A chapter from "The Peninsula," a book about Occupy Seattle
by Michael Dare
They took her kids. Martha didn't deserve that, she really didn't. It wasn't her fault her shithead husband had decided to solve America's mortgage crisis by deserting his wife and children. They locked her out of the house, gave her ten minutes to get her stuff that stretched into half an hour, piled in the front yard, forget the good furniture. She fit as much as she could into the car, that's what she thought, it was all in the car, talking to herself, if they hadn't taken the car she'd still have her kids, what were their names?, walking up third from the Seattle courthouse where she had entered with her kids but left without them, their names, her kids, her life, her only excuse for existence, why couldn't she remember their names? One of them at least, at this point,must need their diaper changed, because she was their mother and they came first, that much was clear from the start, whatever her needs were, they were subservient to her kids, she was their servant, their go-to-guy for everything, they were too small, they couldn't eat, bathe, or get dressed without her help and now she had no one to help, not a soul, not even herself because she wasn't there, not at all, a short-circuited automaton just walking down the street, oblivious to everything, the corners, the lights, the other pedestrians who somehow knew to get out of her way, talking to herself, a conversation the world at large knew it was best to steer clear of.
Left foot, right foot, la de dah, walking, down a sidewalk in downtown Seattle, nowhere to go in the active task of forgetting where she's been, she comes across a bunch of tents in the park, a drum circle, some sort of meeting, people talking, making signs, demonstrating, marching back and forth, having fun, a party, a masquerade ball, people in masks and capes, like the funway at a radical political carnival, backpacks and bikes, people eating, people sleeping, people arguing, people kissing, what fairyland was this, what microcosm of all society had she stumbled into? Surely someone here could use her help.
George was pre-op and didn't give a damn if everyone knew. His days of raging queenhood were soon to be over and what was wrong with wearing his pink tutu to celebrate. He flitted about the campsite like Tinkerbell on steroids, no amount of female clothing could hide his masculine physique or his mescaline mind. What better place than Occupy to trip your brains out.
Today's magic word was rude. "How rude" George declared to the random guy who touched a donut but picked up another. Everyone was so rude these days. Maybe when he was a real woman they'd show him some respect. Meanwhile, working the food booth suited him fine.
"Hi, can I help?" He whipped around to see a disheveled housewife from hell who said "Really, just give me something to do and I'll do it." He'd seen rude before but this was beyond the pale. Who asked HER if he needed her help? Nobody.
"How rude" he said.
Martha tried to figure out how she was being rude. Nobody had ever said that to her. She wasn't being rude, she was being helpful, so that's what she said, "I only want to help."
George looked at her with new found disgust and self-loathing. If this was what it meant to be a woman, he wanted no part of it. He wanted the glamorous life, to be fabulous, which he was, fabulous, not like the star of "Housewives of Skid Row" standing in front of him. Then again, the garbage needed taking out. "You can take out the garbage" he said as a flirtatious tease.
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Somebody needed her, finally, and she was overwhelmed with a sense of well being and connection with the universe, much like the mushroom euphoria of George who was mysteriously giggling up a storm when Martha took off.
In his domain, the food tent, nothing escaped his notice. There is a fine line between a line and people just milling around, he thought. If you cut in front of a line, well, you're just being rude, but if you cut in front of a bunch of people just milling around, like that misshapen gorilla just did, what did that make you?
George was puzzling this through when suddenly "Hi, can I help?" interrupted his reverie.
OMG, here she was again. How much time has passed? He was sure he had gotten rid of her, but he had to admit the garbage was gone, not knowing she hadn't found a suitable trash bin but had just left the plastic bags full of pizza containers and coffee cups on the sidewalk around the corner. From his perspective, she had done a fine job, even though her way of creeping up on him was just, well, rude.
"Thank you, I guess you could clean up a bit," he said and she was on it. Where did those Handi-Wipes and Mr. Clean come from? Soon the whole tent was cleaner than Dubya's conscience.
Someone donated a giant bag of salad, dressing, paper plates and forks. George had on his dainty sanitary gloves with the lace frills, putting together salads by the handful, when the last speck of dirt was wiped from the table and Martha rudely exclaimed "What now?"
