#16: Day 6 TIme for a change.

I just noticed that I haven't mentioned my shelter very much. My shelter is in a land far away from the hustle bustle of Baton Rouge called Denham Springs. That's a joke son. Kinda. Baton Rouge hustle bustles only if you happen to live in some podunk little mining town in the Appalachias, with your toothless gran'maw and yer dawg Buford. Yeah....its slow and its small in these parts.

Denham Springs is slower and smaller. and way far away. Not for L.A., but definitely for LA. The driving instructions that I picked up at Sheltering, one of our many departments at HQ, were interesting, and I have mentioned them before. They said that the shelter, Hebron Baptist church, was twelve miles away. Pretty far from work. Well twelve miles it wasn't. we clocked it at twenty four.

The engineer among us after several days, finally looked at a map, and found that the macaroon that printed the directions had us going completely through the city and then backtracking five miles out of our way, adding 30 minutes to our drive. Sigh. Now why is it people like to live in small towns?

Anyway, Hebron is located way way into the piney woods. Well ok, I don't know if they are actually pine, and they aren't really woods, but it sounded authentic. In any case, we aren't near anything recognizable, and we are out deep in the country.

Inside of the chrch is a big room divided, with one corner tarped off for those of us ladies who prefer not to sleep cheek by jowl with those of the rougher sex. Other than that, what you saw was cots on cots on cots. Needless to say, I was on a cot. after a few days of attrition, I was able to snipe a large blow up air mattress. I had one before you might say, ah, but that one was squishy and blue and slippery. This new mattress was a lovely forest green, the top was fuzzy and pleasant to the touch. my sleeping bag did not slide on it like it did on the last mattress. This was luxury. Oh, I also kyped one of the really sturdy cots, unlike the ones that folded up and collapsed if you forgot and leaned the wrong way. Amazing really the things that you value in strange situations.

I moved to a space at the front along the wall, the morning after the "Butt" incident. I couldn't bear a repeat. The woman next to me looked smaller at least. We were a room full of characters. Each totally different from the next. we had the ultra right-wing mom of five at thirty-six, who would later go out with the "christian", mom of one teenager and party hearty with a group of twentysomething national guardsmen that they picked up on the street the night before. They would roll in at four AM, no one knew how they managed it.

We had the sweet midwestern mom who had piercings all over, and insisted on showing us. When I commented that she was almost forty now, and perhaps might consider removing the nipple piercings at least, she replied in horror, "but I paid $80 for them!" Sigh. Next to me was the small woman who judging from her voice and demeanor had more than occasionally spent time keeping company with a bottle of something. In the mornings, this fairy would rise and shine and strip naked. Pretty much in front of the large opening that separated the women's area from the general area.

Men walking by and catching a glimpse would no doubt, be put off sex with a woman for the rest of their unnatural born lives when they saw the possibility of what the fairer sex as they knew us, might become. That is if he wasn't actually struck blind on the spot. She had one of those bodies that sagged. Sagged is actually an inadequate description. Removal of her undergarments resulted in what resembled the unrolling of old sweat socks filled with wet uncooked rice. The unrolling ceremony gruesomly ended by the "footwear", arriving at their destination with a resounding thud. That would be somewhere around her midsection. Remind me to thank God for the little things that I have forgotten could happen to me should I stray. I have found yet another small thing in life to be thankful for.

This same deceptively calm woman one night in her sleep began yelling at the top of her lungs, "Shit! Shit! Shit!", and then started moaning equally loudly, "Ooooooh...ahhhhh....ooooooOOOOOOOOH!" Woke the entire place up. When we laughingly told her the next day what she had done, she told us that she had been dreaming that she was with her old horse that she hadn't seen in years. No one pursued that line of questioning too much farther.

One of the women across from me was sophisticated, friendly, smart, well groomed and funny. What was she doing here? Wait a minute, what was I doing here? Next to her was a big friendly sane woman that everyone liked. Notable among all of the big unfriendly insane women that no one liked. There were young and old, educated and un, tall short, thin, fat. a supermarket of mostly the middle aged.

Some were showing husbands what if was to be left alone with kids all day, some were showing their kids that mom wasn't a great big loser. Some were just showing themselves that they could contribute to something that was grander than their world, wherever it might be. Some were at summer camp and having a party. Others were there to show the rest of us how much more functional they were than we. I didn't know what the hell went on in the "mixed" side of the shelter, as that was where the nightly bullfrog serenade went on, so I avoided it. How can anyone snore that damned loud and long, without waking themselves up? I still hadn't completely figured out why I was there.

