Sylvia's Story, Under the Overpass
Paul Perry
We were standing under the overpass, six of us plus
Stump, who didn't really count since he's always out of it.
Little Chub had scored a dozen or so chicken thighs at
Popeye's--he'll go there when they're about to close and
pick up the litter from their parking lot then kind of hang
around, looking hungry, his sad little face looking sadder
than ever, and it usually works if they've got leftovers--
and Loop had bought a couple of three liter bottles of Coke
which were on sale at the Seven-Eleven, or at least she
said she bought them, so we were enjoying ourselves. Still,
though, we were feeling kind of down. It had rained during
the afternoon, a chilly rain, giving us all a smell of the
winter that was right around the corner, and winter meant
standing in line at the shelter, hoping to get a ticket
before they ran out of beds, or sleeping on a cardboard
mattress in an alley, shivering in spite of wearing
everything you owned including garbage bags. So in spite of
the chicken and the Coke, we were feeling glum, standing
close to the oil drum that served as our fireplace.
Then a strange thing started happening as we stood
there in a little circle facing each other. Street people--
don't call us homeless people, we hate that--see, street
people don't like to talk about themselves. It's probably
because talking about ourselves brings things to mind that
we'd rather leave where they are. Also, we figure that
what's happened to us in the past is nobody's business but
our own. But as we stood there under the overpass, the
shadows growing thicker around us, we started talking about
ourselves.
At first it was just a thing or two. Luis mentioned
that he was illegal, had crossed the river down by
Brownsville thirty-two times, usually getting caught right
away, never getting farther from Mexico than a few miles
from the border. But then he'd decided that he'd been
making a mistake by going across with others, sometimes
just four or five of them, sometimes a whole gang, then
staying with them, so he decided he'd go it alone. This got
him as far as Beeville but they picked him up near the
highway to San Antonio, so he decided the next time he
would just stay in amongst the trees as he worked his way
north. It worked; he'd been in San Antonio now for more
than a month.
"And I don't try to find work," he said, wiping his
mouth on his sleeve then taking a swallow of Coke. "I just
live on the streets, eat what I can find, what I can
steal." He shrugged. "I don't steal that much." He was a
lean, dark man with a skimpy beard and a scar on his cheek,
making him kind of mean-looking but I'd found out that he
was really a nice guy, but a loner. "I got no family in
Mexico so I don't got to send money home." He looked around
at us then his gaze settled on me. "And I don't have a buddy, don't need no buddy. Better to have no buddy." He
threw his chicken bones in our garbage bag--we keep this
place clean; it's where we live sometimes, see--then
sighed, his shoulders slumping. "In Mexico I was
hungry all the time, yes, but so was the others, all but
the...the rich ones, so I was just a poor, hungry man, but
here I eat Big Mac, Taco Bell, chicken from Popeye's, but
it's worse for me than at home because there I was poor
man, here I am...." He frowned, trying to think of how to
put it.
"No man," I said. "You're no man. You live on the
streets so you don't exist. You're invisible. Right?"
Luis smiled a sad smile. "Yes," he said. "Right."
Then I had to tell them about Markie. "Me and my buddy
Ben over there, we had this nice place down where Ninety
West curves into Thirty-five. It was right up in the space
under where the two highways meet, a little noisy but nice
and cozy. Well, we find this young guy wandering around one
night, half-starved, pretty sick, so we take him back to
our place, fix him up a place, give him something to eat,
although he don't eat much. He had AIDS I think, something
pretty bad. Anyway, Markie liked to sit on the side of the
embankment and watch the traffic go by up on Thirty-five,
watch the people going to their nice houses. Well, Markey
didn't come back to the place for a couple days and me and
Gus we figured he was just wandering around because he
would do that. Right, buddy?" I looked over at the dark
solemn face of my partner, Ben, and he just nodded, saying
nothing, as usual. "But after a couple days," I went on,
"we go up to this embankment where he likes to sit and
watch the traffic, check to see if Markey might be there,
and he is. But he's dead. He's sitting there but there's
enough flies around and enough smell so we know he's been
dead awhile, and all the time he's been sitting there dead,
the cars have been passing and nobody's noticed. See," I
said, shaking my head, "he was invisible, just like we're
all invisible."
Sylvia looked over at me. "So what did you do? Call
the cops?"
I looked over at Ben and he just kind of looked away,
and I said, "Cops are bad news for me and Ben. That's all I
can say about it but we keep away from cops, don't even
like to call them."
"So you left this guy Markey just sitting there?"
Sylvia asked, sounding kind of disgusted.
"Hell, he's dead, right?" I said, getting a little
peeved. "Somebody's going to notice him sooner or later."
"So did they?" Sylvia asked.
