Grey Sunday

It’s an overcast medium-cold drippy day. Everything - the sky, the slightly choppy water in the Narrows, the Verrazano disappearing into the fog - is so persistently grey you wouldn’t know if I had taken a picture in black and white or color. This kind of weather makes me feel like one of those storybook princesses who pricks her finger and falls asleep for months. I work today, so I shove aside the boulder of inertia and start getting ready. Jeff B, the volunteer who works with our Very Sick client calls. He says the client’s father has asked him for a ride to the hospital. He’s a little confused about why the father is asking for a ride from Harlem instead of taking the train. “Maybe this is his way of asking for support,” I say, and this rings true for Jeff. “I told him I could get him after church,” he says. “And he said to me ‘you’re a man of God, we can pray over my son together.” Jeff is nervous about this, because he is a liberal Christian and he doesn’t know where this guy stands. He doesn’t want to be stuck in a situation where the father tries to “pray the gay away.” He decides to feel out the father’s beliefs on the way, and then just drop him off if they’re objectionable. “His mother really has issues with his father, and she might be there,” I warn Jeff, so he texts her and she tells him her daughter is there today, but she is not, so we decide to tell the father that and let him decide if that’s likely to be a problem. We open up for Sunday dinner and in comes Z., a client I haven’t seen for years. Z., a trans man, was 16 when I first met him and living in his girlfriend’s closet, coming and going through the window so her parents didn’t know. Eventually, they got caught, and then he lived for a while on the streets near the Christopher St. pier. He would not go to a shelter, because at 16, a shelter will call child welfare. But at 16, you also can’t do anything for yourself -you can’t sign up for school or get your birth certificate or sign a lease. Over the years, he wound up doing various things for money- sex work, selling loose cigarettes, odd jobs. Every now and then I would be zoning out on the subway and hear a familiar voice from the other end of the car – Z. reciting his poetry for cash. His face would brighten up when he saw me and he would pause to give me an update. He eventually wound up living in an abandoned house in the north Bronx with an assortment of dogs and a few cats he rescued, struggling to get by with no heat or running water. His years of trauma and fear deepened and settled into full blown agoraphobia, leaving him rarely able to leave that house, so I was surprised to see him at our office, now in his late 20s, the years of struggle lining his face, but his smile the same. He has a baby carriage with him, and in it a little guy, 4 months old. He’s the child of two of my other clients and Z. has just been appointed his temporary guardian. It’s dinner time. “Will you watch the baby while I eat?” he asks, parking the stroller close to my desk. The baby starts to fuss, so I give him his bottle. He looks at me with wide brown eyes soaking me in and I wish I could protect him from the pain I know lies ahead, the harshness of the shelter, the struggle of a father in jail.