“It sounds great, Erika.”
We arrived at Penn Station where I convinced Erika that we should walk the twelve or so blocks to the mission instead of hiring a taxi. We briskly walked the distance to the shelter and had no problem locating it since there was a huge cross mounted above the entrance. In red neon lights, it declared to the dark city that “Sin will find you out.”
Opening the ornate oak door to our knock was a short, round- faced, round-bodied woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her grey hair in a Dutch-boy haircut. She smiled warmly and greeted us in her accent that I later learned was Western. She hugged Erika and then me while she introduced herself.
“Hi, Joanne. I’m Carol. I’m so glad you’re here in time for dinner. Please come in.”
Before we could decide whether we were comfortable with the situation or not, Erika and I were ushered into a long, narrow room where about ten people were eating at a table abundant with a variety of delicious smelling foods. We were seated and I soon learned from my fellow diners that there is always more than enough surplus food given to the shelter by several New York corporations. That night we feasted on stuffed fish, lasagna, cold cuts, macaroni salad, tossed salad, rolls and butter, rice pudding, and lemonade; all were donations from the cafeteria of the Colgate-Palmolive Corporation. Erika and I shamelessly ate second helpings while we enjoyed the good fellowship. I was surprised to find that I related well with most of the shelter residents. They were more interesting than many other people with whom I have found myself dining on other occasions.
After dinner, Carol insisted that Erika and I see her bedroom. Erika entered first, then Carol, then I, in a single file between the bed and dresser. We walked into the room. We felt obligated to comment on the room since Carol seemed so pleased with it, so we complimented her neatness. To leave the room, we executed an “about-face” and left the room in reverse order.
We left the mission and walked several blocks to an Episcopalian church where we enjoyed the performance of a Russian Chamber Choir. From the church, we walked to a deli where we each selected a midnight snack to bring to the hotel room. There we enjoyed some late night chatter. I felt more and more comfortable with Carol, so I asked her about herself.
“Carol, how long have you worked at the shelter?” I asked casually. Carol glanced at the ceiling as she calculated and then looked at me and answered, “Well, I guess it’s been nearly twenty years now since `My Walk.’ I call it that because I walked from Ohio to New York. That’s how I came to work at the shelter.”
“Why did you decide to walk to New York?” I asked.
“I didn’t exactly know I was going to New York. I was just walking away from my family.” Carol explained.
“Your family? You left a family behind? Do you mean a husband and children?”
“Yes. I left three teenagers and my husband.”
I was quiet for a moment as I convinced myself that Carol was telling the truth.
I slowly asked, “Do you mean that you just got up one day and walked out?”
“Well, yes. Sort of. It didn’t just happen all of a sudden; but one day I knew I could not stay anymore - not one more day. I took a few changes of clothing, a couple of dollars, some food, a sleeping bag, and I started walking.”
I knew my face must have revealed my amazement, so I apologized.
“Oh, it’s okay. You’re not the first person I’ve shocked,” she said with a laugh.
It seemed to me that Carol enjoyed shocking people with her story. Her laughter gave me permission to ask more questions.
“How did you feed yourself? Did you work along the way? Did you have a tent? How long did it take? Weren’t you frightened?”
“I wasn’t frightened. I knew the Lord was with me. The reason I love the homeless people now is that I was truly homeless myself. Sometimes I slept in the woods and sometimes in city streets. I did work off and on but usually I ate in soup kitchens; as few times I ate from garbage bins. I could have taken more money or my car with me, but I felt strongly that the Lord wanted me to leave everything behind.”
I was disturbed and the expression on Erika’s face said that she was too. It was late and we did not have time to ask any more questions that night. After arranging a time and place to meet for breakfast, Carol left our hotel room to walk around the corner to her little room at the mission. Erika and I watched out our window for Carol. She walked down the dark street to the shelter and mounted the stairway beneath the red neon-lit cross with it’s prophetic words. Carol entered the safety of the big oak doors.
