A Hell on Wheels : A Homeless Woman Finds That Living in Her Car Offers Its Own Brand of Misery

I need anonymity, so call me Diane.

I try not to be seen as I watch you prosperous-looking people walking from your cars to your offices. If you saw me, your faces would mirror your suspicion and disapproval.

Yet I was one of you. And at least some of you are dancing on the same tightrope over the same abyss into which I have fallen.

None of you know I am here in the car just a few feet away from you--or what it is like once you get here.

I can tell you, courtesy of a typewriter for which no one would pay me five desperately needed dollars.

Last night my money added up to $38.67, so I found a cheaper motel. But tonight I will start sleeping in my car.

I must eat on $6.23 for the next 10 days. Then there will be a paycheck--enough to keep me in a motel again for about a week. After that, it will be back to the car until the next payday.

Yes, I work for a living, but this job may end soon. And since the pay isn’t enough for a deposit on an apartment or even a room, it would be hard to mourn its loss. Except that I have no money, no home, no evident prospects.

My downward spiral from a middle-class Orange County lifestyle began a few years ago. I was divorced and in my 50s, earning $40,000 a year as an editor, when my mother died of cancer. As the only child, I was left to care for an aged father advancing steadily into the dementia of Alzheimer’s.

I quit my job, moved to his apartment in Florida and cared for him for two years. We survived on my savings and his annuity. And in 1989 he died, leaving me broke and drained of self-confidence and the ability to concentrate.

News reports told of high unemployment among “older workers,” meaning anyone over 40. I was 57. Where did I fit in?

I didn’t.

Now I drive through the streets of Newport Beach looking for a place to spend the night.

There seems something wrong with each street-side parking space. Here is a house whose windows look directly into my car. Here a space is too near an intersection with heavy traffic. To remain anywhere, I must remain invisible. Yet the one quiet area is also isolated. There is danger in isolation.

Finally, I drive slowly past the Sheraton hotel, with its many parked cars and empty parking spaces. It seems so civilized. I used to come here for business lunches when I worked across the street. Aware of the irony, I check into a space facing the street.

The back seat of my 5-year-old Oldsmobile is too short for sleeping, but the front seats recline. My legs dangle toward the brake and accelerator, yet it seems comfortable enough to think of getting some sleep.

I drop my seat back, but tense whenever footsteps approach. I dread waking to find someone staring at me, so a large, black, cotton knit jacket I place over my head makes me feel nicely invisible. If I were dressed entirely in black, I’d be even less visible. From now on I shall prepare for the night like a cat burglar.

The night is filled with the noise of airplanes, police helicopters, traffic, auto alarms, slamming doors and voices. But for about five hours, it is almost silent. I sleep soundly for two hours, then fitfully for the next hour and a half. To avoid discovery, I must leave before daylight.

This is the first night of what will become four months of living out of my car--long hours of solitude, physical discomfort, boredom and sometimes hunger. And a few middle-of-the-night frights.

But it will teach me much about myself--and that line beyond which lies permanent hopelessness.

When I awaken, the night sky is beginning to pale. I hear a soft, staccato padding of feet and cautiously raise an eye to window level. A jogger sets out from the hotel. It’s time to leave. I drive toward the fast-food restaurants on Bristol Street.

I sit impatiently in McDonald’s parking lot for its 6 o’clock opening. I can wait for coffee, but I need the restroom. I take my dish-washing detergent along and manage a passable sponge bath.

I need exercise to pull me out of my stupor. I drive to Park Newport and walk briskly along the bluff as if I were a resident, nodding back to those who say good morning. When I get back to the car it is 7:35 and I am still sleepy. But I can think of nowhere to sleep in the daytime without attracting unwelcome attention. Finally, at 9, the library is open and I can check job ads in out-of-town papers.

The day crawls on, uneventfully. I won’t return to the Sheraton before 9 p.m., for there is too much activity and too much chance of being noticed. So at 6, I’m sitting in my car in a Coco’s parking lot, alone in the dark with only my stereo for company and empty hours ahead.

My mind summons old memories:

* Mother meticulously reviewing financial records with me so that I would know “how to handle things in case anything happens to us.” I was surprised at how little they had left after 14 years of retirement. A small, dwindling cash reserve, Social Security and a small, fixed annuity financed their lives in a rented apartment.

