FSH: Lost in Trinidad

“As a photographer, there are so many styles out there beyond portraiture that I greatly love and admire. One of my favorites being photojournalism. Getting the story behind a person just through photographs is not an easy task, but some are masters at it, like my friend Joel.  – cad”
 

I first met Cheryl back in August when I was taking pictures in a Washington, DC neighborhood called Trinidad in the Northeast section of the city. Even before getting into street photography, I was always fascinated with Trinidad. Like many of the poorer neighborhoods in our Nation’s Capital, Trinidad is infested with drugs, gangs, and prostitution, but what’s makes it unique is its eclectic mix of people.

The world’s first and only university for the deaf, Gallaudet, is located right there in the heart of Trinidad. The D.C. Farmer’s Market is close by as well and each weekend brings in crowds of shoppers looking for a deal at the open-air flea market.

It is not uncommon to see deaf students walking the same blocks as the flea market shoppers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and the ordinary working people just trying to get by. It makes for some of the most compelling and unique scenes in the city.

So it was only natural that as my interest in street photography grew, I would begin to take my camera into Trinidad… That brings us back to August, when I first met Cheryl.

She was turning tricks on West Virginia Avenue and had noticed me driving around the neighborhood. She approached my car while I was at a stop light and asked if I was looking for a “date”. I explained that I was only there to take pictures. I raised my camera as proof and she flashed me a bright smile, inviting me to take one of her. I did and here are the results:

We spoke briefly and I remember thinking at the time that I wanted to know her story but I wasn’t really sure how to go about asking. And to be honest, I was a little nervous to be seen talking to her. The neighborhood is always crawling with cops and stick-up kids roaming the streets. I didn’t want to fall victim to either so we quickly parted ways. When I looked back at the picture later that evening I couldn’t help seeing it as a lost opportunity. 

I didn’t really think about her again until I was out taking pictures last Saturday. As always, I found myself driving into Trinidad. Once there, I saw a group of deaf students out cleaning up trash and planting flowers as the drug crews and old ladies watched on suspiciously from their porches. Unfortunately, the slight drizzle that had been persistent all morning suddenly became a hard rain and I was forced to take a break and wait for the weather to clear up.  

That’s when I saw Cheryl walking alone in the cold rain. If I was ever going to get her story, it was now. I pulled over and spoke to her as she approached my car window. She had a vague recollection of our previous encounter. I showed her the camera again and told her I wanted to take a few pictures and get her story. To my surprise, she quickly agreed and got into the car.  

  I pulled into a fast food parking lot a few blocks away and we began to talk.

“So what do you want to know?” she asked me.

“Whatever you want to tell me,” I replied.

And that was all it took. It was as though she had been waiting for the chance to tell her story for quite some time.

 She started off by saying that she’d been hustling part-time for about eight years, but had been really begun working the streets steady for the past four years when her crack addiction had spiraled out of control. 
 

“What happened four years ago?” I asked.

“I had a baby that died.” The statement hung in the air for a while, and for a moment, I thought she might not say anymore. But then she took a deep breath and continued on.

She said she had known many addicts and prostitutes that had either given their children away to relatives or had lost them to social services. She never wanted that for her child. She tried to stay as clean as she could while she was pregnant and kept the baby with her after it was born.

It was a baby girl, and she named her ‘Chermiia’, a combination of her and her best friend’s name. Having the responsibility of taking care of Chermiia gave her a purpose and a sense of importance she had never felt before. She was able to keep her addiction more or less under control during that time. She was still working the streets on occasion, but was desperately looking for a way out. Then Chermiia passed away one night due to what Cheryl said was SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). She was two months old.

“After that, I just didn’t see the point in staying clean,” she said as the tears began to form in the corner of her eyes. She told me Chermiia was buried in Mt. Olivet cemetery which coincidentally runs parallel to West Virginia Avenue, the very same street Cheryl hustles on.

“Sometimes when I’m walking these streets, I talk to her. I think she keeps me safe. I should be dead right now, but I believe in god and I think that’s what’s kept me safe all these years.”

She said she did get clean for a while last year when she was living in a halfway house. At this point her mood starts to brighten. She says she had started going back to church, gotten her driver’s license, and even found a job at a local grocery store.

She takes out the driver’s license from her purse with pride and hands it to me… “I looked pretty good when I was clean didn’t I?” she beams as I look at the picture. And indeed, she did.

After she left the halfway house she moved in with a boyfriend who lived in an apartment not far from Trinidad. She started to come back to the old neighborhood and that was the end of her sobriety. She relapsed and was back on West Virginia Avenue soon after.

I hand her back her driver’s license and notice that her fingers are cracked and blistered. They are the hands of someone that has lived much longer than the 29 years Cheryl has lived. She must have noticed me looking at her fingers because she begins to tell me about them.

“I try to paint my nails everyday, but it’s useless. When I smoke the pipe gets hot and my fingers blister. Then the paint comes off. That’s something I’m embarrassed about when I’m with a professional man. My fingers give me away.”

She says tries to pay attention to her looks even though it’s very hard when you’re living this kind of life.

“A lot of girls out here wear the same clothes every day for weeks. They smoke every penny they get. I try to at least buy some lip gloss or eye liner from the dollar store when I get a chance, but it’s hard to keep that stuff because people are always stealin’ in the places I stay. If I fall asleep when people are around, they’ll steal everything. Makeup, clothes, even underwear.”  

Before she leaves, Cheryl tells me that she has a court date coming up next week. She was arrested for solicitation and possession of drug paraphernalia a while back and she is about to be sentenced. She thinks she’ll get put into a drug treatment program and says she’s actually looking forward to the opportunity to get her life back in order. She says she no longer has the desire or energy to live this way. She got a glimpse of what life could be like when she was clean last year, and she’d like another chance.

“I’ve been praying for it,” she says as looks off into the distance. I take one last picture before taking her back to West Virginia Avenue.

Before she gets out of the car I ask her if she has anything else she wants to say.

“Yeah,” she pauses for a moment, “I love these streets… but I don’t want to die here.”