George started contemplating precisely what he wanted Martha to do now. Luckily, someone showed up with a stack of pizzas before something extraordinarily rude came out of his mouth. "Why don't you be a dear and distribute these at the other side of the park," he said. Martha took off with the boxes.
The salad depleted, the gloves removed, the Purell squirted into baby pink palms, George barely had a chance to rest his weary buns on the director's chair when there she was and he gave a little shriek. "OMG, what are you doing here?" Couldn't she take a hint? When someone sends you to the other side of the park to do something, you're supposed to take as long as possible getting back, but here she was, Raggedy Ann starring in the Mary Tyler Moore Show, perky, buoyant, out of her mind.
I must get rid of this woman, thought George. She is a burr in the saddle of my girlish enthusiasm.
"Have you been to City Hall?" he said.
"No, what's at City Hall?" said the marionette posing as a functional human being.
"There's another Occupy site at City Hall. I'm SURE they could use your help."
"Really? Because I want to help, I really do."
"I can see that, so you go, girl, get yourself to City Hall."
"Where is it?"
"Right down that way," he said, pointing down Fourth. "You can't miss it. It's on the same side of the street and it's an Occupy camp just like this one. They'll find something for you to do. Just follow that guy."
Propeller Man is a strong, tall, Liam Neeson type, long beard, always looking down, never talking to anyone, just walking around in circles with his suitcase on wheels and the pull-out handle, twirling occasionally, breaking into dance, not a real dance, not a dance that betrays any classical training, he isn't a Broadway chorus boy gone to seed (note to self: Write "Broadway Chorus Boy Gone to Seed".), it could only be called a dance because it follows a certain pattern, part mime, he'll surf a wave then surf it again, spin around with his arms out, reach for the sky, Feiffer's ballerina, an ode to a fucked up Grecian urn, another circle, posing then back again then gone, just walking, no longer propeller man, dour man, pissed off about something you don't want to know.
"Follow him?" said Martha.
"Yep, he's going to City Hall."
EXT. CITY HALL OCCUPY CAMPSITE - NIGHT
Other than sirens, traffic, snoring, not a sound. The plaza is full, everyone who has a tent is tucked into it, some in sleeping bags filling the empty spaces between the tents.
Hank appears to be asleep, sitting in a chair under the 10X12, leaning back, feet up on another chair, eyes closed, covered in blankets and sleeping bags and mittens, but secretly alert to every sound, he is, in fact, on duty, as someone must be every second.
"Hi, can I help?"
He opens his eyes. Where did this housewife come from? Who is that guy spinning around talking to himself who looks like Liam Neeson, and not the natty Liam Neeson from Schindler's List but more like one of the Warsaw Jews headed to the Pogrom, heavy jacket, wool pants, furry hat, not quite talking to himself but obviously deeply concerned about something.
"What?" is all Hank manages to say.
"I'm here to help. That pretty girl at Westlake sent me here because she said you needed help."
Hank looks at his watch. 4:30? Fuck. Everyone's due another 90 minutes of peace. "There's really nothing that needs to be done right now," he said.
"Well what's the next thing that needs to be done?"
Hank looks around. Everyone's asleep. "Well, the next thing is to wake everyone up but" before he can finish his sentence, before he can say "not till 6" or "in an hour and half," Martha is off waking everyone up.
WTH, Hank jumps from his seat, throws the blankets to the ground and chases after Martha, who is going up to each tent, shaking it, and saying, no, shouting, "Everyone up, time to get up."
And this is where I enter the picture. Everything you have read up to this point is conjecture based upon pieces of the story I was able to piece together later. But as of now, this very moment when I am woken up, I am actually there. I guarantee that some version of what I just wrote happened, but I wasn't there so I had to fill in the cracks. The rest of this story is in fact, fact.
