Who Is My Shelter? (15 page)

I snorted. “Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Her brother's been stringing her along with empty promises for months. Cordelia's so sweet. They should be falling all over themselves to make room for her.”

“So who else? Celia Jones has her granddaughter with her. How old is Keisha?”

“Ten. I think those two—Celia and Cordelia—would make perfect housemates. Cordelia's kids already relate to Celia like a surrogate grandmother.”

“But if Cordelia's not a candidate, next on the list would be . . .”

I grimaced. “Shawanda Dixon. The two babies are hers— Dessa and Bam-Bam. But I don't know, Mabel. She's a tough cookie. And the kids have no discipline.”

“Maybe an older woman like Celia is just what she needs.”

“
Humph
. What she
needs
is an apartment by herself.”

Mabel shrugged. “So assign her to 2A by herself. The board decided three should be the minimum number for a three-bedroom with subsidized rent, so she'd fall within the guidelines.”

I fell silent, my thoughts tumbling. I was hoping for a few more
likable
residents at the House of Hope before we took on a hard case like Shawanda. “I'm going to ask Cordelia and Celia first,” I said stubbornly. “That would give us a more stable quorum in the building before adding Shawanda to the mix.”

Mabel nodded slowly. “All right. But if Cordelia takes herself off the list, you'll need to find someone else to share the apartment since it'd just be Celia and her granddaughter in a three-bedroom.”

I was going to hope for the best. “Who else should go on the list? Any moms like me, who need second-stage housing so they can get their kids back?”

“Well, there's Sunny Davis. She's got four kids farmed out to various relatives. Court won't give her custody until she has a place to live.”

I could hardly wait to ask Celia and Cordelia if they wanted to apply for the vacant apartment at the House of Hope. Celia's dark eyes filled with tears when I invited the middle-aged grandmother to my office and told her we'd have a vacancy at the House of Hope by the first of November.

“Oh, Gabby, honey. These old bones would be grateful to sleep in my own bed instead of a bottom bunk with Keisha overhead! That girl flops more'n a fish in the bottom of a rowboat.”

“Old bones, my foot,” I teased. “You can't be a day over fifty.” I was guessing. Celia's acorn-brown face was smooth and unlined, though her close-cropped nappy hair was salt-and-pepper already. But I realized I knew very little about Celia's story—only that her daughter was strung out on drugs, leaving Celia to raise her granddaughter. And something about losing her apartment when her husband died and she could no longer afford the rent.

“Close. I'm fifty-two. But feels like I've lived double that. Lord have mercy, the things I've seen, mm-hm, help us!” She waved a thin hand in the air, and for a minute I thought she was going to “have church” right then and there. But she regained her composure and asked, “What do I have to do?”

I explained the application process the city required and left her in my office to fill out the forms while I went hunting for Cordelia.

“Haven't seen her,” Angela Kwon informed me at the reception desk. She ran a finger down the sign-out page. “But she hasn't signed out, so she should be around. Oh! This message came for you awhile ago, but you didn't answer your office phone. Somebody from Wisconsin wanting to know if you still want the retreat house the weekend of the twenty-eighth. Guess they've got another request for the same dates.”

I snatched the note. “Yikes. Yes, we want it!” I scurried back to my office to return the call. Finding Cordelia would have to wait.

chapter 14

“The good news,” I told Mabel Turner the next day, “is that we've got that retreat house in Wisconsin for the last weekend in October. Are you sure you don't want to come?”

She eyed me with the same
“Are you kidding?”
look Estelle had given me. “And the bad news is—?”

I sighed. “Cordelia Soto says she and her kids are moving in with her cousin around the first of November. At least that's the plan.”

“But that's good news, Gabby. They'll be with family. Cordelia's been here over three months. She lost her job, then her apartment, and hasn't been able to find another job. We're not set up for long-term shelter, as you well know.”

“I know.” I made a face. “I'm being selfish. The bad news is, that puts Shawanda and her kids next on the list for the House of Hope.”

The Manna House director made a tent with her fingers, letting my words hang in the air a few moments. I could feel a lecture coming.

“Gabby. You know as well as I do a lot of different women come through that front door. Some are cooperative and likable, some need a whole lot of help, and some, I admit, are a pain in the you-know-what. But every woman has God-given potential within her, some just need more help than others to develop that potential. Including Shawanda. She's prickly—but she's managed to not get kicked out of the shelter. The important thing is to be clear about the rules and expectations.”

I suddenly had a brilliant idea. “We made a list of house rules last week. But that was basically for the current tenants. Maybe you could come to our next house meeting and help us create an appropriate list for the House of Hope.”

Mabel turned to her computer and called up her calendar. “Which is . . . ?”

“Tonight. We're changing to Wednesday next week though.”

“Tonight! I'm not sure I can on such short notice. Unless— could I bring Jermaine with me? Let him hang out with Paul for an hour?”

“I'm sure Paul would love it.”
P.J. might be another story
. It was one thing to include Mabel's nephew in a large group, like the house blessing, where P.J. could ignore him. Another to leave the three boys alone together, especially since P.J. had been less than friendly to the kid he'd labeled a sissy. Even though P.J. and Jermaine were both freshmen at Lane Tech, it was Paul and Jermaine who had developed a friendship around their love for creating music.

But having Mabel come to our house meeting would be a big help. I couldn't let P.J.'s attitude toward Jermaine dictate what happened. And he'd been warned.

“Thanks, Mabel. Guess I better talk to Celia, see if she's willing to share an apartment with Shawanda.” Though what we were going to do if she didn't want to, I had no idea. And I still had to double-check with Josh. “See you at eight thirty, okay?”

