Her Song

Her Song

by Kimberly Fader

“This is my song!” My client announced, cranking up the radio of the dated state-issued sedan, closing her eyes, and belting out the chorus to Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over; “Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in. They come, they come to build a wall between us. But we won’t let them win.”

Her medusa-like hair was dirty funky but could pass, at a distance, as flirty funky, especially paired with her red lipstick and the donated rockstar fake fur jacket we just picked up from Goodwill.  

We were both in our thirties with similar musical tastes, but I had a daughter to pick up by five, dinner to make, and bills to pay. She would be dining for free at the soup kitchen, and her dishes would be washed by cheerful volunteers from First Presbyterian. She might have to beg for a cigarette after the meal. When she first arrived, she enjoyed the flow of free offers from men as the new female in town. But that river nearly dried up after the rumors of “that bitch is batshit crazy” circulated through the homeless shelter. 

Maybe the remaining half-life of the medication dispensed at the inpatient psychiatric unit, combined with the complimentary “tastes” of recreational street drugs, had helped her hold it together for a few weeks. But the unraveling had begun. 

Just as abruptly as it started, her crooning stopped. “What’s going on? What are you thinking? You’re thinking something,” she blurted out her suspicions. Her eyes were on me, her face inches from mine, triggering memories of my mother at her worst. My heart pounded and I strove to refocus on steering as vehicles surrounded us in the holiday traffic on Route One.

As a mental health homeless outreach worker, my first job was to re-establish needed benefits. When I discovered that Marian was not her real name, I realized why my efforts thus far had been futile. My subsequent inquiries led to a call from Bellevue Hospital in New York, an hour away, if one could fly like a crow over city traffic. She was well known there, where she had been hospitalized many times. Back then, when deinstitutionalization was in its infancy, psychiatric hospitalizations could last for years. Marian, AKA Brenda Hollins, had absconded from the institution where she had been involuntarily committed after her second serious suicide attempt. The following morning at 8:00, a team from the New York Office of Mental Health would come to the shelter to rescue Brenda from herself.

I’ve learned in my years at the shelter that many people with severe mental illness (not just the worried well, but those with some form of psychosis) have a sharpened sixth sense. This goes twofold for mentally ill people on the streets. It might be that street survival cultivates a greater awareness than people with homes require. Or maybe their amplified sensitivity created more opportunities for discord, eventually propelling them into their nomadic life. 

To my knowledge, no double-blind studies published in peer-reviewed journals had documented this phenomenon, but shelter staff knew. We didn’t need “evidenced-based” conclusions to understand that our clientele was not easily surprised. If we made discreet plans to engage enforcers, such as the police and psychiatrists, with the power to contain or commit, the intended targets disappeared into thin air without a word. Poof. Although it is true that homeless people with mental illness often take off on their mysterious journeys, the timing of these exits was extraordinary.

Shelter staff also whispered a theory that clients might be beckoned back through some preternatural force if you spoke their name more than once. This phenomenon seemed particularly true for the rabble-rousers, or maybe they had a more pronounced impact. I privately laughed about this shelter folklore when I started, but I soon learned. "Don’t call trouble."

Despite my intentions to carry on as usual, keeping our plan to visit Goodwill for a winter jacket, Marion/Brenda’s radar seemed to detect a new vibe. 

“You think I’m crazy. You do, right? But, I’m not, I’m not. I just need...”

She rummaged through her Mary Poppins-like bag, chaotically filled with her treasured acquisitions. When you have no home to store belongings, you must carry your crucial assets. And when you don’t have much of anything, everything you have is vital.

“Do you have a cigarette?” She asked.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.” I had quit four years prior when I got pregnant. But I occasionally caught myself reaching for one after a stressful event. So, I understood the craving. 

“Can we stop and buy some? I’ll pay you back. I promise.” 

I pulled into the next 7-11, and we both went inside. A former shelter social worker once left a client alone inside her car, which was subsequently stolen, and she never heard the end of it. And you don’t just hand a client money if you want them to stick with the plan. We drew some attention as Brenda stayed on my heels and glared at any would-be onlookers until the purchase was complete. Treating Brenda to the cigarettes was an anomaly left out of my case notes. It would not be the correct answer in the Connecticut licensing exam for Social Workers, but that licensing board didn’t have to transport an unmedicated schizophrenic passenger. 

Brenda tore open the pack and shakily lit her cigarette but then seemed to calm immediately after her first drag. Before smoke-free policies, clouds of second-hand toxic chemicals hung in psychiatric wards. Some argued that smoking is self-medication, not just the nicotine but also the meditation-like ritual of stopping to focus on your breath. Now, most inpatients are issued nicotine patches.

After driving for a few minutes in silence, Brenda said, “They think I’m crazy, but it wasn’t me. It was, it was, you know, them. They said I have no core. I have a core; they just can’t see it. Because they want to be my core. I won’t let them.”

I wished I could grasp this fleeting opportunity. I wanted to understand what she meant by her core and who she thought wanted to take it from her, but I could not afford to rev her up again in this small moving space. I just nodded and murmured, keeping my eyes on the road.

“I just want a life, you know? A real one. Not this one. That’s not crazy. Not this one; this one is not for me.”

As we neared the shelter, the traffic slowed with stop-and-go. Brenda stared out the window. This neighborhood was urban, rundown, and gray on this December day. But pops of color and chatter from free-moving people going about their day gave it life. 

Did Brenda have a sixth sense that her dream of escape would be over in the morning? If so, she did not fight it. 

Our life paths crossed so briefly thirty years ago. I don’t know what happened to her after she left, where she is now, or even if she is still alive. And yet, whenever I hear that song or its re-released version, I stop in my tracks, haunted by the image of her younger face singing her song to the life she wanted.