4/22/2020

The rise of homelessness during the pandemic reminds a French Quarter writer of a luckless time in youth, when a spontaneous act of generosity turned the tide.

– by Ellis Anderson

I think of her as The Screamer, but really she shouts and yells.  Those two verbs seem mild:  A stadium crowd shouts.  A quarreling couple yells.  The ferocious cries of this woman carry agony, deep and abiding.
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“Motherfuckers!” she blasts into the COVID-quiet streets of the French Quarter.  “Get out of my head, you piece-of-shit lying fuckers!” 

That’s one of the few complete phrases I’ve been able to make out, although she’s interrupted my sleep, and that of my neighbors, many times since the shut-down began.  

The Screamer usually starts raging about three or four in the morning and she paces through the neighborhood until dawn.  Her curses continue at top volume for hours.  They carry for blocks in the cool night air, for once blissfully devoid of a round-the-clock stag-party soundtrack. Gone are the frat-boy pre-dawn mass-howling events, the drunken packs of bachelorettes screeching and the sound systems of cars blaring full-blast with the windows down, their drivers believing that the French Quarter is only a Disney-for-adults where no one lives. The Screamer’s night cries, with no competition now, bounce off the centuries-old brick buildings, echoing down the narrow street canyons.  Her strident distress calls carry the anxiety of the entire city - or at least my own. 

I caught a glimpse of her one morning while she was closing out another long night.  She ambled down the sidewalk away from me, her slight form bent like an old person.  She paused and let loose another loud curse across the empty asphalt lanes of Decatur Street.  It seemed impossible that such a small body could generate such volume. 
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The Screamer is just one of the unsheltered who populate the neighborhood streets now.  Some have been there all along, but since the busy backdrop of tourists has dissolved, they come into high relief.  There are the recently homeless too, like the tarot card reader with the signature cowboy hat.  His sign reads, “The Realistic Mystic.”  

​Before COVID, we always greeted each other in passing.  He sets up his table in the deserted square, but now  he sleeps in his chair at night.  The Realistic Mystic tells me a paranoid roommate asked him to leave.  Savings were threadbare and few customers inquire about the future these days, even from six feet away.  When I ask what he can use, he tells me he’s no beggar.  But he mentions that water is always nice. On a few evenings I bring him filtered water in sanitized containers.​

Another new fixture is the young woman who reminds me of a grimy Peter Pan, with cropped hair and a turned-up nose.  She lives in a deep Dumaine Street doorway, one shut for good.  In the daytime, she often sits cross-legged on cardboard in her four-by-two-foot space. At night, she makes a little coffin of the cardboard and curls beneath.  

I always walk on the opposite side of the street from Peter Pan.  I’m 63 and know that COVID covets mature lungs.  I don’t want to come close to anyone, especially a person who’s high risk.  The dogs drag me toward the river with impatience.  But the beam of her smile crosses the street and tugs for attention.  

“They’re so beautiful,” she sometimes coos at us.  “They look so sweet!”  And I agree.  She asks once if she can pet them, but I think of my dogs as virus mops and don’t let anyone touch them these days.  I feel awful denying her such a small thing. 

One morning I am walking the dogs down Dumaine a bit earlier than usual.  On the other side of the street, I see the cardboard coffin.  I wonder if Peter Pan has been able to sleep; The Screamer was active much of the night.  It’s disturbing enough to hear in my secure bedroom.  How would a vulnerable young woman feel, with only a piece of cardboard to protect her against a raver - or a rapist?

Then, a mighty curse rises from beneath the cardboard.  

“Damn you!  You’re something – something, you motherfuckers!” 
 
I levitate off the sidewalk.  Even the dogs bolt.  

That the gentle Peter Pan and The Screamer are the same person has never occurred to me.

***

Years ago, I read that the word “home” is one of the most powerful in the English language.   Almost universally, it evokes an emotional response, memories, or at least aspirations, of security and love.  Contentment. Belonging.  Adding on a suffix makes the word even more powerful: “homeless.”  Women who nest on the sidewalks at night in particular move my heart, reminding me of my own past.  Those with dogs crank the wrench tighter. 

Blue is one of those.  She’s a wraith with tattoos on her face that reminds me of an Old West character from the series “Hell on Wheels.”  I’ve known Blue for two years now, since her black lab mix, Minnie, was a puppy.  The two sleep wrapped around each other at night.  

