A Knock at the Door

The houses are well-spaced-out here in the heartland of Greater Los Angeles. “Deep lots,” the real estate agents like to say. You can pass a lifetime without unwanted contact, unless you like unwanted contact, in which case we’ll exchange glances and point you toward the urban hordes.

Maybe this is why the knock on the door was so unsettling that Sunday. Out here, you don’t expect a stranger with shame in her eyes. Somehow, you never imagine that the urban hordes might point themselves toward you. Somehow, you don’t expect a beggar in suburbia.

She stood on the porch under the climbing roses. She wore a clean flowered skirt and had no front teeth. She couldn’t speak English, and, pointing toward the recycling bin we’d put out for the trash man, she gestured that she was scavenging aluminum cans.

In one hand she brandished a trash bag that was almost as big as she was. Behind her, a baby carriage was parked. She said something in Spanish and ducked her dark head. All we caught was the word for “food.”

There are quarters of this metropolis where beggars and hunger are common. Not our part. We are the modest capital of well-enough. Our local “homeless community” consists of about 35 souls who hang out by a gazebo in a nice park, winos and wanderers whom people have known for 20 years.

When we took a Westside friend to the local mall, she took one look and blurted hilariously, “It’s been a long time since I last saw this many fat people in one place.” No, ours is not a community in which people go wanting, and the specter of want on our doorstep was a shock.

We gave her every scrap of aluminum we could find, and started pulling provisions from our shelves. Seven eggs. Ritz crackers. Macaroni and cheese. A half-loaf of Wonder Bread.

On her way out, we pressed a $20 bill into her hand. Gracias, she murmured, gracias. For hours afterward, we felt invaded, disturbed.

Four days later, she was back.

*

This time, she showed up just as the woman who minds our children was arriving for work. The sitter was born in Guatemala, and within minutes, she had the scoop: The woman had five children and was pregnant with No. 6. Her husband was the handyman at the apartments down the street.

For his work, they got free rent, but money was scant, and she had too many small children to get a job herself. There was so much she needed--diapers, clothing, food. She didn’t know where to turn.

With enough cans, she figured, she might cover the bills. With enough cans, it might all work out. Our sitter laughed kindly and confided something I, with my limited Spanish, couldn’t make out.

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“I tell her stop having the babies,” the sitter replied.

We got the woman’s address and told her we’d come by later. We gathered outgrown kids’ clothes, food, addresses for the nearest food bank and clinica. But it’s a long way, in these closed precincts, from deep lot to deep lot, and by the time you reach the hand outstretched before you all sorts of mischief can transpire in your heart.

On the drive to her apartment, uncomfortable thoughts crowded in. I remembered the poor people I’d grown up with in the coal country of Pennsylvania. I remembered their guilt and desperation, their lice. I thought of the mountains of words that have been written about the face of poverty and welfare reform. I wondered if maybe I wasn’t getting too involved here; maybe we should just leave the stuff outside her door.

Funny, the way the poor seem noble when we’re in the mood to help them, and repellent when we lose our nerve. Surprising, what happens to “love thy neighbor” when the neighbor puts her dignity in your hands.

*

It took all of two minutes before we were face to face. And the face of poverty, like the face of suburbia, was not easy to read. From the outside, her apartment was a nice place, on a street where my husband played as a kid. But inside, it was a wasteland, barren of furniture, with only one bed for the family to share.

On the outside, it seemed clear that she had borne more children than she could support. But is it not an exaltation to bear life? “These are mine,” she told us proudly in Spanish, and gestured to a baby, a schoolgirl, two toddlers, a hard-looking boy. They seemed less her burden than her accomplishment.

In our driveway, she had seemed the vanguard of the urban hordes, and scary, with her toothless, obsequious smile. But here, on her turf, she was just a mother trying to make ends meet.

Beggars have their reasons, my grandma used to say. What were this woman’s? Her weakness? Our weakness? The hateful laws we pass when we fear there are too many out there like her? We handed over our boxes and wondered about the face of charity.

Less than a week later, she was back.

Shawn Hubler can be reached online at shawn.hubler@latimes.com