I stared over at Sylvia. "There's been nothing in the
papers." Then I gave her a grin. "Maybe he�s still sitting
there. You want to go check?"
Sylvia just shook her head. Then she said, "Okay, I've
heard all these sad stories about why we're invisible,
right?" Then she laughed, tossed that thick mane of red
hair back, straightened her shoulders in that way she has,
showing that she's a good-sized woman and proud of it. "Now
I'll tell you my little story." And for the next fifteen
minutes or so, she did.
"See," Sylvia said, "I had it all. I had a good job, I
was married to this handsome, sexy guy that turned women's
heads everywhere he went. We had a nice house with a white
picket fence and rose bushes. Yep, I had it all. Then one
day, a Monday it was, I went to work and sat down at my
desk to start working at my computer. I shuffled through
the stack of forms that I'd be working on that day and got
them lined up the way I wanted them, made sure my chair was
djusted just right, then I turned on my computer and got
ready to enter the data, the kind of stuff I'd been working
on for more than three years--when my boss Mr. Mackey
tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around and he didn't
say anything, just motioned for me to go with him, so I
turned off my monitor--we were required to do that--and I
followed him. At that point I was a little uneasy but not
really worried. I didn't much like Mr. Mackey. He was
too...too stiff, never smiling, always formal, if you know
what I mean, but I'd never had any trouble with him. I was
a good worker, always on time, always keeping busy, so I
figured it wasn't something I'd done." Sylvia smiled, her
teeth gleaming in the flickering glow of the oil drum fire,
then she went on. "Well, he didn't even ask me to sit down,
just told me I was being let go. 'The company's
downsizing,' he told me, "and we're letting some people
go.' I was just kind of numb. 'But I've got a high
productivity rate, Mr. Mackey,' I said. 'How come I�m
being let go?' 'Yes,' he said, 'you've been a fine worker,
Mrs. Martin, but we're going strictly according to
seniority.' He stretched his thin little lips in a smile
and said, 'I'm sorry, but business is business.' Then he
walked over and stood by the door. 'You'll need to clean
out your desk and leave right away, Mrs. Martin. One of the
security guards will help you.'
"Well, I was devastated. I walked out of that office
feeling about as low as I'd ever felt. Now I had to think
about going home to tell my husband, Foley. See, Foley was
a specialist. He specialized in working on the
transmissions of classic cars, usually only Rolls Royces.
Since there aren't many Rolls Royces in south Texas, or at
least not many that need transmission work, Foley spent
most of his time at home, watching TV or gabbing with our
neighbors, the Sewards. Joe Seward worked nights at some
kind of telemarketing job, and Linda Seward didn't do much
of anything except run around wearing short shorts and a
tube top. That kind of worried me at first. Foley's a big
handsome guy, dark hair, dark eyes, strong looking, one of
those people who never exercise but look like they do
but I figured nothing's going on in the daytime with her
old man there, and I was always there at night, so I
figured Foley was satisfied with me, even though I'm too
tall and too lean and way too plain. Anyway, I went up the
steps to this cute little house we were renting, wondering
how I was going to break the bad news to Foley. After all,
I was the breadwinner and everything we owned we owed money
on, including the 35 inch TV that was Foley's pride and
joy. Still, I'd managed to put a few hundred dollars in our
joint savings account so I figured we could make it until I
found another job. After all, I'd waitressed before, I
could waitress again. Well, I opened the front door, peered
into the living room, expecting to see Foley sitting in his
lounger, watching one of his soaps, but the TV was off and
the lounger, although reared back in his favorite position,
was empty. Then I heard these sounds that sounded all too
familiar. Uh-oh, I thought. Something's going on here. And
sure enough, it was. When I went into the bedroom I found
them, Foley and the Sewards. Yep, both of them. Foley was
in his favorite position, lying on his back, and the
Sewards, both of them, were busy, busy, busy. And all three
of them were stark naked."
Sylvia stopped talking, looked around at all of us,
cleared her throat and asked, "Any of that Coke left? my
throat's dry."
Somebody handed her the second bottle. It had a couple
of inches of Coke left in it and Sylvia turned it up and
drank it down. Then she bent and looked in the oil drum.
"Fire's going out," and she picked up a broomstick we kept
around for that purpose and stirred up the embers, got the
fire going a little bit.
"So," I said, not able to hold it back, "you kicked
his ass out, right?"
Sylvia looked over at me, gave a little shrug. "Nope.
It was the damnedest thing but I ended up apologizing to
him."
"What?" old lady Miller said, the first words she'd
spoken since we got together. But then she rarely spoke,
just scrounged around, slept on a bench behind the shelter
most of the time, minded her own business. "I'd have burnt
his sorry ass," she said.
