Heroin Part 1


I see her enough on the corner that if she isn’t there I notice, at the exit off the highway. You’ve probably noticed her, but didn’t give her too much thought except to think to yourself, 'Get a job. Who’d live that way'. It would be easier to actually work. She looks miserable/ ugly/ like stone/ staring directly ahead of her, not looking directly at anyone. If you want to give her money you’d have to call out to her because she’s not looking at you.

I knew her right after she got out of jail for forgery. She and her sister were cashing stolen check and they got caught. She was sent to State Reform for Women. They were forging the checks to buy heroin back in ‘95. That’s her thing. That’s what makes her face so itchy that she scratches it raw. When she got out of prison she had been off heroin and was trying to stay clean,that's when I met her. You wouldn’t know it to look at her today, but she’s actually a very intelligent, funny person with an incredible knowledge and appreciation for music.

Staying off heroin was too difficult for her.

Now She just looks like marred stone. Her face is emotionless as she stares straight ahead. She’s not begging, she is standing there, if you want to give her money fine, but she wont ask you for it directly. She has a sign, "hungry and homeless". She hasn’t eaten and looks too skinny, but I don’t think she’s hungry. She’s a junky, she’s not hungry. she also isn't homeless. She lives at ****. It’s a new address it seems like she’s always lived downtown.

When I knew her she had a job working at the Salvation Army sorting clothes, her mom got her the job but her mom isn’t doing much better than she.

J- is her name, she’s been arrested 6 times for panhandling always by the same cop. You’d think Officer M- would just let it ride after awhile, but he keeps ticketing her. Its an $80 ticket, yet she keeps going to the exit off the highway with her sign and her face of stone.