The streets are a good place to keep a secret. The woman who arrived four days after Christmas had one.
She carried a backpack and her Bible. She said her name was Aly, and for weeks her new friends knew only that she turned her socks inside out every day, that she pulled her fleece hood over her eyes when she slept, and that she'd give anything for an orange.
They did not know that she had come to them to save her soul.
SHE CAME
on a Sunday. She descended 22 steps below the sidewalk to a windowless basement known as Travelers Aid, a catchall center for the homeless, a kind of AAA for those lost in life.
She wore baggy tweed pants, a green parka, a cardigan, hiking boots, and a red fleece hat over her gray curls -- as if she had shopped at a rummage store in a yuppie neighborhood. She wore oversized glasses and ruby lipstick, drawn larger than her lips.
She filled out an intake slip, and became one of the dozen or so new homeless people who arrive every day at this downtown Providence refuge. Her story was a familiar one: out of work, out of money, out of friends.
She stepped into the community room, where the air was stale, like a subway car, and the banter thick:
Am I going to get a cigarette today? Am I finally going to get a job? When are they going to put me into some kind of job training? When am I going to have a chance? Am I going to get new clothes? When am I going to get my glasses? I can't see without my glasses. They said two weeks. You better sign up for deodorant, you stink.
Her pack went along one wall, with the rest of the luggage, including the Stop & Shop bags stuffed with garments. She walked to the other side of the room, to the row of eight long tables.
This seat was taken, and that seat was taken, until finally a stranger, with a silver cross around his neck, boomed that Aly was his girl, she was OK.
Nearby, a man in headphones listened to the radio and called out the play-by-play of the last seven seconds of the New England Patriots game. When the game ended, he cut a deck of cards. It was time for a quick game of Aces. The bus to the shelter would come in 20 minutes.
THE NIGHTLY grab for a bed becomes a game of musical chairs. Those who are far enough up in line when the overnight shelters open around 5 p.m. fill the beds; the losers walk or take the bus back to Travelers Aid to sleep in chairs, or the floor, or by the heat of the grates at the Providence Civic Center.
To get a bed, Aly would take the No. 22 bus from Weybosset, for the 41-minute ride to the Welcome Arnold Center, the men's and women's shelter near the prison.
She rode with Florence London, 38, who had been on the streets since November when she was laid off from a factory. She had earned the nickname Mother Teresa for tending to those worse off.
The bus stopped on Pontiac Avenue, near the shelter, a former state mental ward with curtainless windows. Florence carried her belongings in a green trash bag, like a bag of leaves, and helped a blind man toward the brick building, calling out each bump in the ground.
One night, after waiting in the cold for the shelter to open, Aly walked upstairs, past the staff sorting pill bottles checked at the door by that night's guests. She chose bed No. 7, one of 14 blue vinyl mattresses in Room 303.
The aroma of "beefy rice" drifted upstairs as the women in this room gathered around. Jamie said in a raspy voice that they were like a family, and that the regulars watched out for the newcomers.
"I think about you guys during the day," she said.
Aly's shoulder blades showed through her turtleneck. Slight, about 5-foot-6, she was losing weight.
She thanked the others for being so helpful.
"That's because you came here and you weren't ignorant," Jamie said. "It's a hard life," Jamie continued. "If you don't adapt, if you don't accept that this is your life, it's over."
Cathy Naylor, another guest at the shelter, jumped in: "This isn't your life! This is a transition to another life."
Naylor, 40, had been homeless for two months, and was working hard to get a job and treatment for depression. She had Beanie Babies and a sewing machine in storage. During the day at Travelers Aid, she crocheted a wall hanging of Bethlehem for the wall she does not have.
Resting on her cot in the shelter, she stabbed her toothbrush in the air as she said the state needed more affordable housing, more shelter beds for women.
"Mmm hmm," Aly agreed.
"Why is it that a politician can raise a million dollars to get elected, but they can't raise a million for a homeless shelter for women?" Cathy said.
"Amen," Aly said, her energy rising.
"The government doesn't care about the homeless," Cathy said. "They don't care about us."
