Tamme

At 35, Tamme Jackson is an old soul.

A single woman on the street, she is surrounded by men in the solid block of dark blue tents where she lives just outside the Salvation Army compound in downtown San Diego. On an early weekday morning, looking out the open vestibule of her tent, Merlin, one of the many older men walking by, stopped and asked if she had any alcohol. She rummaged around in her tent and handed him a clear plastic water bottle with the remnants of a faded pink liquid. “It’s vodka with a splash of tajin. There’s not much left but you can have it,” she offered. He asked if she needs anything - he was going to see what food was being distributed. “I love tajin,” she smiled to me when he walked away.

I asked Tamme what she thought about the camping ban the mayor has now signed into law. It’s a hot topic on the street, she said. “They can’t put us all in jail.” Still, she isn’t sure what the near future will bring to this small community. There aren’t many other women on this block, and as for men, “people come and go off the block,” she said. “There’s a lot of competition. There are a lot of new faces lately,” she smiled. “You need references to be part of our club.”

Tamme is a La Mesa native. She went to Helix High, got married, and despite tough times, she and her husband were living in a motel with their daughter. “We were housed,” she said. “Just not to the standards of CPS (Child Protective Services). They took my daughter.” Her daughter is diabetic and needed insulin shots, which is why they worked so hard to live indoors where they could refrigerate the insulin. “I didn’t want a tent because that makes you conform to the streets.” But neighbors complained about their loud arguments, which brought the police and CPS to their door. She misses her daughter terribly. “I can’t take her to ballet. I can’t give her love. She is an old soul too. When she was two she was already wise.”

Tamme moved in with her mother for a while, at an SRO on 4th Avenue and G Street. Unfortunately management was not willing to look the other way at her mother hosting a second tenant. They evicted her. Tamme got them a tent and chose to camp on the block where she currently lives. Her mother, also a diabetic, began to decline on the street. Tamme’s eyes welled up as she recounted doing her mother’s laundry when her kidneys were failing and she couldn’t get out of the tent fast enough to pee outside. She had a breathing tube in the hospital and was on dialysis in her final days. “I held her hand. God works miracles, I thought. She died in January. I’m still mad at her,” Tamme said softly. “She had a mental illness and I didn’t know how to deal with her. When I had my daughter we got close.”

She was close with her father growing up but when he moved out, Tamme said, she felt like she lost both parents. “When you combine childhood trauma, then you add drugs, youth home, then you get booted out… Now I’m the Princess OG of the street.”

In her initial days she carried around lots of bags and felt judged. People would look through her belongings if she left them for a minute. Now she feels her belongings are safe in Her tent. The locals have an understanding that when you take a walk your belongings are to be left alone. There are a few other rules. Like keeping the area around your tent clean, and not calling police. As a woman, there are other challenges to staying safe, clean, and independent. “You have to be feisty, but not too feisty,” she said.

“I woke up one day with someone lying behind me with his pants down, poking at my back. It was at the trolley station at 2:30 p.m. and there were people all around and no one did anything about it. How insensitive can people be? He was an older man with a grey beard.”

Tamme didn’t call the police, however. “I’m not a cop caller, so I didn’t call the cops. People retaliate, and it might be worse.” The one time she did threaten to call police was when she was assaulted by a security guard in a parking garage. She was sitting on the steps in a stairwell doing her parenting homework when a security guard told her to leave, chased her, then pushed her down the stairs. She was so incensed she told him she was calling police, but didn’t. “Who is going to take my side against a security guard?” She let it go but told her friends about it. “I have a lot of guy friends… the neighborhood looks out for each other. Just, when people are arguing I get on my bike and leave.”

Back in December she and her boyfriend were smoking pot they didn’t know had been laced with fentanyl. Her boyfriend died. Tamme had to be Narcan-ed five times.

Merlin returned from the Salvation Army with a box of food. He gave Tamme two cans of tuna, an apple, two oranges, a bagel, half a baguette he tore off and handed to her, and a can of peaches. When he left, a man in the next tent peeked out the small window on the side of the tent and asked if there was any food she could spare. She gave him the apple, bagel, and a can of tuna. She used a knife to open one of the cans.

Four guys started swirling around her tent like a small tornado of alcohol-soaked energy. One stood in the traffic lane, clutching his sinking trousers with one hand, yelling and waving with the other hand after someone that he was going to kick the other guy’s ass. Cars came and went at the parking spaces behind her tent. The screamer finally sat down in a chair in front of the next tent. A frail older woman came to ask Tamme if she wanted to play cards. Tamme pulled out the folding table the woman had left with her and started putting it together.

A week later when I brought her a can opener, she wore eye make up and had sparkles on her cheeks. She was smiling, almost dancing, on the corner as she hovered outside a large tent where friends were sitting inside smoking. She said now would be a good time to take a new photo. She felt prettier.