5. Julia
Julia
Present day…
“Hey boss, did Mary and the kids move out?”
I looked up as my lead case manager Robbie, stuck her head in my office.
“Yeah, the team drove her and the kids over to meet the landlord and pick up the keys. They’re all so excited. She said she doesn’t care if her new furniture isn’t coming until tomorrow, she was going to spend her first night in their own home camping out in the living room.”
Robbie and I shared a smile. Mary and her family had been participating in our homeless families program for nearly two years now.
When we first met her she was living in a shelter for domestic violence survivors after narrowly escaping a man who was trying to kill her in retaliation for filing for divorce.
Her abuser had gone to prison and her DV advocate referred her to our program.
It had been a long, hard road but Mary was finally in a better place, about to start her new life.
The Sunrise program provided transitional housing and shelter for women with children who were leaving homelessness.
Given that domestic violence was the number one cause of homelessness for women, we also worked with a lot of survivors.
Our wraparound services helped women like Mary move to self-sufficiency by connecting them with what they needed, such as counseling, family therapy, job training, financial literacy, and parenting classes.
We were proud of our program. Once our clients were employed and moved into housing of their own, our outcomes were some of the best in the country. We were literally helping people change their lives every day, and while our work was hard and often traumatic, I loved it.
We all did.
“Is Gina coming to our meeting today?” Robbie asked.
Gina was the program manager for Sunrise. She usually worked in the main admin building but frequently joined our team meetings to hear how things were going and offer support to the team.
“No, she’s been helping with a special project in admin, but I’m going to the main office later to meet with her.”
Robbie was a good friend whom I’d worked with at my last job, but we needed to maintain boundaries here since we were no longer peers. My team lead wasn’t in management so I couldn’t share that the special project involved Gina compiling evidence in a criminal case.
A recent state audit of our program had uncovered financial discrepancies – discrepancies that led right to our long-time CFO Erin Rose.
Most of the staff knew that Erin had left the agency, but not that she’d left in handcuffs after being indicted for embezzling from our programs. After the arrest, the executive director and our board had brought in forensic auditors who, assisted by the state, had uncovered the breadth of the embezzlement.
Now we were putting in new internal controls to keep it from happening again.
Fortunately it looked like the state was not going to cut our funding over the incident, because if they did, our program would close and all of our families would be back on the street. And we’d all be out of a job too.
The alarm on my phone beeped, reminding me it was time to head to the meeting. I used alarms for everything to keep me from getting focused on something else and forgetting that I needed to be someplace else, like the staff meeting.
“What are you doing this weekend?” Robbie asked as we made our way down the hallway to the conference room.
I winced. “I’m having dinner with my parents tomorrow.”
“Is your mom still throwing every eligible lesbian in town your way?” she asked sympathetically.
“The last one was from Portland,” I said. “I think she’s running out of options in Seattle.”
“That’s impossible,” Robbie laughed. “You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a lesbian in Seattle.”
“Ugh, that’s a terrible metaphor.”
“Yeah, but my point stands. There are a ton of queer women in this city, but unfortunately a large chunk of them are fundamentally undatable.”
Unlike me Robbie desperately wanted a relationship. Unfortunately she had terrible luck. Somehow she ended up with one horrible woman after another.
Meanwhile, ever since my birthday a few months ago my mother had been on a mission to get me married off.
I never knew when I’d come to a dinner or hear a knock on my door and find my mother there with some poor woman who likely wasn’t even my type anyway.
I’d lost count of the number of times my mother had ‘accidentally’ run into me somewhere near my house or the shelter.
I didn’t see her this much when I lived with her.
If I didn’t know better I’d think she had a tracker on me.
It was getting to be exhausting. I’d begged my father to intervene, but he’d told me I needed to fight my own battles, which was his way of saying he was too scared to cross my mother. Chicken.
For the next ninety minutes I was focused on my team meeting.
As the shelter manager I oversaw the residential portion of the program, collaborated with other programs that served our clients, and supervised the on-site case managers.
My team was small but mighty, every single one of them dedicated to the families we served.
I was still in a good mood from a productive team meeting when I made my way over to the main administrative office to meet with my boss. I was one of the first managers Gina hired when she was developing the Sunrise program, and we had a great working relationship.
“How’s it going?” I asked when I arrived at her office.
Gina looked pale – well, paler than usual – telling me that the investigation had taken a lot out of her.
“They’ve completed the investigation,” she said. “The good news is that we have definitive evidence that Erin acted alone, something she also testified to under oath.”
That was good news. It would have sucked to learn that more of our coworkers were stealing money intended for our clients. Hearing about Erin was bad enough.
