Pieces Of A Family

AL MARTINEZ SPECIAL TO THE APPLETREE

I

they aren't intruding on your
have pinned on the wall
life, you tend to ignore them.
next to me a lined piece of
They're like passing traffic, or
notebook paper on which
leaves carried on a stray wind.
is printed, "I Love You
When I got to the place
Mom." It is written in black
where the freeway family had
crayon in the careful hand of a
been, no one was there. I
child who might be 7 or 8 years
searched both sides of the free-
old.
way
and then concentrated on
On the
It was q
an open area near where
back, in the
same black
house viewed the encampment had ex-
isted. The day was
crayon, she
:::::amontoarm
hot and smoggy, and
has drawn a
$5110261.:§MtkAa,,,,
I wasn't about to
picture of a
spend a lot of time chasing shad-
house with roughly outlined
ows. But then, as I was walking
doors and windows. It is almost
back toward the car, a homeless
bleak in its isolation, alone,
man emerged from a group of
without life, without warmth,
eucalyptus trees.
without surroundings.
I swear I'd searched the area
This piece of paper is special
and hadn't seen anyone, but
to me. I found it one day along
there he was, a guy in his late
the freeway, in a lot once occu-
40s, dirty, bearded, and wearing
pied by a group of homeless
clothes as old as rainfall. He was
people, lying amid the debris of
vague about almost everything,
what had been their encamp-
but he did point out the exact
ment Only pieces of their exis-
spot where the family had been.
tence remained: a blackened
He'd been there a couple of
barbecue grill, a paper cup, a
nights, too, until they'd all been
few cans, a ragged shirt..and
told to move on, though he did-
that note.
n't know by whom. They were
A woman who works at
always being told to move.
Modem Maturity magazine
Who told them wasn't impor-
told me about them. She wasn't
tant.
sure how long they had been
The last I saw him, he was
there and didn't know if they
walking south along the free-
were actually a family or simply
way, going nowhere.
people thrown together by ne-
The hand-printed note was in
cessity.
plain sight near the barbecue
I'm not sure what compelled
grill. I'm pretty sure of the age
me to look. Los Angeles' Shelter
of the person who wrote it and
Partnership estimates that there
drew the picture of a house on
are up to 80,000 homeless peo-
the back. I have grandchildren
ple in the country. Like every-
who are 7 and 8, and it looks
one else, I've gotten used to
like something one of them
seeing them around. As long as
might have done.
AL MARTINEZ is a columnist for The
I stood there for a long time

Los Angeles Times.

just looking at the note, drawn
slowly into it, increasingly un-
aware of the heat and smog.
The din of freeway traffic muted
to the distant hum of flies at a
picnic table. I could piCture a lit-
tle girl sitting in the terrible lone-
liness of the vacant lot, carefully
printing the words, and just as
meticulously drawing the pic-
ture of a home that may have
existed in a corner of her mem-
ory.
Was there actually a mother
for her to write to, or was she
just a phantom figure of a child's
longing? Had there once been a
home, or had all of her young
life been spent wandering and
dreaming?
The house she drew was a
house without her in it, a place
beyond the horizons of her
reach, cold and distant and
empty. It was like one of the
real homes that surrounded the
vacant lot, viewed through
something close to despair.
This is not a good time for the
homeless. A growing hostility
toward their existence is forcing
them out of sight I think we see
their homelessness in ourselves,
imagine the utterly devastating
failure of spirit they must feel,
and simply can't bear the intro-
spection.
I live now with the vision of
the child who wrote the note. I
always will. One of them may
be a little girl whose warmth
and loneliness claw at the heart.
If so, I hope that she is loved as
she loves, because sometimes in
the emptiness of a world filled
with sadness, love is all we have
left. El

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