"Who's getting a tax break?" Aly said, rousing the crowd, like a preacher. "Anyone here getting a tax break?"
The question hung in the air.
Jamie narrowed her eyes toward Aly: "You ask too many weird questions."
Aly backed up toward her cot. She had seen this before in other shelters; the brashness, the generosity, and the anger. She listened to the back and forth.
Employees won't hire you if you're homeless.
Don't put down you're homeless!
You should be able to tell the truth and not have it held against you.
It all comes down to: you don't have, you can't get.
"That's like a statement my father made," Jamie said. "I'm homeless because I drink. I drink because I'm homeless."
Her father said it in a newspaper article on the homeless. Jamie's mother had tossed her the paper, saying, here, you want to know who your father is?
"That's how I found out he was a bum."
The lights went out at 9. Aly's thoughts swirled.
I'm seeing people that Jesus walked with, talked with, and ministered to. I'm meeting Jesus. That's what's extraordinary.
TO FILL her day, Aly sometimes strolled around downtown Providence, in broad, wraparound sunglasses, her hat pulled low over messy hair. People stared and shared whispers, as she applied lipstick on and around her lips at the Nordstrom cosmetics counter, and then looked close into a mirror. Once, Aly saw a woman she knew sitting for a makeover at Chanel. Aly brushed by, looking the other way.
She went to City Hall to watch the inauguration of David N. Cicilline, the mayor of Providence; she realized that in a different time, she might have been one of the speakers.
At Travelers Aid, she met with her social worker; she filled out an application to be a maid at the Westin; and she became a regular among misfits, who had arrived for the most basic of sustenance: warmth, kinship, and a pastrami sandwich.
She began to wonder if she should take two sandwiches, to make sure she would have food for later.
She found her group, and began playing cards and arguing about things.
Yes, there were groups -- like in high school -- and a raw sense of justice. Who was getting two showers, morning and night at the shelter, instead of one? Those who were uninsured and ineligible for public assistance, most single adults there, complained about those who received checks but still didn't have a place. There was a rumor that one homeless guy was really the mouse at Chuck E Cheese and had a DVD player. And a family, related by blood or history, was thought to be pooling their money and planning to spend it in February or March, at Disney World.
The prostitutes looked down on the panhandlers, who had their own standards. When a young woman said she was going to college, a panhandler asked where.
Katharine Gibbs.
"That ain't college, but that's a start."
There was talent here, or inklings of it. A man with phlebitis and a top hat called himself The Homeless Poet, and carried a binder of his work. Lee wore a black dress and carried a bag of old sweaters that she pulled apart and re-knitted into blankets.
Linda considered herself a mother to six street people, though she sat off to the side and never said much; the woman in blue, with the pageboy haircut was silent, too.
Was it safer to be quiet? Or are they quiet because they never believed they mattered anyway?
A man sat sentry next to the trash can, counting imaginary things; another kicked his leg back as if riding a scooter. A woman in a walker was humiliated each day when she lost control of her bowels. Inevitably, someone helped her to the bathroom, while someone else told her she smelled.
Whenever two or three of us are gathered together, humanity lives and dies.
Aly's usual seat was a stained, plastic chair next to Don, a sweet man who read "anything but romance" books all day. Aly read her Bible. She could read that Bible through a storm. It had always been that way; she could meditate in a room of 400 people. She didn't stop when a ball made of saran wrap from a sandwich landed at her feet, or when a blind man ambled by, or when a woman shook her rear and sang the Foxwoods Casino jingle.
The poor will always be among us. The poor, the liars, the cheats, the dispossessed, the crazy so to speak, will always be among us. That doesn't mean we stop providing the dignity that is ours to give.
Aly was making real friends. Florence London, with whom she rode the bus, was a friend.
"If you're down here, you're not alone," Florence said. "Say someone came in for Aly. I'm gonna get up and go over and find out what is going on."
Wayne Mackie, 50, became Aly's closest friend. Each morning when he saw her, he offered her a hug, and sometimes, an apple or an orange. "I know how she loves her fruit."