I am asleep in my tent. At 6AM, it will be my job to wake everyone up, so why is someone waking me up? What time is it? I scramble for my watch which does not glow so I stumble for a flashlight. 4:30!? I must jump out of my tent to shut up the demon who just woke me up but fear that the sight of my near naked body might accomplish the opposite. I must get dressed. Much like Paris Hilton, I do not sleep in the same clothes I wear during the day. A certain amount of time must be devoted to getting myself together, during which time whoever was outside shouting "Wake up" to the world had actually succeeded in waking everyone up, damn my hygiene, if I'd only slept in my jeans, I might have prevented who knows how many sleeping souls from a rude awakening.
Finally, I emerge from my tent and try to keep my voice down while shouting at the what?, housewife?, cloth coat, rubber gloves, born to clean tattooed on her forehead. (I will try my hardest not to allow any fiction from the first half to permeate the second half - without good reason.)
"What the fuck are you doing?" I'm sure I must have said.
"He said I should wake everyone up," said the housewife.
Hank looks at me and says "No I didn't," trying to puzzle it out, how had things gone so terribly terribly wrong?
"Yes you did, you liar," she huffs at Hank. "You said it was the next thing to do."
"What?" I say to Hank. "Did you say that?"
"Sort of, but..." Poor Hank is perplexed. Both he and I do not know what is going on. We only know we want it to stop. I take control.
"Look, it's 4:30 in the morning. We don't have to be up till 6," I say to Cinderella, but it's too late, people are already up, making coffee, some in simple sleeping bags are packed and gone, Christ, wandering the streets of downtown Seattle at 4:30, all because of this lunatic.
Having not already read the beginning of this story, I do not know what is going on, so I do what I always do, separate the parties and actually listen to what they have to say.
But first I had to do what I never do, just what Obama had to do upon entering office, go around apologizing to everybody for someone else's mistakes. I go to each tent and explain that "you've actually got until 7 so we were going to wake you up at 6 so you'd have an hour but someone went berserk and woke you up at 4:30 so you've actually got another 2 1/2 hours." Whew! This was not how I planned on starting my day. I was thinking something more along the lines of a bagel and coffee, not a whole series of "Fuck you"s from inside tents of gin-soaked teenagers tweeting to their friends about the asshole outside their tent.
So Hank tells me his tale. He also hadn't read the beginning of this story so his tale makes no sense. All he knew was this lady showed up and he either did or did not tell her to wake everyone up, poor Hank, still trying to puzzle it through, to remember the conversation verbatim, shaking his head in a perpetual mask of confusion.
We turn around and notice Martha following in my footsteps, going up to each tent and apologizing for having woken them up before.
"Wait here, make coffee for people already up," I say to Henry, then dash after whoever that is to shut her up.
Turns out to be an easy thing to do. She is the woman who only wants to help, so all I have to say is "Would you help me over here, please?" and she follows me to a corner of the plaza where we could have some privacy and I could be a willing ear.
Her name is Martha and at some point she asks me if I could help get her kids back and I have to give this serious thought. "Yes" was out of the question. Though I very well might help, depending upon the circumstances, you do not look a crazy person in the eye and tell them you will help them anywhere but a loony bin.
The more I listen, I understand she has undergone some sort of psychological trauma, the twitches, the vacant pleading eyes, the inability to concentrate, the firm and steady demand to do something for you.
I am not qualified to diagnose anyone this far gone, and I don't want to give her false hope. She's so out there I'm not sure anything she tells me is true. In any case, as long as she is occupying the plaza, she is on my watch and my responsibility.
You know that ACORN social worker who was caught on tape offering assistance to a caricature of a prostitute and pimp who were seated before her seeking help? The one that was deliberately re-edited to make it look like taxpayer money was being spent to set up whore houses? The one that a festering boil on the anus of humanity named Andrew Breitbart (RIH) used to actually bring down ACORN, a wonderful agency that has helped millions of people?
I now realize of COURSE the social worker offered to help.
Let's say you're working at a social agency whose directive is to help people who need it.
Someone comes into your office who is clearly deranged and says "I want to build a casino on the moon. Can you help me?"
When you say yes, because that's your job, to help people, when you look them in the eye and say "Yes, I can help you," you are NOT saying you are going to help them build a casino on the moon, you are saying you are going to figure out how to get them the psychiatric help they clearly need.
