The Stranger

December 26 dawns bright, clear, and cold, or at least what passes in Southern California for “cold:” about 50 degrees. Southwood is quiet; many of the residents are indoors after a late Christmas Day, or are off with relatives. Angela’s out of town, so Bree and I end up sitting at the table with Shoshanna, Marisol, and Rebecca, coloring and talking about Christmas. The girls talk about Barbies, sweaters, necklaces, and other gifts. Rebecca suddenly remembers some some fruit-scented markers she received, and gets up to go get them.

A rather incongruous burst of death metal music at high volume draws everyone’s attention to the upper level of the motel, where a very thin young man, shirtless in the cold and apparently in the middle of a major housecleaning session, is hanging what appears to be sets of mini-blinds off the second story railing.

“Be careful,” Marisol says to Rebecca, who has paused to look up at the source of the music. “I will,” Rebecca replies, heading for her apartment.

“We should tell them,” Shoshanna says to Marisol, who nods soberly. She turns to Bree and me and says, cocking her head toward the young man, “He’s a pedophile.”

“He molests kids,” Shoshanna says.

“Oh. How do you know that?” Bree asks.

“My dad told me, and their moms told them,” Marisol said.

“He just moved in,” Shoshanna explains. “He’s on parole. They have to tell everyone who lives here. It’s the law.”

Rebecca arrives back with her markers and passes them out, offering each of us our choice of scents. We color in silence for a few minutes.

“So,” I say, “you guys know never to go anywhere alone with that guy, and to never go in his apartment, right?”

Marisol nods. “We have a buddy system,” Rebecca says. “And our parents are walking us everywhere.”

Shoshanna looks up from her picture. “We don’t even walk on the walkway by his apartment. We walk all the way around. We don't even go upstairs.”

“My dad is trying to make him move out,” Marisol says. “He’s talking to the manager, and the parents made a committee.”

“OK,” I say. “That’s really good.”

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to talk to the parents about signing their kids up for the Cherish Our Children program. The program is a response to child exploitation and abuse, and involves different levels of education and intervention. The simplest level, the one we’re trying to start at Southwood, involves parents signing up their kids to be matched to an adult who will never meet them but who will commit to pray for the assigned child by name on a daily basis. We had some success with a few of the Southwood parents, and I’m glad they’re getting prayers. Besides that, and the kids having some education and safety plans, I know there’s not much else that can be done. Parolees have to be paroled somewhere, and most of the motels take them. Poor kids have to live somewhere, and unfortunately, for many of them motels are the only option.

The man finally re-hangs his blinds, locks up his apartment, and walks out of the parking lot and down the street. It’s time to pack up, and we watch the kids go back to their homes. Bree and I head off to get something for lunch; on the way, I think about how much I worried about something happening to her when she was small. We had some hard times while she was growing up, but we never had to live in a place where having her exposed to real danger was an inevitability. I thank God for that, and resolve to remember to pray more often for all the kids at Southwood. And for the stranger.