[Mb-civic] Jimmy's journey - Elissa Ely - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Jimmy's journey

By Elissa Ely  |  November 6, 2005

MANY YEARS ago, when I had a degree in humanities and not one useful 
inkling of what to do with it, I worked the overnight shift on the 
women's side of a street shelter. The shelter was in a warehouse; my job 
interview was on the fire-escape.

There wasn't much to do all night. We turned away late guests, called 
detoxes to see if they had openings, and sat in a small office full of 
fluorescent light, waiting for dawn.

Jimmy was my co-worker. He wore a beret that dared anyone to comment on 
it. Years earlier, before sobering up, he used to sleep in the shelter. 
Now he was staff, and he kept a pint in his desk drawer for any guest he 
diagnosed with impending DTs. Alcohol was not allowed in the shelter, 
but Jimmy viewed it as a medical intervention. When he had been 
hard-drinking and homeless, he said, a staff member had saved his life 
with a nip, and damn the rules.

Jimmy loved the guests for their sorrows. He knew the mother and 
daughter who shared a job by day, sat side by side at meals, washed up 
in the same sink, and slept in the upper and lower bunks of one bed. He 
knew the woman with one eye who never smiled and had once taught in a 
university. And he knew Tony, as much as one could.

She would be well over 100 now, if she is still alive. Her hands were as 
large as feet, and her voice was rough. She wore layers of shirts in all 
seasons and kept to herself, though solitude is no distinction in the 
shelter. Jimmy made sure to save her unshaped shirts. He made sure she 
was not jostled by younger women in the meal line. She always got a 
bottom bunk. And I knew, when I would hand out soap and towels, that she 
was given another privilege.

Showers were arranged dormitory style, with no chance for the luxury of 
a contemplative experience. Yet somehow the room always emptied when it 
was Tony's turn. She had a shower to herself and changed clothes in 
privacy. Jimmy explained it to me one morning before dawn.

''Tony's a woman, but she's a man, too," he said. ''The doctor gave us a 
letter about her years ago."

Hermaphroditism in rural New England was a disaster of identity, 
untreatable. Tony's family rejected her at birth. She was passed from 
home to home until she emancipated herself into homelessness. Then she 
worked for years in logging camps, until she grew too old and found her 
way to Boston. She had been living in the women's shelter since its 
doors opened.

(continued)...
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/06/jimmys_journey/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051106/990d1923/attachment.htm