And if they run out the door at that moment and shout to the world "This government agency is helping me build a casino on the moon," and the footage of the bewildered social worker is used to bring down the agency she works for, there's nothing to call that but hard core Republican and the scourge of humanity.
Who knew I'd be faced with a similar problem. When I say to her "I can help you," she may think I mean I can help her get her kids back, but what I really mean is I can help her deal with it. To not let it destroy her life like it destroyed mine. How can I look at this woman and not see myself 20 years ago when my own daughters were taken away? Look at me, I want to say, I survived, and besides, however much you may miss them now when they're cute, it may not be an even trade with the misery they may cause you when they grow up. It may be GOOD they're out of your life.
All this I do not tell her.
"What do you need? Whatever you need. I'm good at that. I can find things," almost, but not quite, Lenny in Of Mice and Men, saying how much he likes rabbits. I ask her if she has a tent or sleeping bag but no, they just left her her, no telling who "they" are. I'd get her a sleeping bag and tent tonight if she was still around, but right now? "You want a library? I can get you a library. How about carpeting? I know where there's lots of carpeting."
I picture the plaza carpeted. No. "You know what we could use?"
"What, tell me what?"
"We need to be able to post things, like schedules of meetings and GAs, a place where people can leave messages."
"Yeah?"
"We need a bulletin board" and she's off, out of the plaza and into the city.
Cool. Either we end up with a bulletin board or we never see her again. Either would be fine with me. There is only so much of other people's problems I can absorb. I might be a nice person but do not ask me to commit random acts of first aid or psychiatry upon any wounded individual. The guy with the gash on his leg will not appreciated it when I throw up on him, and the crazy person will not appreciate showing up as a crazy person in one of my short stories.
City Hall security show up to wake everyone at 6 only to find most of us are already up and hot chai is available. They continue to do their jobs for the next hour till 6:50 and everything is clear. I go back to the food tent to relax when someone runs up to me and says "You've got to come, quick."
I run out to the plaza to discover a pile of heavy 10X12 wooden pallets you see at the back of grocery stores, a bunch of flattened corrugated boxes, and Martha. "I got some nails here," she says. "I figure you can find something to use as a hammer and you can nail these boxes to those pallets and here," she fumbles in her apron, "I got toothpicks to use as thumbtacks," and she looks at me like a golden retriever who brought back a stick, waiting for me to pet her and scratch her ears and say "Good girl."
I look at my watch. I look around. The guards standing by ready to bust us for violating the permit, SNAP, just like that, we have nowhere to stay tonight. This seems a splendid opportunity to raise my voice.
"We've got two minutes to get this crap out of here!"
I do not know where it goes. I have a bad back and do not participate in the heavy lifting. I simply hold my ground, counting down the seconds, the guards on their walkie-talkies gabbing to someone above, the mayor?, the police chief?, who knows.
There is a round of applause all around as it becomes clear we have survived another day. We retreat to the tent as the hoses come out.
We look at her. At this point, she is just another in a long line of people at the bottom, propeller man, flag men 1&2, bike guy, Wolfhound, Gizmo, Vets #1&2, anarchist #47, dozens of street freaks with hundreds of maladies, so a woman flittering about the camp like Blanche Dubois going "Where are my babies?" is just par for the course.
I get on with my day, read the mayor's paper, hang out on his balcony, have fun with his secretary, and plant myself in the lobby of City Hall to Facebook and Twitter and Blog myself into a stupor right there in front of everybody. I have to do this to justify our continued occupation by exhibiting free speech. I figure muttering "fuck you" under my breath in public doesn't count, so I must commit actual free speech online every day from the hallowed lobby of City Hall. I believe on the day in question, I attended a meeting of the Sanitation Department in the Bertha Knight Landis Room where the hors d'oeuvres were delicious.
The next day is a semi-repeat. At 6 :55, the whole plaza is clear except for Mademoiselle who sits herself down in a chair in the middle of the plaza and refuses to move without her coat. It is cold. She needs it and won't budge until someone brings it to her.
