Free A Gift of Hope: Helping the Homeless by Danielle Steel

themselves. We
have
to help.

FIVE

The Clients:

Who Are They?
    A lthough it’s not unusual for me to forget the name or face of someone I meet at a dinner party, I rarely forgot a face I saw on the street. Some of them I saw time and time again, others I saw once and then they disappeared forever. I always wondered what happened to them. Did they move on to another city? Did they go to a shelter? Had family members claimed them and convinced them to come home? Did they go to jail? Or did they die? I heard of deaths on the streets often. Whatever happened to them, there are faces I will remember forever, even though I will never know their stories. I never, ever asked them how they got to the streets. I felt I owed them that respect. And street etiquette and simple decency forbade it.
    The woman I saw most often is the one I mentioned earlier,who began her life on the streets in a blue flowered silk dress and a string of pearls and ended up in a wheelchair, missing all her teeth and one leg. Yet she was always cheerful, polite, kind, and grateful for our kindness and anything we gave her. She was a bright woman, and I know she had children somewhere. She mentioned them, and as in the case of many women on the streets, her children were with her mother. (In other cases women on the streets have children in foster care.)
    One of the people I met on one of my first trips was a man who popped out of a Dumpster, like a genie out of a bottle. At another time and place, he would have scared the life out of me, and I have to admit, even that night he frightened me a little. His hair was a tangle of dreads and his face was streaked with dirt, he was filthy, and his eyes were wild. Trying to maintain my composure, I explained to him what I had to offer him, and he nodded, standing in the Dumpster. I ran to the van to get him a sleeping bag and jacket, after he told me what size he was. With them, I handed him a hat, socks, and gloves. All of it disappeared into the bowels of the Dumpster where he was living. And being very small, I couldn’t see into it. I was just walking away, when I heard his voice shout out behind me: “How do I look?” I turned to see him beaming at me, in the same extreme state of disarray, but he had added to it the clean, warm jacket. I think on that trip the jackets we gave out were pale gray. (We always took whatever colors we could getin volume. For obvious reasons, we preferred darker colors, but couldn’t always get them.) As I turned to look at him, I had never seen a smile so wide and proud. He was absolutely exploding with joy. The tenderness of the moment brought tears to my eyes, as I smiled back at him. Along with a warm jacket, we had somehow given him back humanity and pride.
    “You look beautiful!” I shouted back at him and meant it, and his smile widened.
    “Thank you!” he said. No one had touched my heart as he did at that moment. I still think of him often, and privately call him “How do I look?” to identify him when we talk about him. He looked so happy, and it was an infinitely precious moment. As I waved again and walked back to the van, he shouted “God bless you!” and vanished into the Dumpster. I never saw him again, but like so many others, I will remember him always.
    Another woman I saw only once was pushing a shopping cart at midnight, near San Francisco’s civic center. At one time, there was a tent city there, which was disbanded by the DPW. Afterward, people camped in doorways and on steps, in clusters of cardboard boxes, especially for the night. She was a large woman, pushing her cart with a measured step and a dignified walk, and for some crazy reason, she reminded me of English nannies I had seen pushing prams around the park in my childhood. Everything she owned was in that cart,stacked high but in meticulous order. It was one of our last trips before Christmas. We approached her, told her what we had. As we spoke, I noticed that she had done her hair in