the hurting

Last night, I heard my neighbor yelling. He’s divorced now, living with another divorced guy. Isaiah woke up around four, so I was waiting for his crying to subside by reading Mere Christianity in the front room. One of the guys’ trucks pulled up, and before long, I heard my neighbor yelling, presumably at his roommate: “Get it out of here! Get it out of here!” I heard something large and metallic clanking. “I swear…” he yelled, but I didn’t hear the rest. A truck roared away, came back five minutes later. Yelling again. Isaiah cried out again with the disturbance.

I ached, even amid my peeking through the blinds into the darkness. These poor men – families ripped apart. They see their kids only part of the time. Moms probably have custody. I once watched my neighbor’s son circling around the tree in our front yard. Ring around the tree, around and around and around. What’s on the little boy’s mind? Why don’t Mommy and Daddy love each other anymore? What’s gonna happen to me?

I ache, too, because I haven't reached out to them. I never do. But then, maybe it wouldn’t have helped. I tried to reach out to the lady across the street but she left her husband anyway. Divorce is all around us, and I still wouldn’t consider it for myself. Why do they? Where is the point where they give in, give up?

We watched Homeless to Harvard last night. True story: a girl who barely attended any elementary or middle school is out on the streets by age 15, after her drug-addicted and alcoholic mother dies of AIDS. Her grandpa doesn’t want her; she has nowhere else to go. So she sleeps on trains, raids dumpsters for food, stinks. But she’s brilliant, and gets herself enrolled in a high school without them knowing she’s homeless. The New York Times gives her a scholarship to Harvard when she applies by telling her story of self-preservation. But she’s a loser, a real loser.

In elementary school, in middle school, I never reached out to Angie Brown, Heather Huninghake, the Fryes, the Marc What’s-his-names, the Jeffrey Beldens. Maybe if I had, Jeffrey Belden wouldn’t have committed suicide.

In high school, I came to a point of politeness with John Koch, but I wonder if it was only for public image. I think I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, but behind his back, I wrote – for my entertainment – “John Koch wants to be a computer scientist.” It was a joke – my own personal laughing point – because I knew awkward, chubby, dirty, stinky John could never be a computer scientist. I didn’t seem phased by the fact that I didn’t even know what a computer scientist was.

In middle school science class, John had told us, his tablemates, of things from his home life. I only remember him saying that one of his parents – I don’t even remember if it was Mom or Dad – had thrown dishes across the room in a rage. He shrugged it off with a laugh, but now I think now he was crying out for help.

And I didn’t do anything. I didn’t tell a teacher. I didn’t tell him I was sorry, or ask him if he was scared to go home sometimes.

Kyle says I can’t blame myself – that I wasn’t taught to reach out to the rejects, the “gross people.” But I think I had an innate sense that these people needed love, and I was capable of giving it.