will not condescend, preach, judge, or be fake. If I transgress, I will do so with joy, and enjoy my repentance. It is okay that these houseless people are my friends, despite what my more fortunate friends would have me believe. It’s more than okay, it is a wonderful gift they miss out on. A blessing, a secret treasure. I will not take shit from anyone.
And most of all, I will remember I am not Jesus, Moses, Buddha, or Muhammad; I’m just a dude with a messiah complex and a pen.
I take my shower, feeling guilty for the privilege. I think to myself I am disappointed, unable to allow my houseless friends to come over to my place to shower. I have too much stuff that could be stolen, as has happened when I’ve acquiesced to visiting showerers before. My towels, any clothes in the dryer, which is located next to the shower. Toiletries. Money that I may have left laying around. Food, and trust.
This day, I think about what a luxury it is to have had such stuff worthy to have been stolen, still have so, so many more possessions leftover, and extreme ability to earn more.
Owning white male privilege has become a well from which I try very hard to resist drinking, at least flagrantly. I just can’t be that guy, anymore, not after pandemic has struck minorities, women, children so harshly, and even made me welcome deaths from particularly GOP fascistic assholes who spread anti-vaccination evangelism and essentially are killing people.
Also, my mother worked long hours as a CEO’s secretary to keep us afloat, after the divorce when I was a child, and did the work of two executives. I promised myself as then I would never forget her quiet tears of humiliation, our relative poverty, as I worked odd jobs starting at nine-years-old to help pay basic bills.
I have known the upside from having white male privilege in America, and am still learning its downside.
I dry off, and then try to pick attire that will not insult the people I am about to visit.
I put away my name brand clothes, my $200 jeans, the $50 thermal socks, the $400 hiking boots, except the ones that are very old, the ones I worship. The ones that cost the most, lasted forever, and have gotten me through more scrapes than cigarettes and therapists combined.
I always pack cash and extra clothes, to give quietly away.
There was a period when I was seriously cash poor in 2020, a work injury tore irreparably my labrum and rotator cuff.
I remember even then having to pay my landlord money to keep myself housed (and keep quiet her penchant for making deeply cutting remarks about my deceased mother, spreading lies to our shared neighbor and social groups when she was desperate for cash, even when I’d paid rent in full), but the disability pay from Amazon was so little.
I didn’t eat a meal for nine days straight, once. Just snacks that I could stretch out while I awaited gap between pay and disability pay. I fed my dogs, instead, and quite a few homeless people. It was a form of altruism therapy that helped me get through extreme pain and pandemic. It was selfish AF of me, if I’m honest, so I could brag later, say I gave away food when I needed most. It took me weeks for my body to recover from that bit of vanity; I’m getting too old to pull those sorts of stunts.
I give cash for information, informally. It’s not strictly transactional. And I am sure I would give cash, clothes, chotchkies and valuable collectibles from the generous inheritances bequeathed me by seemingly recent deaths of my grandmother and mother, five years ago.
It seems like yesterday.
I still have not even found the strength to open all of the boxes to see what is inside.
The undertow, too much.
My network of adored houseless individuals is broad. Not just The Cut, but also The Cove. University of Portland/railroad tracks area. Cathedral Park, and surrounding areas. Pier Park, and its surrounding areas. George Park, Delta Park. I have tried to hit them all. They’re in my districts 43 and 44, here in Oregon, from which I have been elected as a precinct committee person for the Democratic Party.
These, too, are the people I serve, the houseless. And they need me most.
Trust me, I’m no saint. I find these days to have been the most adventurous and enjoyable of all the five years since I’ve returned to Oregon to care for my dying Mom.
Believe it or not, there is far more laughter and fun, than there is misery, even from context of being visitor and guest, to and of, the houseless. We have a lot of fun, and if we didn’t, I’m not sure I would do it nearly as much.
I have my favorites, and I have those to who I’ve been directed when they’re having specific problems I can help with, or at least direct them toward help.
I and very clear and transparent about my affiliation with the Democrats, I want these people to know that we care, and that we are willing to come to where they are and look them in the eye. They matter to me, and I know they matter to Democrats. I can’t speak for the GOP, but I’ve never seen anyone in outreach so far and all the years I’ve been doing this. I hugely wish any would join me--the crisis at hand is far beyond partisan gamesmanship. These people really need our help, and they needed it yesterday.
