Adventures in the Everett shelter, part 2

The week from hell signaled the end of the line for old Ann. It started off on a Monday night. Reiko, the Japanese woman who had arrived the week previously, was more severely depressed than she had let on. Late that Monday, one of the women ran into the counselor's office yelling that Reiko was on the front porch bleeding form both wrists. Bridget, our favorite counselor from England leapt out of her chair and raced for the front door, telling us all to go to our rooms until further notice. None of us listened to her, instead we clustered in the kitchen and leaned against the door, trying to hear what was going on. Somehow the Everett police were on the front porch, holding a bleeding, screaming Reiko. There was a lot of shouting and doors slamming. An ambulance siren. More shouting. The front door slammed again. We all looked at each other in terror. We gossiped in a half-hearted way. We distractedly ate pop-tarts out of the box and paced the kitchen floor. About thirty minutes later, Bridget bustled through the kitchen door and headed for her office. She looked severe and said quietly,
"Not a word. Not a word from any of you. Go to your rooms. Now."
Meekly we obeyed. Those of us who had rooms in the upper levels of the house crept silently upstairs. We were very shocked. I couldn't sleep but then I remembered that Ann was gone tonight, on a court-ordered visit with her daughter. I had the room to myself and I lay down, feeling scared and depressed.
The next day, all the counselors and the Director of the shelter stayed cloistered in the main office for several hours. We stumbled around the house, bags under our eyes. The counselors would tell us nothing. We were too afraid to ask. The day passed without event but then evening descended and Ann returned from her court-appointed visitation with her daughter. She was in a bad mood, even worse than usual. She was not a woman with a sunny disposition and happy outlook. She went up to our room and began to throw my possessions from my dresser and the bed, onto the floor. I was downstairs watching television when one of the women came and told me. I leapt up the stairs and flew into the room. Ann was trying to rip my drawing pad apart and sort of snarled at me as I lunged for my drawing pad. She let go of it and leaned over her many garbage bags. I turned away, swearing a blue streak and when I looked up she had a large kitchen knife in her hand and she threw it at my head. I yelled with fright and surprise, ducked, and the knife sailed over my head and hit the wall near my bed. It fell down between my bed and the wall. I yelled again and she swung one of her garbage bags at me. I leaned out of the way and she grabbed her coat and took off for the stairs. I stood there in complete shock and couldn't move for a moment. Several women, alerted by my yells had nearly collided with Ann on the stairs as she shoved them out of the way and ran down the stairs. Bridget called out to Ann and told her to stop. I heard Ann's feet thundering down the last of the stairs and running for the front door. I heard her yell,
"Don't tell me what to do! You're a white devil bitch!".
She wrenched open the front door, and ran outside slamming the door behind her with all her might.

I stumbled downstairs saying over and over,
"She threw a knife at me! She threw a knife at me! I can't believe it but she threw a knife right at me!".
I was shaking so badly I thought I might fall down. My friend Julie reached out to steady me. Her face was as white as the proverbial sheet. No one said anything and the silence was absolute. Bridget looked ill with shock as she went to the front door and locked it, sliding the deadbolt closed with a snap. She was very distracted and told me to go upstairs and get Ann's possessions and to meet her in the office. All the other women were milling around, talking excitedly and fearfully amongst themselves. Numbly I went back upstairs. I opened the closet door and saw that Ann had five large plastic garbage bags full of stuff. One of the bags was quite heavy. Mindlessly I felt around under my bed and found the knife. Gingerly, I put it on my bed and just looked at it for a few moments. Then, heaving one of the bags onto a chair, I began to go through it. After a moment, I sat down rather heavily, staring into the bag in complete shock. I felt my jaw drop. The bag was crammed with hundreds and hundreds of prescription bottles. None of the bottles appeared to be Ann's. Men's names, other women, bottle after bottle after bottle of other people's medications and the bottles had many pills still in them. I wasn't a pharmacist but A.P. was a nurse and I knew that many of these pills were of the controlled substance variety. With shaking hands, I set aside that bag and picked up another. This one was filled with numerous pages of court/legal proceedings. Nosy little bugger that I was, I started to skim them. Most of them concerned Ann's various scrapes with the law and her attempts to gain custody of her daughter. I recall one document that sticks in my mind to this day. It said something along the lines of:
"When confronted about her actions, the defendant grew extremely hostile to the judge and attempted to throw a paper bag filled with a moldy sandwich at him. She was removed from the court as she began to scream profanities and it is our opinion that the defendant be denied access to her child..." This was an eye-opener. It also seemed to explain a great deal about Ann and her increasingly erratic behavior.


