Cuz

I met Jenny Lawrence, cuz, while working in homelessness in a winter night shelter for young adults in Sydenham, South London. The shelter got an extended life beyond winter under a Housing Association, and it would carry on as a homeless shelter for a few years. The building was pretty impressive for a homeless night shelter. It had been the training dormitory for a bank previously. There were single rooms for each guest and the building was divided into two parts – one for men and one for women. There was a communal TV room, a large canteen with a large kitchen, a laundry and a store for used for donated clothes.

I had left college with a nice Sociology honours degree and followed it up with two years in elected positions in the student union. Unemployment was officially 3 million or something and everyone knew that it was closer to 4 or 5 million. So, there was me with a shiny new degree not really setting me up for any joy and a couple of years of political activism behind me. The result – life on the dole. Now there are those who tell you it is an easy life and only spongers do not get a job. They do not know what they are talking about. It is a hard life.

Six months in and the routine of walking to the employment office forlornly looking for a job that did not involve becoming a screw, and then walk to the library for warmth and to read and borrow books and the foot journey home to poor food options and the hope that maybe a friend would show up with a beer for me. Not fun. And then there was the time I got up in the morning and had two letters. One me Giro for two weeks dosh, about 75 quid, and the other an electric bill final demand for about 70 quid. Not good. Anyone who has ever lived on whatever food they happened to have lying around and 5 pounds worth of supermarket food for two weeks will get it. Others will not. Hell. A bag of potatoes, a few cans of tomatoes, a couple of packs of spaghetti and a collection of the cheapest vegetables and a modicum of meat. I made it though, having lost a load of weight and swore never again. I did not even have the money to go looking for work – not even a cash in hand day job. Total misery. The next Giro came and things went on. It settled into a routine with little prospect of any work on the horizon except the odd cash in hand number. Boring.

It was somewhere into this routine, about 6 months in to be precise, that Helen, the girlfriend of Sam who I shared the flat with came in one day. She was working in homelessness. Sam was working in care for the old. It was I with no job and no money. This was nice, I was being taken for a drink down the Vic.

“So, we have a job going at the shelter”, she said while on our second pint. I just listened wondering.

“It is only the caretaker. It is only 125 quid a week, but it’s on the cards with National Insurance and leave, etc. It’s probably not good for you, but thought I would ask”

Well caretaker in the UK meant fixing things and cleaning things, and I had had plenty of experience of both from the places I had lived, and the cash in hand jobs done in summer breaks from poly, so it was an easy decision.

“No problem, I will take it. Any work is better than none”

And so, one Monday I started a new job as a Caretaker in a winter shelter for the homeless. For those who have never worked in homelessness in any capacity, it is hard work whatever job you do, and demanding, and cleanliness ain’t something that is easy to keep in such a place. Fixing things and changing bulbs was no problem. A constant round of cleaning toilets, common areas and floors was more of an ask. Luckily the residents were responsible for their own rooms unless they left or were asked to leave/evicted. It was another routine but not too difficult. And the money was enough. Life improved and I settled into my routine and I got to know the workers – Gifty the cook, Seamus the manager, Mairtín the deputy manager, Helen a supervisor, and Jean and Tony were the other supervisors. Then you had the workers, Jenny, Grishma, Jim, Martin, Mick and a group of agency workers including William, Steve and Ronnie. The latter I knew from university! The residents came and went. Some stayed a fair long time. Some just disappeared. Some were evicted. This mostly happened if they endangered others. There was definitely a hierarchy of power among the homeless. And we, as officially a night shelter for young adults, had a policy of only asking for name and age. No ID was checked, so at any one time you could have the vulnerable or even I suspected minors right through to those hiding from the police for violent crimes all mixed in one place. It was surprising that most of the time things ran smoothly and at times there were successes in getting people housed or getting social services involved, but that was not really our remit. The shelter was for just providing those under 30 a bed for the night, a shower and some food before and after.

It was not the good stories though that had effects it was the bad ones and the insecurity of insecure funding. There was a constant turnover in staff. Soon after I started Seamus the manager disappeared – long term sick leave. Nobody ever knew the story there. So Mairtín an outspoken Irish supporter of Republicanism was running the place and he had a tight group all from the same town as him in Jim, Steve and Martin around him. This created an opening for a new worker. Hearing I had a degree in sociology and I guess assuming it may be relevant, Mairtín called me into the office and offered me the job. As it meant a big pay raise, I of course said yes. Within a handful of months, I had gone from caretaker to worker. Next up Tony resigned to go on his annual travels. He was off to South America and would later return as an agency worker with a bunch of tales to tell including the encounter with the Shining Path. Jim, Mairtín’s cousin as it came out became the next supervisor. Soon though, after an IRA bomb attack on London Bridge station, which curiously I was only 20 metres form when it went off, the entire Irish contingent resigned and left for Australia via Thailand. Helen became acting deputy manager and a new deputy manager would be hired to become acting manager! The chaotic rounds of constant departure, promotion and replacement were continuing. A new supervisor was needed to replace Jim and I found it was to be me. In far less than a year I had gone from caretaker to a Night Supervisor. Now being on nights was good because it was two fourteen hour shifts a week, plus attending a weekly meeting. And the way people were leaving there was all the overtime you wanted on supervisor rate. Things were looking up. Nights though tended to be the time when crazy stuff would happen, so it was stressful. By this time, Mick and Jean had gone. Mick fired or being forced to resign, nobody was really certain, over the incident of the resident with a gun, and allegations of another nature. Jean followed onto long term sick leave followed by eventual resignation, after her breakdown over her intervention to help a young man replace heroin with methadone ended in disaster, but these are not part of this story.

