Praying for You
Brother Robert, in full Capuchin robe, is not at his usual post in the center aisle. Instead, he’s busy pouring milk for guests when I arrive at St. Ben’s. “We’re short-handed again,” he tells me. “It’s been like this the past few days. It’s more of a workout than I’m used to.”
“I’ll help,” I say. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just jump in,” he tells me.
I deliver a load of shirts and packages of toothbrushes to the giveaway table, grab a pitcher of milk and start moving around the room filling red plastic cups. In this way, I see the group in a different way, mingling among all the people there instead of helping with the families and handicapped before sitting with a few fellows. I’m surprised by how different this makes me feel, how set apart.
Some guests are grateful, others barely acknowledge me. Many are people who know me. With them, I joke or exchange greetings. Some signal for drinks by holding cups high in the air. As I move, I’m getting a bead on the group as a whole instead of one by one. Mental illness, physical handicaps, worn out. High on some substance, overly medicated, stammering speech, alert and smart. Dirty, clean, jovial, broken.
I’ve been gone for a couple weeks. Staff and guests come looking for me to ask where I’ve been. Ruben tells me that I haven’t been there in seventeen days. I make a mental note to check that out on my calendar.* Josh, sweating over the hot dishwashing station, gives me a big hug and says he’s been wondering if I was coming back. And Willy stops full out in the aisle when he sees me, fixes that loving, unwavering gaze on me, forming a human obstacle the guests are forced to move around.
I smile. “How’ve you been, Willy?”
The gaze is unlike any I normally receive in my life outside St. Ben’s. “I’m better now,” Willy tells me. “I been worried about you.”
“I’ll come sit with you in a bit,” I tell him. “We’ll catch up.”
Still, he stands in the middle of the aisle, not moving. People carrying trays loaded with food have to skirt around him.
I hold up the pitcher of milk to show him I’m in the busy with a task. “I’ll watch where you sit. Don’t worry, I’ll find you.”
At this, he moves off to the exact place where I used to sit with my friend Samuel, who I still miss every time I go to St. Ben’s. It’s a warm evening in May, a sudden blast of early summer after a long stretch of cold rain. Willy wears a heavy leather jacket. He once held it out to me when it was sopping wet, telling me to just hold it. In my grip, the weight startled me; it was about as a heavy as a loaded grocery bag. He’d told me it takes days to dry out, but once you get a jacket like that, you don’t ever take it off, because somebody will steal it.
I help a blind woman, a woman with a walker, and a few kids get their meals. One family seems to think this is a restaurant with terrible service – acting so rude that security steps in. Unlike the other guests, they left their table in a mess, food spilled, not cleaning up after themselves. That was enough serving the room for me. The line was finally thinning, the need to pour milk and coffee slowing, so I grabbed a tray and headed for Willy.
Often, Willy is a slow eater, but this time, he’s made it all the way to dessert by the time I join him. Bits of chocolate cake are studded through his gray beard. He doesn’t wipe his face and stops mid bite when I sit across from him, holding a chunk of cake with his fingers. No words for a second, just the steady gaze. Then he says, “I missed you.”
“I was gone for a couple of week because I fell. I tripped over a little raise in the pavement and landed face first in the street. My nose was bleeding, I broke a tooth and got pretty banged up, but I’m okay now.” As I relate this story, his eyes fill with tears. Big tears that he wipes away with the back of his hand. He can’t wipe them away fast enough, and soon, he is crying quietly, teardrops plopping onto his beard. Willy is soft-hearted and easily deeply moved. I’ve seen tears well up in his eyes several times, but never like this.
“Willy, I’m okay,” I tell him. “The doctor said I’ll be just fine.”
“I just don’t like to hear that you got hurt like that.” He grabs a napkin and wipes at the stream of tears that haven’t stopped, mops up his beard. “You know I love you. I pray for you every day.”
“I love you, too, Willy,” I tell him. “But, you’d better stop crying now, or I won’t tell you any stories about myself anymore.”
A young man without a tray sits beside Willy and says to me, “I’m just waiting here for my girl. She’ll be here in a minute.” He notices Willy’s tears, scoots closer and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Hey, hey, man. You don’t got to cry. What’s the matter?”
Willy tries to smile, but the tears get stronger. He’s too choked up to speak.
“I told him I was hurt,” I tell the young man. “He just hasn’t gotten to the part where I said I’m okay.”
The young man says, “You hear that, man? She’s okay. You don’t got to be cryin’ now.” The man looks at me. “Willy’s got a heart of gold, a heart of gold. He don’t hurt nobody. He’s always good to people, sharin’ what he got.” He gives Willy a squeeze, lowers his voice and asks for a cigarette. Furtive glances around the room, they make some kind of exchange under the table. People get kicked out of the meal program for selling cigarettes. It’s against the rules. I pretend not to notice, think about whispering that Nikky can’t come back because she was doing this. But Nikky also got loud and belligerent with security when confronted.
