Resonance
Nobody looked at the poster on the wall that said, “Helping Achieve Your American Dream”. “American Dream” was floating in a cloud, as if to say the sky is the limit. Unfortunately, that afternoon, none of us in that waiting room were soaring enough to reach the heavens.
The waiting room was filled with the exhausted, the estranged, the disenfranchised and the desperate. The parts of society so often referred to in passing, but never really acknowledged. We cast away these tired souls on the streets or in parking lots or see them on television and we explain to our children what is it to be homeless or poor, but not what it means.
The man next to me sniffled between bouts of coughing. Then he would growl, maybe to keep away his feelings of defeat, maybe to clear his smoky throat. He never wanted to be here, in this place reserved for the poor. He wasn’t a beggar by nature or a bum by trade. He was once unbeaten. He was once young and eager and full of aspiration. At least that’s what I envisioned for the man. He never really talked to me. He didn’t see a need to answer my glances. His two children, a boy and a girl, ran around the room playing tag. They snaked around the others waiting in the hard and uncomfortable seats. He would scold them for wild behavior then he would stare into his lap. Aspiration probably meant something different to him now.
“William Flannigan?” a woman called my name from a doorway. I followed her down a dimly lit hallway. No light fired with enough confidence to cast highlights on any face. Everything was washed out and grey. Fresh ink and black coffee permeated the walls.
“This is your caseworker Joanne”. Joanne lifted herself from her high back office chair and greeted me with a smile and a handshake. Probably the same duo she’s greeted everybody with since becoming a case worker. The handshake renews a man’s dignity and the smile lets him know he’ll be ok. She was a slender Italian woman with graying hair and a thick coat of makeup covering her once beautiful skin. Something tells me she was probably younger than she looked. But carrying other’s problems on your shoulders tends to thin a person out, wear them down. Her brittle salt and pepper hair was simply a symptom. She was used to giving pieces of herself to others.
She typed away at her computer, entering information, running algarhythms and accessing the programs that determine so many lives every day. She stared at her screen for a moment. “Do you live with anybody else?”
“No”
“Do you have a spouse?”
“No”
“Any children?”
“No”
“Have you ever received assistance before?”
“No”
She typed away again.
After several minutes of form signing and policy explanations, I left the office with a 200 dollar food budget and utility assistance. But, before I could leave Joanne said something to me I’ll never forget. “You know, if you get married or have kids you’ll get even more assistance every month”.
I walked out the doorway, past the woman who called my name earlier that afternoon. “Mr. Hawkings?” The man and his two children walked up to the woman. She led them down the hallway. His eyes met mine as we passed each other in that dim hall. In his heart he thought maybe today he would win. We stood as reflections for a moment. He gave me a nod.
“Daddy, we have to go!” his daughter tugged at his coat.
Later that week, I ate like a king. But, I felt like a pauper.