* Father after Mother’s death, grief-stricken and demented. Sometimes he knew me, but in an instant his eyes would change, and I knew before he spoke that he believed I was Mother.

* Father raving and threatening suicide if he had to enter “a home.” He asked me to stay and take care of him. “You’ll never have to work again,” he said and waved proudly at the apartment. “You’re going to get all this when I go, you know.” It was pointless to explain that he had so little and I had only enough savings to last a year.

* Me selling our possessions to pay the bills, until he died and I returned broke to California.

Now, in Coco’s parking lot, living out of a car does not seem the worst thing that can happen to anyone. I know better.

Morning. I drive to Ralphs and spend 69 cents of my remaining $2.56 for a can of tuna.

This is the time, from 6 until 9 a.m., when you are most exposed. People out and about now seem to have an evident purpose. Police cars make rounds up side streets and through parking lots. Gardeners descend on shopping centers to mow and groom and pick up litter.

Carrying my tuna back to the car, I find a wallet full of cash and credit cards in the parking lot. I take it to the market manager. As I walk back to my car, I wonder: How hungry or desperate would I have to be to have kept that wallet? I don’t know, but I’m not there now and I’m thankful.

I am startled by a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I must wash my hair. It’s not a matter of vanity. After three days without a shampoo, I’m beginning to look a little too much like a bag lady.

A shampoo isn’t easy. You have to plan. I weigh the options and decide to use the restroom at the main Newport Beach Public Library. It is clean and often quiet.

I fill my purse with a plastic water bottle, a bottle of dish-washing detergent and a washcloth. I wait for the restroom to empty, then enter the spacious handicapped stall.

I remove my jacket and T-shirt and pour water over my head. Then the restroom door swings open. I freeze. Semi-soaped and dripping, I stand motionless until the occupant of the next stall leaves.

The prospect of being seen now--with soaked hair and detergent in hand--is mortifying. I finish, pull on my shirt and leave the restroom looking as if I have been swimming. I cross to the library exit quickly, not looking back. It is a new, low moment in my life.

I awaken the next morning at 4:30 after sleeping almost five hours.

This is a go-to-work day for me. I work a 40-hour week in four days. But while most people yearn for quitting time, I now look forward to the hours in the office, that place of blissful luxury.

It has hot water, coffee, tea, drinking water, a newspaper, a restroom, my own chair and a place to leave the car. I hope I will be alert enough to do a good day’s work.

I manage to perform well. Only in the warm, airless afternoon do I suddenly drop off over my papers and yank instantly awake. I pull through the fog, pour more coffee and focus on my work.

The irony is I work for a firm that publishes books advertising apartment rentals and their vast array of comforts and amenities.

Occasionally, someone looks at me oddly. There are expressions on faces I haven’t seen before, but no one is aggressively rude. And always I am on guard, ready for any attempt to make me leave or any rude remark. I am so constantly on guard for hostility that I don’t realize I have become unprepared to deal with anything else.

One weekday morning, I linger long in my car at Coco’s at Fashion Island, alternately reading and thinking. A voice wafts into my open window.

“Are you all right?”

Startled, I look out and see, a few car-widths away, a well-groomed, attractive man in his 30s approaching his Mercedes. He pauses tentatively and looks at me with an expression of kindly concern in his acutely intelligent eyes.

“What?”

“Are you all right? I wondered if you had car trouble. I saw you here earlier.”

“I’m fine,” I say abruptly and turn away. “I’m waiting for an appointment.”

“Oh.” He moves into his car and leaves.

I was rude to someone genuinely concerned about a stranger.

Now the tears cut loose. I keep seeing a stranger’s kind, puzzled face and hearing a gentle “Are you all right?”

Of course I’m not all right! But I can’t say that to him--or anyone.

I’m down to 43 cents, so I shop carefully. I buy two bananas for 29 cents; I can’t think of anything I can buy with my remaining 14 cents.

As days go by, I become increasingly aware of homeless people, from those living in automobiles to the fully homeless afoot. They are unseen when you live a “normal” life. They try to go unnoticed.

One man comes every night to check the coin-return slots of the newspaper racks and telephones near Coco’s. He is about 50. Nothing distinguishes him from anyone else except the telltale hesitancy of his movements.