This distraction helps Willy stem the flow of tears. A woman arrives and the young man takes off. Willy turns his attention back to me.
“Want to come to the Bucks game with me?” he asks. I know that the guests are taking advantage of the large, outdoor screen where the playoffs are visible on the street. One guest told me that’s where the party is, that they get down with Marquette students and have a real good time.
“You know I don’t like sports,” I say, smiling. “You go enjoy the game. I bet it gets pretty crowded down there.”
Willy winces like he’s been stung by a bee. Now I know he’s back on his version of an even keel. “Oooh! It’s so crowded you couldn’t slip a credit card in your back pocket. You know how thin a credit card is?”
I laugh. “If you put a credit card in your back pocket, someone’s likely to pick your pocket.”
Willy’s gaze warms up, a smile crinkling his eyes. “That’s what I like about you. You’re smart.” He holds his gaze on me. “You sure you don’t want to see that game with me?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, what about coming to see ZZ Top with me? If I buy tickets to see ZZ Top, will you come with me?”
“Willy, you’re not buying tickets to see ZZ Top. You save your money.”
“I got money. Will you go with me?”
I can’t tell if he’s serious. “Tickets are expensive. I’m telling you no.”
“What if the Lord blesses us?”
“What?” I say. “If the Lord blesses you with that kind of money, you use it on a down payment on an apartment.”
“If the Lord blesses us, will you go with me?” he asks, relentless. “I hear the voice of the Lord, and He’s telling me I’m about to be blessed.”
I cup a hand to my ear. “I’m not hearing that voice, Willy.”
He chuckles. “I hear it. The Lord is about to bless me, that’s what I’m telling you.”
I set down my fork. “Where are they playing?”
“The Riverside.”
I try to reason with him. “Tickets at the Riverside start at sixty-five or seventy-five dollars. You’re not buying tickets for ZZ Top. You need to stop talking like this.” Noting his unwavering gaze, I try to change the subject. “You want my cookie?”
He reaches over and takes it off my tray. Just as I think he’s finally going to drop the subject, he says, “If I get that money, and I get tickets, will you go with me?” He pinches the cookie between his thumb and forefinger, holds his pinkie in the air.
In mock exasperation, I turn to the fellow sitting beside me. “Can you believe this?” I say. “That man is teasing me.”
The man says, “Don’t tease em’, please ‘em.”
“You’re no help,” I tell him. I point at Willy. “Look at that pinkie.”
Willy wiggles his eyebrows at me.
“Oh for Pete’s sake. Cut it out. I’m not going to a concert with you.”
More eyebrow wiggling. A tiny pucker of a kiss blown my way. Twinkling eyes. Willy is enjoying this.
“Willy, there are free concerts all summer long in Pere Marquette Park. Maybe you’ll see me there.”
He sits back, satisfied, like a man who’s just won a good game of chess.
I give Willy a stern face. “You can be my friend, but you can’t ask me to go out with you.” I shake my finger at him. “I mean it.”
He laughs. “Here, let me get your tray.” He grabs up both our trays and heads off to the area where dirty dishes are organized.
I follow with our empty cups. Ruben is standing to the side, waiting to talk to me. As we near Ruben, I remind Willy to put in an application for an apartment at St. Anthony’s. “I’m pretty sure you can use your Social Security as income, but you need to check on that.”
Willy asks, “How much is rent?”
I’m always cautious about giving answers to these questions. I don’t want to make a mistake, even if I know the answer. “I think it’s thirty percent of your income. I don’t know all the details. You need to talk to Kenny about that.”
Ruben jumps in. “Yeah, yeah. That’s right.”
I touch Ruben’s arm and tell Willy to talk to him. “He lives in one of the apartments. I’ve seen them. They’re really nice.”
Ruben nods emphatically, his one eye not quite moving with the other. “Real, real nice. Yeah, yeah.”
Willy has been placed in two apartments over the past few month, and both times, he’s walked away. The only reason he ever gives is, “It didn’t work out.” Someone in the building always “has a disagreement” with him, and he doesn’t want to stay. I’m guessing he won’t apply to St. Anthony’s, that maybe he doesn’t like complying with rules, but I say, “You need to get off the street by winter. If you apply now, you might get in.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ruben says.
Willy tells me to give him the cups. I place them on top of the trays and he makes it to the dirty dish station. Ruben and I talk for a few minutes, and I figure Willy is gone, but when I move toward the kitchen, he’s waiting for me. He steps in close, too close. For a second, I think he plans to try to kiss me. No teasing face, no tears, he says, “You know I love you. I pray for you every day.”