Among all this change and upheaval, a few things never changed. One was Jenny. Jennifer Lawrence was a second-generation Jamaican Londoner and a big character. She remains to this day one of the nicest, helpful, most sincere and honest people I have ever known. She had come through a life of challenges, but remained always ready to do the right thing and help others especially those who needed it. Although in many ways we were completely different, we became close friends. We also shared a last name, so to Jenny I became Cuz.

Every night after ten until around eight in the morning there were only two staff – a supervisor and worker. Jenny and I became a regular team on these nightshifts. We got to know each other well over time. We got on and became friends. We exchanged many stories of life, challenges, the good times and the bad times in those long nights where sometimes it would be mind numbingly quiet and others filled with events through the many months of that time.

Not long after we became a team, one night, a young woman came to the door and requested urgent help, and to stay in the shelter. She requested anonymity and said if anyone came looking for her to deny she was here. This was unusual, but we had a policy of confidentiality so nothing that would not have happened anyway. I left Jenny to talk to her. We then took her to a vacant room to sleep, and sat to talk.  Jenny later told me that our new resident was part of a local gang and had just run away. In fact, she was not just part of the gang but the leader’s girl.

Later that night, loud music – thumping bass – outside. And then a ring at the door. I went to open the door seeing a young, tall man outside and a group of others around a well lit car where the music came from.

“You got my woman in there?” the young man asked.

“I don’t understand”

“You got my woman in there? I’m told she came here.”

“No. I don’t think so…”

Variations of this repeated over what seemed like a long time, but was probably only a couple of minutes.

“You don’t think so… You dissing, me man?” This was not what I was used to dealing with.

Then as it went quiet and uncomfortable, I noticed Jenny behind calling me.

“Hold on a minute, sorry. I will be back”

I went to Jenny.

“Graham, you are some big old tall young white boy, you are going to have trouble with these gangsters, let me talk to them.”

I deferred to her sense. She went over to the door. I heard her tell them her name was Jenny. I went back to the office to not interfere and heard no more.

After a while the men all went to get in the car, laughing as they did so.

“Don’t worry, no problem now”, was all Jenny said. I spent most of the rest of the night not reassured, and expecting something to happen, but nothing happened. Jenny was right. There was no problem.

*****

One quiet evening William was in the office with Jenny and I. William, like Jenny was a second generation Jamaican Londoner, with a fashionable haircut, a lot of wit and was naturally attractive to people. They were talking about their travels in a lively manner. I had little to offer as at that time I had not travelled much outside Europe and not often there, so I listened.

William told the story of how he went to New York, and on walking out of his hotel he got mugged within minutes. It was not a visit he had enjoyed or wanted to repeat.

“He held a gun to me and took my chain and wallet and he even took my shoes”, William told us.

I had never known Jenny had been in New York, but she said,

“Yeah! I had the same”.

“He take your shoes?” asked William.

“No”. And Jenny told the story.

“I came out of the hotel and was walking down the street thinking where I could get some decent beer like Special Brew. American Beer is all weak. Then this big nigga comes up to me and pulls out a gun and sticks it in my big black face. I don’t know what he said, but he called me bitch. Nobody calls me bitch.

Neither William nor I were going to interrupt.

“So, I knocked the gun out of his hand and headbutted the mother. I don’t think they used to headbutts in America cos he went down like a sack of potatoes and his head bounced on the pavement. I kicked his gun and it went down this sewer thing, and then I thought. That cunt called me a bitch. So, I stamped on his balls. Hope I burst both of them”

William was looking a little sheepish and I was lost for words, but Jenny carried on.

“There was this crowd watching, so I said ‘what you looking at?’ and then carried on walking. I never looked back”.

I knew Jenny knew how to handle violent men from a previous story she had told me and Grishma, but had never heard this one before.

*****

Grishma, Grish as everyone called her at her request, was a tiny slim young woman. She had been born in Jamaica of Indian heritage and as such was kind of excluded from the others of Jamaican heritage at work, except of course from Jenny who was open to everyone unless you got on the wrong side of her. Apparently, there were class issues between African Jamaicans and Indian Jamaicans, a problem of colonialism across much of the ex-British colonial world, I believed.

