At the Coliseum
I was staffing a shift at the Coliseum where a women’s shelter has been set up to house 300 women experiencing homelessness during COVID-19. The area I was assigned was food and dining where breakfast, lunch and dinner are served, mainly handing out glasses of water or cups of coffee to women who wanted one. That’s when SHE (I will call her Brenda for the sake of anonymity) asked for a cup of coffee. Brenda was slight and came across as sweet and unassuming. She didn’t smile much but when she did it was contagious. We talked and she seemed like she wanted to be discovered and not discovered all at the same time. Brenda made sure I knew that she had taken a shower yesterday, and that she didn’t want to be treated like a child. We talked about how she had lived in Colorado most of her life, how she had stayed at Samaritan house and would bum cigarettes off of anyone who would give her one. It was easy to be with her. As we talked, a quote that I had come across came to mind, ‘Mercy is to take another person seriously.’ I could tell her mental capacity was limited, but I was listening.
Later in the afternoon I overheard some of the staff talking about how they had been trying to get Brenda in the shower because she hadn’t taken one in several days. I approached a situation in which Brenda was being asked to put shoes on for her safety and protection in the Coliseum. She began to get belligerent and the situation escalated. As I came on the scene, she was letting everyone know she had a blister and that shoes were not going to work for her. I looked her in the eye and said, “Can I just go take a look in the shoe bin and see what I can find?” Somehow, she conceded to that. I found her exact size in boots and socks to give her feet support. When I came back and showed them to her she scoffed, but saw they could work and put them on. Next, another staff person tag-teamed my efforts and said if she had a new t-shirt then she would have all she needed when she got out of the SHOWER. Her reaction to the t-shirt was not what I expected. All that was available in her size was a heavy metal band shirt with skulls and one from Victoria Secret that read “PINK.” I brought them both to her so she could decide. I truly thought she would choose PINK, but she said the skulls were more her style (I love that I was wrong).
We started walking to the shower and she called out to someone she knew, “Guess who this is?” I called out, “What Brenda is trying to say is we are friends.” To which Brenda replied with her dry sense of humor, “No, I was going to say you are now the one who is going to ‘wipe for me’ when I go to the bathroom.” I gave her a playful look that said, “Yeah right?” She gave me a knowing look back, and then went straight to the shower.
As I turned to go back to the water and coffee station, I ran into Trish, who I had met earlier that day. She was a security guard working for the Coliseum, had only started the job a few days ago, and had voiced to me that she was still taking it all in and learning the ropes. In that present moment at the water and coffee station, Trish said in tears, “I figured it out, I know why I am here. It is to witness how you, and all the staff, are with these women; you let them know they have value.”
If there is a news story to be had from the Coliseum it is how, not one, but all of these women’s organizations in Denver are coming together to have an impact and provide shelter in this unique way for women experiencing life without a home. The message and experience is clear: WE ALL GET FREE TOGETHER.