“I’ll help,” I say. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just jump in,” he tells me.
I deliver a load of shirts and packages of toothbrushes to the giveaway table, grab a pitcher of milk and start moving around the room filling red plastic cups. In this way, I see the group in a different way, mingling among all the people there instead of helping with the families and handicapped before sitting with a few fellows. I’m surprised by how different this makes me feel, how set apart.
Some guests are grateful, others barely acknowledge me. Many are people who know me. With them, I joke or exchange greetings. Some signal for drinks by holding cups high in the air. As I move, I’m getting a bead on the group as a whole instead of one by one. Mental illness, physical handicaps, worn out. High on some substance, overly medicated, stammering speech, alert and smart. Dirty, clean, jovial, broken.
I’ve been gone for a couple weeks. Staff and guests come looking for me to ask where I’ve been. Ruben tells me that I haven’t been there in seventeen days. I make a mental note to check that out on my calendar.* Josh, sweating over the hot dishwashing station, gives me a big hug and says he’s been wondering if I was coming back. And Willy stops full out in the aisle when he sees me, fixes that loving, unwavering gaze on me, forming a human obstacle the guests are forced to move around.
I smile. “How’ve you been, Willy?”
The gaze is unlike any I normally receive in my life outside St. Ben’s. “I’m better now,” Willy tells me. “I been worried about you.”
“I’ll come sit with you in a bit,” I tell him. “We’ll catch up.”
Still, he stands in the middle of the aisle, not moving. People carrying trays loaded with food have to skirt around him.
I hold up the pitcher of milk to show him I’m in the busy with a task. “I’ll watch where you sit. Don’t worry, I’ll find you.”
At this, he moves off to the exact place where I used to sit with my friend Samuel, who I still miss every time I go to St. Ben’s. It’s a warm evening in May, a sudden blast of early summer after a long stretch of cold rain. Willy wears a heavy leather jacket. He once held it out to me when it was sopping wet, telling me to just hold it. In my grip, the weight startled me; it was about as a heavy as a loaded grocery bag. He’d told me it takes days to dry out, but once you get a jacket like that, you don’t ever take it off, because somebody will steal it.
I help a blind woman, a woman with a walker, and a few kids get their meals. One family seems to think this is a restaurant with terrible service – acting so rude that security steps in. Unlike the other guests, they left their table in a mess, food spilled, not cleaning up after themselves. That was enough serving the room for me. The line was finally thinning, the need to pour milk and coffee slowing, so I grabbed a tray and headed for Willy.
Often, Willy is a slow eater, but this time, he’s made it all the way to dessert by the time I join him. Bits of chocolate cake are studded through his gray beard. He doesn’t wipe his face and stops mid bite when I sit across from him, holding a chunk of cake with his fingers. No words for a second, just the steady gaze. Then he says, “I missed you.”
“I was gone for a couple of week because I fell. I tripped over a little raise in the pavement and landed face first in the street. My nose was bleeding, I broke a tooth and got pretty banged up, but I’m okay now.” As I relate this story, his eyes fill with tears. Big tears that he wipes away with the back of his hand. He can’t wipe them away fast enough, and soon, he is crying quietly, teardrops plopping onto his beard. Willy is soft-hearted and easily deeply moved. I’ve seen tears well up in his eyes several times, but never like this.
“Willy, I’m okay,” I tell him. “The doctor said I’ll be just fine.”
“I just don’t like to hear that you got hurt like that.” He grabs a napkin and wipes at the stream of tears that haven’t stopped, mops up his beard. “You know I love you. I pray for you every day.”
“I love you, too, Willy,” I tell him. “But, you’d better stop crying now, or I won’t tell you any stories about myself anymore.”
A young man without a tray sits beside Willy and says to me, “I’m just waiting here for my girl. She’ll be here in a minute.” He notices Willy’s tears, scoots closer and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “Hey, hey, man. You don’t got to cry. What’s the matter?”
Willy tries to smile, but the tears get stronger. He’s too choked up to speak.
“I told him I was hurt,” I tell the young man. “He just hasn’t gotten to the part where I said I’m okay.”
The young man says, “You hear that, man? She’s okay. You don’t got to be cryin’ now.” The man looks at me. “Willy’s got a heart of gold, a heart of gold. He don’t hurt nobody. He’s always good to people, sharin’ what he got.” He gives Willy a squeeze, lowers his voice and asks for a cigarette. Furtive glances around the room, they make some kind of exchange under the table. People get kicked out of the meal program for selling cigarettes. It’s against the rules. I pretend not to notice, think about whispering that Nikky can’t come back because she was doing this. But Nikky also got loud and belligerent with security when confronted.
