The Invisible People:Homelessness ::: by @niksofly

It was Thanksgiving 2003 when my childhood friend and I decided that we would cook Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve done it before, but to be responsible for the creation of the menu was a new task. I had a few coins from allowance and there were two little knuckleheads whose attention we were trying to score. I was always told the best way to a man’s heart was through his tummy (which happens to work for me). An elaborate meal was prepared accompanied by decadent deserts and the signature holiday punch.  We did well, all things considered. My parents had friends over which was cool considering there was a plethora of food. We all kicked backed and as the afternoon married with the evening, we decided to part ways. We returned before curfew only to find that the leftovers I began salivating for were reduced to crumbs and memories.  Enthralled, I waited for my mom (this had my mother written all over it) to explain how a 12ft dinning room table covered in food was now empty without a trace being in either refrigerator.  When she walked in she apologized for taking the food stating her friends knew of a homeless girl and after taking food to her, she discovered a colony by the bayou and gave them the food.

For the remainder of my senior year and throughout my sophomore year of college, my mother and I made it a point to cook daily for the homeless people. My father would buy the sleeping essentials and hygiene kits to give to them. It was apart of our routine. We caught flack from the business owners who felt helping them was enabling them, but I couldn’t see as a human how could one decide that these people weren’t worth anything.  Some were drug addicts who were strung out because they were self- medicating to eradicate the nightmares of war or familial devastation. There was even a carpenter from California who was hired to build these apartments. He was promised a comfortable salary plus room and board, but was worked for months without pay and when he inquired he was let go. Consequently the living arrangements ended and he was homeless.  The young woman that my mother originally took the food to was actually someone we knew granddaughter. And then one evening, fire fighters were parked in our spot. To our dismay, the business owners set fire to the bridge destroying the homeless’ makeshift shelters that hid under there. Bellows of smoke forced the residents to see the invisible people that inhabited the same neighborhood as them.  No one cared about these souls. They only cared about themselves.

That train of thinking would continue on years later. One afternoon,  I scurried downtown leaving  an interview to grab a bite to eat. I bumped into a homeless man. He was about 5’4 , elderly with long locks of peppered gray hair. With one eye consumed by a cataract and a thick accent, he bartered his pride for the charity of life’s majestic people who felt disgusted that a man of his “low rankings” spoke to them.  Each snarl tore a piece of soul from his body.  I grabbed his hand and told him he’d be my lunch date. We sat down and talked for quite a bit of time. Strange looks were given to us.   When I walked him outside the patio to start on my journey home I was reprimanded for dealing with him.  “ His kind” made the patrons uncomfortable.  Not the young  lady with exposed breast, but the man who was trying to silence the choir of  hunger in his stomach. Disgusted, I lost all composure, but it wouldn’t be my last time doing so.  Unfortunately it hasn’t.  These people that we seem to overlook were once our family members, friends and neighbors. They were apart of our daily lives and somehow we forgot about them. I have so many accounts and stories told, but they all are woven on the thread of invisibility.

 Everyone has this attitude that homelessness cannot happen to them and that these individuals whom are homeless must be different. The reality is, the average working person is a paycheck away from being on the street.  You are one accident, one lay off, one economic upset away. No one aspires to eat out of garbage cans or to belittled for coins and partially eaten food.  Ask yourself if your job downsized today and you couldn’t get work for six months, would you be one of the invisible people? Food for Thought.

-Niko Rose