We Belong to Each Other

We Belong to Each Other: 15 April 2021

As I write this I’m about 17 hours in to what I hope is a 24 hour stomach virus. It was a rough night, and today I’m just so weak. I get sick very seldom, which makes it awful when it happens. It feels like a betrayal!  And it always reminds me of how much admiration I have for people who live with chronic pain.

Emma came down to my basement sickbay after her morning classes. She was checking on me, and offered to read to me. Not only that, she offered to read the chapter book I’ve been wanting her to read, not the Dog Man books she currently prefers. She ran back upstairs—which seems superhuman just now—to get her tablet so she could play soothing music. And she brought me a stuffed penguin, because it helps to hold something fuzzy when you feel bad. It did help. It was a sweet hour we spent together, reading and talking and petting our dog, who has looked at me all day with anxious eyes.

When she left, I drifted into a hazy doze and woke thinking about a young woman I saw last week in Asheville.

I’d taken an exit off the highway to secure a tarp threatening to fly out of my truck bed, and I pulled into a gas station parking lot.  As I was getting back into the truck my attention was drawn to the parking lot of the Quality Inn across the busy, four-lane street.  I saw a person doubled over, slinging his/her upper body side to side and gibbering to him/herself. S/he staggered from the back of the parking lot toward the street, a group of several people just watching. No one seemed to be trying to intervene. I said, “No no no no no!, please don’t cross the street please don’t try to cross” when she started across. It was grace or blind luck or both that she made it across without being hit.

At this point I could tell it was a young woman because she wasn’t wearing anything under her unzipped hoody. She weaved/swayed/jolted into another truck, around another car, and finally stumbled into the convenience store of the filling station. That’s when I called 9-1-1. I felt impotent—I didn’t know the name of the street, or what was wrong with the woman, or how to ask for help, but I stuttered through the call and was assured that others had already called and police were on their way.  I hung up and thought, “wait, when are they going to show up? And what happens then? And what happens until then?”

I moved the truck over by the convenience store and waited. I tried praying, trusting that God was providing and hearing the right words—since I didn’t know what or how to pray for this situation. I had no idea how I could help, but I desperately wanted this young woman to receive some help that I didn’t know how to offer. When words fail me, as they so often do, I fall back on my Quaker practice and hold the whole situation in the Light. I trusted that God was there with us already, and was holding us in the Light, too. Still, it’s awful to feel so incompetent.  Were the police really coming?

A few minutes later the woman caromed out of the store, staggered in front of my truck and went weaving over behind a couple of dumpsters. I fervently wanted her just to sit down, maybe doze, and stop endangering her head with the wild swinging. But she didn’t stop, or she got back up, because I heard her moving down the bank behind the convenience store.

I got out of the truck at this point. The hill is a steep drop filled with tall weeds and saplings, culminating in a slow river below. I really didn’t want her to drown. I really wished I was brave enough to speak to her. I really wished the police would show up. I really wished I knew what would happen when/if they took her somewhere. Where would they take her?

This, I thought, is exactly the problem that ‘defund the police’ as a slogan distorts. Defund the police doesn’t mean we don’t need or want police in our cities. But it does mean that it’s possible to reallocate funds so that in this emergency I could have called the mental health/addiction 9-1-1. This woman didn’t need to be arrested. She needed trained mental health professionals and access to rehabilitation. And the police need to be freed up to tackle crime. I was thinking this while following the movement of the tall weeds. She seemed to have stopped, fallen?, about halfway down the bank. I couldn’t see her.

To the left was another motel, and a man walking his dog came over to the chain link fence separating the properties to investigate. I think he was also recording her with his cell phone. Benign concern or something worse? What was she doing down there? He turned to someone I couldn’t see and said someone should call 9-1-1. I called down that I had already and was waiting for the police. He asked whether she was my daughter. My voice shook when I said no, because a scary future image of my 8-year-old flashed before my eyes. (“no no no, please no”)

The police came in two vehicles. I saw them pull in and I waved them over to this back corner. One male officer, two female. I pointed out where the woman was and didn’t envy them the trip down the steep weedy bank. Should I be filming this? Should I offer to help…somehow? I felt completely out of my depth.  The store manager and a cashier came out. He was recording, which I wasn’t sure about until he said it was store protocol whenever there were incidents on the property not covered with security cameras. I thought that’s probably a good policy to protect all parties involved, including victims.

The officers cuffed her hands behind her back, but mostly to control the erratic body movements as they helped her/carried her/dragged her up the bank. They were firm and gentle with her. No quick movements, no condensation. It was clearly a struggle. The manager stopped recording and helped get her up the last 30 feet of embankment.  The two female officers sat her on the ground near a police vehicle, one behind her to keep her from jerking backwards and smashing her head. They’d zipped up her hoody. She babbled and sang without making sense, couldn’t answer questions. She looked so young. Dark eye-makeup smudged on clear, pale skin. Chuck Taylor’s and khaki cargo pants. Thick black and brown crochet locks to her chin. White girl trying hard for black girl style. Grass stains and seed pods ruining the look. Thrashing then quiet then thrashing again. I was superfluous. And I couldn’t bare to leave.

After about 10 minutes the officers gently got her to her feet and put her in the backseat of the vehicle. The manager thanked the officers and offered them bottled drinks. They politely declined. I told them about the other folks in the hotel parking lot across the street. It was conspicuously empty now. They thanked me but didn’t seem at all inclined to go over there. I thanked them, and they accepted that readily, almost cheerfully. They seemed, deservedly, proud of their efforts. I shuffled around a few more seconds, checked the tarp in the truck bed one last time, left the scene.

What disturbs me still, in addition to the particularity of this anecdote, is knowing that similar drug-dangerous occasions are happening all day every day. I told my children the story, so they could feel and imagine the scariness, the danger. They have so many decisions ahead of them, none of which is easier with the inevitable peer pressure. It makes me all the more grateful and willing to savor the sweet unscripted encounters that I have with them.

The one thing I wish I’d done differently was in response to the man who asked me whether the young woman was my daughter. After saying no, I wish I’d added, “but she’s someone’s daughter.” That young woman is everyone’s daughter.

“Nothing exists by itself alone. We all belong to each other; we cannot cut reality into pieces. My happiness is your happiness; my suffering is your suffering. We heal and transform together.”

—Thich Nhat Hahn