Serenity

Serenity Rubalcaba, 20, takes her time gathering belongings and carrying them from one side of the street to the other, stepping over the trolley tracks that run down the median of Commercial Avenue in San Diego’s East Village. The sidewalks are getting hotter quickly with the summer’s first blistering heat wave. She lingers in the receding shade of the painted wall as she sweeps up around her remaining belongings. A breeze blows plastic bags along the gutter.

She looks up as the cheerful jingle of an ice cream truck grows louder, closer. Stepping off the curb, Serenity absent-mindedly placing a hand on her belly, now seven month pregnant with a son. Her boyfriend leans into the passenger side window of the ice cream truck and she leans against him as she decides what flavor she wants.

A San Diego native, she attended Clairemont High School, leaving just five credits shy of her diploma. The insecurity of being bounced around foster care homes and juvenile hall made it difficult to concentrate on her studies. And then there’s her daughter. Back with her mother for the pregnancy and birth, her mother ended up throwing her out when Serenity was 18 and the baby was a year old. She devised a legal agreement with her mother so that she could retain parental rights while her mother has the ability to make medical and legal decisions concerning the toddler’s well-being. “I wanted her to have stability,” she said.

Serenity has an older brother in college, doing well. Her father wasn’t in the picture when she was growing up, but she remembers that he drank too much. He died last December when police arrested him, put a knee on his back while his hands were handcuffed behind him. “He suffocated,” she said. “His name was Daniel Armenta and he was only in his 30s.” She plans to name her son Daniel.

When she got kicked out of her mother’s house she stayed with friends, couch surfed, stayed in motels, then moved in with a friend who charged her rent. The friend was a party girl, always having people over, playing loud music and drinking. She didn’t want to be around that environment so she left and with nowhere else to go, she started life on the streets. She chose the sidewalk in front of the NAMI site on 16th where she could be first in line to get a shower. But these days the line is always long so she goes to St. Vincent de Paul for a shower.

She is incredibly resourceful, knows where to get food and other services. She gets dinner four nights a week at a facility that helps homeless youth. She got on a list for a Section 8 housing voucher. She applied for supplemental income and mental health services, since she suffers from anxiety and depression.

“I learned to advocate for myself. There are so many women that the system completely fucks them over because they don’t know ho two advocate for themselves,” she said. “As long as I know I am in the right, I can stand up for myself.”

Even so, being on the street isn’t easy. Trust, safety, hygiene, nutritional needs for herself and the baby, staying cool in a mid-summer heat wave - all of that requires a person’s full attention, she said. Women especially have to be vigilant. “I’m not one to play around. People know not to mess with me,” she said. Being pregnant adds a layer of complexity. While she doesn’t anticipate any particular health needs between now and when she gives birth, “it’s not ideal” living on the street. “It’s not something I envisioned for myself at this age.”

She feels the camping ban passed recently by the city council adds a lot of stress where there was none. “Now with the cops, we don’t know when they’ll come, what they’re going to do. It’s stressful. We are in oppositional defiance of the camping ban.” Meanwhile, she hugs an old friend, Rachel, who recently got into housing but who returns to the street to occasionally spend the night in her old tent, and to be with her street family. The sun gets higher as people wait for the city clean up crews to finish, so they can move their tents back into the shade.