About a dozen gathered at 5 a.m. at the Rise City Church in Lakeside, answering to a call for volunteers to participate in a national count known locally as WeAllCount. The event was organized by the Regional Homeless Task Force, which counted more than 9,000 homeless people last year. Based on the news later in the day, we were about 1,700 volunteers countywide scouring in the night for signs of human life inhabiting the world in inhuman conditions.
About a dozen gathered at 5 a.m. at the Rise City Church in Lakeside, answering to a call for volunteers to participate in a national count known locally as WeAllCount. The event was organized by the Regional Homeless Task Force, which counted more than 9,000 homeless people last year. Based on the news later in the day, we were about 1,700 volunteers countywide scouring in the night for signs of human life inhabiting the world in inhuman conditions.
In Lakeside, I am partnered with “Brian”, police officer who prefers to remain anonymous. I count about half a dozen other volunteers and get in my partner’s car prepared with non working pens (freezing), maps I cannot read, instructions I think I understand (bubbles, triangles, squares for vehicles and tents, sticks for people) and with a desire to have maybe sipped one more time from that warm coffee. Two sweaters are an exaggeration in California when inside a car and my thoughts are going involuntarily to the people we are searching for, sleeping on the ground in this desert cold.
Trying to count at night how many homeless are in Lakeside is like trying to investigate if Santa Claus is real. I see he ate the cookies and drank the milk, but that’s about it. I see the abandoned shopping carts along the roads, some trash that’s not picked up yet, cardboard boxes abandoned, clothes rummaged through near the Goodwill collection centers, just not the people who once owned them or wanted them or were disappointed with their findings. When it comes to homelessness, the elusiveness of these people’s lives is a double sword for their own good. Even if one is trying to help, one cannot find them in the same place all the time. They do have certain areas where they gather, but not all the time and not to be shared with everybody asking. It’s more like, if they know you, they will see you from the distance and decide if they approach or not. Sometimes, I just sit on a bench and wait.
Chasing darkness is a double sword for the searcher as well. To wish or not to wish to find as many homeless as possible tonight – that is the question? Wishing to find them is like wishing for them to exist. I sink in a bucket of sadness. I say, you see, we are forced to turn within when they are not out there to remind us how good we have it. Partner Brian is a pragmatic police officer and brings the conversation back to the point: ok, our goal is to be as thoroughly as possible, so the total number will reflect the reality. That way, San Diego County would receive more in federal money to help these people. But we need to keep our distance. Don’t approach cars with covered windows. Don’t get out of the car if you see tents. Approximate the number of people sleeping inside. Don’t give them your snacks.
Partner Brian is teaching me the difference in between fogged windows from inside (with people) vs. from the outside. I fog his window with my breath and draw a cloud, to see the difference. No difference! My maps are upside down, because the sun is not up and I can’t deal with my incompetence in finding neither the North, nor the East at night. I know right and left. We start all the way at Greenfield and drive up and down on every little street, turn around, cross the main road back, cross from Lakeside to El Cajon and back, go to neighborhoods of nice houses with no trace of inside fog on the windows and we decide there’s no way “these people” won’t call the police if they would see a car with curtains parked in front of their house. We involuntarily judge people we don’t know by using presumed behavior based on their assets. I admit to hypocrisy and I tell him a story about having a quarrel with a homeless lady when I didn’t want to give her something she wanted from me because of the way she demanded. We both conclude it’s impossible not to judge even when we know we are judging. No saints in this car, thank goodness. Partner Brian tells stories about his encounters with homeless people, about the ones who don’t want help, the ones who need and cannot get it, the drugs and the personal tragedies that follow. He volunteers in his spare time to help, counsel and direct them to available resources. He knows their names. He has to work today after wondering around all night. This is his second year doing this. He’s very Zen, a Catholic and a Republican and we end up talking about abortions and how else are “these women” in the street supposed to deal with life? We get out of the car to look under a bridge. I don’t know why, I keep clutching on my clipboard with all the county paperwork attached. I’ve heard stories about “them” having guns and I say out loud, maybe if I look like some bureaucrat, I stand a chance.