Wayne always wore rust coveralls, stained with paint from construction jobs that keep him going in the warm months. He had a thick mustache, like Magnum P.I., and a good memory of music. He could name which Sammy Davis Jr. song was first played where, and then who remade it.
His fanny pack held inhalers for his breathing trouble. He walked or took the bus to a clinic in Pawtucket, trying to get free refills. A Vietnam veteran, '69 to '72, he was eligible for care at the VA hospital, but he refused to go. "They lied to me when I was in the service; they'll lie to me again."
He had applied for disability, and was due to hear back in 120 days.
This, Travelers Aid, was a temporary setback, he said. He had plans.
One night, Wayne and Aly were before bowls of soup at a long table at Beneficent Congregational Church, in Providence, which opened as an emergency shelter in the cold. A volunteer played classical piano, and Wayne recognized the piece as Rachmaninoff.
Aly was a seat over, holding her New Testament, and leaning close to a man with a hospital bracelet and liquor breath. He wore a sweatshirt with the logo of a substance-abuse recovery program. He had tried them all, AA, NA, Gamblers Anonymous. He said his favorite Bible verse was, "The meek shall inherit the earth," and then he pointed to himself: "The weak."
A look of wonder came over Aly's face.
Those who came to Jesus spoke from vulnerability, not strength.
The Gospel was coming alive, she said.
This is why I'm here.
When she looked away for a moment, the man said to someone next to him, "She really liked my Bible quote. Did you see her eyes light up like a Christmas tree?"
"Give us our daily bread," Aly continued, motioning around. "Give us all our daily bread."
Or how about, she said, "Blessed are those who mourn." This makeshift shelter was filled with mourning.
"The mourning of hopes . . ." she said.
Wayne nodded. "Aspirations."
Yes, she said, "the mourning of hopes and aspirations that might never come true."
Wayne looked at her, "They will."
Aly found easy company in talking about her Bible. In Travelers Aid, there were three topics that got everyone talking: "The system," Powerball and religion.
A Baptist minister, who had had his trouble with alcohol, would thump the table and tell everyone where they were and what they were. Aly thought he offered sound advice. An elderly man in a sweater carried a minister's ID that looked to be California store-bought. He had married two couples at Travelers Aid, and would be marrying another couple soon.
Aly tried to refrain from saying too much in the theology discussions. She didn't want to reveal her perspective on faith.
One man told Aly, "I'm in this shelter because I ain't done everything Jesus wanted me to do." The Devil was after him, and he wasn't strong enough to get away.
A man who called himself Mr. Harrell, with whom Aly played cards -- against Travelers Aid rules -- didn't want to hear the God talk.
"Look," he told her. "If you've got Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, and Cain killed Abel and God told Cain to get out of the garden, and when Cain went out there, there were all these other people -- then where did all these other people come from?"
"You tell me where all these other people came from and I'll believe."
Florence London had once sung in a church choir.
Now, she hesitated to go to church. She went now and then to a worship service at a local soup kitchen; the preacher, like Florence, had beaten drugs.
But when she tried to worship God with the masses, she felt unwanted. A suburban church sometimes sent a bus to Travelers Aid on Sundays to pick up the homeless. But an usher always led the group to the balcony. Florence took this as a slight, and said so. "We're just as good as anyone else." The ushers had told her that some of the parishioners had complained about the homeless.
The next week, some of the Travelers Aid group left the balcony and sat downstairs. But they were not welcome, Florence could tell. "They were sitting there like this," Florence said, holding her fists near her chest, "doing this with their pocketbooks."
Aly told Florence she understood. She, too, had gone to church as a homeless woman. Her very own church.
"I was just different enough that I did not feel welcome," Aly said.
She had arrived early for the Sunday service at the Episcopal church on Providence's East Side. She wore her one outfit, her dark glasses, a blue fleece hood, and too much lipstick.
She walked slowly past the ushers, but they didn't recognize her, nor did they offer her a program. No one would be expecting her.
She sat in the back row, and then went and picked up her own program.
