The Guest Room

A few years ago, I was wandering the blustery winter streets of Washington, D.C. as night fell. I was an out of towner—a rather naïve Midwesterner on break from my college in Amish country. The pace, the unfriendly city faces, the insensible drive around Dupont Circle, all of it had created a pit of anxiety in my stomach, and I had rapidly come to the conclusion that city life defied the natural progression of the species.

Capitol Hill types in suits intimidated me, cars with tinted windows seemed a ludicrous precaution, and the sheer haughtiness of Georgetown struck me as impossibly beautiful, affluent and elitist. Of course, I did not put words to this, but scoffed at the rigid figures who darted between stores, cell phone to ear, eyes fixed not on the people around them, but flicking back and forth over the crowded sidewalk, looking for the quickest path through.

As night drew dark, I began window shopping with the friend who joined me on the trip. We glanced into storefronts, getting a glimpse of merchandise so far beyond our means that we couldn’t bring ourselves to actually enter the shops. As we strolled along, I grew increasingly aware of the homeless who were packing up their garbage bags and mats, heading off to sleep at missions, under bridges, wherever it was that they went. The shoppers who also milled the streets failed to cast a glance at the men and women who woefully gave their donation cans a few last needful shakes. The bright lights of the stores easily captured their attention, but the dinginess of the hard to look at seemed to escape interest.

This had bothered me throughout the day. Having grown up in a small town, I was unaccustomed to large numbers of street people, and even more unfamiliar with the practice of passing others on the street without acknowledgement. For the power-suited crowd, empathetic impulses appeared to be dead.

Eventually, I strayed. My attention was drawn to a closed furniture store. Stopping in front of the window, I watched the staff cleaning up for the night. They swept the softly lit hardwood floors, fluffed sofa pillows, and took great care to ready the emptying store for the next day.

It took a few moments before I realized that a man had joined me at the window. I watched his reflection in the backlit glass and saw this disheveled, clearly homeless man observe salespeople caring for a room full of other people’s furniture. His shy almost furtive expression soon softened, and he appeared to drift into memory. Looking in on the rooms belonging to no one, I could see the impression of his old home in his eyes. It could have been a childhood home, a first apartment, I have no idea—but this was a man who knew what home felt like, who had tended to things, had cared for his own place in the world.

Now he was a vagrant, locked outside, viewing an imperfect facsimile, a home that was not home. He blinked. His focus shifted away from the furniture and to the surface of the reflective window. Seeing me watching him, he coughed gruffly, looked away and in a moment, was gone.

I had caught him in a private moment, and with his guard down, the man revealed to me the irony of our world. We nurture empty spaces, create worlds of warmth and light for the sake of retail, while human beings suffer on the outside, hungry, uncared for, locked out of our clean, safe places.

For years, I’ve clung to this moment as a telling example of our cultural brokenness, of the callousness of the rich. I even used this story as part of my graduate school applications—it allowed me to show my sensitivity to others, my disgust with the status quo.

(It is, of course, very un-status quo to go to graduate school.)

Wanting to remain true to my roots, aware of economic disparity, I still like to view myself as a thoughtful outsider, an observer of the system, but somehow apart from its inherent injustice. I talk a good game about poverty, but now that for the first time, I live with a sense of financial security, I feel only dread about returning to that state. I could give up quite a bit and return to a more precarious situation (in my childhood we flirted with, but never quite managed to become entirely homeless). I feel guilt for what I have, this lovely apartment with carefully cared for furniture. I wonder if someone with less looked into my window, would they think of home? Would they wonder if all of my things keep me happy and warm? Would they see the guilt round my eyes as I pulled the curtain closed on them?

My husband wants to buy a bed for the spare bedroom, and I protest fiercely with no real argument to support my objection. Exasperated, he told me yesterday he understands why I am so bothered by the thought of having a real guest room, a bed that frequently goes empty when there are people who need beds. I suppose that must be part of the reason why the guest room sickens me. The empty bed would be a reminder that I have become a fraud.

I am caught up in truisms about rich men failing to pass through the heads of needles. I grant that a vow of poverty is a difficult thing, but once there, it seems just so much easier to be good. Vaguely, it seems as though poverty simplifies the decision making process—you have so little that you give to others what you can, but your own basic needs are justifiably given first priority. I idealize giving until it hurts, but having just reached this glorious feeling of middle class stability, I’d rather my pocket book not hurt for a while. And so I litter my world with tchotchkes from Target and salve my conscience with T shirts from the local fair trade store. With so many options, I find it easy, oh so easy, to wander from store to store, finding little trinkets for my nest. And I find that my new way of living might be even more abhorrent than that of the D.C. power shoppers I condemned. I have yet to develop the ability to see through the impoverished as though they were invisible. I still see the ramshackle needy outside. I simply step around them as I enter the store.