Unsilent Nights

Life in a women's homeless shelter

by Tanisha Alston

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Published: Apr 2, 2008

destitution

When I ring the bell at the Eliza Shirley House, a women's shelter on Arch Street, a security guard opens the door. Looking me over, he tells me that he's seen me before and remembers my face. I tell him I doubt it. He insists, saying he remembers my locks, and as he checks my bag, says that yes, he saw me on 69th Street. He asks if I have any weapons, scissors or razor blades, then confiscates my bottle of green tea.

I move to a sofa to await intake. A woman comes out and asks whether I've ever been here before, and why I'm homeless. I tell her I have no place to go. This, apparently, is a satisfactory answer. She assigns me a room and bed, gives me a meal ticket, and tells me to stop on the second floor to pick up sheets.

The truth is, I'm not homeless; I've come here for a weekend to see what it's like in a shelter. I'm allowing myself $5 for the weekend, one change of clothes, a washcloth, a toothbrush and some reading material.

My "room," which is really more of a cubicle, is on the third floor. It contains two pairs of single beds, separated by a partial wall. I make the bed and peek across the partition to see two other women, one of them snoring loudly, wrapped in sheets. Curfew isn't until 12:30. I settle in.

Lying on my bed, I hear someone next door say he's going to bloody someone's nose and bust their lip if they don't play a game right.

After taking a walk, I return to the building, where a few residents stand outside, smoking and eyeing me as I ring the bell. In the lobby, I ask for toothpaste, and a staffer hands me a styrofoam cup with toothpaste squirted inside it.

Thus far, I've avoided using the bathroom, because the door is propped open and there's usually someone standing at the sink. But there's no longer a choice. I make quick eye contact with a teenage boy (part of a family in the room next to mine) who's washing his shoelaces, then head in. I have to hold the stall door closed with my hand.

The lights on the floor go out at 11. I'm not sleepy, but I lie down anyway, taking my pullover sweater and rolling it up to use as a pillow (my bed has none, and no blankets, either). I listen to the kids next to me talk, curse and play video games on a cell phone in the dark. After a while someone yells, "Stop the noise!" Another shouts, "Por favor!" When their mother comes down the hallway from the TV lounge, everyone jumps into bed, quiet, as if nothing happened. Still, the woman behind my wall is snoring so loudly that I can't get to sleep. After tossing and turning for half an hour, I rise with my sheets to move to an empty bed.

I must have fallen asleep, because fluorescent lights, turned on for a bed check, wake me up. A staffer finds me and asks why I'm not in my assigned bed. I tell her I wasn't comfortable. She tells me I can ask for a bed change in the morning.

With all the walking, talking and slamming of doors, I think I woke up at least five times last night. I pack my sheets up and move back to my assigned bed, which I make up, and then sit down on it to read. My roommate, Ericka (all residents' names have been changed), is up discussing books with the teenage boy from my bathroom trip. They're making up titles for books they want to write after leaving the shelter. Ericka says her book will be called It Was All a Dream.

People are returning from breakfast. I'm sitting on my bed, reading a magazine and trying to ignore my growling stomach, when the snoring woman comes back into the room and asks why I didn't eat. I tell her I don't like oatmeal, and can wait for lunch. I'm not sure if this answer satisfies her, because she walks away. A few minutes later, I hear oldies blasting through headphones; a few minutes after that, the familiar sound of her snore.

The snorer still snores.

One of my roommates, a Spanish speaker, uses the universal symbol of a "V" in front of her lips to ask me for a cigarette. When I shake my head no, she flicks her thumb for a lighter. I hand one over, and apparently make a nervous face, because she shoots me a thumbs-up symbol to indicate her plan to return it. In my limited Spanish, I ask her name. "Nancy, mami," she says.

The menu for lunch: tuna sandwiches, tomato soup, applesauce and milk. I show the server my meal ticket, pass on the soup, take my tuna on wheat and grab a seat at a table with the snorer.

"That's black people's tuna," she says by way of greeting. She wears close-cropped hair under a black skullcap, flipped brim complete with cigarette and a big white T and baggy jeans. I nod, grateful that the tuna is well-seasoned with diced green peppers, egg and celery. I devour it, then move on to the applesauce. I ask my table mate's name, which she says is Debra; I tell her mine, which she repeats between bites and slurps of soup. She asks whether I'll be going out today — I wonder whether she has her eye on the coat and small bag that I've kept with me at all times. I tell her that I might go out for a walk, and she could join me if she'd like.

"Not me," she says between sips of juice. "Today is a day of rest." She watches as I dump my tray, grab my bag and head out.