“What happens next?” I asked.
“Allison brought in a contract CFO to oversee the finances until we can hire a someone to replace Erin. Now the board’s got to assure the funders and donors that we’ve eradicated the problem and we’ll be responsible stewards of their funds.”
“I’m glad I won’t be in those conversations,” I muttered.
“You and me both,” Gina said. “Apology tours are not in my skill set.”
We spent the next thirty minutes giving each other updates and reviewing program outcomes and the shelter’s latest spending report. We were just about wrapped up with the meeting when I heard a knock on the door.
I turned to see who was interrupting us and immediately felt a rush of irritation. It was Chris Robbins, my childhood enemy.
Our lives had intersected a lot over the years. We’d grown up in the same neighborhood, so we’d gone through elementary and high school together. Our parents were all close friends, which meant a lot of barbecues and dinners and outings in each other’s company.
The first time I met Chris it was hate at first sight. She’d pulled my hair hard enough to bring tears to my eyes, and I retaliated by punching her in the stomach. That was the first of many times our mothers were called into the school to talk about our behavior towards each other.
We were in most of the same classes in high school, then when we both went to University of Washington we ended up on the same floor in the same dorm our freshman year. Somehow we both ended up with the same social work program too.
I had no idea why she rubbed me the wrong way, and why I did the same for her, and I didn’t really care.
We graduated college and I didn’t see her again for several years – until she turned up as the new employment manager here about a year ago.
Of all the nonprofits in this city, of course we both ended up here…
As part of my job I worked closely with the managers of the employment and counseling programs, both of which were agency-wide programs that also served our Sunrise clients.
I was professional with Chris the same way I was with all of my colleagues, but the truth was I didn’t like her any more now than I had when we were teenagers.
She was cute, in a soft butch kind of way.
Tall and slim with narrow hips and small breasts, she was wearing her typical outfit -- faded blue jeans, a checkered shirt over a tight fitting white tank top, and combat boots.
I swear she’d worn those combat boots every day since freshman year of high school.
She’d even worn them to our high school graduation, despite the fact that her mother had made her wear a dress for the event.
Her hair was a little bit longer than it was when we were younger.
It was still thick and wavy, but now she wore it cut short on the sides and hanging longer in the back like some kind of modified mullet or something.
It should have looked stupid, but for some reason the look worked for her. Not that I’d admit that.
Chris’s brown eyes met mine for an instant, then bounced away to look at my boss. For some reason I noticed that her eyelashes looked super long despite the fact that she never wore any make-up.
“Gina? You wanted me to stop by now, right?” she asked. “I can wait outside until you’re done here.”
Gina smiled and waved her in, pointing to the chair next to mine. “Come on in, Chris. I wanted to talk to you and Julia about something.”
Deliberately ignoring me, Chris settled into the chair next to mine. I caught a whiff of something citrus that I didn’t hate.
It was weird how the universe seemed determined to keep throwing me and Chris together.
Gina lowered her voice, even though her office door was closed.
“With what happened with Erin, the leadership team has agreed that we need to diversify program revenue. Having one funding source pay for most or all of a program, like the state does with Sunrise, puts us at great risk if something goes wrong.”
She paused to take a long sip from her ubiquitous stainless steel water bottle.
“We’re adding another person to the development team to look for new grants, however an opportunity has come up that I want to pursue.
Jane Haberly, our board chair, was paired up in some golf tournament with the president of a new family foundation whose focus is on women’s empowerment.
The lady was very interested in the employment work we’re doing with homeless women. ”
She paused for emphasis. “I’m assigning you two to work together on a proposal that Allison and I can present to them during our meet and greet with the foundation officers in two weeks.”
Next to me I felt Chris stiffen. “I’m sure I can handle it on my own, Gina.”
Gina’s eyes narrowed slightly but her expression stayed neutral.
“Everything’s better with teamwork, Chris.
With Julia’s knowledge of our homeless services and outcome data and your employment expertise, you’re going to be able to pull together a kick ass application.
Besides, it’s a pretty complex application process with a very short timeline, so I’ll need you both on this.
I’ll send y’all the information now. I’ll need something to review next Friday, or the following Monday first thing. ”
“Next Friday?” I asked incredulously.
“I know it’s a big lift, especially with your other responsibilities, and I hate to ask you to put in extra hours, but in this case I think it’s worth it. Just let me know where you need my support. I’m glad to jump in wherever it’s helpful.”
She turned her chair to face her computer, effectively dismissing us.
“Thanks you two. Happy writing.”