Blue’s a good writer and has passed on powerful poems - when she has paper.  Her nature is literary.  She collects books others discard and sells them for money.  We have become friends of sorts.  But if she were a real friend, wouldn’t I invite her to stay in my apartment?  Wouldn’t I do more to help her find housing?  Instead, when I’m feeling flush, I sometimes give her small amounts of money to assuage my guilt.  I buy her lunch and Minnie dog food or treats.  Once, on a bitterly cold night last winter, I gave Blue my down jacket.  I still didn’t sleep well, knowing she and Minnie were curled up on frozen concrete.  

When I next saw Blue several weeks later, she apologized for how dirty the jacket had gotten. 

Right before the shutdown in mid-March, Blue tells me that she’s ill.  Doctors have told her she needs at least a six-week course of antibiotic treatment in a nursing facility.  
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She doesn’t ask for money.  She asks me to help find a temporary home for Minnie.  Blue wants to make sure whoever takes Minnie will give her back when she gets well.  Minnie is not only her dearest companion, she also helps bring in panhandling donations. Blue understands that some would want to keep the dog instead of resigning her back to a life on the streets.  

She gives me permission to take a photograph of them both and post it on Facebook.  That night, the image inspires several offers to take care of Minnie while Blue gets treatment.  My old friend, musician David Roe – D.R. - makes the first.

At first, Blue goes by the musician’s house to check the vibe.  D.R. is not home and she leaves a bag of dog food as a promise she’ll return.  She later tells me Minnie settled right into a couch on D.R.’s front porch and didn’t want to leave.  Come on!  She told the dog.  You can’t stay now. 

On the evening when they finally have a meet-and-greet, Minnie at once connects with D.R..  The duck fat he offers helps.  Blue, whose strong intuition has kept her alive through the years, instantly trusts him, too.  D.R. offers her use of his shower and feeds her a good meal.  Then he covers the fare for her ride to the hospital. 

Now, Blue’s settled in a Slidell nursing home getting treatment and Minnie’s getting spoiled.  D.R. calls Minnie an “old soul.” The dog sleeps in his bed.  Last week, he took Minnie to Slidell for an outside visit with Blue.  It was a joyous, if brief, reunion.  He’s trying to arrange permanent housing for Blue after she recovers. Minnie will get creds as an emotional support dog.
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Are there ever happy endings?  I try to believe this could be one. 

***

D.R.’s mostly retired now, but works all the same, volunteering at places that feed hungry people, like St. Mark’s church on the edge of the French Quarter.  “That’s what I’m doing the last part of my life – I’m feeding people.” 

That’s no surprise.  D.R. came to New Orleans in 1978, the same year I did.  We were both 21 and both musicians.  I arrived with enough cash to rent a cheap apartment.  D.R. did not.  He lived in a squat with some other kids, including a guitarist named John Abramson.  By May of that year, John had become my boyfriend and musical partner.  

John told me about that winter, the one before we met.  It was so cold in the abandoned apartment building that sometimes D.R. and the other squatters built fires in the laundry room.  Both he and D.R. got sick with bronchitis.  At one point, John was wrapped in a sleeping bag on the floor of an empty room and felt the physical presence of Death hovering over him. 

But both young musicians recovered.  The weather warmed and the tourists ventured out from their hotels to linger in the streets, tossing dollars to buskers like D.R. or John.  The two became part of the thriving, convivial community of French Quarter street performers.  Both were able to get apartments – much more affordable in the days before gentrification. ​

Later that year, John and I often traded the good money spots on Royal Street with D.R.’s lively jug band and other performers who became lifelong friends.  Any given evening would find a group of us clustered around a communal table at Buster Holmes on Burgundy, where 60 cents bought a big plate of red beans and rice with French bread and margarine. 

John and I snagged a roomy and recently-renovated apartment in the heart of the Quarter on St. Peter Street.  It had a wide balcony, where my German Shepherd, Annie, loved to sit and watch the street action below.  Wood floors.  High ceilings.  Because it was located above a notorious and noisy bikers’ bar,  Shakey Jake’s [now the Gold Mine, a long-lived neighborhood establishment], it cost us only $150 a month, the equivalent of $600 in 2020.