Debra and Nancy are playing cards in the lounge, and I'm reading (again) on my bed. Debra comes back into the room and asks if I want to listen to the radio. Excited, I ask her what station she likes, and she says whatever I want to listen to. I go over to her bed and she hands me a Walkman. She warns me to be careful not to let the taped earpiece fall off. Looking over her living space, I feel a tiny pang of envy that she has a big duffel bag filled with clothes to use as a pillow. And she uses it: Ten minutes later, she's snoring again.

Debra finally decides to share that cigarette in her brim with Nancy. I fall asleep after turning up the volume on the Walkman to drown out a resident's loud, angry call with a boyfriend.

A staff member yelling "Dinner!" rouses me. I get up, see that Debra is asleep, then get back in bed. Nancy creeps over and again makes the lighter motion.

Out in the hall, a new resident stops me to ask for powder. She says she doesn't want to offend anyone with the odor of her feet.

5 p.m.: "Is It Good?" Isn't the Question

According to Debra, tonight's lemon-pepper chicken leg is recycled chicken cacciatore from last night. The portions are considerable — the server put four legs and a mound of rice on my plate — but the chicken is tough. I've already given up on two of the legs when I notice Debra eyeing my plate. I ask her if she wants it. Of course she does.

I ask Debra if she thinks the food is good. She tells me that's not really the question — the question is, "Is it filling?" She says she's HIV-positive, and likes to keep her weight up, so "no one could tell."

Debra shares that she'd just been released from jail last Thursday, after doing five months. Initially, she'd been arrested for assaulting her husband with a butcher knife, but ultimately served time for some old bench warrant. Of her husband, she says that she "cut him like he wasn't shit," with the same knife she used to prepare chicken. He had to get 20 internal and 60 external stitches on his arm. But she still loves him, she says — he took care of her when she had cervical cancer. "He does what he does," she says, but he still changed her diapers and washed her when she was sick. Tuesday, he'd be signing a new lease on an apartment for them to move into.

"You know, yesterday I wanted to cry because I didn't want to be in this place. But then I said, 'What for?'" she says. This is a short-term situation for me, thank God."

An announcement for fellowship services comes over the intercom. I don't hear anyone make any moves to attend. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, thinking about how hungry I am and wondering what kind of night it will be when Debra walks in and asks if I'm OK. I tell her I am, and she tells me she'll be in the lounge, watching Poetic Justice.

Bored, I decide to go outside and have a look around — the shelter is actually in one of the busiest tourist areas in the city. I walk one block to pick up a free newspaper, spend a dollar on a Slurpee, but soon run out of things to do. I head back inside, this time stashing my illegal beverage inside my coat for my three-flight climb. Debra comes by, asks where I went, and if I need a sweatshirt. She seems to have decided to take care of me.

The intercom goes off again, this time to call everyone down to the first floor to sign the attendance book. We all complain as we make our way down three flights of stairs. On my way back up, I pass Debra resting on the bottom step of the second-floor stairwell.

"I'll be up in a minute," she says. "These steps are a killer."

I didn't get to sleep until 2:30 a.m. Bed check was delayed an hour, and took longer than it did the previous night. Two ladies in the room on the far end kept yelling, "Turn the light off! Why is the light on?" A staff person had to yell at them to be quiet. Ericka's friend, the shoelace-washer, burst into the room in the middle of the night asking for his belt. He yanked open drawers and slammed them shut, yelling, "Where is my belt? I know you have it!" I watched him through squinted eyes while he shook Ericka, trying to wake her up. He ran out of the room as quickly as he came in after his grandma called him by his name. Timothy.

By the time Timothy left, Debra was snoring loudly, so I put on her headphones. I couldn't get comfortable with them on my ears, though, and kept tossing and turning, losing my sheets, and repositioning my sweater pillow. Finally, the snoring went down to a barely noticeable hum and I was able to doze off.

After breakfast, I really don't want to lie down anymore, so I sit in the lounge. The TV, unfortunately, got broken overnight, so there isn't anything to distract me. I've already reread the magazine I brought with me two times over. The boredom is excruciating. There is literally nothing to do. My bed is already made, my things packed.

I'd fallen asleep in a plastic-covered lounge chair with my feet up on an ottoman, listening to kids play Disney's version of Monopoly with a staff member. Now I go back to the room to wake Debra up for lunch. The menu: Tuna sandwiches, tomato soup and applesauce.

Aside from a woman who walks around asking if anyone has seen her tennis shoes, it's pretty quiet on the floor. I wish it could have been this way at night. I write Debra a note warning her that I might not be back, and enclose a dollar for replacement batteries. As she sleeps, I place it and her Walkman on her bedside table. Then I walk to my bed, pick up my bag, and slip out as anonymously as I entered.

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