"See," Sylvia said, "once the Sewards went sneaking
out of there, carrying their clothes, somehow looking kind
of comical, Foley looked up at me, still lying there naked,
not as...well, not as charged up as he had been with the
Sewards but not looking the least bit guilty. 'I hope,' he
said, 'your being home early like this don't mean you went
and lost your job.' Well, that hit me where it hurt because
I had lost my job and I was feeling real bad about that
so," and Sylvia paused, shook her head, "damned if I didn't
feel so bad about it that I ended up apologizing to Foley
and damned if he didn't say, 'Well, I hope you'll be going
out and looking for a new one right away.' And that's just
what I did. I went out early the next morning and started
making the rounds, filling out applications, sitting in
waiting rooms full of other people sitting and waiting and
I was sitting in this waiting room that afternoon and I got
to thinking about what had happened, about walking in on
Foley and the Sewards, about him not even saying he was
sorry, about me saying I was sorry, and the more I thought
about it the madder I got. Finally I wadded up these forms
I'd filled out and I threw them in a waste basket and I
walked out of there and I caught a bus home and I went
charging inside." Sylvia paused, looked around at us,
grinned one of those tough grins of hers, and said, "Well,
Foley was gone, the furniture was gone, all of it sold by
Foley, and when I rushed down to the bank to check on our
bank account, all of the money was gone. Well, I went back
home and I just flopped down on the floor and cried. I
cried all that afternoon and on into the night and I
finally spread out a couple of blankets�Foley had left
them--and I managed to get a little sleep. I woke up the
next morning, thinking things had got about as bad as they
could get when a knock came at the door. I opened the door
and there's the old lady that owns the house. She had this
couple with her and when I asked the old lady what she
wanted she said, 'I came to show these people the house,
hon. Your rent's up day after tomorrow and since your
husband came by and got your deposit, said you'd be moving
out, I brought these people by to see if they might be
interested.' She looked around and said, 'Well, I'm glad to
see you got everything moved out, but this place could use
some cleaning up.' I just stood there and looked at that
woman, not able to think of a thing to say, then I went
into the bedroom, bundled up my blankets and walked past
her and out the door."
Sylvia looked around at us, all of us hanging on every
word, then she said, "Well, I walked down the street and I
sat down on the bus stop bench and for a long while I just
sat there. Finally I dug in my purse and got out my old
billfold and I looked in it and I saw that I had nine
dollars and some change and that was it. I had two old
blankets and nine dollars and some change and nothing else.
No job, no husband, no furniture, no house. And that�s when
it hit me. I also didn't have anything to worry about. I
didn't have to worry about losing anything because I'd
already lost everything. And at that moment I felt more
free than I'd ever felt in my life. Then I thought, Now all
I got to worry about is how I'm going to stretch this nine
dollars and change, so I went down the street to a
restaurant and I went in and I told the waitress, 'I want
something that's going to cost me about nine dollars, tax
and tip included.'"
Sylvia clapped her hands together, grinned around at
us. "So you people talking about being bad off having to
live out here on the streets. Well, you know you can get
whatever you need out here. If you need clothes, you check
out Goodwill or the Salvation Army. If you want to sleep
inside, you go to one of the shelters. Otherwise, you make
yourself a cardboard pallet, sleep under the stars. I pick
up a job now and then, make a few bucks, buy myself a good
meal, go to a movie maybe. I hang onto my blanket roll;
that's my one permanent possession. Otherwise, I don't own
anything and don't want to. See," she said, looking at us,
"I like being invisible. I like it."
And we all nodded, thinking about what she'd said.
Then from behind me I hear this scratchy voice, one I'd
never heard before. "She's right," said the voice, and I
looked around and damned if it wasn't old Stump, first time
I ever heard him say a word, and also the last time because
they found him dead not long after that, all snuggled up in
his cardboard house, under the overpass.
Well, you probably figure we all became good buddies
after that, got to be like a little community. Nope, didn't
happen. I stayed with Ben, of course, no change there. But
the rest of us just kind of avoided each other after that.
Maybe we were embarrassed because we'd opened up too much.
Maybe that was it. But we just kept away from each other.
As for Sylvia, she just disappeared. Somebody said she'd
taken off for Houston, somebody else said she'd headed
south, maybe down where the beaches are. Sylvia would do
fine on the beaches. Hell, Sylvia would do fine anywhere.
© 2001 Paul Perry
From the book "Street People" by Paul Perry, Pocol Press, ISBN 1-929763-08-5. [email protected]. Available on Amazon.com.
Multiple award-winning author Paul Perry's book "Street People" offers
two dozen fictional tales that explore the real issues and life
struggles of homeless people. Forget the stereotypes of bag ladies and sprawled-out-in-back-alley winos. "Street People" is an aching, unflinching, stark, and deeply moving tour through the "invisible" underbelly of the United States.