No one was talking to me, or saying hello to me. Suddenly, I had this feeling, wait a minute. I had just met these wonderful people, who should be welcomed in any church. Extraordinary people, different, wacky, all this, but extraordinary nonetheless.
I had seen Jesus in these people, and I was happy. Happy! Once you have seen Jesus, can you really sit in the back of the church? No.
She walked outside and stood at the wooden doors, greeting the well-dressed congregation in a sweet, muffled voice, as if she had cotton balls in her mouth, and a lisp: Welcome my sister in Jesus! Welcome my brother in Jesus!
People rushed by her as if she were soliciting outside a supermarket on a cold day.
They looked down, or past me, but not at me.
She walked upstairs, and greeted people in the foyer. They were not rude; she was not offensive, merely invisible. She sat in a pew in the middle of the church, under the chandelier, and the service began. The congregation, which did not know she was among them, offered a prayer for her.
After the service, she went downstairs where the church was serving coffee and something to eat. But Aly did not want food. She wanted someone to look at her, and talk to her. She stood at the door to the church hall, and again greeted people with enthusiasm.
One woman stopped, made eye contact, and welcomed her. Aly knew her, but had never thought she'd be the one to reach out. Aly put on her violet gloves, and walked into the cold, sad; in that church, she had seen herself. Just as she had seen herself at Travelers Aid.
The people in that church were fearful of those who look so different and odd. The people in the shelter are coping with all kinds of things that speak of both hope and hopelessness. I am both of them.
She returned to Travelers Aid, and then one night soon after, took a bus to Boston to see friends. They worried about her, and they worried what would happen when others found out her secret. She brushed her teeth in a restaurant in Chinatown, walked by the junkies, and boarded the 10 p.m. Fungwa Express for a $15 ride to New York City. She needed to learn more in this spiritual journey.
She slept the entire ride. The bus pulled in at almost 2 a.m. Not sure where to find a bed, she went to the 5th Precinct cop shop, where the theme from All in the Family came from the TV in the back.
"And you knew who you were then, girls were girls and men were men ... Didn't need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight ... Those were the days."
A police officer called the shelters, most were full. Got room for any bodies, he asked. He directed her to 42nd Street. She walked out of the police station into a street that smelled of sour milk and rotting food. She made her way to the Open Door drop-in center, where she answered the attendant's questions: No, she was not homicidal or suicidal.
There were no beds inside this center, a room about the size of a school cafeteria. There were only long tables and chairs, and the hissing, hiccupping and snoring of exhaustion. There must have been 150 people, asleep, their heads on tables, or leaning back in their chairs, their mouths agape. The attendant warned Aly to keep her bags close, so Aly put one leg through the shoulder strap of her backpack and went to sleep, until the fluorescent lights flickered at 6 a.m. to reveal dirty cinderblock walls and a man pulling a crisp white shirt from his duffle bag, as if he were going to work. He combed his hair and read his "Daily Bread." Then the prostitutes arrived for their day's sleep. They had extra food from a free breakfast. Who wanted an orange, they asked strangers. Aly took one.
When Aly returned to Travelers Aid a few days later, her hair was in cornrows, courtesy of someone in a shelter; she held her head in her hands, staring at the floor. That afternoon, Aly went to lunch with a friend in a restaurant where she thought she would not be spotted.
Anne Nolan, the executive director of Travelers Aid Society of Rhode Island, and a confidante, asked her gently: "You said you wanted to find your soul. Have you?"
Aly's eyes filled with tears.
She took a sandwich bag out of her backpack. She removed two earplugs, pulled her lower lip forward, and inserted the plugs. She looked older, jowly, and when she spoke, she sounded like she had a speech impediment.
This is how Aly had been visiting churches.
After New York City, she had traveled to Philadelphia by bus, where one Episcopal church had given her two pounds of nuts, and another one turned her away hungry.
She had arrived to the church from another night in the shelter. Breakfast was $3 for continental, or $5 for full. She acted confused. That was too much money. Sorry, it's $3 or $5, she was told.
