I want to tell you a story that happened many years ago, as recently as today and will happen again tomorrow. It is a story about a deceptively familiar place where securing the basic necessities of life, health care, housing, transportation and communication, requires persistence to overcome one obstacle after another. I call this place The Parallel Universe.
A couple weeks before Trila bought a new, second-hand washer, dirty laundry had taken over the apartment. The solution: a trip to the laundromat. “Trila’s expecting you,” said the cheerful young woman who opened the door. “Come on in.”
She helped us load the back seat and cargo bay of my car with plastic bags stuffed to overflowing. “Who’s your visitor?” I asked as we headed for the only laundromat in town. “A friend from Kentucky. I’ve known her for years.” My unasked question: does your landlord know, filled the silence. (A no-overnight-guest-policy is written into Trila’s lease, a widespread practice in transition housing.) “They can stay two nights.” “They?” “Her boyfriend used to work on boats. They’re homeless.”
Before I could share my fear she might jeopardize her lease, Trila added, “The Bible says to love your neighbor.” She looked at me. “I know what it’s like to be homeless.” Trila smiled. “Jen did the dishes. Her boyfriend mopped the floors yesterday.”
Trila started loading empty laundry carts while I went in search of machines big enough for her belongings and began converting 14 $1 bills into quarters. We ate Chinese at the buffet two doors down, filled four enormous driers with wet clothes, and three hours after starting out, headed home in a car stuffed with bags of clean laundry.
Four police cars, light bars flashing, officers in full SWAT uniform wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying enormous guns in front of them, greeted us. Trila’s end of the duplex was under siege. As two officers approached, I rolled down both front windows.
“Do you live here, ma’am?” Trila nodded. “A man we know to be armed and dangerous and wanted on a number of drug related crimes, is hiding in your house. We need to get inside.” Trila gave them her front door key along with permission to enter. Two officers watched the back and side window while two more pointed guns at the open front door, crouched down and hollered: “Come out with your arms over your head.”
“Skippy’s in there,” Trila wailed, and scrambled out of the car. I intercepted her half way across the front lawn insisting we stay in the car for our own safety. Less than a minute later the “armed and dangerous” boyfriend, hands behind his head, emerged followed by Trila’s young friend from Kentucky.
With the wanted couple handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car, Trila and I stood in the living room while three members of the SWAT team searched the back rooms looking for and recovering capsules and drug equipment stashed in closets and drawers, even a hole in the wall behind the kitchen stove.
Finally, it was over. The probation officer handed me his card. “Call me if Trila finds any more drugs or paraphernalia.” She did, and I dutifully took the items to the local police station.
Trila felt betrayed. “Jesus said to love our neighbor.”
“He also said, ‘be wise as serpents and innocent as doves’,” We agreed it is awfully hard to know who you can trust.
Ps. Skippy was discovered unharmed hiding under Trila’s bed.
* To protect their identity, Trila is a composite of these women. All the stories are true and describe my experience as companion in each case.
