Scared of The Moon

Author's note: Originally written for my Journalism final.

Author's note 2.0: The weekend before Thanksgiving, a friend and I took money that we had raised (with a lot of your help) and randomly selected Jacquelyn Lewis-Tolbert-Robertson for a one day shopping spree, including new clothes, a hotel room for two nights, and a dinner of her choosing—this is her story.

Jacquelyn puffed on a Marlboro Smooth. For a while, she had been relatively quiet, but after an exhale of smoke and warm breath into the cold air outside the Outback Steakhouse on Highway 50, she looked up at the moon and said, “I never liked the stars. And I was scared of the moon, too. Always thought it was following me.” She spent the next five minutes explaining how she had found a nemesis in the moon since she was a young girl. Before she started again, she tended to the cigarette’s ember. “But one night, I couldn’t sleep. I was always looking down to not look at the moon. I was homeless, and I wanted to give up, but I looked up at that moon, and I knew it was God. That was God watching out for me.”

She looked down from the moon and back to her cigarette. Carefully, she snuffed out the end of the half-smoked butt, inspecting it to make sure that all the fire was gone, and quickly placed it in the pocket of her brand new jacket. Why put trash in the pocket of a new jacket? One man’s trash might be the only cigarette Jacquelyn comes across this week.

Photo courtesy of Ciara Ungar

Jacquelyn Lewis-Robertson-Tolbert (she prefers all three) calls the grated vent outside the Metro Center metro station home. From across the street, you can see her in a tattered leather jacket, black beanie, and dirty yellow pants folding up her large wool blankets. The fact that Jacquelyn stood out is a mystery because ultimately, the Washington D.C. metro area is full of people just like Jacquelyn.

Actually, the metro area comprises the fifth highest homeless population in the country according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Unfortunately, the homeless population in Washington D.C. is on the rise, despite the national average dropping. Over 13,000 people are homeless in the D.C. metro area, but as winter moves into its coldest month, Jacquelyn is alone on the street for the fifteenth year in a row. She doesn’t beg for change or cigarettes—she simply makes a home out of what circumstance has given her: next to nothing.

At 56-years old, Jacquelyn is a veteran to Washington D.C. She grew up in the area and is one of the few District residents who can call the city their hometown. Upon meeting her, Jacquelyn foiled most of the stereotypes that often haunt the homeless population—the aggressor or the beggar or the ungrateful. She gathered all of her belongings, stuffing them into a tattered, plastic Ikea bag along with an old pair of pink flats and a bag of floss picks. “Taking care of my teeth means a lot to me,” she said with a smile.

Walking to the car, she talked about what it meant to live in the streets and how life had ended up heading that way. She refused to focus on the past, and continuing to press about it seemed pointless. A string of relationships gone awry, a begrudging battle with alcoholism, and a lack of opportunity placed Jacquelyn on the streets in 1998. But interestingly enough, Jacquelyn is not without family. She talked about the metro area and how it’s dotted with Lewises and Tolberts and Robertsons. Family members dot the eastern side of D.C., and her two sons, D’Angelo and Greg, live in Arlington and Fairfax.

None of her family was available for contact, but Jacquelyn spoke of them with love, “Oh, I love my boys. They’re in their twenties now.” She talked about their children and the lives they have started on the outskirts of the metro area, but she also hinted at the distance she kept from them while adjusting the tarnished gold ringer on her middle finger—a token she has refused to give up with a symbol engraved in it that represents emancipation.

On the drive to the first stop of the day, Jacquelyn listens as the radio scans for a station and quietly announces, “I love jazz. Especially free form jazz.” Outside the window, the early evidence of Christmas decorations pass as she adds, “and Christmas music. I love Christmas.” The radio stops on a station playing “Carol of the Bells,” as Jacquelyn launches into a recounting of Christmas as a girl. “We would make it last as long as we could,” she said. She always hoped for books—particularly on history and science. She began to explain how she hoped to be a scientist as a child until suddenly she grew quiet again. Driving through the area around Capital Hill, she noted, “I used to stay at a shelter around here, but it closed down.”

The closing of homeless shelters in the Washington area is an unfortunate truth. When searching for “Washington D.C. homeless shelter closed,” a slew of results turn up on Google, all within the past five years—one article reporting that 50% of shelters accommodating families in the D.C. area were closed due to budget cuts back in 2011. Jacquelyn’s last tenure at a shelter was back in the late 90s. She referenced the clean and sober shelter that has since been shut down. Last year, she had the opportunity to get into a shelter located a bit closer to Downtown, but she gave up her spot for one of the two women she had spent the better half of last winter with. When asked why, she said, “They are older than I am. I know I can survive.