In the spring and fall, we could earn that in a few days of performing in the street.  Bars and club gigs paid $10 per musician per set.  Plus tips.  Depending on the time slot, we could work the standard four-set night and come home with $70 or $80 dollars each.  John and I saved up and bought our own PA system, allowing us to take more jobs in more upscale places.  All the working musicians we knew prospered.  We called it "The Dream Life.” 
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So while I had gone short stints without an address before, I’d never experienced an accompanying sense of desperation.  

​Until the summer of 1979, when I was 22.  

***

While the living was easy most of the year, from June to mid-September, the French Quarter streets grew quiet and empty.  In the late ‘70s, people with money to travel chose beaches or mountains as their destination in the summer, not the steaming swelter of New Orleans. Well-heeled locals split for cooler climes, too, like the North Carolina Highlands.  The musicians and service people left behind struggled to make rent and groceries.  

A few musician friends suggested that we try Boston in the summer.  It was a prosperous place, friendly to musicians.  Street performance was possible and bars were eager to hire fresh New Orleans talent.  John and I decided to give it a go.  We gave notice on our apartment. We’d be coming back in the fall with full pockets, and it would be easy to get another.  We used most of our savings and bought a used VW van to be our adventure camper for the summer.  John made racks for our equipment and built a bed on top.  I sewed little curtains and bought a cotton bedspread from India.  Annie had her own spot behind the driver’s side for a bed.  

The plan was simple.  We’d sleep in campgrounds just outside the city and drive in to play music most days.  We had $300 in savings - $1,200 by 2020 standards - to live on until we got some gigs.  We were prepared for anything.  

We thought.  

The van engine blew up in western Massachusetts, far from any town.  We spent most of our money having it towed.  After the garage owner inspected it, he decreed it would cost $400 to rebuild the engine.  They’d need all the money up front before starting repairs. We could leave the van there with our equipment, but there would be an additional storage fee.  

In the space of a few hours, we’d gone from being flush to having no place to stay, no savings and no sound equipment to get gigs.  

We brought only what we could carry  - our backpacks and our instruments, my violin and his guitar.  And Annie.  We stuck out our thumbs.  By that point, I’d hitchhiked thousands of miles, many of them alone.   But no one stopped that late afternoon.  A man, a woman and a large dog was not an appealing combination.  The three of us slept that night under an interstate overpass.  Or tried to. 

The next morning, we finally caught a ride into Boston, where we believed our remaining cash would at least buy us a room in a flop house.  We quickly discovered Boston health regulations forbade animals in any temporary lodging.  Some friendly hippies directed us to Boylston Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. That evening, we set up in front of a popular seafood restaurant, The Crab Net.  It had a constant queue outside, a ready-made audience.  

In New Orleans, we played with the guitar case open, seeding it with bills.  This time, I also made a sign and propped it in the case.  

We need a place to stay tonight.  
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That first night, some students who shared a shabby apartment took us home.  We stayed up late, smoking pot, drinking beer and giving a private concert despite our exhaustion. 

***

Those first weeks in Boston, the suspense began anew every morning, knitting knots in my stomach through the day.  If we hadn’t secured a place to stay by the final sets, John’s guitar strums took on a new urgency and my violin began to plead.  We’d sing songs like “The Boxer,” by Paul Simon, our tight harmonies reeling out lyrics that had never been more meaningful to me.
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“When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy,
in the company of strangers
in the quiet of the railway station, 
running scared…” 

And while I was used to the occasional cutting comment when we played in the French Quarter – why don’t you hippies get a real job? -  in Boston’s swank business district, the faces of prosperously-dressed passersby often turned scornful after reading the sign in our case.  Their hard, disdainful glares tried to impress on us a certain shame, a shame I accepted, one that stung and swelled larger every day.
 
But I think of my experience that summer as Homeless Lite.  We did have a safety net of sorts.  While neither John’s parents nor mine could have afforded the van repairs, they might have scraped together a few dollars to wire us.  We also understood the cost in reproaches would be more than a loan shark’s interest – and longer lasting.  

We desperately wanted to prove we could survive on our own, overcome challenges without help.  That was made easier because we were white and young and somewhat educated, with a degree of talent and a polished act – all of which gave us certain advantages we then took for granted.  And the time itself was a more generous one; people less fearful, more spontaneous. 