She recalled the conversation for Nolan:
"Just a small bweakfast? That's all I want. Just the fwuit?" She loved her fruit.
That would be $3.
A priest walked by. "You the father? I just want a little fwuit." He looked at the prices. He told her it would be $3.
She was almost in tears, she told Nolan. Upstairs, in the church, a Bible class had begun. She joined it as the group was discussing Saint Augustine. She took her New Testament out of the back pocket of her baggy tweed pants.
Hurt and angry, she stood up during a pause and said: "I came downstairs looking for breakfast and was turned away. The kingdom of God has come near."
Then she had rushed from the church.
She was following the words of Jesus, she said. He advises his followers, in the Gospel of Luke: "Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you; nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.' "
Aly left after her lunch with Nolan and returned to Providence, walking down a narrow, dank side street to Travelers Aid, to the people whom she had always considered to be teachers of the Gospel.
SHE HAD LEARNED this years ago at a Philadelphia soup kitchen where some regulars were making fun of a disheveled man who stank. He was yelling back.
Aly had gone over, and tried to talk reason into the situation, but her presence made everything worse.
The head volunteer had tried something simple; she walked over and put her arms around the man whom the others taunted. She hugged this dirty, smelly man until he hugged her back, and she said, "Isn't it something how we all just need a little love sometimes? It's so hard on them streets."
Then she hugged the people who had taunted him.
The head volunteer pointed her finger into the chest of this young woman who had used her head, not her heart, to comfort: You've got a lot to learn, but you're young yet, it'll come.
The whole place was quiet, not silent, but quiet. Everyone calmed down, because of this act of affection.
She did the unthinkable. She hugged him, and held onto him. The power of that, that's Jesus.
Aly kept thinking that if she had not been in the soup kitchen that day, she would not have seen Jesus' work. Jesus was on the move. So must she be.
You have to keep wandering around, being present. Not sitting in an office somewhere.
Aly was present at Travelers Aid one cold night when Ernie walked in with blankets, and everyone began talking about their simple dreams.
He had landed a construction job, and had bought 14 blankets for $7 and was handing them out. He hung his jacket, patched with duct tape, on a chair. "I get paid Friday. I'm getting out of here Saturday."
All he wanted was a fully furnished two bedroom. "I got $700 available to me. I'm out of here."
Another woman said, "Heat, hot water, I'm happy."
Cathy Naylor crocheted her wall hanging of Bethlehem.
"As long as I can cook and there's an electrical outlet for my sewing machine," she said.
Maggie dreamed of love. As she ate her pastrami sandwich, she said it was two years ago Tuesday that colon cancer took Louie and she became homeless.
After that, "I worked at a few jobs but I didn't have any heart," she said. "I still don't."
"I just don't care," she said. She hid her tears in her hands, staring down at the table.
"I miss Louie."
Ernie climbed into his sleeping bag.
"Good night, Maggie," he said.
"Good night, Ernie. Sweet dreams."
Aly was lying in a corner, on a mattress she had made of newspapers. She was partway under a table, to shield herself from the fluorescent lights that must stay on all night, for security reasons.
Her head itched from the tight cornrow braids, and she had been saying all night that it was the same feeling as when she lost her hair to chemotherapy six years ago. Yes, this 55-year-old woman had known darkness. Breast cancer. Her own sister had committed suicide a few years ago, by shooting herself. Aly had not known her sister knew how to use a gun.
At some level, we are all homeless, all searching for that place where we can find security and heal those places within ourselves that have been fractured by the unexpected and heartbreaking experiences of life.
These people in Travelers Aid --
These are the survivors.
Aly went to sleep, her fleece hood pulled over her eyes.
ALY COULD SEE her time on the streets coming to an end. She began reading with urgency, holding her Bible in her hands, chapped with chipped nail polish.
She read Matthew. The energy expressed by Jesus and his followers exhilarated her.
The Gospel talks about opening the eyes of the blind, honoring the poor, healing those who are ill, and challenging followers to share in this glorious effort.
Jesus said, take no bag, take no purse.
She carried the bare essentials, enough undergarments to go six days without washing -- if she turned everything inside out each night.
