Christmas is a Bitch

True stories from the front line of homelessness. in Portland. This is the third story in the series, you can find “Story #1 — Penny” here and “Story #2 — The List here”.

Christmas is a bitch. I worked in schools for years, and I think the nastiest part was cultural lore; be a good human and the tides of karma will yield for your a special but poignant holiday. The kids who came from nothing knew that was crap, I could never quite push it out of my head and I yearned for some Christmas miracle for the kids. Those poor doe-eyed kids got so that they’d wish for good things to materialize in their lives just so I’d feel better for them. None would come. I promise you a redemptive end to this story.

I braced myself for Christmas at the shelter. I thought I knew what to expect. Up till that point I really hated my co-workers (especially you, Dillon). I had all but walled myself off from them, spending my entire shift in the auditorium with the homeless folks. The wind would batter the big roll-up doors and the time passed incrementally by the hour between smoke breaks.

Nadine was on everything. She was slender and looked only twice her thirty-five years of age. If left alone the throws of her addiction would make it appear as if she were dancing alone to some swaying, swelling music. She knew exactly where she was though, both in life and space. No matter how nodded off you thought she was, she’d respond to anything you said with a hilarious remark. She seldom slept and hovered around me as I talked to Julie.

Julie very much had her shit together in many regards. She was my age, had a few kids and was working at Safeway. Her boyfriend was a stoic silent man who went to bed early. Julie quite obviously was drinking in the bathroom. She knew I knew and also I’d not throw out a mother in the days leading up to Christmas. I adored the fact that Nadine and Julie got along and respected each other. We three maintained the dignity needed to get along in a place like that.

“Assholes out there won’t decorate,”

There was an unspoken code to not lead off with discussions about kids, families, and Christmas, but my beforementioned prick co-workers refused to decorate the damn shelter for Christmas. So there I was, night after night, making snowflakes, making construction paper chains, stringing popcorn together. See, the volunteers provided plenty of decorations, trees, and ornaments, but the damn things sat in a corner for weeks on end.

“I’d help you with that… but I’m not stupid.” Julie said.

“Assholes out there won't decorate,” I gestured towards the reception desk where the automatons scrolled at their phones.

“They’re smart,” Nadine said, nearly falling over but somehow remarkably keeping her cup of Ramen level.

“Smoke break” Julie announced.

The clouds moved quickly over the moon. Several of us smoked and shuddered in the cold. Jesy had joined us, my quiet shadow, maybe 28. She kept me sane at the bus lines.

“What do you make here?” Nadine asked. Her gyrations were unaffected by the wind.

“Fifteen.”

“That’s not bad.”

“What did your parents do?”

“More than I did as a teacher after union dues and insurance, but shit. I moved back here after ten years. There is nowhere to rent with any dignity,” I felt stupid having said this out loud.

“Tell me about it,” Julie said, and everybody snickered, mostly at me.

“What did your parents do?” Nadine asked.

“Teachers, both. Here.”

“Oh yeah? WHere?”

“Jefferson, Marshall, Brooklynn,” I said.

“What is your last name?” Jessy chimed in.

“Carrico,” I said.

“Mr. Carrico? I knew your dad. Crazy little bald guy, right?”

“Yes. That’s him.”

“Mr. Carrico. I remember he always had me make the answer keys for homework because he’d always get the problems wrong.” Nadine and Julie watched in amusement this coincidence be revealed. “I remember too once he marked me absent for two days because I bought a new hat and he didn’t recognize me.” Jessy’s eyes gleamed as she seemed to be making connections. At the bus line, she often pointed out the people whose names I had called. Incompetence was generational. “Hold on,” Jessy said and disappeared inside.

“I didn’t know you were a teacher,” Nadine remarked, in an almost flirty tone.

“Mr. Carrico,” Julie said. “Why did you quit that gig?”

“It sucked. A lot of paperwork. You think the people who work here are like prison guards. Work at a school. Teachers these days only take the job to complain to their friends about how hard their job is,” as I write this, I am realizing what a cynical fuck I am. “Also I lost my kid in a custody battle... around Christmas and I just couldn’t do it anymore.” It was stupid to pity yourself at a women’s homeless shelter and there I was doing it, and getting sympathy.

“It’s hard,” Julie said. Wisely she moved the subject a long time. “I used to go through my High School English teacher's suitcase. I’d spend lunch hours in his room and he stopped being very careful and he’d leave. I’d jump up, make sure he wasn’t still in the hall and riffle his desk. I smelled his jacket. All that weird shit,” Julie laughed.

“Oh shit, It’s my family’s fault,”

“I used to do that too!” Nadine half slurred. “With Mike’s jacket.” Mike was the socially inept person who ran the buses with us. We all laughed.

Jessy returned with an older lady also staying at the shelter. She came out, shivered and looked me over. “See,” Jessy said. “Mr. Carrico’s son.”

“Both my kids had your mother and father as teachers,” the woman said.

“Oh shit, It’s my family’s fault,” I said.

“No, they both treated us like real people,” she said. “Tell them Jan says hi,” she said and lumbered back into the building.

