Having Fallen from Grace

 “From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.” -Karl Marx

When I was a teenager my best friend Jean had a sister who lived with her boyfriend and his family back when this kind of arrangement was still looked down upon as an immoral thing to do. They were a friendly and cheerful lot with a lifestyle that I had never seen before in that Jean’s sister and her child were welcome there with no moral high ground issues that I could see.  One of the family members was named Al, and he was a Vietnam veteran who never left the house.  He was a bit socially awkward but he was almost always smiling as he sat watching television for most of the day.  The only time that I saw him look any different was if someone knocked on the door.  A look of fear and sheer panic would come over him and he would freeze in his chair until it was determined by others in the house who was doing the knocking, Once, Jean and I went to their house looking for her sister.  No one answered the door so we waited.  Jean said that if we waited long enough Al might answer the door.  We waited a good ten minutes and finally the door slowly opened and It was Al who answered it.  Only one side of his face was visible to reveal one eye for which he could see who was there.  When he recognized us, he began to grin and he told us that everyone had gone grocery shopping.  He didn’t offer to let us come in and wait but that was not unexpected.  There are many more people like this now who have served in the military and came home with severe PTSD.  My next-door neighbor is one of them.  I have lived here six years and in all that time he has only spoken to me twice.  Once to just say “hi” and another to tell us that he liked our Halloween costumes and decorations.  You will not see this man outside otherwise.  Months after the Halloween hello his sister-in-law told me that he had been so thrilled to see our holiday festivities that he could not stop talking about it for days.

The same friend who introduced me to Al’s family also introduced me to a young woman who had a much different way of living that I found to be very troubling to say the least.  This woman was living with her lover and his wife and children.  The man was probably in his mid to late 60’s, the wife looked to be probably in her early forties.  He was a large man, bald and very obese.  His wife was painfully thin, hunched over and was very plain. She seemed to be in another world as she shuffled slowly around the house doing small amounts of housework. The young woman was a friend of Jean’s sister-in-law who had driven us to their house to pick her friend up and take her to her parent’s house to see her child.  Her parents had gone into court to get custody of the child having proven that their daughter was an unfit mother.  I did not hear any of the details of how she might have been unfit but she did talk a bit about how she and her baby had been dragged to a hospital by police prior to them taking her son away and how her baby had been examined by hospital staff in a rough and rude way with the baby terrified and crying the entire time. She also talked about what the situation was like in the household where she lived.  I don’t remember her having anything bad to say about her lover’s wife except to say that after the woman had given birth to her last child her “butt” had gotten longer.  She said she had heard of people’s “butts” getting “wider” but never longer. She said nothing about her lover who was a lump of a fellow that she had to ask permission from to visit her child.  When we arrived at her parent’s house, we stayed in the car and she knocked on the door. Then a woman came outside with a little boy who appeared to be about three years old.  He walked outside and hugged his mother. They stayed in the front yard and she played with him and threw a ball for him to catch.  Sometimes he was able to.  All of this was under the watchful eye of the grandmother.  We only stayed there for about 15 minutes and then I saw Mother and Daughter exchange a few sharp looking words, then the woman came back to the car and we started the drive back to her home. She was tense and a bit agitated on the trip back and said a few things about how she was going to try to get her baby back if she ever found a boyfriend who would help her do that.  After we bid her goodbye, I felt slightly sick at heart for some time.  I could not imagine how someone could find themselves in a situation such as this.  Being thirteen I had never been exposed to anything like that before.  I guess I led a much more sheltered life than I thought I did. I cannot remember the name of this young woman but I will never forget her story. My friend Jean was no stranger to being exposed to unfortunate people and situations like these. I met her when I went to a new school upon entering the 8th grade and my education well and truly began with that friendship.

Jean came from a large family who had many problems of their own such as alcoholism, infidelity, criminal behavior from one of her older brothers, domestic abuse in her sister’s first marriage and other situations that I had never been witness to before. They kept a loaded pistol on top of their TV set. I never saw anyone pick it up except Jean’s older sister once, when she was making a joke about having to tell someone to “f**k off" and leave her alone. How Jean and three of her other siblings managed to keep clear heads and still have genuine goals for themselves was amazing.  It is even more amazing to me when I look back on it now.  One trait that they all possessed, which is rare in any decade, is that they did not pass judgement on others easily.  They had more tolerance than most people and did not fall into the same troubled behaviors that those around them did.  Even now I have a lot of respect for what I learned from my association with them and I can’t help but be grateful for my friendship with Jean because it was instrumental in giving me a strong empathy for others that I cannot say I would have developed to the degree that I did without having known her.

There was an elderly woman who lived in a town in Arkansas where I used to live.  Arlene used to walk down the Main Street of this small town wearing several layers of clothes in winter and summer.  She would slowly shuffle along with her head bowed looking for cigarette butts to pick up and smoke.  Sometimes she would walk to my husband’s grandmother’s house where she was always welcomed and was given something to eat. Arlene spoke very little except say “hi” and thank my grandmother-in-law for giving her lunch. I was told that Arlene lived with her son and daughter-in-law and she did receive a Social Security check every month but her son would take it away from her and give her only $25.00 of it for cigarettes and food that she would buy at a small drive-in restaurant. He would then send her off to roam the Main Street alone.  When her money ran out, she would visit my husband’s grandmother. Some days she would sit there for hours watching television but appearing to not really comprehend what she was seeing and occasionally she would soil herself.  No one ever got in a twist about this.  They would just clean the chair after she left.  I have no idea what happened to Arlene after I moved away from there but I cannot imagine her life ever being any different until she passed away.