I must've been taking more time than I thought because my friend Julie came into the room and gawked at the stuff in the garbage bags. My face must have been as white as her's had been only moments ago because she just looked from the garbage bags to me and back again. She pulled another chair over to where I was sitting and raised her eyebrows.
"Spike... what... what is all this stuff?" she managed to ask as I silently handed her the sheaf of court papers so she could read for herself. She took the small stack as I distractedly rummaged through another bag of Ann's stuff. Julie gasped and I looked up at her grimly.
"This explains a whole lot about ol' Ann, doesn't it? She's... I wasn't lying to Bridget about her crazy crap! I wasn't exaggerating, Julie! Bridget will have to believe me now!". The stress of the past half hour was making my voice a bit shrill.
Julie just shook her head and put the papers down. She peered into the bag with all the pill bottles. She whispered,
"Spike, this is... what is this? All these pill bottles... I recognize this one... oh my God, this is a narcotic. What's she doing with these...it's.. this name on the bottle! These aren't even her prescriptions! What the hell?"

Julie's voice trailed off and I knew she was very upset because she normally wouldn't even say "hell", believing it to be a bad influence on her two small boys. She was a fundamentalist Christian and it was amusing that we got along so well as I wasn't too thrilled with most Christians at that time in my life. Also, there was the lesbian thing. Julie had lectured me about the evils of homosexuality and it seemed to be an odd pairing. Julie had even said so. The thing was, I was a cool person and Julie told me she couldn't help but like me, in spite of the Gay thing. It was strange but I liked her, too. She was witty and smart like me and we had an unlikely friendship.

I got up from the bed and Julie got up from her chair and we both began to grab the bags and haul them down the steps. DeeDee appeared in the door and I gave her two bags to carry so I could take the knife. DeeDee's eyes got huge as she spied the knife in my hand.
"Shit! Oh, sorry, Julie! Spike, did Ann really throw that at you? My God, she has completely lost it! You should see Bridget's face! I think she's gonna have a heart attack! She's already called Merrill and a bunch of other counselors, too. I think she said they were going to...". DeeDee continued to talk rapidly and I nodded absently, following her and Julie down the stairs. DeeDee was asking questions a mile a minute but I didn't try to answer her. I was lost in thought wondering what was going to happen if and when Ann returned to the house. In my mind's eye I envisioned police helicopters and a S.W.A.T. team taking up positions around the perimeter of the house. Smiling slightly, I followed DeeDee and Julie across the living room floor where Graciella and her children stood around the couch, goggling at us as though we were part of a television show. We went through the kitchen and paused outside the door of the Intake/Counselors office. Bridget was on the telephone, speaking quickly and crisply in her British accent. She saw the knife in my hand and her eyes got big for a second and then she waved me over to sit in a chair in front of her desk. She made shooing motions to Julie and DeeDee. They put the garbage bags on a chair next to me, shot me concerned, frightened looks and backed out of the room. Bridget, listening intently to someone on the other end of the line, walked around her desk and closed the office door with a snap. I sat down in my chair and leaned back against the wall, trying to stop trembling. Bridget finished her phone call, put the phone on the cradle and regarded me with huge eyes. I stared back at her. She blinked rapidly and then became rather business-like.
"Are you hurt, Spike? Did she hurt you?" she asked me.
I shook my head but showed her the kitchen knife again. Bridget seemed to lose her composure for a moment as she stammered,
"She... you're saying Ann threw this knife at you? She actually threw this at you? This is a serious charge, Spike! I know you two don't get along but to say that she threw a knife at you? That's rather a serious accusation!"
I was becoming annoyed. Bridget knew of many other instances of Ann's erratic behavior and yet she was grilling me as if I was the one who had attacked Ann! I stood up and gestured towards the garbage bags.
"Bridget, you know Ann's a wacko! Yes, she threw this knife at me! I'm not making this up! You should take a look at the pills in these bags! None of them have her name on the bottles! She's got all kinds of narcotics and pain killers and who-the-hell-knows-what-else in here and you think I'm making this up?!"
I realized that my voice was getting louder but I was angry and scared and I hated that look on Bridget's face. She opened her mouth and was about to say something when the telephone rang. She motioned for me to wait outside the office until she was finished. I got up from my chair and stomped over to the door. As I closed it behind me I heard her say,
"Yes, the address here is..."


