Ghost Country (7 page)

Y
OU SHOULD DO
some volunteer work at Hagar’s House,” Mrs. Ephers told Mara one morning at breakfast. “Your heart bleeds over all these homeless women, but you should see what their lives are really like. Drunk, most of them, some from homes as nice as this one. Maybe it would give you more sympathy for their families, or at least stop you heading down the same road they’re on.”

Mara hunched a shoulder and left the table without answering. As a matter of fact, she had volunteered at the shelter a few times, without telling anyone at Graham Street, but she hated the shelter’s director. The church had approved Patsy Wanachs not only because she spoke some Spanish, but because she was a member of the congregation whom everyone had known since childhood. Patsy shared the obsession with order and decorum that the Orleans Street Church prized, and could be counted on not to let the shelter move from the basement into the pews.

Mara hated the fact that women had to ask permission to get tampons or seconds at breakfast, or for an extra blanket if they were shivering. The rows of cots, four feet apart, allowed no privacy. Women could put their personal belongings in a locked
office for the night, to protect them against theft from their sisters, but then had to come to one of the volunteers, Mara, for instance, to request access to their own possessions. A handful of private lookers could be “earned” by the inmates from points scored by good behavior.

Mara hated the way Patsy Wanachs looked at the women when they violated one of the shelter’s rules, a secret pleasure in power shining through as she shook her head, made a note: LaBelle, or Caroline, if you become abusive we have to ask you to leave.

Mephers poured out her grievance to Harriet that evening: I tried to get Mara involved in something outside herself, but I might as well talk to the elevator here. In fact, I’d get more satisfaction out of it—at least the elevator comes when I call for it.

Harriet was tired. She wanted only to lie down before dinner, when she’d have to play hostess to some of Grandfather’s surgical colleagues, but hearing Mara in the front room, trying to improvise on the piano, she took a breath and went in to talk to her sister. Mara was playing the same triad over and over with her left hand while fumbling with chords in the right.

Harriet couldn’t understand why Patsy Wanachs’s attitude troubled Mara, “They have to have rules. I know it seems dehumanizing, but in any group of people there are always a handful who would grab everything if we didn’t have some restraints.”

“Yeah, like your clients.” Mara didn’t look at Harriet, but she did stop fumbling with the keys. “They didn’t get to own banks without stealing from other people.”

Harriet refused to fight. “That’s why they need me. Someone has to explain the rules to them and keep them out of jail if they’ve gotten too grabby. Well, Patsy is just explaining the rules to these women, so they don’t have to spend the night on the street. It’s a pretty rough job, you know, running an overnight shelter, The church is lucky she’s willing to do it.”

Mara twisted around on the piano bench to look at her sister. “But it’s the look on her face when she makes a note in that log of hers. Like she’s happy she gets to chew someone out.”

“I think you’re imagining that, Mara, because you always want to fight anyone with authority.” Harriet spoke gently.

“And I suppose I’m just imagining that Rafe Lowrie is a sanctimonious hypocrite, too? Well, he’s over there preaching at the women every Wednesday night. Showing them their evil ways. He makes Cynthia go with him and hand out Bibles. He has more money than God, his son Jared is like the biggest most hideous rapist on the Gold Coast—”

“Mara!” Harriet spoke in her Do-you-have-proof-for-that-allegation? voice.

“Talk to Tamara Jacoby!” Mara’s skin flushed to a muddy red. “Okay, so she’s sleeping with him, but Cynthia says she’s terrified of him. It’s like the classic battered wife syndrome: Tamara’s paralyzed by him, so she keeps coming back to him. But meanwhile, Cynthia has to live like a nun, and Rafe talks to her in that rasping voice about what her duty to God is. That’s his phony way of saying ‘Do everything exactly like I say.’ It’s the same way he talks to the homeless women. That’s why I hate to go over to Hagar’s House.”

“He only agreed to run Bible study because of the dissension in the congregation about whether to keep the shelter going at all. You know, when Mrs. Thirkell found out that we had pimps hanging around outside the church gates …”

Harriet sat on the bench next to her sister and imitated the outraged Mrs. Thirkell. Mara had to giggle.