I used to know a woman who lived in the town where my grandparents did.  Her name was Anna May, and she had only one eye and the lower part of her left arm was missing. She was always friendly and upbeat and my grandmother liked her a lot.  Anna May made her living ironing clothes for people in town and my grandmother was one of her customers.  Anna May would come to people’s houses and pick up the clothes and she would bring them back when she had finished.  Many women in town let Anna May iron for them although most of them did not need the service.  They just knew that she needed the money and could not get a job anywhere else. The clothes that she brought back were always neatly folded and they looked as good as any professional dry cleaner would have done. It was pretty amazing how beautifully she did her work with only one hand.  Anna May was “struck,” as my family would say, on my grandmother’s brother.  He was a truck driver who would visit frequently when he was not working. He was friendly enough to her when she came over to pick up or deliver ironing but you could tell that he only viewed her interest in him as a joke.  I always felt bad about that when, after she would leave, he would laugh about the very idea that she might think he could ever be interested in her. I have often wondered what happened to Anna May when she got too old or too disabled to do the ironing.  There were no other options for her at all.

It is impossible to say whether the lives of these people would have been different if we did not live in a Capitalist society, but a society that prides itself on expecting everyone to uphold an ideal of self-sufficiency and praises only those who are able to manage it typically shows little tolerance for those who cannot. The few people who do show tolerance for those who are unable to fit the ideal are by and large not much better off themselves. As long as the majority of us don’t have to see those less fortunate it is unlikely that these situations will ever be effectively addressed. In the 1950’s film Giant, there is an extreme prejudice against the Mexican people who work for the family central to the film. The patriarch of the family discourages his wife from helping a Mexican family with a very sick baby, saying that “these people have a way of taking care of things themselves.” Translated this means we don’t bother with them.

Prior to the 2020 Presidential election, Democratic hopeful, Andrew Yang, said during one of the debates that we need to rethink what is considered to be work in this country because many people do a multitude of work for no pay here in America, and these contributions are highly valuable in society but we look down upon them as useless because they garner no wages and they proffer up nothing to Capitalism in the narrow view of too many people. He believed, as many do, that we need a basic income for our citizens, and it needs to be one large enough to cover a decent standard of living.

How we treat other people is a choice that we make, but I do believe that Socialism and Marxism have built within their structuring a more humane approach to dealing with the people who fall through the cracks, in ways that Capitalism never has.  I once heard Noam Chomsky say that animals and elderly people are not entitled to rights in this world because they contribute nothing to society, as in they do not work. I beg to differ. I have always thought very highly of Chomsky but I have never stopped being troubled about this statement from him.  It is the one thing that I heard him say that I could not disagree with more.  He said that it is up to people whether or not they want to help others who cannot or do not contribute to a society by having a job outside of the home.  Women like Arlene and Anna May are usually much worse off here than the men who at least had some coverage for their disability from having served in our military, with the exception of an elderly man named Rob that I knew.  I do not know his situation as to how he became so destitute, but if I had to guess I would say that he was probably a farmer who fell upon hard times in the rural south and there were no family members who cared or he lost everything at some point and no one bothered to help him. He lived in a shack next to some of my family members and he had no electricity or running water.  The father in the family used to take a plate of whatever they were having for dinner over to Rob every evening.  As far as I know, that was the only food that he ate all day.  Yes, helping others is a choice that we make but I have seen the choice to do so become less and less prevalent by the day. And I do not see this improving unless our social and economic structure makes an enormous change in how we take care of our own.  As many people have decided that they are not their brother’s keeper in any way I see nothing improving without a stable government ideal that would promote a mindset of caring about the welfare of its citizens.  The stories that I have related here were things that I witnessed as a child but in truth I do not remember ever hearing about anyone being homeless back then, even though what passed for a home was sometimes pretty substandard, the current statistics on the amount of homeless people in our country now are staggering.  We have made a choice to do very little or nothing at all about this issue, and it follows that we are doing little or nothing about the situations that create homelessness, such as the kind of  problems of the people that I have talked about here which I believe will only be solved by involving all of us in the processes which go into making the lives of people less terrifying when due to some unfortunate circumstance the people who have “fallen from grace” cannot see a way to get and keep the things that make the continuation of life possible. We are today denying millions of people a standard of living that should be their right to have. Basic necessities to sustain life should not be considered a privilege for only those who are still in the good graces of Capitalism.  As a society, we have proven that we cannot be bothered with those who are unable to keep up with the status quo so it will absolutely take a government and social structure that demands that we must be bothered. It is much too late for Al and Arlene, Anna May and Rob, but it is not too late for the people who need help now.  It will not happen though, unless we manage to redirect the current mindset of not hearing and not seeing and not believing that this is a failure of the people of the United States.  I had to see many things first hand myself when I was very young by being friends with someone who saw them every day to realize that comfort and wellbeing are not afforded to everyone like I assumed they were from where I stood.  We will have to make sure that someone like Jean or someone like the three spirits who visited Ebeneezer Scrooge come to us and make these tragedies impossible for us to ignore any longer. Why is it taking so long?