I do not want to see her forcibly removed by the guards. I also do not want to dive into the three foot high pile of soaking occupy detritus that accumulates every day. I do not even know what her coat looks like and she won't tell me.
"Has anyone seen this woman's coat?" I yell.
"No, but I found her tiara and slippers," someone yells back.
Good one but sarcasm doesn't work with crazy. She believes it. "Bring them to me," she says.
I look around and find a coat. I do not know if it is hers. I might have said "your majesty" while handing it to her but I do not remember.
We have a little City Hall General Assembly and there is a consensus she has to go. Every time she helps it is a disaster and she can't stop helping. It is up to me.
Simple rule. If you want to get rid of somebody, the easiest way is not to throw them out but find them somewhere else to go.
There are few places that will take in absolutely anybody from the street, and the ones that do don't advertise or they would get inundated. So I ask around. One place sends me to another which sends me to another. Finally, I end up in a building with nothing on the ground floor and no sign whatsoever. You have to know to go in a certain door and walk around back to the stairs hidden from the street. Once up on the second floor, it is a shadow world, like the lobby of a low rent hotel, people with all their belongings sitting around in folding chairs reading newspapers and drinking coffee. A check-in desk behind glass in a wall with a door and a buzzer to let you in.
I step up and tell the guy at the desk my dilemma. He stops me and says "The woman you're describing has probably been here before. We get a lot of repeats."
I tell him her name and he says it doesn't sound familiar. "Here's how it works. We open at X and close at Y and we fill up pretty fast. No one needs a reference, just show up. You're early enough that we've got about 8 beds left. I'd say you get her here in the next 15 minutes and I can guarantee access to the common room, a bed, some food, and some counseling."
Perfect. This is exactly what she needs. I scramble outside and run to City Hall which is just a block up the hill on James.
There she is, helping. I prepare my approach. I can not just ask her to follow me.
"Martha, I need your help," I say.
Her eyes perk up. Someone needed her. "What?" she says.
"I need you to grab your things and come with me, I want to show you something."
She is suspicious. This isn't going to be easy. She has already grown roots. City Hall is home and her only connection to reality. "Where?"
"It's right down the block, see, that building right there, but you don't want to leave your stuff. We've got to get there fast so come on."
She gathers everything she calls her own and follows me down the sidewalk. Along the way I tell her I found her a place to stay, in a bed, with privacy, that she didn't have to bum a tent.
This sounds good to her but she is incredulous. "You did this for me?" she says.
"Yeah, you've got to meet this guy there. You'll see. He's cool. It's right over here."
I lead her to the nondescript building that does NOT look like a homeless shelter, through the empty lobby, and to the elevator because she has bags and bags.
Exiting the elevator, I nod to the guy behind the desk and indicate towards Martha. He shrugs like he's never seen her before. I knew it. She is not a woman wise in any way to the world of the street. She is more like a half-drowned bewildered kitten/alien washed ashore in a foreign land by a tsunami of unimaginable pain.
She steps to the window, speaks to the gentleman, then comes back and looks at me.
"You did this for me?"
"Well, yeah."
"Thank you."
Burnt in my skull. The most sincere and heartfelt thank you I have ever received in my life. A heartbreak. A monument. A shrine.
"You think they can help me get my kids back?"
I'm sure I said something reassuring. I gave her a hug and got out of there before I remembered, a broken wreck of a human without a home, similarly separated from the children I love, I've had time to heal, 20 years, but I know EXACTLY what she is going through and I wonder if I looked half as pathetic to other people when my misery was still fresh and not scabbed over with layers of emotional scar tissue ripped open again because all it takes is to be reminded, shit, sometimes being sympathetic, much less empathetic, is a real bitch and my breath starts coming fast and it all comes back, every once in a while, it seems, I must shed tears for my children, walking down the goddam street, tears for just how fucked up the world is and how impossibly helpless we are against random elements, what's the point?, it's all futile, walking, down a sidewalk in downtown Seattle, clearly just another crazy person who can't keep their emotions under control, I look at them, the others, what must they think of me, I'm not like this, goddam it, there is a difference between Martha and me but for the moment I haven't the slightest idea what that could be.