This distraction helps Willy stem the flow of tears. A woman arrives and the young man takes off. Willy turns his attention back to me.
“Want to come to the Bucks game with me?” he asks. I know that the guests are taking advantage of the large, outdoor screen where the playoffs are visible on the street. One guest told me that’s where the party is, that they get down with Marquette students and have a real good time.
“You know I don’t like sports,” I say, smiling. “You go enjoy the game. I bet it gets pretty crowded down there.”
Willy winces like he’s been stung by a bee. Now I know he’s back on his version of an even keel. “Oooh! It’s so crowded you couldn’t slip a credit card in your back pocket. You know how thin a credit card is?”
I laugh. “If you put a credit card in your back pocket, someone’s likely to pick your pocket.”
Willy’s gaze warms up, a smile crinkling his eyes. “That’s what I like about you. You’re smart.” He holds his gaze on me. “You sure you don’t want to see that game with me?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, what about coming to see ZZ Top with me? If I buy tickets to see ZZ Top, will you come with me?”
“Willy, you’re not buying tickets to see ZZ Top. You save your money.”
“I got money. Will you go with me?”
I can’t tell if he’s serious. “Tickets are expensive. I’m telling you no.”
“What if the Lord blesses us?”
“What?” I say. “If the Lord blesses you with that kind of money, you use it on a down payment on an apartment.”
“If the Lord blesses us, will you go with me?” he asks, relentless. “I hear the voice of the Lord, and He’s telling me I’m about to be blessed.”
I cup a hand to my ear. “I’m not hearing that voice, Willy.”
He chuckles. “I hear it. The Lord is about to bless me, that’s what I’m telling you.”
I set down my fork. “Where are they playing?”
“The Riverside.”
I try to reason with him. “Tickets at the Riverside start at sixty-five or seventy-five dollars. You’re not buying tickets for ZZ Top. You need to stop talking like this.” Noting his unwavering gaze, I try to change the subject. “You want my cookie?”
He reaches over and takes it off my tray. Just as I think he’s finally going to drop the subject, he says, “If I get that money, and I get tickets, will you go with me?” He pinches the cookie between his thumb and forefinger, holds his pinkie in the air.
In mock exasperation, I turn to the fellow sitting beside me. “Can you believe this?” I say. “That man is teasing me.”
The man says, “Don’t tease em’, please ‘em.”
“You’re no help,” I tell him. I point at Willy. “Look at that pinkie.”
Willy wiggles his eyebrows at me.
“Oh for Pete’s sake. Cut it out. I’m not going to a concert with you.”
More eyebrow wiggling. A tiny pucker of a kiss blown my way. Twinkling eyes. Willy is enjoying this.
“Willy, there are free concerts all summer long in Pere Marquette Park. Maybe you’ll see me there.”
He sits back, satisfied, like a man who’s just won a good game of chess.
I give Willy a stern face. “You can be my friend, but you can’t ask me to go out with you.” I shake my finger at him. “I mean it.”
He laughs. “Here, let me get your tray.” He grabs up both our trays and heads off to the area where dirty dishes are organized.
I follow with our empty cups. Ruben is standing to the side, waiting to talk to me. As we near Ruben, I remind Willy to put in an application for an apartment at St. Anthony’s. “I’m pretty sure you can use your Social Security as income, but you need to check on that.”
Willy asks, “How much is rent?”
I’m always cautious about giving answers to these questions. I don’t want to make a mistake, even if I know the answer. “I think it’s thirty percent of your income. I don’t know all the details. You need to talk to Kenny about that.”
Ruben jumps in. “Yeah, yeah. That’s right.”
I touch Ruben’s arm and tell Willy to talk to him. “He lives in one of the apartments. I’ve seen them. They’re really nice.”
Ruben nods emphatically, his one eye not quite moving with the other. “Real, real nice. Yeah, yeah.”
Willy has been placed in two apartments over the past few month, and both times, he’s walked away. The only reason he ever gives is, “It didn’t work out.” Someone in the building always “has a disagreement” with him, and he doesn’t want to stay. I’m guessing he won’t apply to St. Anthony’s, that maybe he doesn’t like complying with rules, but I say, “You need to get off the street by winter. If you apply now, you might get in.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ruben says.
Willy tells me to give him the cups. I place them on top of the trays and he makes it to the dirty dish station. Ruben and I talk for a few minutes, and I figure Willy is gone, but when I move toward the kitchen, he’s waiting for me. He steps in close, too close. For a second, I think he plans to try to kiss me. No teasing face, no tears, he says, “You know I love you. I pray for you every day.”