Mistake?

I think not

I was rummaging through my document file, looking for an essay I wrote a while ago that I wanted to share. Ah, there it is, I thought, and I pulled something up that was not what I was looking for after all. But it was something I needed to read again, because I’m reading Tracy Kidder’s excellent ROUGH SLEEPERS, which has made me think again

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

the homeless. And so I’m sharing this essay with you instead:

                                                       ON GIVING

            I think it was in the early ‘90’s that the numbers of people asking for money on the street starting feeling overwhelming. I remember walking with a friend in New York City at that time, and in the space of one block, we passed by three people who approached us for money. My friend said, “You know, I just had to stop. I can’t keep enough dollars in my pockets.”

            No doubt there are a great many of us who struggle with whether or not to give money to panhandlers, most of whom are (or say they are) homeless. These days, most people, myself included, ignore them completely. We act as if they’re invisible, just some voice coming out of nowhere with the same tired refrain: Spare change? Can you help? How you doin, miss, hey, can I ask you something? Others make a kind of joke of it. When someone says “Spare change?”  to one man I know, he says, “No thanks.”  He thinks it’s funny, but it always makes me uncomfortable. This same man says of people who sit on concrete for hours, holding out paper cups, “Listen, those people do great. They make a ton of money.”

            Hard to think that’s true. Especially if I take into consideration a story I heard the other day. I was teaching a writing workshop, and we were talking about dialogue, about the importance of making it sound natural, making it sound like the way people really talk.   I said, “Whenever I walk past someone sitting on the sidewalk with one of those cardboard signs saying, Lost my job, I want to ask them, “What happened? How did you lose your job?”  I said that I often wondered if those people really did get let go: there’s a sameness to a lot of the cardboard entreaties that makes you naturally suspicious: Homeless, lost my job, have four kids, anything will help. Lost my job, homeless, have five kids, please help. Lost my job, hungry, veteran, homeless. 

            Sometimes the people asking for money have a dog. I guess that seems like a good idea, since sometimes people can find generosity in their hearts for an animal more easily than for a person: after all, the animal has no choice.  I find myself worrying about the dogs, but I must say that every dog I’ve ever seen with a panhandler seems well-fed and well-cared for, and in possession of a wagging tail. So who am I to judge?

             Anyway, I told the class I often envision having a conversation with those panhandlers, that indeed I’d imagined it just that morning.  I’d walked past a woman wearing a patterned skirt and a black top and a black scarf over her head, hijab style. She was bent over a cardboard sign with block print saying Lost my job, four children, please help and her eyes were closed, as if in meditation. Or perhaps in sleep. Or perhaps in humiliation.  This is how I thought it might go:        

Me: Excuse me!  Hi. I wonder if you’d mind telling me….What was your job? And how did you lose it?
            Woman: That’s none of your business.

            Me: Oh! Well, I just….I sort of feel—

            Woman: First of all, I prefer the term “free person.” Secondly, I don’t owe you anything. I’m asking you for money. Period. You can give it to me or not.

            I told the class I imagine all kinds of things, someone telling me about how they were doing really well at a highfaluting place, and then they messed up because they did this or they did that, and now look at them. Or someone answering in a way that is completely unintelligible.   Or someone answering in a way that leads to us having a real conversation, an honest and interesting and enlightening one. Maybe we become friends. Maybe roommates!

            Later that day, a woman in the workshop offered part of her lunch to a homeless man, and she used the experience for her exercise in writing dialogue.  But she not only gave him part of her lunch, she sat with him while they ate. She gave him her time and attention, and therefore a much-needed measure of dignity. We were all moved at how this experience made that man feel visible, and how grateful he was for it—he told her so. He told her it was the god in her that made her do it. He also told her he hadn’t eaten in a day and a half, not since a little girl had given him some candy, gummi bears, maybe it was. But it was good, he said, um hum, it was tasty.

            Was it true he hadn’t eaten in that long? Who knows?

