Creative Nonfiction
On Dana Street in North Berkeley, unhoused men and women huddled under a church awning in the morning downpour. I looked away, then forced myself to cross the street, raising my voice over the pounding rain.
"This weather is awful," I said, shivering, water running under my collar, trying to sound casual, though I likely came across as what I was: guilty and entitled.
Their rain-soaked clothes steamed in the cold air. Blankets and sleeping bags, draped over the church stairs and railings, wouldn’t be dry by bedtime. Some of them were barefoot. Cracked leather boots with yawning tongues, giant white sneakers, and torn green Crocs—lined up like offerings on the top step.
A young woman nodded. "It's wet," she said, her voice flat, almost amused. A spider tattoo curled around her neck. She sat on the granite stairs, leaning against her backpack, streaks of dried mud on her arms and stomach, her shirt rolled up so the wet fabric wouldn’t touch her skin.
I took a twenty from my wallet; I didn’t have anything smaller. "Maybe you could share it?"
She looked at the others; they nodded.
I handed her the bill, opened my umbrella, and hurried toward Zellerbach, where I had tickets for a matinee concert. For a moment, I felt good. Then shame hit. Why not give each of them a twenty? What was wrong with me?
Watching the orchestra tune their instruments, I couldn’t shake the image of all those wet shoes. I imagined shoving my own feet back into them, cold and waterlogged. I'd always had the luxury of tossing mine in the dryer. The shoes reminded me of my son, as so many things did, pulling me back to memories of him.
I didn’t witness when he first became homeless. By that time, I’d already moved to California. He had friends and relatives to stay with but wouldn’t commit to sobriety. When he was injecting meth, he couldn’t live indoors. He’d tear apart people’s homes in a frenzy, breaking up furniture according to some private, impenetrable logic.
Every morning, he called and asked me to send him money. I deposited fifteen dollars—an amount we’d finally settled on. I always had suggestions: buy a bus pass to reach a shelter, grab two-for-one tacos. “Good idea, Mama,” he’d cheerfully agree, then do what he wanted, regaling me with stories of chomping on stale bagels pulled from the trash, told in excruciating detail, as if to cause me maximum upset.
Around that time, there was an offer on the table for a flight to San Francisco and a bed in rehab. If I stopped sending him money, I told myself, he’d eventually take it. But could I really do that?
The day after the concert, the rain had turned to fog. I kept thinking about those wet shoes, so I searched for a place to buy used clothes. Goodwill happened to be having a half-off sale. I bought dozens of sneakers, boots, and sandals, mostly men’s sizes. The cart overflowed; pairs tumbled to the floor. At the register, I explained they were for the homeless, angling for a bigger discount. The cashier, looking overwhelmed, just kept ringing them up.
In the parking lot, I sorted the shoes across the seat and floor by type and size, banding the pairs together.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do with all of them. But pulling out of the lot, I saw a man hobbling in shoes split at the seams, the soles held together with electrical tape. I pulled over.
"Need a new pair?" I asked, stepping out of the car. "They're in the back—pick what you like."
He tossed the ones he didn’t want on the floor.
"Measure them against your foot," I said. "Don’t take any that are too small."
Stop lecturing, I told myself. He didn’t need another person telling him what to do. His hands shook; his fingers were raw, the nails bitten to the quick.
I opened the trunk and handed him white crew socks. "Want these?"
"You're a good person like me," he said, hugging a pair of size ten Adidas. His face was gray and lined; most of his teeth were missing. "I help people too," he said. "Whatever I find, I give away."
My son was the generous one. I was just imitating him. As a child, he often gave away his toys, the more he liked something, the faster he was to offer it to someone else. I didn’t praise his kindness; I yelled at him: That’s my money that bought your bike! At his memorial, his friends spoke of how quick he was to share whatever food or money he had.
I could say I was handing out shoes in his honor, but the truth wasn’t that neat. Our favorite hobby was shopping together. He had a huge collection of sneakers in his closet. When he relapsed, before he got kicked out of his sober home, I took him to the local shoe store and made sure he was wearing brand new Timberlands.
After he moved to California, he was homeless again for a short time before rehab. I convinced my sister to come with me to an encampment in Oakland to search for him. We moved aside two wooden sawhorses that blocked the entrance and asked for whoever was in charge. It was like a neighborhood, built from whatever the world had thrown away—tables of clothes, rows of tents, green and brown tarps overhead, and a mountain of bike parts piled high. My son was gone—chased out for stealing. He showed up at my door the next day, unshaven, the sharp chemical reek of meth seeping from his pores.
That was long before I started handing out shoes. Once I started looking down at people’s feet, I noticed how unhoused people’s shoes were in terrible shape. One man, pulling a heavy suitcase behind him, wore sneakers that were obviously too big and missing their laces. I gave him a pair that fit. While he tried putting them on, his pants slipped off his hips. I looked away while he pulled them up. Next time, maybe belts?
A man with a wild beard, wearing shoes with the toes cut off, picked up and examined every pair before choosing some blue boat shoes that seemed to me completely impractical.
"Are you from a church?" he asked.
Another man was barefoot, striding purposefully down a busy street in black socks, muttering to himself.
"Sir, do you need shoes?" I called out the window.
I followed him around the corner, braking hard at a red light.
"Sir, sir?"
He glanced over his shoulder and sped up.
Idiot, I told myself. You’re scaring him. Stop.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become particular about my own shoes: arch support, stiff soles, only the podiatrist-approved brand.
The unhoused are always moving, hauling their lives from place to place, walking toward nowhere. Their feet must ache all the time.
Living alongside people who are unhoused is painful. Complaining about it feels crass. It hurts to pass by someone sleeping on the sidewalk, curled beneath a thin blanket, head resting on cardboard, empty cans of food and a bent spoon nearby. People say the numbers here are high because of the weather — partly sunny, seventy degrees most of the year.
After a few weeks, only the reject shoes were left: too-small boots and crocodile dress shoes with pointed toes. I considered buying more. But the truth was, what started as a thoughtful impulse had turned into a chore. I wanted my backseat clean again.
I’d told my friends about giving out shoes—it had become a story, a way to laugh at myself.
When I donated the last pairs back to Goodwill, I felt deflated, worse than when I’d started. A few people had new shoes. But there were always more people on the street who hadn’t been there the day before.
Now I keep backpacks in my trunk, Dollar store flashlights, yellow rain ponchos folded into squares, packets of moisturizer, and Yoo-hoo chocolate milk which, as a vegan, I wouldn’t drink myself.
I hand a backpack to a bald woman bent over her shopping cart, aware of how insubstantial it is; another to a shirtless man with a torn gray blanket draped over his shoulders.
People take them but don’t open them right away. The images stay with me, interrupting the ease of my retired life in Berkeley.
When the backpacks are gone, I’ll go back to giving money. No instructions. No story. Just trust. Maybe that’s all any of us want.