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.