The Orleans Street Church had been built in 1893, on land donated by a speculator who thought the wealth that moved across the Chicago River after the famous 1871 fire would spread west as well as north. Right after the fire, Geoffrey Lenore bought up useless chunks of land in what became Irish and German slums, and when he finally admitted his mistake gave three acres of it for the church. Lenore also endowed the massive stone complex, built around an atrium so that his only daughter could have a garden wedding the year the building and grounds were completed. Besides
a nave to rival Notre Dame’s, the building included twelve Sunday school classrooms and a giant hall where people could have danced if church rules allowed.

When parishioners met a century later during the coffee hour, filled with shock and titillation at the sight of women sleeping on the subway grates at Chicago Avenue, they looked over their vast plant. The cellars where coal used to be stored weren’t really used for anything. They could be cleaned out, turned into sleeping quarters, the church could install a kitchen so that women could get a hot meal before leaving in the morning. God clearly intended for them to do this great work. It would be like the early eighties, when they opened the building to El Salvadoran refugees—a very successful program, repaid with becoming gratitude by the various families when they’d been established in permanent homes.

Of course, without putting it in so many words, the parish council knew the shelter would be kept separate from the church: an outside entrance created on Hill Street where the old coal chutes used to be together with the private kitchen meant that no homeless woman need ever come upstairs to the main buildings.

Once Hagar’s House was up and running, the reality of their client population dismayed many church members. For one thing, some of the women drank. When parishioners were singing hymns and laughing as they scrubbed the cellars, they had never imagined drunks—they’d pictured clean well-groomed women, down on their luck, humbly grateful to the church for providing them with shelter, praising Jesus and thanking His servants, the Orleans Street Church.

The parish council forbade alcohol within the shelter—it was never allowed on church property, anyway, not even for communion, when the elders served grape juice to the congregation—and they ordered Patsy Wanachs to bar the door to anyone who arrived drunk.

Even more shocking, some of the women were prostitutes: Patsy Wanachs reported that their pimps came around demanding
to see them. The church’s own doorman, faithful old Ronald Hemphill, was slapped one night by one of the pimps demanding entry at the main gate.

At that point there was a strong movement to shut the shelter altogether. The trouble was, Sylvia Lenore supported Hagar’s House. The great-granddaughter of the original Geoffrey Lenore, Sylvia continued the family presence in the front center pew of the church, served on the parish council, and—as Rafe Lowrie grumbled to the head pastor—had depressingly progressive politics. If she’d had to earn that inheritance herself, Rafe and his cohorts agreed, she wouldn’t be so free in handing it out.

Pastor Emerson was hard pressed to keep both the Lowrie and Lenore factions in his congregation satisfied. Like many large downtown churches, Orleans Street contained both young fundamentalists, who tended to be social conservatives, along with older members who were more liberal both in doctrine and on social issues.

Sylvia Lenore, who’d been baptized at Orleans Street fifty-six years ago, had been reared in a progressive tradition: her father marched with Dr. King in Memphis and Marquette Park, her grandmother ran a settlement house out of the church’s Sunday school rooms. Sylvia and Rafe clashed over every issue before the parish, from Hagar’s House to the organ fund.

One night, in a particularly heated discussion of Hagar’s House, Sylvia preached (raved, Rafe Lowrie muttered) about the church’s duty to the widow and orphan. Which brought Mrs. Ephers to her feet in turn: Are these widows? she demanded. They’re like the woman in the Gospel of John, who had five so-called husbands, but was never married to any of them.

A ripple of laughter went through Lowrie’s faction. Pastor Emerson got up to propose a compromise before Sylvia or any of her furious supporters could respond. He could ill afford to alienate Sylvia Lenore—her hundred-thousand-dollar annual pledge was an important part of the church’s budget. Besides, in his heart, which
he tried to keep hidden from the fifteen-hundred-plus members of the congregation, the pastor found Sylvia and her friends easier to work with than Rafe Lowrie. He didn’t always agree with her, but Sylvia didn’t phone him at two in the morning to harangue him when they differed. As Rafe had. Many times.

Keep Hagar’s House open, the pastor urged: The congregation had put far too much into starting it to shut it so soon. Give the shelter a full year, but let someone try to bring the Gospel to the homeless.

