Blyth: The Day I Met Angela

from 9.16.07

Yesterday I met a womyn named Angela. She was screaming on the street below our window as Kristina and I made some Hangover Potatoes. We glanced down like we often do, expecting to see a man piss on a wall or vomit on his already stained and worn shoes. There is a detox center on the corner of our street (coincidently run by St. Vincent de Paul, the organization I now work for) and things like that aren’t so uncommon. People lose their minds from time to time, detoxing off this drug or that, and sometimes things can get loud or volatile. But when we looked down today a womyn was slashing at hir wrists with a piece of dull metal.

Not knowing what to do we ran down the stairs. A womyn who worked at the detox center reached hir before I did, grabbed the womyn’s arms and slammed hir wrist against the wall forcing hir to drop the piece of discarded metal that she had been stabbing at hir wrists with. I was frozen. I didn’t know what to do. The womyn from the center was a professional, she knew what she was doing and I didn’t want to get in the way. I didn’t want to make things harder for hir. I asked hir how I could help and she asked me to call 911 but all I had was my cell phone and that wasn’t going to work. She looked at the womyn crouched in front of hir and she held hir arms firmly with concern, trying hir best to keep hir from clawing at hir own skin. She looked at hir and said, “Angela, shh shh shh, it’s ok. You’re going to be ok. You’re going to do this. We’re going to get you some help. Shh shh shh Angela”. I offered to find someone inside to call, but I could tell that wasn’t what she needed. So I sat down next to Angela, put my arm around hir back and held onto hir. The two of us sat there, listening to Angela wail about how she couldn’t do it any more, how she had tried so hard to get clean, and how he was coming for hir. He was coming for hir. He was coming for hir. She threw hir head onto my shoulder and hir hands flew up to try to scratch at hir face and quickly I pulled them down into hir lap, close to hir body, where they would be safe.

It had occurred to me that she might be dangerous, that she might try to hurt me. But as she sat screaming, arms tugging at my restraint, I realized the only persin she wanted to hurt was hirself. I was holding hir on my own now, hir face pressed into my chest, my hands wrapped around hir wrists spotted with blood as she cried. The other womyn took the opportunity to go inside and call the paramedics and I sat alone with Angela, huddled in a doorway. She returned with another womyn that I knew. Hir name is Michelle, I had met hir when I’d taken a tour of the facility on my first day of work. Michelle and the other womyn talked in calm ordinary voices, trying to convince Angela that she was safe and that she could do it. She could be ok. They said, “You know honey, maybe it needed to get this far, maybe this is it, you can do it. I know it’s hard, but you can do it”. Angela responded by calling them bitches, screeching at them to shut the fuck up, leave hir alone, all the while holding tighter to all of us.

I sat mute, not knowing the womyn in my arms, not knowing anything about what she was going through, not wanting to say anything inappropriate or insensitive. Meanwhile Angela ranted incoherently about getting out of prison, going back to hir mothers house and the father that had raped hir since she was a young girl, “He’s coming for me. He’s coming for me. How could she let him do those things to me? I tried to be a good little girl. I tried. I tried. I can’t do it no more. He’s coming for me.” We whispered that she was good, that she was going to be ok. Michelle assured hir that help was coming and we all waited.

The womyn I didn’t know wiped Angela’s tears away with a napkin and held the same napkin so she could blow hir nose. Tears filled my eyes and then quickly dissipated. I remembered all the people in my life that use/used drugs to bury deep painful truths. I remembered being a young girl and watching my mother detox in the corner of hir room, biting down on hir lip so hard that it bled. I remembered every persin that has tried to convince me that “junkies” weren’t people, that they didn’t feel or care. And I remembered all the womyn I know in my life that have been beaten, raped, assaulted. The womyn in my arms was just barely hanging on. She was in a place so raw and so humyn that it seemed impossible to do anything but love hir and hold hir.

Over time police started to show up. Two men with guns, then four, then six. Michelle reassured Angela that they were only there to help, that they weren’t going to hurt hir. For the most part they left us alone as we waited for the paramedics. They stood across the street, talking to one another, laughing about something that had happened earlier in the day, completely detached from what was happening right in front of them. Angela panicked at the sight of them and we did our best to console hir as she thrashed hir arms around. We were still holding hir, doing our best to pin hir arms down with our hands and knees when one of the officers came over to ask us if we wanted hir cuffed. “No!”. He walked away. The paramedics arrived and Michelle and I did our best to stand hir up so that she could walk over to the gurney. But as we lifted hir up, after having sat with hir for the past 20 minutes listening to turmoil spill out of hir, we were told by an old white man who had arrived in his own separate car to leave hir alone so that he could do his job. So we stepped away and a swarm of men laid hir down and strapped hir to a board. First hir feet, then hir wrists, then hir torso. As they wheeled hir towards the ambulance I waved to Michelle and the other womyn and turned around to go back into my house.

Shaken I walked up the stairs to the bathroom sink and washed small smears of Angela’s blood off my arms and chest. I washed my hands several times, knowing full well the risk of HIV and other diseases, feeling guilty for thinking hir blood might be contaminated. I had held hir, listened to pieces of hir story and then did my best to scrub hir off of me.

I moved on with my day, finally eating those potatoes, taking a nap, steaming some artichokes for dinner. I don’t know what happened to Angela, I never will. I hope she received the care she deserves, that someone took the time to try and understand what it might have felt like for hir to get strapped down to that board, or be driven so insane by memory that she would try to take hir own life, but I know that many do not receive even the most basic of care.