mutual aid & safer sleep for Belinda (part 1)

{Thank you to my paid subscribers, whose support directly helps people living outside and funds my mutual aid efforts. Stories and photos are shared with permission. All names are changed.}

At 3:30 a.m., I was up editing and my phone rang. I didn’t answer but listened to the voicemail. It was Farah, the security guard who patrols the Walmart parking lot overnight in a little fake police car from the security company.

Farah is a devout Muslim from Iraq and her heart goes out to everyone. She calls me when someone asks her for help. She says that many women come to Walmart when they are running away from domestic violence. Sometimes they try to sleep around the outside of the store.

“My dear, I have here an elderly woman, her name is Belinda, she needs help, she is very innocent, very sick, she is and praying, begging for my help. She needs help. I hope you can call me and come. God protect you,” she said.

I will always answer Farah right away because she is extraordinary. Her heart is so open that she embraces everyone in need even though it could jeopardize her job. She trusts in this phone call and I want to be worthy of her.

I grabbed a cotton runner rug from my hallway, some bagels and a sleeping bag. I scooped a big rolled-up plastic calendar that I was going to toss out, in case the woman was planning to sleep on dirt in the woods around Walmart. She’d need a layer between her fabric pallet and the bugs.

I found Rasha’s flashing toy police car lights and she led me to Belinda in front of a laundromat with a shopping cart filled with very neatly folded clothing and bags.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I need help, I need help, help me,” she said, hands gyrating, tears on her cheeks.

“I’ll try to help,” I said. “Tell me what you need.”

I sat on the curb with her and learned that she was let out of the hospital to find that her tent (with a two-bucket toilet system, a barbecue and all her medicine) was gone. It had been swept by police or raided by scavengers. She can barely walk but made it over two days up to Walmart to get help. She said she lung cancer, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. She is a devout Baptist: “Jesus is my main man,” she repeated.

"What do you need first? What’s one thing I could help you with tonight?” I asked.

“All I need is a tent from the Army surplus store. I need to go back to my camp. I need help to get a tent and set up a new tent. I need a ride there. I need an Army surplus tent.”

“I won’t be able to help you with that for a few days. But I’ll try to go look for this tent. I’ll find out if another friend might be able to drive you back to your spot.” She told me the intersection her spot was on — a busy four-way stop on a major road, with a hotel, a gas station, a taco trailer. She’d camped in a little plot of trees behind the hotel.

“Can you bring some wood so I can build a kind of fence right around my tent?” she asked. “I just need a barrier, I need a fence I can lock with some kind of a gate.”

“I don’t think I can get wood,” I said, “but keep asking people for what you need and I hope someone else can.” I imagined a little fence around her tent on someone else’s property, a fairy tale idea.

I asked her where she wanted to sleep tonight and she said. “Here, right here.”

She said her best option was there in the light outside the laundromat on the sidewalk. I lay out the throw rug and unfurled the teal sleeping bag from Austin Mutual Aid. I unzipped it and opened it up like a file folder, revealing the orange satiny interior, a sheen reflecting the blue laundromat lights.

I love making a little bed for someone with warmth and softness, temporary though it is. It’s tender and vulnerable. I want people to feel like our interactions are familiar, have the tone of family.

Belinda asked what time it was. “It’s 4 am,” I said. “Do you think you can catch a few winks, 40 winks tonight?”

“Oh yes, oh that’s good, that means I can get three or four hours of sleep, that’s more than I’ve gotten in weeks. I’m going to sleep till they open this laundromat.”

Belinda asked for an arm and I helped her slowly down to the ground. “Please get me that sweatshirt in the cart.” It was folded neatly in the part of the wire cart where kids ride. She tucked it under her head as a pillow and closed her eyes.

I said “Goodnight, sweet dreams.”

Farah pulled the car up and jumped out to help move the cart up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. She blessed us both in Arabic before jumping back in to continue her security rounds.

I will tell this story in four parts over four days. Please follow along. Thank you to my paid subscribers, whose support directly helps people living outside and my mutual aid work. Thank you to all who read the story.