The whole display made Aria despondent. What upset her most was that night after night, women stepped into the water with the hope that their problems might be solved. She could see it in their eyes when they sat down in the water and waited for the immanence of their baptism. The innocence would return to their faces as if they were children, suddenly brittle in their vulnerability. But Aria knew this promise, like every other, was only the promise of inevitable disappointment. A step backward instead of forward … A step that only those who had not yet accepted their ill fate would be dumb enough to take.

The women were not allowed to be at the mission during the day. This gave the volunteers time to launder and organize and clean the floors in preparation for that night’s wave of arrivals. In truth, even if it were an option, Aria would not have exercised it. She was eager to escape the tension of the impossible position that they were all placed in. So much of life being homeless, including life at the mission, was like drinking poisoned water. The impossible position of relying on someone for charity, knowing that there were conditions for that charity. It gave a whole new meaning to selling your soul.

The various religious organizations that offered help throughout the city engaged in a covert kind of parasitism with the people who needed them the most. On the one hand, like everyone else, Aria was too desperate to turn down the help. On the other hand, by accepting it, like a man who is so poor that he has no choice but to enlist in the army, she would have to consent to enlisting in God’s army. Or at least act as if she would. Of the people she encountered who had made it their mission to help people who lived on the streets, only a handful actually cared about them. For the majority of them, it was obvious that their preoccupation with the homeless was in fact a preoccupation with using them. Using them to bolster their self-concepts as good people. Using them to bedazzle their résumés. Using them as write-offs for their companies; using them to increase the head counts of their congregations. And most of all, using them to secure their own place in heaven. Aria hated it. Being a naturally prideful person, she hated to be so desperate that she was forced to give them the satisfaction. Because of this, when the women and children at the mission were sent out for the day, she followed some of that inadvertent advice that she had been given and she went to wait outside the library until it opened its doors at 8am.