A Story Behind Every Face

KATRINA WAS NO LADY:

We lost everything in hurricane Katrina. Everything that meant anything. I don't care about things. Someday we'll get them back, but now my daughter and I are homeless. My son; my husband. They perished along with everything else. Nothing can give them back to us.

ALONE AND PREGNANT:

I tried to tell my mom what was going on but she wouldn't believe me. Her new boyfriend wouldn't stop hitting on me. Then I got pregnant. She told me it was my fault. She chose him over me, her own daughter. She kicked me out. I'm only 15. I have no place to go. Where do I go. What do I do now? What's going to happen to me and my baby.

RECUPERATING IN THE STREETS:

My wife's been pretty sick. We don't have insurance, so I took a second job just to pay the medical bills. Then I lost the better paying of the two. I found another job but they each just pay minimum wage. It was enough to put food on the table and buy the medicine my wife needed, but it wasn't enough to keep the house from being foreclosed on. Now the four of us sleep in our car. My wife isn't going to get better here. The kids don't get to be kids. I don't get to be hero and save the day.

BUILDING A NEW LIFE:

My story's an easy one. I had my own construction company. It was small but it kept me going. Kept a rood over my head. Had a nice truck. Money in the bank. Then I fell off a ladder and broke my back. The cost of insurance when you are self-employed was through the roof, so I never bought any. When you own the company you don't take out workers comp on yourself either. But without it, I had no income coming in at all. My savings, house, car. They all went to pay the medical bills. I wish I had spent the $400 a month on insurance now.

Now I have nothing and disability doesn't even get me a studio apartment, so I'm out here waiting in line for bed every night.

LOVE ISN'T ALWAYS ENOUGH:

He was kid and loving. A good father. A good provider. Every woman's dream. But when he had a few, he was...well he wasn't so much fun anymore. I got a restraining order, but it's just a piece of paper. So I left. I went to a shelter for a while. hey found me a place to stay. A sort of witness protection program, but he found me anyway.

He promised he'd change. I gave him a second chance. It was pretty good for a little while. Then he started going out with his buddies again. He beat me so bad I couldn't open my right eye for the longest time. Lost some of the vision in it too.

I had no place to go. The shelters were all full. Witness protection had a list. I stayed with a few friends but when he came and beat down the door, they told me I had to leave. I couldn't blame them. That's how I ended up here. I've been here for about 3 years now. It's actually better than living with him. At least here, they kind of take you in and you become one big happy family after a while. We take care of each other.

I'll take frozen toes over broken ribs any day.

WICKED STEP FATHER

My dad left when I was just three. Mom and I went to live with her brother in Phillie. Mom left one day for milk and never came back. Things were okay for a while, but when I was 12, things changed. I had a baby when I was almost 13. I named her Hope. Uncle Doug made me give her away. Said he didn't want a bastard living under his roof. Even without Hope, there was still a bastard living under his roof.

I couldn't stay. I'd rather be out here than to keep being his bitch so I left when I was 14. I've been out here for 5 years now. I steal a lot. Only bread and peanut butter. A girls gotta eat. Sometimes I take Tampax, but that's it. I turn tricks now and then but I hate it so I only do it when I'm really down and out. I found out when I was 16 that you could get paid for blood, but you had to be 18. Got a fake ID.

Never got into the drugs. Sometimes I wish I had, but I never had the nerve. I figure I'm screwed up enough already and drugs would just make it worse.

Someday I'd like a house, but I probably won't ever get it. Who'd want somebody like me anyway?

MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE AND THEE ALONE:

Know how old I am? 54. I look a lot older don't I? War'll do that to you ya know. Age you before your time. Liquor'll do it too. I didn't start drinkin cuz I like the stuff. I can't stand it, but it helps you forget. At least for a little while.

I was just a kid in Vietnam. Thought it would get me a lot of girls if I wore a uniform. All it got me was pain. I saw more sh** than any kid ever had a right to see. I wasn't the same when I came home. They knew that. Everybody knew, but they sent me out again.

27 years I served in the Marines. Was proud to do it. I ain't the only one who's change though. America's changed. There's a lot more hate than when I was a kid. Lot more stupid people trying to run the country. They make all these grand speeches about how much they care and how much they want to change things for us. For all of us they say, not just the Vets. They's just a bunch of liars. I ain't so proud no more.

truth is, I want to be out here. Nobody bothers me out here. They all think I'm nuts so why not let em keep on thinkin it? I ain't nuts though. Just tired a all the bull sh**. Everybody should be tired a bullsh**, but nobody wants to do nothing about it. So I keep to myself and life is grand. And if you believe that darlin' I got me a rusty colored bridge to sell you out at Tony Bennett's place to sell ya.