When Carol left, Erika and I discussed “Carol’s Walk” as we prepared for bed. Before we drifted off to sleep, we agreed on two points. The first was that there had to have been extremely horrible circumstances in that home in Ohio that Carol did not want to discuss. The second point we agreed on was that neither of us could imagine anything horrible enough to justify Carol’s abandonment of her children. We tried to be non-judgemental without compromising our values. We were unable to do both.
In the morning we met Carol for a simple breakfast of coffee and bagels. The rest of the morning was spent visiting shops and boutiques of all types. We walked until our feet cried out for relief and then stopped for lunch. After eating, we walked some more until we reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There we continued our walking as we viewed several exhibits.
We chose to go on despite the pain in our feet and agreed to take a stroll through Central Park. Carol pointed out where all the homeless people slept. When we passed several women pushing baby strollers, Carol commented, “When my children were babies, I walked here almost every day. I often met all the nannies and their charges at the playground. It was fun to listen to all the `Nanny gossip’.”
“You lived here in New York when your kids were small?” I asked.
“My husband was a resident doctor at the hospital,” Carol answered.
“Your hussbin iss a doctor?” Erika asked incredulously.
“He’s quite well known, at least among doctors. He’s teaching now,” Carol explained.
Since she brought up the subject of her husband, I felt compelled to ask Carol more about her “Walk.”
“Carol, what happened?” I asked as tenderly as I could.
She sighed and then answered softly, “I know it’s hard to understand, but believe me, the situation was terrible. My husband did not have the same beliefs as I did, and neither did my children. I needed to leave in order to serve God.”
Erika spoke out, “Carol, you know you could serf God right in your home. You did not have to come all the way to New York to take care of the homeless to serve him. You could do dat at home with caring for your husband and children. Dat iss serfing God too, you know.”
Carol stopped walking, looked squarely at Erika and firmly, “It was evil, Erika. It was very, very evil. I had to leave. You could not imagine how evil it was. I know it was what God wanted me to do.”
Carol spoke with such finality that neither Erika nor I dared to pursue the subject any longer. We walked back to the mission with Carol. At first none of us spoke, but slowly the conversation continued in a very light manner. I think we discussed how nice the weather had been for us these two days.
Erika and I left Carol at the mission to meet Erika’s husband, Herman, at their son Peter’s apartment, which is near Columbia University. To get there, we treated our feet to a ride in a taxi. We ate dinner at a very dimly lit restaurant where a young woman at the next table laughed too loudly and much too often. Herman then drove us home to Long Island as the sky finally relieved itself of the rain that it had held back all day.
At dinner and during the ride home, we tried to conjure up the possible “evils” of Carol’s marriage. We imagined every possible situation that might have required Carol to react in such a drastic way. By the time we were nearly home, we concluded that we would never understand. “Carol’s Walk” was between her and God. It seems that God always prepares us for the next turn in our lives. He seemed to have prepared Carol to serve the homelss by leading her to “Her Walk.” For the past twenty years, Carol has found joy in serving thousands of homelss people, and through that she has served God. We were wrong to try to explain Carol’s life to ourselves. The only explanation that was necessary belonged to God.
When I returned home, my family greeted me, and we chatted pleasantly about the events of my weekend. I thumbed through the waiting mail as we talked and I pulled out a letter from my old friend Linda, from Pennsylvania. Linda and I have been close since the eighth grade. Our lives often run parallel. I guess one could call us “soul-mates.” We write every few months and try to get together once a year. Often we share with each other our problems with our husbands, kids, pets, and plants. Sometimes we share our deepest thoughts. We call it our “real gut-stuff.” We have been therepists for each other through many of life’s processes.
I hadn’t heard from Linda in months and so I anxiously opened her letter and read.
“Dear Joanne, I think you had better sit down before you start reading this. I have been living in Las Vegas for the last few months. I left Bill and the kids. The only way I can explain it to you is that I drove out of my driveway last September to save my sanity…