I spend a lot of time documenting my conversations, afterward, and much more time heading to my favorite nature isolation spots to try and recover from news I have heard, cope with transpired events that signal next level down, ones (like Yusely’s) that are irrefutable, irretrievable, and carry momentum that is unstoppable.
When things continue to get worse, as they have since COVID-19 struck, people like me need to find solace. In spirit, with companion animals, in nature, rarely with other people.
If we don’t succeed in this recovery, we perish. Because of this weakness, we must always hide our true identities, and throw people off with deflecting personality (all construct, pure play, genuinely rooted), and always at the ready to nudge anyone to other conclusions whom may figure out the extreme degree of our privilege (in my case more than most) and intelligence.
Most of all, however, our sensitivities make us an easy mark, no matter how well we can fight.
So now you know the great risk I take in bringing this story to you. I very well may never be safe again, at least not in the arms of anonymity.
A sorrow befell me this day, I won’t lie. I felt it. I’d felt it all week.
I was not ignoring, or denying, it, but there literally was nothing I could do before today. My schedule did not allow.
I approach The Cut almost always from its Lombard location, about midway down the peninsula on which I live.
It’s a smart way to enter: it is videographed 24/7, very trafficked by cars, pedestrians and Cut denizens.
I want people to see me enter, in case I never make it back out.
I alternate between my landlady, neighbors, friends, my sister in New York City, and co-workers about who will be willing to take my two dogs, Max and Jack, because I know at any one of these visits I might come to harm.
I’m not sure what everyone thinks, about these random-to-them seeming requests, and I try not to broach the subject with them too deeply.
I want to avoid all the warnings and admonitions, the requests that I not proceed, all the stuff that has been expressed before that I must shoulder, if I am ever to be able to effectively unload.
I have learned to just avoid the onload now, and keep my life an open secret.
Even when detractors and their fearmongering try to imply the worst about me, out of suspicion, or hate, I refuse to deny their allegations. It’s better than them knowing the truth.
Until today.
I know what I am doing is dangerous, and I know I need to do what I’m doing… because no one else will.
I am doing it for people like Yusely.
This day, I for some reason randomly choose to enter The Cut from its northern most point, at Columbia Boulevard. Far out of my way, and even I am puzzled as to why I have made this decision.
My gut tells me I will soon find out.
I am entering the encampment about 50 feet from where I last saw her, when she was pushing a piece of pizza on me because I had been interviewing and interacting with people for 12 hours straight, with no food, and just a half drunk bottle of water.
I’m hoping to run right into her, I was thinking then.
Looking back, it is clear I was suspicious something awful had happened.
I wanted to avoid all the talk the long walk from Lombard, on the bike trail.
The gossip, the threats, the “faggot” calls, the calls for help, the calls for sex, for drugs, for money, for clothes.
Most troublesome, the calls for nothing, no calls, from those long past hunger, or even drive from their addictions. The ones I pray for most, at the end of one of these days, to myself, for I never let anyone see me sad here.
I have no right.
None whatsoever.
What happens next is a flurry of memories that will, no doubt, be diagnosable if I make to senior age as: PTSD.
However, I will do my best here to recount, if only for Yusely. She deserves for me to try, like her mother did in the interview three weeks after her death.
Marbelis Reyes kept on fielding and answering my questions, knowing each one was going to be a shotgun burst of razorblade slices to her soul just to hear, even worse to answer.
If Yusely’s mother could soldier on, so certainly, must I try.
For the record, I know this particular part as a lot of “me” in it.
I apologize, though it is important in this story to reveal the filter through which I report.
It was not planned that way.
I meant to intersperse the above with stories about the birth of Yusely, endearing memories from her toddlerhood, primary school years, those spent in high school, and her fairytale-like quinceanera.
I have been asking for such stories from Señora Marbelis for months now, and I’ve only received the pictures and links I have shared the in first three published parts.
Marbelis informs me as of this writing she is not able to share such stories. She is working with DHS, and has Yusely’s entire life history recorded with them.
But I am not interested in the stale s*** the Feds have.
I want to know the joys, the wonders, the love a mother has for her child, and when it hits me Marbelis is not yet strong enough to provide this for us, I am broken for the rest of the day.