The Eyes Have It

Paul Newman eyes. That's what I call them. An intense, penetrating blue that could pierce your very soul. Sometimes as with Shawnee, you could actually look into those eyes and see nothing. No life, no emotion, and seemingly no essence. It was those eyes that caught my attention, not the waist length emerald, sapphire and amethyst strands of hair. Nor was it the multiple facial piercings; nor the pair of hands that were tattooed in a choke hold around her. It was her Paul Newman eyes.

Although kids have always been part of my life, first mine and for the last 18 years, kids of others, I knew from experience that I was "The Company." In my day we called it "the Establishment." Either way I would be deemed suspicious. Shawnee would be on her guard around me until trust could be earned, if ever. Therefore I wanted to see her in her element; to see her be herself, the way she acted around her peers. I needed to see her while her invisible protective force field was down.

My maternal heart quivered with compassion for this adolescent which gave me this overwhelming desire to know what was behind those eyes. Why were they so empty? Did they mirror her life? From what I could already recognize, they held horror, fear, an awfulness that few of us could ever perceive.

She was petite, no more than five feet tall. The boy's pants she wore hung low on her hips, making them sag in places that were meant for tautness. The too small tank top exposed more violent in nature tattoos on her biceps, neckline and wrists. Her attire also revealed a paunch that could only be achieved through motherhood, telling me without words, that her maternal heart had been wounded deeply. Her masculine mannerism opened to the elements one who trusted no one; who needed no one; who loved no one, including herself.

After only a few days of observation, I knew many of her likes and dislikes. What made her angry and what made her smile. She had an awkward smile; one that was given rarely and when it was, always through clenched jaws that matched the fists that were always at the ready. She chain smoked with a vengeance, sometimes tossing a joint into the mix, never caring what people thought. Or did she? Was she wanting to get caught, perhaps even needing to be caught?

When she accompanied one of her friends who had been accosted to the emergency room, she looked like she would rather be anywhere else but there, but to her credit, she waited albeit nervously. I made it a point to introduce myself and asked if I could buy her a cup of coffee. While the friend was in surgery, she and I had a chance to talk. I was taken aback when what started out to be a casual chat turned out to be a gushing of self-restricted, fury and fear.

I hadn't yet met a kid that gave his or her right name. It seemed to be not only a way of hiding from their past but a new identity as well. Blue eyes called herself Badger as I would find out in time, the name was apropos as were most self-proclaimed titles.

It turned out Badger was 25 years old and had more battle scars than most people acquire in a lifetime. Badger was born a Native American, abandoned to her 39 year old abusive grandmother in Oklahoma. She was raped by grandmother's boyfriend at the age of fourteen.

"I don't want no damned liar living under my roof," the grandmother drunkenly stated, after Badgers confession of what had been done to her. Seven weeks after the declaration, her grandmother married her off to the highest bidder. The going price for a child bearing fourteen-year old was $239 and a 1969 Cadillac convertible that wasn't running.

Six months later, Badger gave birth to a little girl which was promptly taken away from her and given to the boyfriend, even though it supposedly wasn't his. During Badger's 6 year marriage, she survived extreme verbal abuse, multiple broken bones, and even a gunshot wound to the chest which left her heart a bit weaker than normal. Badger gave birth to two more children, both products of spousal rape.

She loved her children as best she could and through the abuse and violence she did what she could to protect them from their father's daily rants. But the courts declared her an unfit mother when her husband broke the arm and collar bone of their 10 month old boy. She left Oklahoma an empty shell when her children were taken from her and given to the grandmother that never treated her as anything more than a slave.

Badger has seen it all, done it all and at 26 is worn out and tired. Although she has never spoken the words out loud, I believe that if she could lay down and go to sleep, never to awaken, she would be content for the first time in her short life. She went back to Oklahoma two years ago to begin the battle of regaining custody of her children. Although my time with Badger came to an end, her story hasn't. I see it in the faces of the new Badgers. The Badgers that have been abandoned, battered, raped and worse.

Named after a character in CATS, Mungojerrie/Chloe is a pick pocket who insists that all the pockets she has stolen from were deserving. Zelda chose Pariah after her parents labeled her as a social outcast and sent her out into the world to fend for herself at 15. Pregnant 17 year old Lisa calls herself Gypsy. She never stays in one place for very long, for fear of her step-father, also the man who impregnated her, will find her.

There will always be "Badgers," but maybe we can reach out just a little and offer a bit of hope. As I walk these 1863 miles I beg of you, if you have a heart for kids, especially the one and one half million kids who have never had anyone give them their hearts, then please donate 1 penny for every mile to your nearest teen shelter.

Be the Change