Instead of the possessions, I become possessed by the generosity of others, the value of an orange, kind words, the anger around here, the injustice of our economic system, and the many, many ways in which people love and seek to be loved.
The January nights were growing much colder. So many people were piling into Travelers Aid that fights were breaking out. Bags were seven thick along the wall.
Desperation and unity arrived with the freeze. The group was outraged when a homeless man was turned away from the men's shelter because he arrived too late and the beds were filled; that night he slept on the grates at the Providence Civic Center. Aly went with the group to City Hall to complain.
Florence went back later, with two other women, and met with Mayor Cicilline. They told him that the state needed more shelters, and they said bus drivers were being rude to them, as they piled on with their bags. They wouldn't treat shoppers that way, Florence said.
Cicilline told them he would take the bus with them that afternoon.
Travelers Aid was abuzz with the news that the mayor was coming to the bus stop; Florence seemed proud. The mayor had not only listened to her, but he had told her to check in with him regularly. Aly was worried the mayor would recognize her. She put on her dark wraparound glasses and thick lipstick for the bus ride.
She was at the bus stop when Cicilline showed up in his own sort of disguise, a baseball hat and jeans. Aly stood with the regulars: one man was blind, one wore a neck brace, and another carried his checkerboard. She was quiet, careful not to look directly at the mayor.
When the group boarded the No. 22., Aly sat behind Cicilline, who talked to Florence. Aly removed her dark glasses, and put on two pairs of eyeglasses, one pair on top of the other. She had been doing this, saying she couldn't see out of either pair well; she thought together, they might work. No one questioned her eyewear; getting the right pair of glasses is hard on the streets.
On the bus, she read her Bible.
It was filled with writing. Each day, she had been making notes in it, underlining passages and scrawling in the margins.
She was recording everything in her final days on the streets.
She filled her journal with the words of Peter Maurin, cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and read them again and again. The words became clearer every day. He said that people in need are ambassadors of God because they give everyone else the opportunity to respond with generosity.
This is wonderful.
She saw it happen.
With the cold weather, kindness spilled forth from society. The state and city set up emergency shelters. Aly was ecstatic when Grace Church, an Episcopal parish, opened as an overnight haven and gave special care to a woman who carried her life's possessions on her walker. Teenagers at an Episcopal parish served chicken, and the homeless were allowed seconds. Praise God, Aly told them, what a wonderful thing you are doing. She stopped at each young person, questioning their faith. Have you been confirmed?
Cars lined up outside Travelers Aid, on Union Street, to deliver coats, some with tags on. Wayne, the Vietnam veteran, volunteered to sort and distribute them.
One night, so many donated groceries arrived, that Aly, Mr. Harrell, Wayne and a few others prepared what one homeless man described as a "real top-shelf" meal.
Mr. Harrell, a former cook, planned the menu, and led the preparation of two kinds of quiche -- plain, and bacon-and-sausage -- center-cut pork, baked chicken, rice pilaf, wild rice with pineapple sauce and asparagus tips.
Aly searched for tablecloths, and recruited from among the homeless two waiters and two waitresses who used trays to serve chicken salad on white bread as an appetizer.
Afterward, three homeless men washed and waxed the worn green floor in the community room. Aly sprayed the tables and the sinks and vacuumed the small room where homeless families gathered.
Aly said it had been the most exciting night she had ever had.
In some ways, there is this part of me that is sort of searching for shelter, rest, a group, being part of a community. Oh Lord, our souls are restless until they rest in Thee.
It's just that some hide it, some don't.
Mr. Harrell sat at a table across the room. Cooking made him think of his dream, owning a 1920s-style restaurant on South Main Street: white linens, valet parking, a beautiful bar.
"Ain't nobody going to give me money to do that," he said. "It's just a dream; you've got to have dreams. Without dreams you die."
He kidded Aly that after seeing his cooking, she must have the hots for him.
She joked back: "When I saw you cook, it wasn't my stomach growling, it was my heart beating."
"Seriously," he said, "Aly's my girl. I love her to death, I really do. She's good people."
