Is it humanly possible to lose touch with reality in a split second or does it happen over a period of time?
San Francisco, California is a city all to itself sitting out on a peninsula, made up of districts. Chinatown/North Beach districts is where my story begins.
Chinatown comes to life at 6:00am with meat markets and produce markets opening in preparation for the thousands of Chinese residents, spectators, tourist and the rest of us to make purchases or to window browse. At about 9:00am it's at a full swing where you can buy anything from food to travel and all in-between. The 30 and 45 bus lines are traveling along with the hustle and bustle of everyday life add the 8x and the 8bx traveling in-bound dropping off and picking up patrons along it's route.
At 6:00pm sharp Chinatown shuts down and becomes a ghost town, the only thing you can find open is Walgreen's til midnight on most nights, unless you go up and down the side streets and even then it's very few that are open for business. The lights may still be lit but it's because they're cleaning up and preparing to leave.
I've lived in this area for about six months now and it's relatively quiet after that time save the revelers on the weekends coming from the nightlife clubs and eateries of North Beach just one street over on Columbus Street. One of the highlights of most weekends though it's a sad occasion are the funerals. Very rare on a Thursday, common on Friday's and Saturday's and on some Sunday's you will hear drums beating sounding the alarm of something approaching, tourist and onlookers stand in anticipation of what's to come. The regulars keep going as if nothing is happening, then comes two officers on dirt bikes with yellow vests following them is the Green Street Marching band playing somber hymns and farewell songs as the dearly departed is displayed on an over-sized portrait held by family members in a truck sitting in chairs. The hearse and mourners follow behind. That's the usual day to day operations of this part of town.
That is until a month ago, that's when it all changed. It was a change that lasted a little more than a month. Because I don't know her name we will call her Clara Chung, she is of Chinese descent and was put out of her apartment or should I say her room at the L&J Hotel. The L&J is a run down hotel, looking at it from outside would make you feel that it is rat and roach infested. Clothes hanging out the windows, the dirty building looked as if it hasn't had a paint job in years or washed down for that matter, I realize that people don't really care as long as they got a place to stay and especially if you have a family like I do. That's how I felt after staying in shelters and drop-in centers, but I draw the line with roaches and rats it's bad enough that these hotels are highly overrated and way to expensive and to top it off they aren't even quality but then again some of these "quality" top notched hotels are bedbug centrals. So I guess you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Back to Ms. Chung, she was set out with all of her belongings. For a month we listened to her cry, scream at nobody in particular, clean and sweep the sidewalk because that had become her home, she simply had nowhere else to go. She would go on something fierce at all hours of the night, at about 3:00am she would fall asleep(I would pray for her not to be cold) but at 6:00am she was wide awake and going about her way. The police would walk past, sometimes they would stop and talk to her other times they would taunt and laugh at her but she never backed down she stood her ground. When the owner/manager tried to get her to leave she refused.
Then one morning as the sun was rising she started singing loudly and woke everyone on the block, some cursed her but it didn't matter to her she continued; some even shouted for her to "shut up" for which her response was "sorry" in a humbled tone of voice but later she would be singing again as loud as she could. Near the end of her stay she would get on her knees in the middle of the crosswalk and pray and cry. Why she chose the crosswalk instead of the sidewalk is beyond me but she did.
One day while I was down the street at the laundromat she came in and wanted to take a wash-up in the restroom, so the attendant allowed her too, then when she was finished she cleaned up after herself and then washed her clothes. While she was in there four other people including myself were tending to our laundry, one of the guys( whom I know) started talking about her and thought she couldn't understand English but she could so she knew the guy couldn't speak Cantonese she started talking about him to the attendant as a result I informed the man that "she can speak and understand English but she has the upper hand on you because you can't speak nor understand Cantonese"(chuckle).
I often felt sorry for the woman, I could feel her pain and deep within myself her fight for survival but I also sensed her struggle to maintain her sanity which she had lost. The fear of insanity was quickly over-taking her in every waking hour, day and week that she was in this condition.
Unfortunately at the end of this story there is not a happy ending, when she least expected it those same cops who had taunted and mocked her were the same ones restraining her against her will. The same manager who had evicted her for not being able to pay her rent any longer was the same one who called the paramedics to do a 5150 on her and as they strapped her onto a gurney people stood around looking and some were helpless to respond to her cries to be free of bonds that held her grip. She wailed in agony from the pain of being detached from her belongings and displaced from all that she knew and held dear, the memories of good times and probably bad times too.
After she was loaded into the back of the boxed in ambulance the manager didn't wait until the door was closed before he ransacked her belongings and carted off what he wanted from it and informed the cops that the rest was "just junk". My daughter and I looking from the window watched as the ambulance drove off down the street before turning onto Stockton Street headed for San Francisco General Hospital we also saw the manager and another man walking in the opposite direction with Ms. Chung's personal belongings in a dark colored trash bag walking out of sight and down Powell Street.
Two weeks have passed and though the street has returned to some normalcy I wonder where Ms. Chung is, is she still at General? Is she okay? Is she warm at night? Does she get enough to eat? Is she safe from harm? I don't know but every time I think of her I stop and say a prayer for her that one day she'll be restored to sanity.