She looks at her watch and realizes it's almost midnight and she is late for work. She walks quicker, past the gang bangers, taxi cabs and working girls that seem to flood the mall parking lot of this ghetto after hours. She hates putting the don't fuck with me face on, she knows it's part of working nights in the worst parts of the city, she resents having to walk so hard and look so pissed, but she knows the ropes, growing up in a ghetto you learn to look pissed even when you are thrilled. It's how you stay safe. She gets to the shelter to start the nightshift and realizes the fucking gang bangers have tagged the fucking outside of the place with territorial symbols. It's a daily battle.
She shakes her head and mutters to herself "it's getting worse". She feels guilt all the time about being on the other side of this invisible battle. She grew up with these guys, or at least their type. She has a twang of guilt as she takes pics of the recent gang branding to give to the cops. She used to be on the other side of it all, drinking 40's with the guys in the area when they were not pulling off serious crimes. She went into social work because she felt she had more street smarts than the avg. worker and could speak better for people living ghettos. She does have more street smarts and she knows all the recent gang brandings are not a good thing at all.. It means either word got around this is a battered women's shelter, therefore full of women or the building just seems like an easy target. She hopes it's the latter.
She goes in, makes a pot of coffee and pulls out all of last years files. Hundreds of women, all races, classes and religion. All their faces staring at her from Polaroid pictures. So many bruises, burns, cuts and unspeakable horrors. Some names she will remember until she dies, others are just faces in the pile, the children break her heart every time they ask her why daddy did that? She never answers them... she just hugs them and tells them it's not their fault. Abuse, AIDS, addiction, sexual abuse of children, self hate, cutting, women selling their genitals for 5 dollars a pop, twelve year old girls trying to get pregnant just so someone will love them, girls lost to gangs, sometimes it just seems like too fucking much.
In her life outside these walls she makes inappropriate jokes about terrible things and gives vague or offensive answers about her job. People, usually women, look at her strange when these things roll out of her mouth. They purse their lips and tsk at her off colour and nasty remarks.. most of these people think they can fathom the horror, and they can't.. everyday is not a battle for her. But her pain is somewhat private, and she finds it offensive when strangers pry for gory details of the frontline and for stories of abused women;s pain. She feels these strangers are usually let down by her, she does not give the saintly answers they want. Fucking CNN culture where all pain is a freakshow for the general public.
It's a manic job, but for every 100 moments of sadness there is the most beautiful light. The moment when that angry ex gang banger teen laughs at the first joke after an icy first month, the woman who for the first time in her life, at 45 years of age is "allowed" to pick out her first dress, the toddler that's first word was her name, The time she asked a woman to tell her what she saw in the mirror and when the client said "my husband's property" she grabbed the mirror and threw it on the floor and her client just hugged her. The group therapy classes that end with everyone laughing and crying together, that time a client told her "you give me hope that happiness is possible", The time she started a food fight in the shelter kitchen, the time all the residents remembered her birthday, when all her co workers had forgotten it. The way the perseverance of the human spirit amazes her on a daily basis.
Her job is not what defines her, but it does shape her. She used to feel like she was doing it to make up for bad karma, now she knows she does it because she can, she is great at it and is helping women lead lives free of violence.
