My friend in Section Eight housing is cooking alive.
She tells me that her central air conditioning still hasn’t been fixed. Her row house’s thermostat, she says, is set to 64 but the temperature upstairs is in the 70s and the temperature downstairs is about 82. She’s already called code enforcement, but they sided with the land lord who claims there’s nothing she can do. My friend puts her baby down for a nap, and the baby wakes up a ball of sweat. Her asthma is hurting her chest. She’s exhausted all day long. She says the landlord still forbids the window air conditioner, and she won’t allow her to put a wading pool outside either. I have been advising her to drink Gatorade and take showers, but I don’t know how long that will help.
Michael and I replaced our own window air conditioners a month ago when we had the money unexpectedly, and we were going to give our old dusty units to the scrappers to recycle. But when I asked in the Buy Nothing group, several people badly needed an air conditioner, any air conditioner at all, and preferably more than one to make their houses inhabitable. I gave one to the lady on the corner, warning her that it was dusty and might need the mildew cleaned out. Another went to the lady behind us, with the caution to prop it on a chair so the water that leaked through the crack on the bottom wouldn’t rot her floor. The last one went to a young man who has custody of his two small children and is suffering horribly in an overheated house. He thanked me as if I’d given him a treasure chest and not an old dusty window unit so loud you can barely carry on a conversation when it’s running.
I’m not saying this so you’ll think I’m generous. I am not. I was just getting rid of heavy pieces of metal I didn’t need, and somebody else benefitted from my garbage. I’m telling you because I know multiple people whose health is in danger from the condition of their housing combined with the state of the climate right now.
While I was talking with my friend, complaining of the heat, I heard from my neighbor– not the harassing one you all know about by now, but the one who lives across the alley. This friend was the recipient of the leaky air conditioner. She lost 50 pounds over the past month or so without a diagnosis, and now she finally has one. She has pancreatic cancer. She’s so weak she can barely leave the sofa; she was looking for a bedside toilet, a wheelchair and a wheelchair cushion. I didn’t know this, but it turns out that wheelchairs don’t just come when you’re sick, not necessarily even if you have insurance. You have to buy one, and they cost a lot. She could not find a free wheelchair. But she found a lady giving away a walker with a seat on it in the Buy Nothing group, and that was better than nothing. She didn’t have a ride to pick it up from the next town over, so I said I’d go get it, and I did.
When I got back, I knocked at the door, but she didn’t answer. Her old noisy window air conditioner was so loud, she didn’t wake up when I knocked. I’ll bring the walker by again this evening.
I’m not saying this so you’ll think I’m a saint for going to get a used walker. I’m not. I needed to run errands anyway, so I only went a little out of my way. I’m saying it so you’ll know that there’s a poor woman with cancer who doesn’t even have the dignity of a bedside toilet, and wouldn’t have had a walker without help.
On the way back to town, I stopped to mail the rent. I wanted to treat myself to iced cold brew because it was sweltering hot in my car even with the air conditioning going full blast, but everyone else in Steubenville had gotten the same idea– there was nowhere to park on the same block as the coffee shop. I parked down by the old Grand Theatre, across from the Americans for Prosperity building.
That was where I saw the homeless man.
It was ninety-three degrees, officially: hotter in the bright patches where the sun radiates from the pavement downtown. When I got out of my car I stepped in a puddle from yesterday’s rain, but instead of feeling cool, the water was as hot as a bath. Most everyone was going about their business in shorts and t-shirts or even less; children were running around in their bathing suits. This man was in long jeans, lying down in the doorway, using his backpack for a pillow.
I asked the homeless man if he needed a ride to the Friendship Room, the Catholic Worker House on the other side of downtown. They have air conditioning, cool drinks, popsicles and even a wading pool with a sliding board for the local children to play in.
The man barely opened his eyes, and said he wasn’t allowed there. Sometimes the Friendship Room has to ban people who have gotten violent, for the safety of their other guests, and that’s reasonable. I don’t know why he was banned. I only know that there was a human man lying on the pavement, barely awake, on a dangerously hot day, under signs that said “PULL THE PORK” and decried the wasteful government safety net.
I ran to get my iced coffee and a bottle of water besides, to break my twenty dollar bill. I gave him the water and a five. I told him to catch the next bus so he could ride in the air conditioning until he cooled off, but all he did was close his eyes again and clutch his fist around the money.
I drank my coffee on the verge of tears, driving on the shadier streets to cool the black interior of my car just a little. I drove past the Greek Orthodox church, and made the Sign of the Cross, and said “do something.” That was my only prayer.
I’m not saying this so you’ll say I’m a good person. I am not a good person. I get irritated when people praise me for trying to help somebody, because I think trying to help somebody ought to be the perfectly normal baseline of decent behavior. I’m telling you this story because there is a homeless man baking on the pavement outside the Americans for Prosperity building during a heat wave, and I couldn’t help him.
I’m saying it because my friend is boiling alive in her apartment.
I’m saying it because several of my neighbors were so overheated they were pleased to get a broken air conditioner.
I’m saying it because my neighbor has cancer and doesn’t have a wheelchair or a bedside toilet.
I’m saying it because our society is sick, and the name of the sickness is selfishness and cruelty, and that sickness is torturing people to death.
I’m saying it because I’m angry. I’m furious. I’m nauseated with rage.
I’m saying this because I’m damned if I don’t wake you up and show you how much need there is, and I’m damned if we don’t do something about it. And I’m using that cuss word in the theological sense. I really do think that our society is hell, and hell is what you and I justly deserve if we put up with hell instead of trying to make these people’s lives a little better.
Now, what are we going to do?
Image via pixabay
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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