Somewhere between vacuuming world, but I nodded anyway.

) “They asked
The eyes of a
and cleaning blinds yellowed by cigarette
homeless man bore
smoke, we found a stash of games. They
into the camera of
were hidden on a shelf under the plates: an
a New York
odd place for Uno and Dominoes, I thought.
photographer We were done with our cleaning, and it was
a slow day among the residents; but it was
7:30, which meant that Mark was upstairs
watching Jeopardy and making his daily
grilled cheese sandwich—a sacred tradition.
We didn't dare interrupt him to ask if we
could play, so we leaned into our teenage
tendencies and adopted the motto: “it is
better to ask for forgiveness than
permission”. We started with Uno.
Gloria
The first resident to sit down was
Gloria. She came sweeping in like the tide
after a typhoon, all white water and swoosh.
We heard her before we saw her—heard her
easy laugh and her high heels clicking and
her soup spilling as she reached down to pet
the dog, as if the law of gravity would
overlook her just this once and let her get
away with it.
“Hey kids, what are you playing?”
I held up my cards to show her, but
she just looked at me quizzically, with a
slight smile resting at the edge of her lips.
“Um, Uno?” I replied
“Oh-no,” she repeated slowly, as if
tasting the word for the first time, “Will you
teach me?”
So we did. To be honest, she never
me who owned the dam, and I told them my
family did. So that’s how I ended up here!”
She laughed, as if this erratic narrative
explained everything. She went on to tell us
that she had been a nurse for 20 years, taking
care of others; but when she got cancer and
her husband died, there was no one left to
take care of her.
“Well, except my son. He lives in
Bluffdale, but I don't want to ask for his
help. Parents are supposed to take care of
their children, not the other way around!”
My heart broke. “Does he know
that you're here? In the shelter?”
“No,” her smile faltered for a
moment before she caught herself and broke
into a wide smile, “and don't tell him either!”
A nurse. A mother. A wife. A
survivor. And yet, homeless? I couldn’t
seem to reconcile these roles. I wanted to ask
her a million questions, to turn out her life
like a pair of pockets and shake the change
loose until I knew how much it amounted to.
But the cigarette smoke started to make her
sick, and she blustered back to her room.
David
David came next. He didn’t join our game
right away, but instead trickled in like water
at the end of a stream—first “just watching”
from the doorway, then “just watching” from
the other end of the table, then “just
watching” with a set of Dominoes in his
ashen hands. It was a Tuesday, which meant
Dan “The Soup Man” had come, and David
tentatively swallowed his work.

Humans Who Happen
really got the hang of it, but as she laid a
blue four on a yellow seven, I asked her how
“This is the first meal I’ve been able to keep
down in three days,” he remarked, and then
more quietly, “Abi, put down your double
she ended up here, and she answered.

to be Homeless
What Uno Taught Me About Life
“Well, I was born in Polynesia. We
lived in a poor village, but we were lucky.
One day the missionaries,” she pointed at
me, “Do you know those guys?” (As though
there were only two missionaries in the
four.”
I was startled. David was across from me;
how had he seen my pieces? I scooted them
closer to my chest and asked him.
“I didn’t see them, it’s just process of
elimination. I know what I have, I know
what’s been put down, and six turns ago,
he,” he said, pointing to my friend, “needed
a four and didn’t have one. That leaves you.”
He proceeded to list every domino that I had
in my hand, except one.
“I can’t decide if that one’s a
four/six or a four/two.” He seemed upset by
this.
It was a four/six.
Halfway into our second game, the
chicken noodle soup decided to riot. David
reached underneath his chair, pulled out a
large basin (I hadn’t noticed it there), and
lost his dinner. Then he stood up—slowly,
carefully—and left the way he came,
trickling; but this time, he was headed uphill
and losing water fast. His funeral was on
Friday.
Ernie
The last to join us that night was Ernie.
Ernie, with hands that looked like fixing and
a voice like a dust storm. When he walked
in, my eyes caught on his grey plaid flannel,
in the pocket of which he had stashed a small
pink notebook and a mechanical pencil. My
grandpa wears that same flannel, but instead
of a notebook in his pocket, he stashes a tin
of chewing tobacco. The difference seemed
important, somehow. Ernie never played, but
instead kept us company while we each
worked on our own games of Solitaire. I
asked him about his accent: far South?
“Louisiana,” he drawled, then nodded, “Yep,
raised by the bayou. Man, I’ll tell you what;
the swamp will eat you alive down there.
Plane goes down? Fo’get about it. The
quicksand will take the plane, and the gators
will take the pilot.”
The conversation moves on, with Ernie
saying something about stone crabs or Justin
Wilson, but I’m not following. I’ve been
transported to a place where my childhood
fear of quicksand is founded, and such
wisdom as run zigzag from an alligator is
actually useful. I can’t imagine it. As I’m
thinking, I catch the end of Ernie’s sentence
and snap back into reality.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“I said that I’ve been livin’ in the wilderness
of West Virginia for the past 30 years,” his
smile twisted into an impish grin, “I got
chased out of damn near everywhere else by
the power companies, for exposin’ their
electricity secrets. I found a way to make a
generator that can power a house for 17
years, no cost. All it takes is $850 upfront.
But I can’t show you the plans. Yer just kids,
and I don’t want to put you on their radar.”
He patted his small pink notebook
knowingly. It sounded like the title of a bad
clickbait article to me, Power Companies
Hate Him!
“So how did you end up here?”
“Well, I got heart disease, you see. So I go
into the city e’ry so often to get a stent put
in. Last time I went, though, they told me
I’m down to my last artery, and they can’t do
no more. But the next day, I saw a Google ad
sayin’ that Utah’s got a new procedure that
could buy me two years!” He seemed excited
“The swamp will
all over again until he realized that he
already knew the end of this story. “So I
eat you alive down
hitchhiked all the way here, only for them to there”
tell me that they don’t got it,” he paused for
what seemed like an eternity, “Then they
threw me in here; what did they call it?
Hospice for the homeless? Bullshit. I ain’t
homeless, I got a home!” He muttered again,
under his breath, as if to reassure himself, “I
got a home.”
“But anyway, I ain’t gonna be staying here
long. I figure if I’m gonna die, I ain’t gonna
“ The swamp will
eat you alive
do it under this blanket of smog,” he
chuckled, “Nope, I’m going to Death Valley,
California. Gonna spend out my days under
sunburnt skies.” down there”