            Riding the el train home that night, I heard a man talking as he moved down the aisle and I thought, Oh no, not another one who practically commandeers a train car, holding hostage a number of people who have no choice but to listen to his hard luck story and repeated requests for money. Situations like that make me a little angry, just like if someone asking for money stands inches from my face to do so. Or “washes” my windshield with a filthy liquid that makes it far dirtier than it was, then demands payment for his services. Those situations feel threatening. They feel dangerous.

The people in the train car fell silent; all that could be heard was the man’s voice talking. At least it was soft; I couldn’t really make out the details of what he was saying. As he drew closer, though,  I looked up from what I was reading to see him. He was thin, dressed in a t-shirt and loose-fitting pants, clean looking. He was pushing a stroller, and in it was a child perhaps 5 years old, wearing shorts and sneakers and a striped shirt, eating a bag of Cheetos and swinging his feet in the universal rhythm of children. His eyes were slanted upward, and in his face was an expression that let you know he was not normal. Indicating the boy, the man said, “This is my son. He’s got Down Syndrome. He had to have heart surgery. Look here, this the scar.” He spoke softly to the boy, urging him to lie back, then raised the child’s t-shirt. The scar was a thin white line, perhaps five or six inches long, running directly over the child’s sternum.

            My throat began to hurt, and I got that helpless feeling that comes when I don’t know what to do--or, more accurately, that comes when I do know what to do, but am not doing it. 

            “He’s got Down Syndrome, and we’re having a hard time paying the hospital bill. I wonder could y’all help.”

            No one moved. The man looked down at his son, who sat in a kind of radiant innocence, eating his Cheetos. His father bent down and spoke very quietly to the boy, then took his hands in his own, and, with infinite tenderness, used his t-shirt to wipe off the boy’s hands. “You a good boy. You ‘member, say thank you, okay?”

            But there was nothing for the boy to say thank you for. None of us gave that man any money. After a few moments, he began rolling the stroller toward the door, and I heard him tell his son, “Come on, we keep tryin’.” He got off the train and there was silence; then people resumed their conversations. I was sitting in the middle of a bunch of women who had been talking about where they got their nails done and it had been a really funny conversation to me. Not anymore.

            There was one second, just before the doors opened and the man got off the train, when I could have reached in my wallet and given him some money, but I did not. There were too many voices I’d heard before telling me not to. “If you give to them, more will just show up.” Or “Don’t be a sucker. If they lost their job, let them get another one. I see signs everywhere that people are hiring.”  Or: “It’s great that you want to help, but how do you know what they’ll do with the money? Lots of them are addicts; they just spend it on drugs. If you want to help, give the money to an organization.”

            The voice that I did not listen to was my own, saying, “Anyone who wipes off his child’s hands with that kind of care is a good man. What does $20 mean to you as opposed to what it might mean to him? Give it to him.”

            I didn’t, and it has haunted me in the days since. I talked to a friend about it today. I said, “How do you decide whether to give money to people asking for it?
            He seemed surprised. He said, “For me, it’s easy. If people ask me for money, I give it to them. I don’t worry about what they’re going to do with it. I figure the fact that they’re out on the street begging is hard enough.”

            “But so many!” I said. “How can you afford to help everyone?”

            He laughed. “Well, common sense comes in here. You do what you can.”

            That man and his little boy are no doubt gone from my life forever. But I keep having this fantasy that I’ll get on the el train and there they’ll be, that little brown- eyed boy and his father. And I’ll give the man money, and I’ll say, “I’m so sorry I didn’t give you anything before.” And he’ll forgive me. Someone needs to.

            I think the conundrum about whether or not to give in the future was solved for me by what my friend said: You do what you can. You do what makes sense to you at the moment.  You look into the eyes of an individual and you make a decision. It doesn’t mean you must then give money to everyone who asks. It means you come upon one of  your species who is struggling and is usually overlooked, and you let him know that you see him. And yourself.