We assume things about the poor, like they’re uneducated, drunk and contagious. Add a disability to the mix and you can add that they’re either a fraud, or beyond help.

Kathryn is poor and in a wheelchair. Been disabled six years and three months. I asked recently how her injury happened?
“How long you got?”
“How much you wanna tell?”
“Not everything, but I’ll at least give you the main parts.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s how long I got, then.”

Kathryn started-out with a hell of a thorn in her flesh. Her mom shot her up with heroine at age three and her dad was never in the picture. Nonetheless, she somehow made it through high-school and college and eventually landed a job at a worldwide news conglomerate.

“Gave my heart and soul to that place for four years, but 9/11 hit and I went to pieces. You’ve never seen images like I did, Abbie. We’d get ’em unedited…British press was the most merciless…and Twin Towers certainly weren’t my only culprit, but they were the tipper…put me over the edge. PTSD hit hard and Meth was my only relief. Kept me sane enough to keep a smile on at work, but eventually I couldn’t keep that façade anymore. Six years and three months ago, had an accident and fell-off a sixty-four foot bridge into a dried-up riverbed.”
“Fell-off, or jumped” I asked?
“Jumped,” she hesitated, double-taking my inquiry. “Don’t typically tell that part though.”

Silence held us for a long minute.

“So how’d Jesus ever get into this story,” I asked, making an assumption about the cross around her neck.
“You mean how’d I get into his? I ask myself that question every day. When I was in the hospital there was an annoying nurse who was always wantin’ to tell me about him. I told her if she’d hook me up with cigarettes, I’d entertain her fairy tales.”

“And that was it?”

“Yeah, just about. We’d sit out on the curb and she’d go on about this God who knew my name, and liked me, even though I liked drugs more than anything and had just tried to kill myself. Shoot,” her smiling eyes said, “I’d have been stupid to not give that fairy tale a chance. And poor people aren’t stupid, Abs, we’re just poor.”

Silence held us again.

“Ever feel like you recovered?”
“No, not really. Been on disability since. On and off the streets,..mostly on. Some days are better than others. All days are better than nights. Just can’t kick the reality I’ve seen, ya know? That’s another thing about Jesus though…he gets me in a different way than other people. Sometimes I think about the things he saw—the reality, really—and the stuff he went through. Makes me think my reality doesn’t scare him off…that he can handle seein’ what I go through. And again, who wouldn’t fall for that, right? Well…maybe stupid people, but I already told you my theory about poor people bein’ stupid.”