Food Stamps and Band-Aids

*Since this vignette was written, 21 percent of people in our region have lost their food stamps, according to DCF safety net enrollment data. Moham has been incarcerated, and Max has enrolled in school and bought his first car.
Saturday mornings, I drive to Campus Walk Apartments to pick up a former client, now a dedicated volunteer. From there, we go to the shelter's therapeutic food garden and work with folks, volunteers, and people experiencing homelessness throughout the day. Max is a young black man. He is the sweetest, most good-hearted human who has experienced a long list of hardships throughout his life. When I first met him in the garden, when he was experiencing homelessness, sleeping next to the compost bins, he didn’t talk much. He could barely speak from the stress and anxiety that had exacerbated his mental health condition. He was born into a multigenerational farming family that lost its land in Williston like many African American families, but Max had entered the foster care system pretty young. An abusive, authoritarian religious family raised him, and he has told me that it wasn’t a good upbringing. He can be fearful and is often apologetic, but he is also emotionally generous and sees the good in people. There was once an old white woman at the shelter, who is known to be racist, who also suffers from substance misuse and mental illness, who was having a really bad day. So, she started accusing sweet, respectful, nerdy Max of trying to rape her that night. But Max came with me. He hadn’t even been there. I’ve been around for many years, and while sexual assault is prevalent in this environment, racism, and the age-old Emmit Till dynamic has reared its ugly head enough for me to understand the situation. I told Max to stay away from her- that it wasn’t safe. His response was a compassionate, “Someone hurt her a long time ago. She just has some demons,” more compassion than I was able to muster in that moment out of fear for my buddy. I’ve seen Max, refer to the most rugged of campers, out on the streets smoking molly, covered in stains and wrinkles and sadness, “beautiful.” And he really thinks that way. We agree on the beauty of humans.
Max is now housed in Campus Walk with some roommates and a guy who sleeps on the couch. I enjoy our Saturday morning visits where I wait for Max on the couch as the pressure of my arrival and solicitation of readiness seems to slow him down temporarily. I have grown accustomed to the anxiety ritual and now instead, catch up with the guys who frequent the couch. Campus Walk, is often referred to as the shelter 2.0. There is an empty swimming pool in the middle that I remember having midnight swims in back in the day. Now, the pool has about a foot of green water on one side containing band-aids, dirty diapers, broken children’s toys, beer cans, cigarette butts, empty snack packages, a dead bird…you name it. The hallways of the complex are covered in drawings from children, the smell of piss, and the ground- blunt guts, broken glass, mold, and sometimes vomit. There have been mornings where I have entered where there were fights in the courtyard, and then other mornings where folks were chilling in the breezeway listening to gospel music. This complex is where many many people are housed from the shelter, a mix of people who just cannot afford other housing, vulnerable people with health conditions and disabilities, and people who cannot be housed elsewhere because of their legal past. It’s not good. Most people don’t like it there. I am concerned for my clients when they get housed there.
Max’s couch mate, Moham, also a black man, is closer to my age. He is high-strung. He has a gold grill and sometimes isn’t great about personal space. He has been in trouble and homeless before. He talks a lot and his stories are long with long rabbit trails that divert unpredictably. When I first met him, I wasn’t sure how to react. He needed some medical supplies and followed me to my car to get some and stood really close to me. I mistook his energy for aggression, a sentiment that often masks racial bias, but I had been truly harassed there before, so I was cautious. But once he moved in on the couch more permanently, I realized he was just excitable. Sometimes he’s with friends when I come in, and we have the best conversations. He told me about his dream of starting a barber shop. We’ve talked about our anger issues, and community health, and justice issues. We tell stories and we spitball ideas on how they’d like to bring folks together in the complex to address things in healthy ways. They get excited to talk about how folks have done similar things historically, talking about the Black Panther Party and mutual aid. Sometimes the guys I don’t know regard me with suspicion, but after a minute or so and some rich conversation, they seem to feel more at ease. I don’t mind, because I know that white ladies can be dangerous. I enjoy this new ritual we have with deep conversation and sharing dreams and insights. Often, they also bring up health issues, knowing I work for a clinic. I bring them wound care supplies and no matter how many times I tell them I’m not a medical provider, they still say I’m a nurse.
On my way there from my little rural corner of Micanopy, I always get to do some good thinking. This particular day I was thinking about the longest government shut down in US history that was taking place, how so many folks I knew were going hungry from SNAP benefits being weaponized. And what happens when the shutdown ends and then millions of people lose healthcare? What would the rest of this day look like? The week had been chaos, trying to connect organizations and people to solutions. My husband and I have family who are impacted, and we don’t make a ton of money, but we are trying to help. It’s hard to be helping and impacted at the same time, but I know the impact for others is often greater.
This day Max had texted me that he couldn’t come to the garden because he had gotten hurt. He works the night shift at McDonald’s and has a motorized scooter. As he was wearily riding it home, past all the frat and sorority houses a student nearly hits him with their car and he slams into the curb and lands on his wrists. Max, who often refers to me as Mama Bear, wanted me to come and wrap up his wrist before I went onwards to the garden. So, I get to Max’s apartment and Moham lets me in. Max squirms a little and says sorry and that he’s getting ready and I sit on the couch waiting with some ace bandages, a cold pack, and some medicine. Moham shows me all the cool decorations for the house he has foraged for, a machine that casts laser lights on the wall and creates ambiance, a rug, some books. He loves to decorate and make the space nice, a contribution that he is proud of. I gas him up, telling him how great it looks, and it does look so much nicer than how sparse Max had it. Then Max sits down next to me and I pull out what I’ve brought him and he shows me his swollen wrist. He awkwardly lets me hold his wrist in my hand while Moham watches closely, of course, now even more convinced that I’m a nurse. I brought things for Moham too, because he always asks for the same things, rubbing alcohol and Narcan. I patch up Max, and he seems to feel satisfied and comforted. Moham begins talking about his legs. He’s told me before how swollen they are, but this time, he shows them to me. They are indeed very swollen and tight. I am concerned about an underlying health condition that could be really bad and I ask him again to go to my free clinic. I tell him how sweet the nurses are. He tells me how he’s afraid to find out what’s wrong with him. We talk about that for a little bit before he starts rubbing the alcohol on his legs, saying it feels better when he does that. Moham tells me he really would come help me in the garden if his health weren’t so poor. He wanted me to know that he cares. Then he continues, “Max won’t let me go with you without him, though, because he’s really protective of you, for real.” I resist the urge to tell him, I’m protective of Max, and then I look to Max, who is wincing in embarrassment, and he says, “Mrs. Abigail and Mr. Leigh are my Mama and Papa bear. They helped me when I was struggling, when everyone else said, Go away.” I love him, and I’m glad he knows that, but that last part…
We conclude our conversations with reassurance of felt reciprocity, that I get what the guys are saying and appreciate them. It occurs to me, that both of these men, who have been in trouble and traumatized, who have been homeless, and Max, who can’t buy his own food while working his butt off at McDonald's, sharing what food he has with all the people who occupy and surround his apartment, and Moham, who likely has never been to the doctor, myself, in a constant state of bewilderment as to why our community hasn’t sufficiently invested in helping folks who are suffering, and myself working to the bone to fill the gaps unpaid, are America. In this little apartment, with plantation-style houses for wealthy young people surrounding the complex, the looming University blocks away, we are an unseen cross-section of the people who see what it’s really like, and we are not the few. This situation isn’t some exotic one-off situation; this is America, in every town: cigarette butts, moldy apartments, gardens, mama bears, barbershops, men who just want to be seen and not judged, to be treated like the other half gets treated, and people who deserve better.