JANICE!

So, a few weeks ago I hit a milestone in my Detroit career.

I first went on Sister Judy’s route in the spring on an Urban Encounter (week long mission trip). It was a really eye-opening experience. We would pull up to a neighborhood of abandoned houses, a ghost town. You can imagine a plastic bag blowing across the street like a tumble weed, pure silence. Sister honks her horn a few times and people start coming out from all the houses. I was amazed that people could live in houses like these, but I was more amazed by the relationships that Sister Judy had with the people, she was a real mother to all of them.

Back in the spring there was one house that remained silent no matter how many times we honked or called out:

A first look at Janice’s place

Sister yelled “JANICE!” but there was no answer. She got worried and decided to go in and check on her. My friend Andy helped sister in and he described the interior to me later. There were only two rooms you could walk in, the floor wasn’t stable in the others. A pile of clothes and loose fabrics was lying in one of the rooms apparently as a bed and candles were scattered about the house to light it in the evening. He put his hand on a door frame and felt something wet, it was white paint that hadn’t dried yet. They didn’t find Janice that day but the wet paint was a clue that she couldn’t be far off. This is where it all began.

This character of Janice fascinated me. There was something about that doorway, half-painted a sunny yellow, that grabbed my heart. Who would bother painting that? Why? And such a happy, hopeful color? None of the other houses are painted. The other houses are a dreary gray. They’re just forgotten, shadowy places to hide. But not that house on the corner, no, somebody was trying to make that house a home. She just didn’t have enough paint.

The following summer I got to join Sister Judy again but I never got to see Janice, just her empty doorway. Sister assured me that she still lived there but Janice would remain a great mystery to me:

Then, at the beginning of my GAP year there was a breakthrough:

NEW PAINT JOB!!! I felt like a child seeing that Santa had brought presents, “SHE WAS HERE!!!” I was so excited!

Maybe today was the day!

Alas, it was not. We left her lunch on the doorknob and kept moving. I stared at the house as we drove away. Sister stopped to hand out a sandwich to a passerby so that bought me a little more time to watch the house just in case she came out late. As we started driving again Matt said, “Well, you finally got to see Janice”. What? “Yeah, sister just handed her a lunch.” WHAT?! I had been preoccupied watching the house! I spun around to take a picture, but she was too far off:

Would I ever meet this phantom of a woman.

The next week Janice was still not at home but this time I kept my eyes to the front. Sure enough on November 6th 2013 at 11:13AM. A bundled figure came ambling through the Detroit smog:

“JANICE!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed it!

I climbed from the backseat to the front, with complete disregard for my fellow passengers, kicking people in the face, crushing lunch bags. I looked like a 50’s teenybopper seeing Elvis for the first time.

We got to have a nice long conversation with Janice that day and I must say, she was as interesting in person as she was from afar. Janice grew up in that now broken down neighborhood and likes to tell stories of when she was a little girl. When you talk to her she rambles on about anything and everything, jumping from topic to topic. But contrary to what you might think, it isn’t just nonsense.

Sister said that she was showing a friend from Belgian her route and they met up with Janice. In typical fashion Janice rambled on and on about the history of Belgium and just spouted random facts about it. Sister was surprised when her friend confirmed everything Janice was saying. She is a trivia machine.

Janice is also a very kind soul. One week after we gave her a thermos with hot chocolate and some new gloves  we found out that she gave them to some folks down the street. When we asked her why she just said, “Oh you know, they need it more than I do and I try to help if I can” Then she talked a little about some economics principle that basically says different goods hold different levels of value depending on the consumer. Janice is one of those people that seems out of place in that ghostly neighborhood, she is just too smart and sociable. In that sense, Janice is still a mystery to me. Someday I will sit down and get her story but for now, I am just glad to have a face to go with the name.