“Lights out” was not really lights out in the mission. In fact, half of the lights stayed on all night long. Long, fluorescent bulbs that hissed as if cursing the women that lay directly underneath them. Every so often, in a muddled chorus, a child started crying in the middle of the night, and then another and another. Their cries usually subsided, but only so the children could avoid further scolding, not because they were being soothed. Aria had come to the mission thinking that she would sleep better there than she did out in the frigid night air. Being there, however, she realized that sleeplessness was another part of life on the streets that simply had to be accepted. On multiple occasions, she lay in her bottom bunk completely bewildered by the fact that so many women seemed to have no problem whatsoever sleeping in those conditions. Again, this made Aria feel like she did not belong.

In the morning, at about 5.30am, the other lights went on in the large room. A woman shouted for everyone to wake up and then they were ordered not to leave their beds until a volunteer had collected their clothing and handed it to them personally. In exchange, the women turned in the bed sheets they had used for the night, which were placed in an industrial waste bin to be taken to launder.

With clothing in hand, they then formed a line outside the bathroom. The lines in the mission seemed to last forever. Every so often Aria’s attempt to dissociate while standing in them was interrupted by the bark of someone trying to get the women already inside the bathroom to hurry up. Inside the bathroom, there was a row of toilets with no doors, and opposite each toilet, a sink with no mirror above it. Adjacent to this was a room completely covered by stained and aging off-white tiles: the community shower area. The walls were studded with silver nozzles, only one of which worked properly. During her stay there, Aria witnessed more than one tussle over which woman got to use that nozzle. But, as dilapidated as it was, there was hot water. This was what made Aria come back the next night and the next. Aria became conscious that she always took hot water for granted until she had no access to it anymore. The swelter of it whittled down the sharpness of the fear she felt constantly now. As much as her circumstances did not seem to improve from day to day, at least the water could fool her into hoping that they would. Even if it was illusion, she could feel like it might be a fresh new start.