FRANKLIN WOMEN’S CENTER PT. 3 AARON’S LESSON
October 11, 2020 by Wiley March
The lovely-natured woman Keyla spoke with forgave my inability to communicate in her language and was gracious with me as I waited patiently, Keyla translating to me the conversation.
Call me strange, but I love those moments when life gently teaches us lessons about our own shortcomings, makes us examine our biases. Keyla had acquired information from the woman in blue scrubs that led us to the men’s shelter not even a full block away. Here the environment was clean and well-kept, no men loitered out front, save one, an older man, in a polo and khaki pants, quite fit and clean-cut. Kind brown eyes watched me, knowing I had questions, almost inviting me to ask.
So, I accepted the invitation. Aaron, we’ll call him Aaron for the sake of his privacy, was quite pleasant, making it easy to strike up a conversation with him. He looked at me in that gentle way a wise and loving father a small child. I asked was the building the men’s shelter and he confirmed indeed it was the shelter. One side was residential, the other drug rehabilitation. I shared with him the story of my missing friend and my concerns for her safety and he assured me, I had good reason for concern.
Aaron shared with me that he’d grown up in a “police” family, his father, his uncle, his brother, his grandfather, even one of his neighbors. Aaron himself though, had taken a different path. Though he’d never been to jail for anything, he admitted he’d struggled with his own kind of demons, substance abuse. He’d been clean for a while but still had his day-to-day struggles, especially during stressful times. This man was the epitome of bravery, strength and dignity, and he’d earned my respect immediately with his gentleness and integrity.
I listened as he told me the things he’d seen through silent, astute observation, through his choice to stay clean and fight for his own dignity. Just down the street, he said the men from their shelter would go every day, posturing themselves as pimps and peddlers of women and drugs, promising the women safety and a fix, a few dollars to split between them for food and a loosey now and then. Day after day, Aaron has seen death, stabbings, shootings, women being taken by force, drugs floating freely right before the eyes of small children, right before the eyes of police. Aaron explained some of the police are bad, some become the “customers” of the women at the shelter, he said the shelter staff is aware and does nothing that he knows of to stop it. Morning after morning, the women are forced from the shelter and sell themselves for drugs and money, almost on the steps of the shelter. And day after day, some of them disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he told me. “But the truth is, you may never know what really happened.”
Still Aaron seemed hopeful. Growing up among honorable officers, he knows there are good ones too, ones that want to stop this epidemic of human slavery and exploitation. Ones that sometimes feel overwhelmed and desperate to save the city and people they swore to protect and serve. He told of a neighborhood that had once been different, a different time when it wasn’t so frightening for him as a child to play on the sidewalks with his friends. Today standing in front of the men’s shelter, he worried over the children who weren’t his, over the women who less than a block away were selling themselves for dope and money, controlled by dangerous men. There are men like Aaron in this world who care, men who hope to make a difference through the wisdom gained by their own experiences. Men who sometimes remind us not to be quick to judge others, because we all have our shortcomings in one way or another (including yours truly) and I’m humbled and grateful to have met him.