Caution, what follows is a lot of me talking about me. ‘Me’s’ not the point though.

“How did you lose a custody battle as a teacher?” Nadine asked, arms folded in thought, slowly doubling over.

“She accused me of being the worst of the worst on Christmas Eve,” I said.

“So?” I mean. You were a teacher.

“She got a restraining order against me while I was out of the house. Since it had the worst of the worst in it, it really fucked with my head. I didn’t know where to start.”

“What did she say?” Julie asked, lighting another cigarette.

“That I raped her and beat our child… hell that I abused our animals.”

“What about a lawyer?”

“She was high as fuck. She was guilty. Our son was growing up and she was high as fuck. She didn’t…”

“In hindsight, there are a million things I would have done differently. But it was freezing, I was locked out of the accounts, I couldn’t ask for help because of the nature of the accusations… it meant my career for one thing. The shame was awful. I went to a warming shelter in Kelso for food. I was scared. I had to walk across this fucking bridge to get there. I remember, you know, looking down into the swirling water, thinking about ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ thinking about how none of it could be real and I looked up and I shit you not, down the bridge a ways a cop car was pulling up. I realized he was dealing with a jumper. Screw Christmas.”

“Why did she do it?” Julie asked.

“She was high as fuck. She was guilty. Our son was growing up and she was high as fuck. She didn’t…” I gestured back inside at the shelter “…bother to help decorate. She didn’t work. She didn’t take the kid anywhere. She had become a monster, really. I was bitter. She had this fake illness and these rich parents. I remember telling her over and over in that bare house… no presents except the ones I had bought presents which were wrapped like shit... I said over and over… ‘You didn’t do a damn thing for Christmas.’ And she hadn’t. Two years running.” Everybody was silent for a minute.

“I talked to my kids. They use words now. They have… vocabulary. I didn’t teach them that. I missed that.” Julie said,

“…I could have told you. Don’t put your dick in crazy.”

Nadine added, “My daughter is in Montana. I hope she can talk. She’s 19.”

I took this as them having had to have made hard decisions in the past. Shit they weren’t going to talk about it. Things I probably wouldn’t have approved of, things said out loud that would have sounded monstrous.

“A kid told me a few months later… Mr. Carrico. I could have told you. Don’t put your dick in crazy.”

“A kid told you that?” Julie asked. “I bet the kids liked you.”

“They sure as fuck didn’t show it via academic success.”

“Ya know, I was at Pioneer Square today. And I dropped my iced coffee and as they were cleaning it up at Starbucks, I was looking at the newspaper. Ya know… the only reason I look at the newspaper is to see if the world is ending or there’s been another 9/11,” said Nadine. “They were very nice, they gave me another iced coffee. They said they’d give it to me if I’d leave. I didn’t want to, it was cold. I guess they thought it was weird I was nodding off there in front of their valued customers. But yeah, the world isn’t ending and newspapers are really quite dull.”

“When I was eight,” Jessy chimed in and everyone turned to look at her “crawled up on the stove to get some popcorn. You know the stovetop stuff. It was on the back burner. I guess I put my face right on the burner.”

“Shit,” exclaimed Nadine.

Just then a manager poked his face out. “What time do you got?” he asked. Smoke breaks were supposed to be fifteen minutes. We were going on a half hour.

“Christ is born,”

“What’s your email address?” I asked in the spirit of Christmas insubordination. He disappeared. I had sat through too many meetings as a teacher to stand leading rhetorical questions. Everyone lit another.

“What the hell happens on Christmas anyway?” Julie wondered out loud. “Does the dude become a zombie or whatever or is it when the kid is born…”

“Into foster care,” Nadine finished.

“Christ is born,” Jessy finished.

“Of course. It has something to do with kids,” Julie said.

My ex sent no pictures, ignored visits and her expensive lawyer cleaned up after her. After a while, the rage of life wears you smooth, like a river rock.

“Kids.” Nadine echoed.

I just had/have this folded picture in my wallet. I still feel right telling her, you didn’t do a damn thing for Christmas, because you didn’t. Shame on you. Maybe I got him a mom for Christmas that day. I don’t know. Most of my life ended that Christmas Eve.

The neighborhood association had complained and changed the law and the nature of life threatening emergencies; ambulances were no longer allowed to use their sirens.

Like a Christmas miracle, an ambulance came into the parking lot, flashing red blue and white. The neighborhood association complained and changed the law and the nature of life-threatening emergencies; ambulances were no longer allowed to use their sirens. I wish they’d use their magical declarative power to outlaw pain and homelessness.

“Dang, is that for me?” asked Nadine. “Why didn’t you guys tell me I was sick?”

We went back inside. The lights of the ambulance flashed down the long hallway. The floors had been waxed recently and they glowed. Maybe it was a kind of birth canal? The paramedics wheeled someone out the door. No one woke. A reverse Santa Claus? The paramedics were dressed in red.

Back in the auditorium, I realized I had just had the most honest conversation about suicide and my son since it had happened. As if feeling my relief, Julie and Nadine both said good night. Jessy stayed until dawn. That morning I noticed she had a new dog to take care of.