‘You’re Always Welcome Here’
In the reference area of Santa Monica’s main library there are quite a few homeless people hunched over books or papers. They are not panhandling, shouting obscenities, smoking crack or washing your windows. They are reading.
Sitting low over a computer, his thick reddish fingers moving with confidence across the keyboard, John (some names here are changed), 29, doesn’t seem homeless. His Heal the Bay T-shirt and khaki pants are clean, but, more important, there’s an air of purpose about him. It’s not until he looks up that I notice the drinker’s nose, the desperate, exhausted eyes that betray the feeling that he can’t stand it inside his head another second, but then a second goes by, and here he is, a little surprised.
“I like the computer, since that’s where I have experience,” he says. “There’s so many people to communicate with. For example, I network with a guy from France. We talk about whatever. Issues.”
John was a computer operator until three years ago when his wife and children were killed in a car accident. Then the drinking. “The doctors say I have depression, though it’s not as bad as it was.” John shrugs. “The library’s a stable place to go.”
One of the few places where people are treated equally regardless of their housing situation, the library draws the homeless. Everyone I spoke with had the same common denominator--a genuine love of reading or research.
Karen is short and quiet, with thick glasses and a sunburned face. “People use the library for a refuge, but not me.” She smiles as she speaks, a fragile smile, and I think of Laura from “The Glass Menagerie.” What if she were alive now and had a run of bad luck?
“They know me in the Children’s Section and are extremely nice,” Karen continues, smiling again. “I love ‘The Borrowers,’ that whole series, and the Paddington Bear books. Right now I’m reading a biography of Shakespeare, and I just finished ‘The Jungle Book,’ you know, Kipling.” She glances away, then, leaning close: “I think ’93 will be my year. I think this is almost over.”
I find that reading preferences of the homeless seem to reflect the general population. Women read more fiction than men, and the men who like fiction gravitate toward action and suspense. Nonfiction readers fall into every possible category: economics, psychic phenomena, electrical engineering, yoga, military history.
For Bill it’s Mars. He’s laboriously hand-copying a topographical map of that planet from an atlas onto four sheets of lined paper. His map is strangely beautiful. Drawing in blue ink with every volcano neatly labeled, Bill has superimposed Mars over a penciled map of Earth that shows through in some places. “This way I can understand size relationships between the two planets.” Bill’s blue and penciled maps might be an eighth-grade science project or a postmodern work of art. “I used to be an archeologist till I ran out of work in ’82.” He touches the huge crucifix around his neck. As we talk about Mars, it’s clear Bill has a hard time functioning in the world, but his explanation of topographical maps is lucid and passionate. He sounds like a young professor.
“The library keeps my mind active. I want to learn more about the solar system, and I’m also working with the Bible.” Bill laughs, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m a very devout something; I’m just not sure what.”
The downtown library has a very different feel from that of Santa Monica--bigger, not as friendly, more security. The homeless people seem different as well. Suspicious. They tend to group together almost protectively.
The book open in front of him is “Black Photographers, 1940-88.” “I was a slow learner and only completed ninth grade, but I’ve caught up now.” In his early 30s with large, thin hands, Ed was a dock worker in Long Beach and got laid off shortly before the death of his mother, a death he took very hard. “I like art and black history. Since I have no TV or radio, the library really helped me keep up with the presidential race.” As he talks, Ed subtly watches me, forming careful opinions he will keep to himself. “The library’s an extremely important establishment because you’re always welcome here. You’re not hassled. You can read.”
People are occasionally asked to leave the library for excessive body odor or sleeping between the shelves, but still, the staff members I spoke with agreed the library addresses an enormous need in the lives of the homeless. “This is the only mainstream stuff left to them,” one librarian said.
Lee is a small, very shy black man, but it is a secret underground shyness that’s in his heart, not his mouth. “I came up in foster homes and didn’t take enough time to get any education. I like the library to practice my reading, you know; even homeless people need quiet.” He tells me he’s written a play. “It took forever because the whole thing was, like, ‘How do you spell this? How do you spell that?’ ”
When the occasional yard work dries up, Lee sells drugs, something he once promised himself he’d never do. “I’m 34 years old and tired of just existing. Someday I want to go back to school. That’s what my play’s about--a 22-year-old black man who gets to go to law school. I like plays.”
Yes, the homeless can find books in other ways--many of the missions have reading rooms--but the library is important not only because of the sheer volume of reference material and periodicals (information homeless people can’t get anywhere else), but also because it’s one of the few places where looks and income do not dictate how you are treated.