One night Grish, Jenny and I were sitting in a cocktail bar in central London enjoying some away from work time telling each other of our lives. Grish talked of Jamaica where she was born and her auntie who had helped her come to London. I mostly just listened to the two of them after a run down of my life thinking, I wonder what story Jenny has?

Jenny had been married, which we didn’t know and which was something she did not mention at work. She now lived with a boyfriend in London and rarely went out with other groups, so we were privileged.

She had, she told us, met and married a US military man in Germany when younger. He was then still in active service and had been in one or more of the wars that the US started getting involved in back then, and he was a special forces soldier. They had an off-base flat I believe.

He had been involved in some pretty bad things is how Jenny put it, without going into details, and at night he would start screaming in his dreams or wake up screaming as though still in combat. At other times he would attack Jenny in the middle of the night even hands around throat. She talked to him about seeking help but he refused seeing it as weak. As time went by things did not get better as she hoped. There was no time heals all for this. In fact, the times she found hands around the neck increased and it became harder for her to wake him and calm him. She explained how she understood how abused women stayed with their man and how although this was different and more about mental health, you always thought you could help them.

Then one night it happened that she was woken again to his hands around the throat and him shadowing above her. This time she said, “Graham, Grish, I thought I was dead this time. He wouldn’t wake and I was struggling to breathe. Then I reached out and felt my cricket bat next to the bed. Next thing I know, he’s off me and my neck is free. Thought I had killed him but saw his body moving a little as he breathed. I packed the mothers bags and kicked his butt out when we woke up. Never saw him again. Later I had to see the doctor about my neck and they asked if I wanted to bring charges with the police. Ha. He’s an American on his base. That ain’t going nowhere and anyway, I hurt him bad – good enough.”

I never asked, but always wondered why Jenny had a cricket bat in Germany.

*****

Towards the end of my time at the shelter we talked. I had told Jenny, and Jenny only, that I was going to leave and spend some travelling before seeing what I would do next. It was obvious to see financially, that things were not good in the shelter funding. Cuts were a government priority at that time and the housing association that ran us obviously were going to prioritise their main role of providing housing. I saw no future beyond a few months. On top of that I had seen too many people get burned out and even ruined by the work. I was nowhere near there, but did not want to push things further. On top of that I had twice faced knives, once a gun and had a fire extinguisher thrown at me from the top floor. The risk was not worth it. I had saved enough money for a year abroad just by taking all the overtime I could. Jenny too was not happy and I knew she would not stay long. I think everyone still full time at that point knew a crisis was coming.

Close to my last day, Jenny came to me and said that she wanted me to do something for her. I said sure, wondering what would come next. She told me she was not happy because the place was now full of pimps and drug dealers who were using the young residents forcing them into addiction and prostitution. She told me she knew who they all were, and if nothing were done every new person who entered the shelter was at risk. Jenny was always very trusted by the guests and they talked to her like a friend. If you wanted to know what was going on, you had to talk to Jenny, so I knew this was how it was and I had also suspected a but myself. I asked her if she was sure. She just nodded and said, I want to evict all of them tonight. The management will not do anything and it will just go on, but she said that she needed my authority as supervisor of the shift to do it all. I was leaving the job and the country. She knew this and I was not looking for a career in homelessness, so I could do it without worry. Once we started, the process could not be handed over to anyone and our shift would not finish until it was complete. If I agreed…

That night and well into the next day we evicted 11 of the 70 residents.

The management wanted to fire Jenny for abuse of authority, but I said that they had to blame me as I was the supervisor, and there was nothing that could be done by them. Jenny left by resignation around the same time as me. She told me, “I have done all I can do here.”

*****

Either me or some of those working at the shelter organized a leaving party for me. Jenny was at my leaving do in a pub near London Bridge with most of the work crew one pleasant May evening. I had been given gifts, snacks were eaten and now drink was going down. The atmosphere was relaxed, but loud. I got talking to Jenny for a while, and asked her what she would do now.

She said, “don’t worry about me cuz. I will always be alright. You just go do what you need to do and forget about me”

We got talking about shelter life and I made the point that I was really surprised I never had any problem with the black residents, only with the white ones. She said, “cuz you ain’t had no problem with any of them cos I always tell ‘em you are my cuz. They say but he’s a white boy and I say, look at the last name, and you know, he was adopted. To them you are me. I asked her why and she said laughing “you are my cuz”.

Then she said remember the gangbangers who thought you dissed them?”

That brought back bad memories.

Jenny went on, “well I told them mothers that. you was my cuz and they had to deal with me if they were gonna dis you. They were like, ‘he’s a white boy don’t fuck with us.’ Then I told ‘em, look at the names – same.”

“The big one says, ‘what, he called Jenny too?’”.

“They all went quiet and then they started laughing. Then they went on their way still laughing”.

As with these kinds of parties you drift around, and talk to different people. At some point Jenny was gone.

I never saw my Cuz again.