End of Chapter 2

Adventures in the Everett shelter, part 1

Ann was crazy. I mean, she was certifiably crazy. I shared a room with her at the Snohomish County Domestic Violence women's shelter in Everett, Washington. This was way back in the fogs of 1990, after I left my abusive girlfriend, A.P.

The big old house in a residential neighborhood of Everett had room enough for about eight women and a raft of children. We had to share rooms, of course. This wasn't the Holiday Inn. The place was comfy, for a domestic violence shelter but it was way out in the boondocks, far from Seattle. Since I didn't drive back then (or now, for that matter), I had to take two very long bus rides from downtown Seattle to the house in Everett. I was fairly new to Seattle, having moved there from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. just nine months previously. Back then, Everett was very rural and "rednecky" and I hated being there because I was constantly worried about being gay-bashed by the local yokels and this fear was well-founded... but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, I initially shared a room with this really cute straight woman named Kris. She was startled to find out I was a lesbian and was a little leery of sharing a room with me until I made it very plain that I didn't mess around with straight women. Why do some heterosexual women assume that a lesbian wants to "do her"? Arrogance! Kris was cute and sweet, though, and eventually we became friends. We were having a great old time and then she got a place of her own, away from her abusive husband and left the shelter. I was very sad to see her go and wondered who I'd have to share the room with next. I didn't have to wait long. About two days later I met Ann. She was an older black woman with a two year old daughter whom she hadn't seen in about a year. She was eccentric as hell and constantly muttered under her breath. We hit it off badly from the get-go and things between us went from worse to horrible in no time flat. The first thing she did when I met her: She threw my clothes off my bed and claimed it for herself.
"I can't be sleeping without my back to the wall! This here bed is mine now!" she snarled at me as she rummaged through her four large garbage bags. I was too intimidated to protest but inwardly I seethed. I liked sleeping next to the wall. It had a great little space heater that made the attic room nice and cosy in the cold of the Pacific Northwest.
I didn't have many clothes of my own, having fled my abusive situation with hardly any possessions, so I had gone to a thrift store and bought some cheap t-shirts. One particular shirt, my favorite at the time had Mikhail Gorbachev's picture on it and some Russian words about peace and freedom. I liked it because of the bold graphics and text. I didn't care that it had Gorbachev's picture on it. Well, Ann certainly had words to say about it. I was taking my turn cooking dinner for the house and she stomped downstairs and slammed into the kitchen with my t-shirt in her hands. She waved it in front of me and yelled,
"What's this Commie rag doing in your clothes! I ain't sharing no room with no Commie! I'm gonna throw it in the trash!" and she headed across the room to toss it in the garbage can. I grabbed her wrist and shouted at her to give me my shirt back. Well, I got in all kinds of trouble for grabbing her and also, during our scuffle, calling her a bitch. I lost my temper, to be sure. We both got sent to the administrator's office and I got a verbal warning for putting my hands on her and calling her a name. She was written up for taking someone's property and attempting to destroy it. That certainly had the house buzzing with excitement. I made my dinner and everyone ate it except for Ann who was sulking in our room.
Life continued in the house. DeeDee called her husband and went back to him for a few days until she came to her senses and returned, sporting a new black eye. Graciella and her four boys hung around the house, not speaking a jot of English and constantly commandeering the television for "MacGuyver". But she sure could cook! The women who ran the house were all too familiar with Graciella and her sons. She had been in and out of this particular D.V. shelter several times over the years. This time around, Jorgé, her oldest son had his leg in a cast. His father had tried to push Graciella down the stairs and Jorgé had intervened. He went down the stairs instead. The boys didn't do much at the house and they never had to do any of the chores as did the rest of us. They were very macho and would order Graciella around, making her get them snacks and do all their washing. I despised the way Graciella let herself be treated by her sons but was told that that was part of their culture and that Graciella had always kowtowed to the men in her life. I had other problems so I just tried to ignore the creepy feelings I got around her children.
I spent most of my time drawing or writing in my journal. I made the weekly trip to Seattle to see my psychotherapist at her office in Fremont, a trendy neighborhood in Seattle. It was a long-ass bus ride, though. Two buses each direction. My eyes were getting bad and A.P. had destroyed my only pair of glasses. When I traveled at night I could barely see where I was going and so I was always terrified that I would miss my stop in Everett and wind up God-knows-where. So the bus ride back from Seattle was never very soothing. All that calming psychotherapy wasted on the perilous trip home!