At dawn, a woman in her 40s, dressed for the office and driving a Buick just a few years old, pulls up to the racks and begins methodically fingering the coin slots. She sees me, freezes like a deer in headlights, then squares her shoulders and leaves.

At midday, in Mariners Park, I eat my lunch of bread, tuna and an orange, then toss my refuse into the trash bin. An old, white-haired man darts from nowhere and puts his hand deep into the trash can, searching through my impoverished rubbish.

One night late, I awaken abruptly. I hear the sound of a key being slowly worked into my door lock and turned, just inches from my ear. My scalp tingles. The key does not work and is slowly withdrawn.

I listen warily. I can lunge for the horn if need be. That could bring someone out of the hotel--and probably end my tenancy at the Sheraton. I wait, unmoving and unseeing under my nighttime shroud.

In a few minutes, I hear a key working slowly in the lock of a car door or a trunk to the left of me. It opens and soon closes softly. Then it is quiet. I lie awake, adrenaline rushing, and finally sleep fitfully.

This is a cold wash of reality: I am no more immune from danger than anyone else.

This payday has loomed larger in my mind with each passing day. I feel increasing urgency to buy some fresh food, to have a bed to sleep in for a few nights, to soak in a tub. Such expectation allowed me very little sleep last night.

But the paychecks from out of state are delayed; they won’t be here until tomorrow.

Tonight I eat my last saved slice of bread and margarine. And, with a wary eye on the gas tank, which reads empty, I drive to the Sheraton yet again.

The paychecks arrive. I check into a motel and almost instantly fall asleep, unable to enjoy the luxury of tub and television until tomorrow.

I wish I had discovered earlier how much money can be saved by sleeping in the car. It’s the only way I know now to save enough to rent a room near my office. Allowing for a night at a motel once a week to catch up on sleep, for laundry and for general self-repair, it will probably take two months or so to save up.

But will I be able to keep up the rent?

When I returned to California from Florida, I finally landed a low-paying but full-time job and was promised rapid advancement. Now I find that the promises are not going to be kept by the corporation that bought this company.

There is a 49-year-old man in the office, desperate to hold his job after a year of unemployment. He is the butt of contemptuous jokes. I did not want to become like him. I do not become like him, an “old person” in a low-paying job, acting always out of fear.

I have taken a stand: Live up to the promises the company made me or I quit. They praise me but won’t budge.

I quit, and they look surprised. It was hardly noble or heroic. When you are already living out of your car, it is easier to give up a job. If you have a home, you can imagine losing it.

The downward spiral continues in earnest. Until now, the auto life has had a rhythm based on paydays. But there are no more paychecks to come.

My son, who lives in Tennessee, is suspicious. He’s been aware that I’m having money problems, but my lack of a permanent phone number and address prompts him to ask me outright if I’m sleeping in my car.

I’ve tried carefully to keep this from him. Maybe it’s a mother’s protectiveness, but I don’t want to burden him and his young family with my financial problems. So when he asks, I laugh it off.

I start walking almost everywhere. Occasionally, I sell minor possessions to buy gas and food, but there is not much left to sell. The gas tank is precariously low; I worry about running out of gas in the street and not having a penny to do anything about it.

It’s harder to look for a new job. Without motel room telephones and the workplace, there is no way to leave call-back numbers when responding to ads. I can walk major distances, but it means arriving hot, sweaty and too tired to impress anybody. Most time now is spent simply solving the problems of getting from one day to the next.

I walk as much as 25 miles a day. Now, after seven days of exceptional walking, my left knee is stunningly painful, and the right knee echoes the pain. There are other unfamiliar pains running down the front of my legs. But if I don’t start walking, I won’t get a gallon of gas into the car and I won’t get any food.

So I grit my teeth and walk, overriding the pain with necessity. For the next three days, I continue to walk many miles. The pain fills every part of my brain.

Now I am hobbling, so crippled that I can hardly get in and out of the car. One day of rest makes no improvement, nor do two, nor three. Movement is excruciating.

I have come to a critical time. My days have become a self-defeating spiral of non-accomplishment. Everything I do now is devoted to simple survival. If I don’t do something to halt it, I could be on my way into a rougher homelessness. But what can I do?

Editor’s note: The author lived in her car for about four months until her son finally learned of the situation and took her into his home in Tennessee. However, he will soon be relocating to another state, and “Diane” says she intends to return to Orange County, where she hopes to restart her writing career.