But there was so much more.
There always is. Always.
2. Left Hand: October 2003
Raised scars on young wrists have haunted me for years. Lamentably, I know too much. The opportunity to literally and figuratively “read between the lines” has not been lost on me.
A series of tiny slender tracks, criss-crossed along the fleshy part of the forearm, front or back—a desperate call for someone to take notice, or just the desire to feel something. Anything.
Shallow lines that widen from the outside of an upturned wrist to the inside—an in-progress decisiveness to take it seriously.
The reverse, wide to shallow, means fear in the final moments.
When I met her, there was no mistaking these tragic scars and trails. Aggressive long thick lines running diagonally from the base of the thumb, six inches towards the elbow. Instantly, two things were certain.
One: right-hand scars reveal a left-handed cutter. Likely a lefty all ’round.
Two: I am in the presence of a miracle. These are the scars of someone who meant business. And still, somehow, she has life.
Fifteen years old. Timidly petitioning for spare change from strangers, with nothing more than her presence. Little more than a child, sleeping among the fattened gutter rats that creep in and out of the sewers of Chinatown. And dressed in the third-hand beaten wares of women on the street three and four times her age.
There are endless questions that haunt all street and inner-city relief workers: Who is she? Whose is she? And how much more hurt does she have to endure in these years that are meant to be the green years of anticipation and innocence?
As I drew near, I could see four university students in matching varsity jackets gathering around her. They were drunk. Very, very drunk. While I sped into a full run I could see them nudging her with their knees, taunting her, and challenging her to respond. Sitting low on the chipped concrete, with her shoulders folded inward, she did nothing and said nothing. But they persisted, eager in their inebriation for mindless entertainment. A cruel synergy set in motion by the heartless belligerence of total intoxication. My pace quickened. My heart was pounding like a hammer. Her defiance to respond reshaped their foolish laughter into tribal anger. Racing through the staggered traffic, I was barely halfway to my destination when I could see mimicking gestures of the unimaginable. Within seconds they were no longer gestures, but performed acts. Snarling and grunting, one of them undid the front of his pants and began urinating on her, while the others cheered him on. She leaned forward over her knees. Her yellow hair tumbled around her shoulders as she simply hung her head to protect her eyes from the stinging pain of physical and emotional abuse.
Consumed by an anger I cannot remember before or since, I arrived throwing punches like I had never imagined. Awkward, fitful punches. A graceless flailing reminiscent of the panicked playground defenses that children use against bullies in elementary school. Hits and misses, anywhere and everywhere. All that the dripping child sitting motionless among us would know for sure, if nothing else, that she was valid of complete outrage.
The entire scenario was disgusting. Drunk and sober humanity graphically revealing every ugly thing but peace. Blood. Drool. Urine. An outreach worker with no recollection of how to de-escalate a volatile situation, and four young men getting off on humiliation. All of it spiraling around a little girl who was living out just one more horrific episode.
The mindless confusion lifted like a slow fog as they finally stumbled away, cursing and laughing. Overwhelmed and outraged, huffing and puffing, I dropped to my knees beside her. She ran the left cuff of her jacket over her mouth, spat out the taste of a stranger’s bladder and smiled at me.
Social justice? Contemporary evangelism? Practical ministry? Blah, blah, blah. Words. All just words. Words tossed around like silly treats spilling from a piñata. Candy-coated words that sound tasty in lecture halls and church sanctuaries, and juicy in deep-thinking books. But in the here and now of it all, they just felt like stupid meaningless words, lost in the unforgiving darkness of a child living an undignified life worse than death.
Payback! Revenge! Even divine wrath! In the moment these were the words that really made sense. Anything that would lower a boom, and preferably cause some pain.
But if forced to concede to upright and even-keeled words, the best I could do was righteous anger. While my behaviour during this hideous incident was ten parts instinct and zero parts prayer, one of the inevitables of the street is living out, and wrestling with, righteous anger. The notion of it alone has kept me sane on many occasions. And while my fit of rage may have been a poor excuse for manifesting righteous anger, and could have gotten me in trouble, I have often justified my actions (for better or worse) by believing that it is godly to be angry when God is angry.
Her slight hands dragged the wet hair from her face. I looked into her eyes with sickening regret, lost for anything meaningful to do or say. And she looked back at me, as though she felt bad for me—that she couldn’t make me feel any better. It was a mind-boggling response. She was magnificent in her fortitude.
She continued to dry off her face with the cuff of her torn sleeve, and with a forced smile offered, “It’s no big deal.”
Revolting! Degrading! Unthinkable! Mortifying! No words, no absurd combination of words could do any justice to what had just occurred. It was a million ridiculous things, and everything except “no big deal!” But so broken, so early in life, these were the first words from the mouth of one of God’s own precious children, curled up on a wet curb on an ugly October night. His little miracle, still surviving and surviving and surviving.
Her name was Amy. Soft-spoken and sweet, trying desperately to hide in the camouflage of those who might simply be ignored if they make no fuss. Overlooked by scholars and homemakers, criminals and preachers—hundreds of passersby each day who look down their noses at her with contempt and arrogance.
Very few words later, she looked up at me again with another half smile.
“I’m kind of hungry,” she sighed, ever so matter-of-factly.
Amy fumbled through her canvas backpack and pulled out an old brown apple. Bruised and wrinkled. She took a small bite, looked up, and smiled still one more time.
Fifteen. Death scars. Tired eyes. Educated urine in her hair. And the courage to smile; valour that no one can steal. Once again, the miracle of endurance met with the cold effects of numbness. Incongruous and glorious all at once.
Dear Amy. A treasure lost and forgotten. Just one of a legion of sheepish survivors who need to learn to feel again. To believe in more than pain and hurt and humiliation. To have history erased. To truly be 15 years old. And to be honoured over and over again, in this life and in the next, as a child of God.
But on this night, she was having a hard time finding someone who would simply put fifty cents in her empty coffee cup and smile back at her. Makes it more than difficult to believe in the rest. Makes it impossible.
The smell of liquored urine filled the air. I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to throw punches at God, the same way my arms threw them at the drunks. Angrily, awkwardly. But the one-sided fight was interrupted by a sweet voice, ringing with unflappable charity and charm.
“You wanna bite?” She lifted her little brown apple towards me.
Left hand, of course.