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I should accept my sisters' goodwill and get a bus ticket back to Maryland. Somehow, this always felt like giving up and I resisted it. Seattle was an adventure! Unfortunately, it was not the greatest time I'd ever had in my life, thus far. I had barely a hundred dollars to my name, I was homeless and staying at a domestic violence shelter, I had no friends here, I had no job skills, etc. etc. Perhaps I should've taken my sisters' advice and moved back to the East Coast. But I decided to tough it out, for a little longer, anyway. I was probably in love with my therapist and didn't want to leave Seattle because of that! I certainly wasn't having a very good life, all told. When I first arrived in Seattle on February 14, 1990 I was with A.P., a crazy woman if ever there was one. I got an upper respiratory infection that winter and I had it for nearly eleven years! The entire time I lived in Seattle, I was sick, sometimes very ill indeed. Was it worth it? Anyway, I digress...
Ann's increasingly weird behavior coincided with my popularity at the shelter. Some of the women were just fascinated with me, goggling at me in wonder ever time we had to have group sessions with the shelter therapists. They could not wrap their minds around the fact that I was a lesbian and that I had been in an abusive relationship with another lesbian. One myth they kept trotting out: Women never could hurt other women, we are all too nurturing! Yeah, right. A.P. was a lot of things. Manipulative, mentally ill, obsessive, paranoid, controlling... she also could be, at times, sweet, caring, concerned but only if she thought she could get something from someone by being these things. She was very narcissistic which I only found out by degrees. At the shelter, I was the resident wit, always ready to zap someone with a well-timed pun. I had everyone in tears of laughter. Humor has always been my strong point. And I used it as a mask, my therapist was always telling me. Well, yeah, of course! Better the laughter than the endless crying jags!
So, anyway, Ann was required to go along to these therapy sessions with the rest of us. No one wanted her there because her behavior was always weird, if not downright hostile. She would mutter things under her breath whenever I spoke and the counselor would have to stop me for a minute and say something to her. Everybody else would roll their eyes and sigh. Ann was oblivious to us. Whenever it was her turn to speak, she would mutter even more furiously and blurt out strange things that made even the counselors scratch their heads. She never said anything that could be recognized as coherent speech. Eventually, she just sat in her chair and the counselor would skip right over her. This went on for a few weeks. Around the last week of November I was getting some good news nearly every day and was fairly skipping around the house. I found out that I had been accepted to live at a "transitional housing" program in Seattle. It was run by The Sisters of Providence, a great bunch of Catholic nuns and I had met the program director, Sr. Mary Wilson the week before. We got along like a house on fire and I was so happy to finally have a place to call home for a year or so. I had also gotten some money from Washington state. "G.A.U."-Government Assistance for the Unemployed. It wasn't a whole hell of a lot of money but it was better than nothing. I would get $350/month and my rent at the transitional house would be a measly $120/month. I had also applied for Social Security Disability Benefits and was going through that long, long process. Everything was looking up and I was going to be moving out a few days before Christmas. The only thing that put a damper on my joy was the continuing and escalating problems with Ann. She nearly set our room on fire one day when she put one of her garbage bags in front of the heater and turned it on to the highest setting. I smelled something funny and went in and found the garbage bag melting onto the floor! She would come in late from wherever the hell she went all day, nearly getting locked out by missing the eleven o'clock p.m. curfew. She would stomp upstairs and turn the overhead light on, waking me up. She didn't care. She would then pull out her garbage bags from the closet and rummage through them, muttering under her breath. I would try to sleep through this but one time I did open an eye briefly and found her going through my dresser drawers! After that, I asked for permission to sleep during the day so I could draw and keep an eye on her during the night. The counselors poo-pooed my concerns about Ann but then things started to go very badly wrong in her life and the whole house got in an uproar.



End of Part 1