And that’s exactly what she’s expected to do. Jacquelyn has spent the last few years working with The Perry School, an institute dedicated to helping those in need find the proper avenues to getting back into the work force. Their mission states their goal to “alleviate the conditions of poverty in order to help ensure positive outcomes for youth, adults and families within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area,” but the key word is “alleviate.” Though the school has helped Jacquelyn establish a resume and identify a skill set, the classes that Jacquelyn must take to populate that resume do not come without a cost.

Jacquelyn currently gets her financial support by preparing and packaging lunches for homeless youth. The little money she makes doing that goes toward feeding herself, her basic living needs, and the classes she needs to take to become certified in food preparation, CPR, and other skills. The registration for those classes happens at the beginning of each month, and as she says, “If you miss the deadline, well, you just have to wait until next time.” Opportunity doesn’t strike Jacquelyn that often, so when given the opportunity to get new clothes and other personal belongings, she quickly accepted.

Walking along in Target, it wasn’t hard to see why Jacquelyn’s resources were relatively limited. For a quick lunch, Jacquelyn decided on the Pizza Hut kiosk inside Target. After getting her personal pan cheese pizza, she sat down at the table and took a moment that most people take for granted. She opened the box and brought the pizza close to her face. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, smelling the pizza, as if someone had just presented her with some kind of delicacy.

Target is hardly Jacquelyn’s normal environment, especially the one set in the newly gentrified Columbia Heights neighborhood. She walked around the women’s section, shifting from moments of total excitement and worried caution. On multiple occasions, Jacquelyn would find a sweater or jacket she admired, only to be met with sidelong glances just a couple of clothing displays over. Jacquelyn stood out with her eclectic, slightly dingy ensemble, and the women in Target took notice. And Jacquelyn did too, especially as she caught the women glaring at her while thumbing through a stack of red and black poly-blend sweaters. No words were necessary—it was obvious that she was not welcomed. Each time, Jacquelyn would replace whatever she was looking at and move on to another rack, as if to apologize for even being in the store.

Their reactions are a reflection of a society that has become so comfortable with sympathizing with the homeless population of America without actually having to empathize with them. Once Jacquelyn had infiltrated their territory, perception of the homeless had changed. With very few options available for housing, stores with customers who express visible distaste toward homeless customers, and on overarching stereotype attached to homelessness, how exactly does a woman like Jacquelyn further herself in an already economically pessimistic world? Through the rarity of human kindness.

As the day came to an end, Jacquelyn checked into the room rented under her name at the George Washington Inn. An upscale hotel in the heart of Foggy Bottom, the front desk receptionist finished her paperwork, handed her the keys to her room and asked, “Is there anything else we can do for you, Ms. Tolbert?” She looked at him with a shocked expression and abruptly announced, “I don’t think I can remember the last time someone called me Ms. Tolbert.” She smiled and said no, taking all the bags from the day up to her room. Once checked in, she pulled everything out of the bags, arranging it neatly on the bed with special attention to the jacket she had picked up at Ross. She pulled it close to her chest and said, “It’s a windbreaker. That help cuts the cold, and the inside is lined with fur.” She hugged it tighter and said, “There’s nothing better than a warm jacket.”

To finish off the day, she asked to go to Outback Steakhouse, only knowing it as Outback before the day. “I thought it was a shoe store for some reason,” she said. Once seated, Jacquelyn ordered baby back ribs. She looked around the table and then turned back to the waitress with a big grin and said, “The full rack, please.”

Every bite seemed to mean more and more until she couldn’t eat anymore. For the night, she looked no different than the Outback patrons around her. It was a day where shelters at capacity or enrollment fees or finding a place to shower didn’t immediately matter.

After a couple of days, the hotel manager called to say that Jacquelyn had checked out, “She wasn’t an issue at all. She was courteous and like any other guest.” No surprise because that’s simply who Jacquelyn is—just another guest to the city of D.C.

Outside of the Outback Steakhouse, Jacquelyn waited for the car to be pulled around. She patted her pocket to make sure the half-smoked cigarette was still in place, and she looked up again to see where the moon was—though no longer scared, she still likes to “keep tabs” on where it’s at. She assumes a lot of responsibility that most people don’t. While most will read this article on a Sunday over a cup of coffee in the sunroom, the paper this is printed on may be the makeshift shelter from wind or rain or what have you.

And when finished reading, there’s someone who will notice you—be it a family member or friend of coworker. But right before getting in the car, Jacquelyn turned and said, “A lot of people pass me on the street. They never say anything. You spend a lot of time wondering if people can see you, and I never thought anyone saw me… but today, you saw me.”

She opened the door and got into the back seat to go back to the hotel for a couple of nights—off the streets, safe from the cold, and protected from the moon.