Empathy in the Eye of the Storm

There is a story I have from my NY Catholic Worker days in the 1980’s that I often return to. My whole time there was filled with blessings and challenges, happily as St. Therese says “All is Grace.”  This one moment stands out to me as perhaps my favorite. 

It was a day off for me, in the afternoon, I was on the pay phone in the hall talking to my brother John, people were milling about as was normal. All was right with the world, until it wasn’t.  Out of the clear blue, Sandra, who was sitting in the dark on a chair outside the laundry room at the end of the hall, lets out a long, blood curdling, primal scream. All at once, all in the few seconds after this many things happened simultaneously; people stop in their tracks, looking in the direction of the source of the scream, my brother John who had stopped talking on the other end of the phone says, “Uh, what was that?,” Arturo who was on the house comes running from the dining room like the SWAT team, looks furtively at me as I calmly point down the hall while I answer my brother on the phone, “I think it’s just Sandra having a reality check”, and that’s when the best part happened.

Johanna, whom I already loved dearly, a former professional model, an exquisite, ethereal being who floated rather than walked, and who barely ever spoke slides up beside me.  I’m feeling like we’re standing in the eye of the storm now, as Arturo is telling Sandra, who says she’s perfectly well, thank you, that she needs to not be screaming then because others around will get upset. And dear Johanna looks quizzically in Sandra’s direction and softly says, “Perhaps she’s lost her Equity card?”