San Francisco, California

The day is unsettling. It’s cold and it’s wet; and the mist is stubborn and seems to hover, only disturbed as huddled masses hurry through.

Robin is not well. A bullet still rests near her spine. And she still feels pain. She needs more treatment; but doesn’t get it.

She rustles through a large trash bag of something and bends by her cart overflowing with nothing. A man stands beside and waits. Then leaves.

Robin’s sons visited her for thanksgiving. Both of them; one about 22 and the other about 35. They came from Sonoma. Her younger son came with a Bible and a fine set of clothes. Her older son came to stay.

She says that all she wants in the world is to spend time with her family and for them to be happy and to be well.

She hasn’t seen her younger son since about Thanksgiving. and now she’s been told he just got shot in the mission. He didn’t want her to know; but she found out. Yet she can’t find him. She tried the hospital where they bring gunshot victims from the mission. Nothing.

She is visibly shaken. “How can two people in the same family be shot like this?” Robin says, “It’s like the city is trying to tear us apart.”

Her older son came to visit earlier than his younger brother and has been staying with her on the street. He’s a “builder.” She tells me proudly of the homes he’s worked on.

Robin is originally from Marin (not Sonoma). She spent her early years there in a Catholic convent or such. They were planning to move to Marin together. She would get off methadone. It was real nice.

But “he got real ugly” and mean a few nights ago, she says. And she hasn’t seen him since. He just vanished.

She says it’s hard. Says she doesn’t know what to do.

“But I must have faith” she says and seems to swallow.

Tom Stone