After another half hour of dickering, the entire parish council agreed to the proposal and the pastor breathed more easily. Sylvia knew that the longer she could keep the shelter running, the harder it would be to close it down, while Rafe was ecstatic at the opportunity to show Emerson-the right way to run a Bible study meeting.

Rafe’s supporters also relaxed: If the women were praying regularly, and reading the Bible, they might find God—after all, He had demanded that Joshua spare Rahab the harlot, who was able to recognize a divine emissary. So, too, might the women in Hagar’s House someday come to Jesus. Might even save the church from some danger, although that was added with a snicker.

“And you know,” Mara said to Harriet, still next to her on the piano bench. “He makes Cynthia come along sometimes to hand out the Bibles and make coffee and shit. You know how hard he whipped her that time she came over to watch the hew Madonna video with me?”

“But Grandfather had told you that you weren’t to buy it: you know his feelings on that kind of pointless eroticism.”

“So he had to tell Rafe. I’ll never forgive him for that. I tried getting her to go to the emergency room, but Cynthia was afraid of what a doctor might say. Rafe’s turning her into a little Stepford wife. He’s joined that horrible bunch of hypocrites called Family Matters, you know, where men get together and learn to be men again, praying God to smite all the evil feminists in their midst and
pick out Christian spouses for their children. Mrs. Lowrie left after he broke her arm all those years ago, but Cynthia’s been terrorized into thinking she’ll go to hell if she disobeys him.”

Cynthia Lowrie and Mara Stonds had begun an improbable friendship when they met in Sunday school at the age of nine. Cynthia’s mother had just run away with a computer repairman; Mara had no mother at all. Even in a world filled with divorce most girls had a mother. Mara and Cynthia were the only two in their whole Sunday school class who didn’t.

Mara told Cynthia her grandfather had locked Mara’s mother in the psychiatry wing at the hospital, even though nothing was wrong with her, and that he whipped Mara when she tried to smuggle a key to her mother. Cynthia’s whippings made a big impression on Mara, which is why she added that particular detail to the story. Grandfather never actually beat her, although Mrs. Ephers, furious with having such a liar on her hands, smacked her across the face and washed her mouth with soap.

They made Mara apologize to Rafe for the story: I’m sorry, she said. My grandmother was kidnaped by the Russians after World War Two because Grandfather is a spy for the CIA. My mother died when she tried to go to Russia to rescue my grandmother. They were both shot by a firing squad.

No punishment could cure Mara of her storytelling, as Harriet labeled Mara’s dramatic tales. Lies, Mephers said, and don’t try to dress them up as something prettier.

Rafe and Dr. Stonds didn’t agree on much, but they were united in wanting Cynthia and Mara to find other friends. Dr. Stonds hated the friendship because he thought Cynthia dragged Mara down: she ought to have friends who were ambitious for education and professional acclaim. After graduating from high school, Cynthia became a transcriber in the word processing center at a big insurance company. She was only going to work until Rafe found a good Christian mate for her.

For his part, Rafe tried to end the friendship because he
thought Mara taught Cynthia to disobey him. Dr. Stonds let Mara talk back to him in a way that he, Rafe, would never tolerate. He’d made it clear that in his own home Mara was to treat him with the same respect Cynthia did. Now that she’d been thrown out of college, he hoped Cynthia could see what a slippery slope her friend was on. Cynthia would murmur, Yes, Daddy, No, I’m not seeing her these days, Daddy, not adding that they talked almost every day on the phone while Cynthia was at work.

“You know, now Rafe’s got his undies in a bundle because the Lenore Family Foundation is bringing in a psychiatrist to counsel the homeless.” Mara played chopsticks with her right hand. “It’s only once a week, on Fridays, but apparently the resident they picked is a Jew. Rafe has been screeching about how a Christian church ought to be able to find a good Christian to work there. And they’re letting men as well as women come to see the doctor, so the possibility exists that homeless people might have carnal relations. I mean, they’re barely supposed to eat, they ought not be allowed to be together as men and women.”

She hit a discordant seventh to emphasize her anger. “You know the asshole held up the start of the psych clinic for three weeks so Sylvia Lenore could see if any Christian psychiatrists or social workers in the parish felt called to minister to the homeless? I guess Gilbert McLlvanie and Connie Trumaine needed CPR to recover from the shock of donating a day a week to
pro bono
work.”