Serving Soup at the Mission

I adjusted the new name tag my ten-year-old niece had made to replace my discreet Outreach Gospel Mission one and stirred the huge old blackened vat of soup. A diminutive woman who seemed familiar but I couldn’t place disappeared behind Leonard in the lunch line-up. Bending my head, I inhaled the fragrant aroma of the vegetables, potatoes and onions I’d diced along with the pearl barley I’d added in to make up for the lack of meat. The woman reemerged into view, looking down at her battered granny shoes, and I considered if she was who I was afraid she was, but she looked so much older and frail. We served hundred of people in a week coming year after year and others only for a time or two. Her slight frame shrugged in the dingy, oversized soggy wool coat that reminded me of my sister’s black lab dripping wet fur.

Leonard, broad chested in his newish red and black checkered shirt, blocked her from my sight again. “Nice shirt,” I said.

“There’s no meat in this soup,” Leonard said in a stentorian voice. He’d said he’d been a minister, and it was believable.

“Sorry Len.” How could I tell him that the chicken meant for the soup had gone off because the power had gone out last night at the Mission? As a new vegan, I was aware one could survive without meat, but tell that to the community poverty activists who, to their credit, fought to ensure the housing and otherwise challenged had as many of the material goodies that made up a good life. I know there was more to wellbeing. 

Fifteen years ago, in Nanaimo, I’d abandoned my suburban family after completing high-school with fair grades and ended up on the streets for three years. I was lucky I’d gotten out. Once I was well enough, I’d moved to Vancouver into my older sister’s basement suite and put together a new self within the context of her suburban family normalcy.

“You always have excuses,” Leonard bellowed.

One of my co-workers, John, put down a tray he was carrying for an older crippled woman and looked at me with a raised eyebrow, with the silent “You okay?” I gave him a thumbs up, and he nodded, satisfied. In the lineup, such a complaint could spread until the room became out of control. His domed head atop his tall, thin body moved through the crowd to help others, and a moment later I saw him conferring with Aaron, who was in charge and monitoring the entrance to the dining room. Aaron scratched above his ear through his thick chestnut hair with the end of a pen and made a note on a clip-chart he was carrying.

“Have an egg salad sandwich, Leonard,” Samantha, the girl working beside me, said. Her hair, the color of burnished red and her cream-colored complexion, made her striking, and several of the men had crushes on her. She also had a very soothing voice, which calmed some upset clients. 

My stomach clenched as the woman stood in front of me, her eyes cast down, muttering to herself. It was her. Barb Ingals! I kept my face blank and hoped she wouldn’t recognize me, and pushed a bowl of soup towards her. Working at the Outreach Gospel Mission had been the doings of my counselor, who’d encouraged me to apply for the job, and I’d felt valued and safe until this moment.

The woman, I didn’t want to think her name, looked up and stopped muttering to herself. She shrank back and hissed, “I know you!” I pretended I hadn’t recognized her and hoped she’d move on. Samantha, plating egg salad and cheese sandwiches, hadn’t noticed. 

“This bitch, Lillian, beat me up and left me to die in the street,” she screamed. Gobs of pooled pink nail polish shone from the fingers pointed at me, the same color popular when we’d been teenagers.

“Of course she didn’t,” Samantha said, continuing to serve sandwiches. My face reddened, and I flattened myself against the wall behind me, wishing I could think of an excuse to leave my station, but when there was unrest, we were all expected to remain on the floor. I stared at the vat of soup and saw I’d dropped the ladle handle into the broth.

“Move it! Some of us want the damn soup,” a tall bearded man wearing a Rastafarian colorful hat growled behind her. He shoved her, and she flailed forward, screaming into Leonard, who was dawdling and still griping. He stumbled and his hard plastic bowl dropped from his tray and clattered on the floor; the soup flowed out and the aromatic and colorful soup I’d been proud of making looked like slop.

John and Aaron were there in an instant and separated Barb from Leonard. Samantha replaced John to tend to Barb, a precaution in case two male staff would trigger her more, and Aaron moved Leonard to a table, where with someone to listen to his complaints he’d get around to eating.

“Let me,” John said, in a firm voice and prodded me towards the sandwich dispensing position, while he used prongs he’d produced to dig out the buried soup ladle, and wiped the wet handle on a towel he had tucked into his belt. Always prepared, a reliable boy scout. He wouldn’t have any past skeletons hidden in a closet.

Numbly, I plated sandwiches. The guy in the Rastafarian hat claimed Barb’s bowl of soup. “Finally, you should have taken that freaky woman away the minute she opened her mouth,” he said. The other staff hadn’t noticed he’d been the instigator and pushed Barb.

“That’s enough. Take your lunch and sit down,” John said in an authoritative voice, and the man looked at him, considering for a moment, and shuffled forward, hunching his shoulders.