The oddest time I had at the shelter was with our main security guard, "Tiffany". "Tiffany", weighed in at well over three hundred pounds. Her hair was styleless, dark brown and barbered as short as a boy's. Her neck was one thick short mass of flesh, beginning right at her ear lobes. There were no visible breasts, and a non existent waist. That led into an abdomen that folded over parts of her body that she couldn't possibly have seen in years.

At night while we slept, "Tiffany" filled in paint by number drawings from a giant coloring book. She painstakingly did this night after night using violently colored magic markers, neatly lined up in order of importance on the table in front of her. When the work was finished, she pasted it on the wall of the shelter behind her. Each day we were treated to something new. My favorite was Van Goghs' sunflowers, rendered in fuschia, jutting out of a cerulian, black and crimson striped vase, seated against a violet ground. I made the erroneous assumption from her appearance and by her demeanor that she was a lesbian. "Tiffany", did not know what a lesbian was.

When we came in she would greet some of us by name. She could never remember mine. One evening while some were getting massages, generously donated by locals, I walked in just as "Tiffany" was making some odd comment about Jews. I didn't know the context, but it wasn't something pleasant. I cut in, and said, "hey hey hey, wait a minute, Jesus was one of us". "Tiffany disputed that Jesus was Jewish until corrected by the whole room. "And another thing", I laughingly continued, "We didn't kill him, the Romans did. Oh, and in case you missed it, my voice dropped down to a whisper. We wrote the bible, and that thing on the Pope's head? Its called a yamulke." By that time everyone was laughing.

"Tiffany's" response was singular. She said with completely naive friendliness, "Hey! Since I can't never remember your name, I can call you, That Jew GIrl!" Some laughed, some stopped cold in their tracks as I pointed out with a smile, that "Lisa" might be preferable. "Oh no", she said, I'll never remember that". I suggested "Red", but "That Jew Girl" was her preferred moniker for me. Someone suggested aloud, that I could in return call her , "That Schikse". "Tiffany", seeing the look on my face, stopped cold, looked at him, and then me suspiciously, and with eyes narrowed asked, "did he jus' call me a HO'!?" I Forced myself not to laugh out loud, and told her gently, "no, he just called you an abomination." She stopped for a second, obviously relieved, held her sides and laughed heartily, declaring, "Aw hell, Ah bin called worse 'n that!"

A day later, she approached me outside as I was sitting with some others in the shelter, and said, "Hi Jew Girl". I turned to her smiling, and as sweetly as I could, replied, "Tiffany", if you keep on calling me, "Jew Girl", then I will have to start calling you "That Fat Girl."" That stopped her. She barked, "hey, wait a minute, that's not nice. I mean if yew was fat, then it would be ok, but yew ain't fat, so we's gonna have words. " I turned back to her and replied, "and you aren't Jewish. " She looked at me incredulously,and declared fervently, "But it ain't the same thing". I rejoined with eyebrows raised, "oh, but it is the same thing."

I watched as it dawned on her. She then asked, "Yew mean what ah bin sayin' is that mean?" when I replied in the affirmative, she, looking distressed whined, "so then what am I gonna call yew? Is there somethin' in Jewish?" I suggested "Mensch", explaining to her that it meant human being, in the best possible way. She tried it out a few times, and we all helped her with the pronunciation. Each evening after that, I would enter, and "Tiffany" would greet me with, "Hi Miiiintsch", and I would reply, "Hi Mensch, sort of" back. It became a nightly ritual.

Once she asked if she was really calling me "goddess" or something, telling me she was , "really gonna be mad if she was", and once she laughed long and hard, telling me that it sounded like she was calling me "bitch", but we kept it up for as long as I was there. "Tiffany " was very proud of knowing some yiddish, and told us that she had told all of her friends. I continued to hope, that none of them planned to come visiting dressed for an early Halloween anytime soon.

Our RC shelter managers were other creatures entirely. They were a team that consisted of this truly horrible old harridan and her pathetic lumpish son. She looked like an overweight Jabba the Hut, if Jabba the Hut could sport shorts and a t-shirt. Her frizzled, thinning blond hair perched like a mistaken landing, on what was left of a face. As for sonny, he looked like he belonged in the deep deep south. I looked to see if he had a pointy white hat sticking out of his pants somewhere each time I saw him. It was some time before any of us figured out that they were ours.