We cover the area down on Old Highway 8 toward Los Coches along the mobile homes, go up to Wal-Mart, then get out of the car to look inside fast food places, behind the buildings. Not a single homeless person. Darkness shelters them all. We should be happy. We feel guilty. It’s not like they don’t exist and we have reasons to celebrate. They are hard to find at night and we cannot go hiking behind Wal-Mart on Crestridge Preserve trails where we know for sure they live by the dozens in little make shift that are less safe and less comfortable than a slum. I feel a short trepidation of enthusiasm when I look down the hill toward some bushes that looked like tents. Then I feel weird for feeling enthusiastic. Brian, why are the police confiscating their belongings? What’s the crime in being poor? Without homeless in sight, we start talking about the searchers and the people who are almost obsessed in their all consuming dedication to help the homeless no matter what, about the dozens of people I’ve met so far willing to risk their life and freedom to do so. I talk about the nice lady who goes to another town every day to give out clothes and food while she lives on Social Security, has ten holes in her ceiling at home and a disable vet as a husband who makes sure to displace the buckets when it rains. I tell Brian about my other friend, beautiful woman, homeless as well, who goes to public meetings and tries to help out the cause of homelessness. She braved cancer twice while living on the street. The police just took all of her belongings the other day. More breathing fog goes on the inside window and more clouds.
We talk about teens getting pregnant in the street, then about teens in general. About mothers crying, afraid they are not good mothers. Then we compare “normal mothers” to “homeless mothers,” and awkwardness ensues. How could anyone complain or compare, now really? Being searchers and parents in the same time, a mixture of normality and surreal fogging the windows from inside this police car, tonight, Ano Domini 2018, when we would rather count stars, scientific innovations, good things or go back to sleep. There is a van here and it has curtains. Ok, one square on the map. Wait, where on the map, where are we and why isn’t anybody in the Wal-Mart parking lot on Camino Canada, as usual? Nobody wants them anymore; everybody is pushing them outside their fence. Not In My Backyard. An RV in a parking lot. A car. Down the road toward Lake Jennings, both sides, then across the freeway, to Scotty’s Scare Trail. Why would they even come here? I am jumping up and down when I am allowed to hit the button to sound the police siren. Why would they even be around here where there are just pretty houses and no store? We talk about Trump. About America. I offer Brian half of my Nature Valley granola bar, he says “no” about a dozen times, then “yes.” I brag about being able to corrupt a police officer with granola bars. You see, everybody has a price.
We forget about the homeless people for a few, lost on these winding streets, dizzy from driving around in circles until we hit an open area with trees and bushes, somewhere around Julian Avenue. What do you think? No, he says, they would be vulnerably open to all the houses up the hill. Somehow, I think we are all fugitives. Nobody is ever searching for the searchers. I tell my partner a story about a Romanian friend who lives up in Chicago and can you guess what he did after he saw a video of a homeless woman talking about finding beauty in the fallen leaves under the bridge where she sleeps. Can you believe he got on the plane and is in Seattle right now to find that woman he thinks has all the answers to solve the puzzle of his life? How could a sick, lost, poor woman with nerve damage and sleeping under the bridge in Seattle have all the answer for this very accomplished drum player, successful businessman in Chicago? Why does he need to be taught about the joy of being alive? She didn’t find the secret. She can barely survive. I say she is looking into that fallen leaf like in the mirror, “yo, God, anybody home?” What could she possibly know more than we do, when people “like her” are constantly fighting to get away from self, to escape, see the drug and alcohol use…
Driving by the Dollar Store on Woodside Ave on our way back, at least a dozen homeless people are already in the parking lot. We cannot count them; they are not in our area. I doubt anybody counted them. More of them – at the bus stop in front of Jack in the Box. Funny thing, they are not even numbers on county’s paperwork. On my way back home around 9 a.m., here they are, waiting patiently for the local library to open, enjoying the sun on the benches at Lindo Lake, gathered in front of the Recycle station on Vine, down by the Seven Eleven on Mapleview, under the awning at Burger King, in the parking lot where that pizzeria place caught fire. I look at them from my new car, sheltered, eons away from ever understanding who they really are beyond the stories they keep telling me all the times, terrified at the prospect of ever trading places, although I am looking up to them all as to unsung heroes for their superhuman ability to survive in such inhuman conditions. How dare we to think of them in terms of numbers?
They gave up on us having any answers. Tonight, I only had two squares, one triangle and one bubble to tell the story about who they are. Can’t count on darkness to tell you the truth.