A blond woman wearing appropriate makeup to look presentable pushed her twin girls ahead, their sweet faces smiling out from pink hoodies. “Say please and thank you,” she said, and the girls echoed her in chiming tones.

“That’s so unfair; that woman yelling at you, and all you’re doing is trying to help her.” I smiled, but felt wretched inside.

A few minutes ago, I’d wanted to escape the room, and the memories that had surfaced, but now I wanted the lineup to continue; the vat of soup to be bottomless and the pile of sandwiches to never go down, but the last people came through, and there was a little soup left in the pot, and a handful of sandwiches left over.

Aaron was back on the floor, supervising clients returning trays of dirty dishes to the racks. I assumed Samantha was still with Barb, learning about my sordid past.

When the last client had been ushered down the old brick stairs back into the streets to hustle and live another day, John and Aaron and I cleared the tables, and folded and lined them in the storage room against the wall.

Samantha came into the room, and I looked away, thinking how much I admired her; maybe I had a bit of a crush on her, and I dreaded her inevitable scorn. I stared at my cell phone, but I hadn’t turned it on. Samantha’s voice, smooth and compassionate, flowed over me, and I almost burst into tears. “Jillian, I’m so sorry. That woman, Barb, was directing all her anger at you. Sometimes they project their emotions onto us, even when we’re innocent.”

I blinked and followed Samantha into the staff kitchen. She went over to the sink to wash the large pots and knives by hand. I steadied myself against the table, hoping to excuse myself early. Aaron and John, bantering, filed in, pulling tray carts and started filling the dishwashers.

“She acted like she knew you, but then I realized she’d seen your name tag,” Samantha continued. My eyes shifted down to my name tag, which Emma, my ten-year-old niece, had customized with large colorful block letters. 

It dawned on me that they didn’t realize that Barb really did recognize and react to me. When I’d been interviewed for the job, I’d opened up about my past and emphasized my victimhood, but I’d left out the times I’d brutalized Barb and others. I joined Samantha and helped dry and put away the piled up dishes she'd washed.

When we finished the cleanup, the others sat down at the staff kitchen table, and I out of habit, joined them.

John placed a plate of leftover sandwiches on the table and shrugged. “It happens; can’t take any of it personally.”

Aaron nodded and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling out the pen from its perch on his ear. He opened up the large black daily journal in front of him. I couldn’t tell by his posture if he was gearing up to write me up in the report. ‘Client Barb Ingals agitated by staff member Gillian…’

Then the thought emerged; my coworkers believed I was the innocent victim of Barb’s rage, and now all I had to do was grab that lifeline and hold on. They’d unknowingly pull me up from the floor, where I deserved to be, and ignore the remnants of my guilt sticking to my face. I took a sandwich and fiddled with it.

I always thought I’d been running to something, the arms of a dream man when I was out of school, and frustrated with my parent’s expectations, who turned me onto the pleasurable highs of drugs that dipped into the annihilating lows of addiction and street survival, and then off the streets and into recovery, and then over to Vancouver to live with my sister where I enjoyed being an aunt to my niece, and now I’d run to find meaning for myself working at Outreach Gospel Mission. But the truth was on my face, even if the others couldn’t see it; I’d been running away from guilt, guilt with a stench many times worse than the most befouled wet, ragged coat ever dragged across a human’s frame.

“Barb is telling the truth. I knew her in the past and I beat her up, dreadfully.” I choked with sobs. 

There was a moment of silence and I felt the air shift around me. Aaron handed me a box of Kleenex. “That was brave of you to tell us, Jillian. The people we serve everyday aren’t the only ones facing their demons. We all are.” 

“Poor Barb, I’m the reason she’s on the streets. Fifteen years ago, when I was messing around with drugs and still living at home, I fell for a guy named Daryl, and he introduced me to drugs. I believed he was my boyfriend, and then one day, I saw Barb flirting with him, and I went berserk. You know I was ready to fight to keep my man.” A bitter ironic laugh came out of me. “Of course he was just playing me, as long as I was bringing cash from home.” Inhaling deeply and exhaling, I let my eyes go up to the ceiling and prayed for strength. “I had Daryl hold Barb for me while I beat her up. I can still see the hurt look in her eyes, and the bruises I gave her.” 

Samantha nodded, “Have you considered God has brought you and Barb here on purpose?” I’d forgotten Samantha was into the gospel part of the program, which I mostly ignored. 

I nodded. I believed in life throwing your fuck-ups in your face, and I was having my snout shoved into my own mess. 

John unfolded his arms. “Yeah, mission of hope here; we’re here for everyone, even ourselves.”

 The room became quiet, and I felt their eyes on me, but instead of reinforcing my self condemnation and rejecting me, I felt their support.