The church ladies on the other hand were so sweet. They would cook us dinner at night, and do our laundry in the evening. I had no idea that there were that many ways to cook a pig. You learn something every day. And no, (you just go on and get that out of your head), I did not have anyone do my laundry. The thought of those elderly little baptist gentlewomen washing "That Jew Girl's" thong underwear....Well, I'd be damned if anyone keeled over with a heart attack on my behalf.....figuratively speaking of course.

In the evenings I would grab some people and go out to some of the local dives. With all of the great southern food that I have come to associate with this area, apparently, Denham Springs has somehow become the mecca of bad, cheap ,fast food. What a shame. I did manage to eat several bowls of boiled shrimp at one bistro, although when I asked for a little cup of drawn butter to replace the cocktail sauce that the meal was served with, the waitress brought me six or seven of those teeny tiny little peel-off-top tublets of butter flavored spread. I wonder to this day what was going through their heads.

This evening, I went out with one of my most favorite residents of the shelter, and one of the weirdest residents of the shelter. The first guy was "Alberto", an eighty something psychiatrist, who slept not far from me on the other side of the tarp. He was in a cot with no matress and one donated blanket. Even in the middle of a madhouse, he was able to sleep like a rock and snore like a bear. In the evenings,"Alberto" would sit outside on the porch facing the parking lot chewing tobacco and spitting. Other than that, he was smart and funny, sharp as a tack. Totally irreverent. Everyone loved him.

Then there was this guy that glued himself to "Al", his name was "Bob". "Bob" is about as plain as plain can be. Pale and blond, blue eyed and average. His uniform was a pair of loose grey sweat pants pulled up a little too high, with a grey t-shirt tucked over his paunch and into his pants. "Bob" was missing a little hair, and a lot of grey cells, only it took everybody a little too long to figure out the second part. When you did, you just sat there for a minute and cocked your head sideways like the RCA dog until you were able to reassure yourself that it was indeed true. Not everyone got there.

Really, it wasn't obvious. for the first conversation, or the first hour, you thought he was an ok joe, then after a while, it sank in, that something about "Bob" wasn't quite right. He admitted that he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1996, and that the greatest thing in his life was backpacking across the US. When he was 18. "Bob" was now fifty two. There was something else about refugees, but it was weird and never clear what exactly it was that happened. In any case, nuts or not, it was "Bob" who inadvertently fished my fat out of the fire.

This evening in the shelter, I was talking about the horror of Bellemont, and how outrageously incompetent my department was. I was talking to "Al", about the situation with the water, when "Bob" jumped in exclaiming, "You!!! You were the one!!! Oh my god, you started a firestorm in my department!!!" I had no idea what he was talking about. "You called about the water!!! You started all of the trouble!!!" Well, yeah. Sounds like me doesn't it? I still wasn't sure, so I had him run it down. It fit until the part about the call to Logistics. I never made a call to logistics, I was in N.O. Hmmmm....I was interested anyway.

I told "Bob", to have his bosses call me to talk about the firestorm and water and Bellemont. His response? "Shhhhhhhh...noooooo...you don't want anyone to know it was you! You don't want to make waves!!!" "Ok this was my first hint that "Bob" was a few tacos short of a combination plate. I said, "why not?" I was a volunteer for the Red Cross. As far as I knew, the deal didn't include a contract in blood and my first born. Or maybe it did, and "Bob was on to something. No, "Bob" was crazy. Nothing he said added up, but I might still be the troublemaker in question. God knows my department management staff thought I was. "Bob" kept on reassuring me unconvincingly, that , "It was a good firestorm. It needed to be done."

The upshot of our conversation was that the Bellemont through either me or someone else raising a ruckus, finally got in enough water for everyone. About damn time! He suggested to me that perhaps I should somehow surreptitiously meet his bosses. He had this retarded plan where he brings me by secretly through his department so that somehow everyone seeeecretly gets to know me by visual osmosis. "Bob" was a nutball. I wanted to meet his bosses, but I wanted to meet them head on. Little did I know how quickly that was going to happen, or what the surprising outcome would be.

You're gonna love this.......


xxoo

Lisa