Gardening

The best part of having been doing this work for as long as I have is that the work is very much like planting seeds. It takes a long time for things to take root in peoples lives, to grow and then to bloom. Last night we were short a worker, and the others were so busy with clients they couldn’t get dinner completely cleaned up before they had to go lead group. I stayed in the basement wiping tables and clearing away a few left behind plates and cups, thinking about the time I spent as a young waitress. Looking through the kitchen door, I noticed suds leaking from the sink and spreading across the floor, so I texted the Pastor. Everyone had gone upstairs to group except one trans girl who is so paranoid she will only sleep inside on the rare nights it is so cold that we stay open. She was sound asleep with her face on the table next to her half eaten salad. I finished cleaning, but I figured I would let her sleep until we closed, so I sat back down. At the front door a flight up, I heard Mo talking to someone and then he yelled down to me, a name I couldn’t make out. It didn’t matter, Mo knows who is eligilble to come in. “Let them in,” I yelled back. A well put together adult trans woman came down the stairs, a huge smile lighting up her face. I couldn’t place her until she spoke, and then my mind went spinning back. It had to have been ten years or more since I last saw her. She was in her late teens and very, very angry. She was furious about the pain of growing up trans in a Haitian family and about the world that didn’t see her. She washed down her rage with a lot of alcohol, a mix so volatile that sometimes I could barely reach her, and nobody else would approach her at all. She reminded me of an injured feral cat, all claws and teeth and fear. The last time I saw her, she was thin and dirty, curled up in the corner of a subway train asleep. I didn’t wake her because you can’t force help on someone, it’s like trying to plant a seed in frozen ground. You have to wait until the soil is ready. She disappeared after that, and sometimes I wondered if she was one of the ones who were gone, swallowed whole by the streets and their pain. But normally word gets back to me when one of our clients dies, an ER doc or a cop or the ME calls or the other clients tell me they heard something and can I check it out, find out if it’s true. I heard nothing. Now here she was, beaming and beautiful. “I had my breasts done,” she said happily, as if no time had passed at all, “and my castration.” Then she opened her purse and started spreading documents out in front of me, so I could see her name change, the F on her birth certificate and ID. “I’m in a shelter now, but I’m getting my apartment in three weeks, in Brooklyn!” There’s no way to avoid getting swept up in her joy as I listen to her chatter on while she eats the dinner we reheated for her. At 9pm we close, so she packed away an extra meal for later, gave me her instagram, and headed out to meet her friend, leaving me with the reminder that there is a reason despite it all.