Mid-summer, a young man named David offered some temporary stability - we crashed with him a few weeks.  We tried to repay his generosity by offering money and cooking meals, cleaning his house.  Still later, two college students took us in.  Marcie and Pat shared a Back Bay apartment closer to Boylston Street and the Boston Common, where we’d developed a weekend following.  It’s a high-rent area now, but back then, the rows of brownstones mostly served as student housing. Staying there, we contributed more, but our commute to work shortened considerably. We only had to walk a few miles each way carrying our instruments. 

Although we worked hard and squirreled away as much as possible, by September we were still $50 short of the $400 needed.  By October, it would be too cold to play outside.  The mechanics would need at least a few weeks to rebuild the engine. Marcie and Pat had been patient, but the two-bedroom apartment was too small for four people and a dog.  

The leaves were beginning to change color as we walked along the lovely residential area of Commonwealth Avenue, moving from our daytime playing spot in Boston Common toward our evening spot on Boylston Street.  We ran into Mark, a regular patron from the restaurant queue and a fan of our music.  He was only a few years older than we were, in his late twenties, but he seemed decades older in many ways.  Poised. Self-confident. Immaculately groomed in an artfully casual way.
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Mark invited us up to his apartment for refreshments.  Where was it? we asked. We had miles more to go that day and didn’t particularly want to detour before playing more sets.  Just on the next block.  We followed him, wondering how someone so close to our age could afford an apartment in the most expensive part of an expensive town.  Maybe he lived in a basement. 

We turned up the sidewalk of a grand historic brownstone.  Mark’s apartment was upstairs, with an astonishing view of the forested avenue below.  The vast apartment seemed like a movie set - polished wood, paneled doors, mantled fireplaces, late afternoon sunlight streaming in through enormous windows framed by brocade drapes.  Furnished with warm antiques and rugs, stacks of books beckoned from several tables, some of them open. None of my friends, none of my friends’ parents, lived in a home like this.  

Mark introduced us to his girlfriend, an elegant woman - again, just a few years older than we were.  She made us tea and served it in an antique china tea set.  I wondered if the set had belonged to someone in one of their families or if the couple had picked it out for themselves at a high-end antique shop. 

As we exchanged stories for the first time, Mark told us that he had graduated from Yale with a degree in Political Science, then gone on to Harvard for an MBA.  Although I’d been through three years of liberal arts under-grad, I was the first of my family to attend college and didn’t understand exactly what an MBA was. I wasn’t about to ask.  I’d never even met anyone who had gone to Harvard or Yale.  I don’t remember much about his girlfriend, except she seemed kinder than most sorority types I’d come across.  I seem to recall she’d graduated from an Ivy League school as well.  We gave the couple a short encapsulation of our predicament and said we were trying to get back to New Orleans before winter set in. 

“All you need is fifty more dollars to get your van fixed?” Mark said, a little incredulity in his voice.  He pulled out his wallet, opened it and handed John a $50 bill. 

Shocked, we insisted that we could only accept such a grand gift as a loan.  We promised we’d pay him back someday, when we got back to New Orleans and back on our feet.  I carefully wrote his name and address in the back of my journal before we headed out to play on Boylston.  I never saw him again.
   
A few years later, when I finally sent a check to Mark, it was returned.  Not at this address.  John and I were no longer a couple, but had remained friends.  We were both sad that we’d lost our chance.  If only we’d tried to repay him sooner. 

When the internet came into being, I tried to find Mark again.  Nope.  After Katrina, I idly Googled his name one day.  This time several listings came up.  He’d had a remarkable career as an international business strategist. 
   
When I finally got through to him by phone ten years ago, Mark had no recollection of the $50, although he vaguely remembered John and me.  I told him I’d mail him a check the next day. He laughed and said he wouldn’t cash it.  He told me he’d frame it and hang it on his office wall.  

I tried to explain how much Mark’s “loan” had meant, much more than finally getting the van repaired.  His act of generosity in that tough time had inspired me for decades, long before the “pay it forward” concept began to trend. And he had helped me understand that even a small – and to giver, forgettable – kindness can sometimes change a moment, or a situation, and once in a great while, a life.

Like mine.