I brought Paul's keyboard home from the shelter, where he'd been keeping it so he could practice after school, figuring there was a good chance he and Jermaine would want to do music. But P.J. threw a fit. “Don't tell me I'm gonna have to listen to the Dorky Duo play their stupid music for a whole hour! How am I s'posed to get my homework done with that racket?”

“You can hole up in my bedroom in the back, and I'll tell them to keep the volume down. Plug yourself into your iPod. Besides, it's only an hour, P.J.”

“Why does Ms. Turner have to bring him anyway? You let me stay home by myself, and he's the same age I am.” P.J. snorted. “The big baby.”

I'd wondered the same thing, but Mabel was protective of her nephew, who'd once tried to commit suicide because of all the torment he got from other kids. If bringing him with her made her feel better, I wasn't going to question it.

Mabel and Jermaine were a few minutes late that evening, so I waited till they arrived, left the boys with popcorn and soft drinks at opposite ends of the apartment, and hustled up to the third floor after Mabel. Edesa was still trying to put Gracie to sleep and Josh was on the phone
—“My grandparents
,” he mouthed to us when he opened the door, phone cradled between shoulder and ear—so we started without them. Tanya said things had been a lot quieter since Zia Bassi had kicked her boyfriend out. I reported that Celia Jones had applied for that apartment when Zia moved, and she and her granddaughter would probably be sharing it with Shawanda Dixon and her two kids.

“Celia and Shawanda!” Precious scowled. “Thought maybe Tanya or me could move in there. Each havin' our own apartment, like you said at first, 'fore the Baby Baxters moved in.”

I saw Mabel hide a smile at the tag Precious had bestowed on the younger Baxters before she said, “I'm sure that would be nice. Except the board drew up some guidelines for residence in the House of Hope and determined at least three persons need to occupy a three-bedroom since we're asking the city for subsidized rent.”

“Well then. Me an' Sabrina
gonna
be three people when she drop that baby.” Precious was working up quite a snit.

Tanya looked hurt. “I thought you an' me decided we liked the idea of sharin' an apartment. Good for Sabrina to have the baby in her room an' all that. Ain't you happy with how things been goin'?”

“Yeah, yeah, it's not that.” Precious scowled again as Josh and Edesa joined us in the front room, and kept scowling as we brought the young couple up to speed. But when we mentioned Shawanda as a probable resident, she popped in again. “Okay,
that's
what stickin' me in the butt. That Shawanda—she 'bout as easy to get along with as one o' them pit bulls. Miss Celia and Keisha? They be fine. But Bam-Bam an' Dessa gonna be runnin' they itty-bitty legs off over our heads an' Shawanda ain't gonna do a thang. Can't tell her
nothin
' 'bout carin' for them kids or she up in your face havin' a screamin' fit.”

“Which is why it's important to have rules for living here at the House of Hope,” Mabel said. “This isn't a personality contest, but we
can
have clear expectations for cooperation and reasonable behavior. So let's talk. Some of the best rules come from the residents themselves. Gabby, you said you'd already come up with some basic rules last week. Let's start there and fill them out . . . do you want to take notes?”

I was so grateful Mabel had come to the house meeting. She had much more experience than I had setting rules and limits for the residents at Manna House—and yet she had a heart of compassion for even difficult cases like Shawanda. And how often had she been willing to bend those rules for me during my sojourn as a resident at Manna House? She'd treated me like a person, not just another homeless blight on society. And it was obvious she wanted us to treat Shawanda that way too.

By the end of the hour, we had a decent list of rules and expectations, which I planned to type up and have in hand when I talked to Shawanda tomorrow. “But what we gonna do when somebody breaks one o' them rules?” Tanya wanted to know. She might just as well have said “Shawanda” as “somebody.”

Josh nodded. “Right. We still need to talk about the process we follow when someone has a complaint or something happens we didn't anticipate.”

Edesa giggled. “
‘Process
.' That's such a white-guy word, Josh.”

He made a face. “So? I am a white guy, if you haven't noticed.”

The rest of us cracked up. Even got a smile from Mabel. “Next time,” she said. “I'll be glad to come the next few weeks until you all feel the House of Hope is on solid ground. Then maybe I could meet with you all on a monthly basis.” Heads were nodding all around. “Edesa, why don't you wrap up this discussion with a prayer for God's wisdom and guidance? We don't want to be like that foolish man in the Bible who built his house on loose sand. There's only one foundation that will sustain the House of Hope—and that's Christ the Solid Rock.”

For some reason, Mabel's comment at the meeting burrowed into my mind and dug up the old gospel hymn we used to sing at Minot Evangelical Church when I was growing up:
On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand .
. . The song played around in my head all night, even though the only words I could actually remember were in the refrain. I'd have to look it up in a hymnal.

I was curious. Was that old hymn the inspiration for the more recent gospel song that had sustained me again and again the past few months? The CD was in my car, so on the way to work the next morning I punched the Play button and the familiar words filled the car.

Where do I go . . . when the storms of life are raging?
Who do I talk to . . . when nobody wants to listen?
Who do I lean on . . . when there's no foundation stable?

And then the “answer” boomed out at me:

I go to the Rock—I know that He's able, I go to the Rock!

By this time, I was bouncing in my seat and thumping the steering wheel as I sang along with the gospel beat.

I go to the Rock of my salvation!
Go to the Stone that the builders rejected!
Run to the Mountain and the Mountain stands by me-e-e!