Aly, her time running out, made a list of the talents at Travelers Aid. One man, an addict, said he had once made an armoire with a scalloped mirror.
What if I can ignite their latent gifts, their creativity and hopefulness.
But first, Aly had her routine at Travelers Aid.
She changed her socks, and told everyone to hold their noses.
She spoke to a newcomer, a young mother, about Genesis.
She weighed in on Powerball.
A man in the corner, with hair going every which way, and his bag on his lap, was going on and on about his plans to the man next to him, and to anyone else who looked his way.
"I would make sure everyone got a house if I had that kind of money. That kind of money, I would do that. So they can live in, that's what I would do. That's what I would do, if I had that kind of money. Open a business, hire everyone. Women and children would get a home. I'm trying to explain to you what I would do. I'm not a cheat. Put 'em right in their own home and everything. I'm not like that. I'm not like these rich people. I'd be set up with that kind of money. I'm gonna go take a shower."
ON A FRIDAY morning nine days ago, after free doughnuts, she told them the truth.
She called Wayne, Florence, Izzy, Bob and a few others into an office at Travelers Aid. She was anxious. She had been warned by confidantes to expect the homeless to be angry with her.
They don't know these people.
She sat before them in the only clothes they had ever seen her in. Her cornrows were out, and her hair was frizzy from washing it with body lotion; she'd run out of shampoo.
She was not homeless, she told her friends .
She had come to them to learn what they needed -- from society and from humanity. She had come for her soul, to be reminded of the work of Jesus.
I knew you were different, said Izzy.
Izzy took a stone out of his pocket and said he had found it in a garden on the day he found his sobriety. He wanted her to have it.
Wayne said he was relieved that she had a home.
"Aly, I care so much about you," he told her. "I'm just glad you have a place to sleep at night."
The streets and the shelters are hard. The fact that so many hearts are sensitive and compassionate is a testimony to why we are compelled to see the homeless as not only our brothers and sisters, but our teachers on the way.
Then, this group went into the community room.
Aly has something to say, Florence told everyone.
She was not homeless. Her name was not Aly.
She's a snitch, one man muttered.
Shut up, Florence said. Let her finish.
The woman whom they called Aly finished, and when she told them who she was, the room broke into applause. People embraced her.
She told them of her plans. This was not goodbye. She planned to work with them, to help them be more, and do more. She told them she had learned years earlier, at a Philadelphia soup kitchen, how everyone needed dignity and love.
What did you learn from us? one man asked.
"A whole bunch of cuss words, a lot about sex -- and please don't stop in my presence," she said. "And I learned about family, community, generosity, love, acceptance, and all these things that make you so wonderful."
She did not say what she learned about herself.
I experience wholeness here.
She stayed in Travelers Aid most of the day, as the regulars one-upped each other. I knew all along, I just didn't say anything. I recognized her from the paper. Her socks were too nice. She flashed her money.
She shot back -- it was 13 dollars!
Don't worry, someone told her. You're always going to be safe on the streets. We take care of our own.
A woman -- the one who knits blankets from old sweaters -- hugged her and did not want to let her go. One man asked if he could have her bus pass.
Then, Bishop Geralyn Wolf, of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island, started up the 22 steps out to the street. Wayne told her that he would always call her Aly.
Bishop Geralyn Wolf spent one month as "Aly," a homeless person, as part of a four-month sabbatical. She began planning it one year ago, growing out her short, salt-and-pepper hair. Before she went onto the streets, she darkened it and dyed her eyebrows. She allowed The Journal to document her journey, provided it would be from a distance, and not give away her identity.
On Wolf's first few days off the streets, she fought the urge to go back to Travelers Aid to see her friends. She returned on Thursday to hold her first strategy meeting with the homeless, for projects that will improve their lives. She brought lunch for 80.
She invited Wayne, Florence and Bob, a homeless man who is an engineer by trade, to join her during the remainder of her sabbatical. She is going to Honduras to study microlending, the practice of offering small loans to poor entrepreneurs. At press time, they were getting passports.
