The Margins of Society

“I can’t help but notice all of those people
sitting over there for a very long time.
Doesn’t it bother you?”
I glance at all of the people sitting
in the area to the left of the reference desk
quietly reading stacks of magazines and
newspapers with the tell-tale
signs of layered clothes, hats
and plastic bags full of their worldly
possessions as the symbols
of their socio-economic status.
“They are just sitting there,” I say,
“and never bother anyone.”
I could tell him that K. C.
used to be a machinist before the plant
where he used to work closed.
With no other work to be had and moving not an option,
pieces of his former life kept slipping away
until K. C. began a new life in a tent city
down by the tracks with so many others.
After a local reporter touched on their plight
of homelessness, they found themselves
evicted by the authorities for trespassing
with their once carefully
placed and consumed items
torn and strewn about like litter.
Rodney was a Marine that
proudly served our country
for better or for worse.
Precariously navigating the library on crutches,
Rodney is hoping to save up enough money
to move to an apartment in Lakewood where
he would have access to a much better
public transportation system to get to the
doctor appointments he so
desperately needs for his pains.
I hope it works out for him this time.
I really do.
You may wonder how I can stand the smell,
but let’s see how well you would be able to
keep your clothes clean with a
little bit of anti-bacterial handsoap combined with
the agitation produced by one
of our flushing toilets in the bathroom.
Hey! If you’re lucky,
you won’t even lose a sock!
Word got out that the folks parked at the church
across the street from the library are giving out food.
People are now carrying
bags of groceries and take-out lunches
that they cannot eat here as they fight
to stay awake before our guard comes around.
Do you know what really bothers me?
Pricks and assholes who quietly make their
charitable contributions at church
to help the less fortunate while
telling me that I should be
disgusted by their very presence.
Their very existence!
Tell me, in the dead of winter,
where else would you like them to go?
Show me the other options.
Rodney swung by the desk later
to give me an orange for being so kind to him.
I know where he got it and tried to
turn it down insisting that he doesn’t
need to give me anything.
“Please,” he insists, “I can’t eat them
and I really want you to have it.”
The earnestness in his eyes broke my heart
and I knew that he needed to give me something.
Anything.
As a kid, I learned in Sunday School
that the poor man who fished
coins from the lint in his pockets
to make a charitable donation made a far
greater contribution than the rich
man who went about the business
in a typical fashion because, after all,
it was the right thing to do.
“The poor are always with us,”
has been a sympathetic sentiment for generations.
The unspoken sentiment now seems to be,
“The poor should be helped, not seen.”
I could smell the tangy sweetness
of that orange in my hand and
knew that I would never
receive a more humble gift
from another person
ever again.
Just for being kind.

Julie Ursem Marchand

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