There’s a heroin addict on our street.
He doesn’t bother us, so we don’t bother him. It’s an understood arrangement. Even the children of our street understand this unspoken rule. The toddlers sometimes point him out, but as they watch him go along, his ragged breath choked with alcohol and tears, they quiet and turn their heads away.
We all do that. We ignore him. Not in the sense that we don’t think about him. When he walks down our street, murmuring about love and God and vaginas, it’s hard not to think about him. But we turn our heads away. We don’t want to look.
It’s better that way.
He doesn’t mind, of course. He’s gone crazy. His veins are swimming with diseases and even though we know he is only forty-five, he looks sixty. He has AIDS. His legs are thin and weak and he has spots all over him. He coughs all the time. He is dying, we know that. He struggles to buy groceries and when he walks back to his apartment, he walks so slowly that I wonder whether he’ll just collapse under the weight of pork chops and Rice A Roni. He always does manage the long staircase to his apartment. But I don’t know how.
*
Every year, a church group comes to get him. It is a Baptist group. They wear funny clothes and have funny voices and they think that God is with them always.
They think he’ll listen to them because of God. It is their mission to make him listen. So when they come, they bust down his door and preach to him. We can hear them talk.
They speak of the love of God, of His infinite forgiveness.
They tell him that he can find peace, if only he surrenders his heart.
They tell him that if he doesn’t surrender his heart, he will be damned forever in Hell.
But Jesus will love him anyway.
And as they talk, as they wave their bibles in his face, he sways at the door, his face brimming of tears. He weeps and falls to his knees and begs for forgiveness. And, with the guidance of the church group, he finds forgiveness--at the price of $150.
They bless him and walk away. But that doesn’t stop the tears.
*
I tried to talk to him once. I stopped him on the street and said hello in a nervously enthusiastic voice. The neighborhood quieted and I could feel them stare at me.
He didn’t hear me at first. He puttered about, humming the most unmelodic tune I’ve ever heard. A piece of flying trash made him jump.
“Sir?” I asked cautiously. “Sir?”
He only laughed hysterically.
*
He is not a bad man. He has never harmed any of us. He stays in his apartment most of the time and nobody thinks about him until he wanders out, blinking in the sun. But we don’t like his dealer.
We know who his dealer is. He is a man, fifty-three years old, and he drives a Porsche. His name is John Swiftly. He wears a tailored suit--he has to wear a tailored suit, he is so large. He can barely fit out of his small car. But he doesn’t seem to mind. I don’t why he comes though. Our neighborhood is too poor for him.
Once he gave me his business card. That’s how I know his name. He winked at me and told me that he was a professional businessman. And that’s why he had a card. Professional. But the card didn’t have anything but his name.
I asked him about that. He looked annoyed.
“Why should I label myself any further?”
*
Then the dealer shifts a parcel in his hands. The syringes clink. “I have to deliver something,” he says. “Excuse me.”
But before he could go up the stairs, our neighbor comes out, as dazed as ever. “There are clouds today,” he says, nodding to the sky. “Lots of clouds.”
“I have some more for you,” the dealer says.
“Come in,” he murmurs absently. He looks at me. “Who are you?”
I hesitate.
“Do you believe in Jesus?” he asks.
“Um.”
“You should believe in Jesus,” he says firmly. “He will show us the way to everlasting life.”
He shows me his arms. He has shot the heroin up so that the needle marks formed crosses.
“Everyone bears a cross,” he says. “It’s just not so easy to see sometimes.”
“Um,” I say.
The dealer has taken off his pants and is standing in his boxers, looking annoyed. “Come on, I have something for you.”
“Coming,” our neighbor says meekly. When he sees my stare, he says, “He has AIDS too.”
*
“My name is Rose,” I suddenly blurt out.
“Mine is Francis.”
We stare at each other and I wonder what I should do. I feel embarrassed. I feel like I should do something else, and our neighbor is waiting for me to do something else. The dealer is inside, making loud noises, and cursing to heaven. The air feels heavy.
Finally, Francis smiles. “Goodbye, Rose,” he says. “It was nice meeting you.”
*
He closes the door and I feel the neighborhood’s eyes turn towards me. They’ve seen the rejection. How could they not? I swallow and walk down the steps.
When I cross the street, I start to cry.
