Ruth Was My Roommate

She was about 25 years old, tall, lithe, and friendly. And her name was Ruth. Was it mere coincidence that we shared the same first name, just as I would wonder later if it was mere coincidence we shared the same dormitory room on the university campus for a week?

Although she was clean, Ruth’s appearance was symbolic of the drug scene—long hair, dangly fringed clothing, and multicolored beads. Steady, girl, I reassured myself. Not everyone who has long hair and wears beads uses drugs. Yet I wondered why we had been placed in the same room and what we would find in common. I was nearly twice Ruth’s age and had been a grandmother many times.

In sacrament meeting some time earlier my bishop had extended the invitation for someone to represent our ward at the school, with the enticement of two college credits. “Why don’t you go, Sister Ruth?” he had said following the meeting. “It would fit in so well with the social work you are already engaged in.”

Having been reared in an active Latter-day Saint home and in a predominantly Mormon community, drugs and alcohol had never been a part of my life. In fact, in the tight little world we had built, we didn’t even talk about them. Yet I had agreed to spend a week “living in” with a girl who needed help and companionship.

I would learn many things that week to make me a better social worker. Each girl is different, with a particular problem to be solved. Most of these problems have many facets, and they are not necessarily great, earthshaking ones, but a series of smaller ones that accumulate and bear down overwhelmingly on an already confused soul.

How often in the future I would reflect on my long, late-hour visits with Ruth. How often, in helping another, I would draw on her information. Listen. Don’t judge, criticize, or condemn. Never preach.

It was long after midnight on that first night when I was awakened by the sound of a key being wiggled in the keyhole. I reached up and let Ruth in. She was bubbling breathlessly over her exciting evening and wanted to talk. Having slept almost four hours, I was revived and now awake, and we lay in the darkness talking for more than two hours—two complete strangers sharing our thoughts and finding our common interests.

We talked of our childhood and of our different upbringings, of our homes and children, of her longing to provide for her own child. We discussed real love, free love, and sex. As we spoke of religion and God, she said she could not conceive of a God in the shape of a man—still it might be possible.

This was a deeply moving experience for me, and we followed this pattern without exception all week. Ruth’s story unfolded like a novel, and I was fascinated by it. I liked this girl. She was not like the ones I had observed on the street—unkempt, listless, and with no apparent goals; she was exciting and exuberant—full of life and expectations.

Having hit rock bottom, she was on the way up and showing remarkable progress. Like hundreds of others I was to meet on the campus that week, she measured her life from the time she had been “off” alcohol. Her time was five months and a few days. Since that time, and for the first time in seven years, she had made her own rational choices and decisions with a clear mind.

“I was so drunk at high school graduation I spent the night in jail,” she told me. “In fact, I have been in and out of jail so many times it got so I was smoking my own cigarettes. You see, there is an understanding among us that each one leaves a package of cigarettes under the mattress for the next occupant. All too often I was the next occupant.”

Since her high school days, much of Ruth’s time had been spent living the life of a nomad. She was living in abandoned houses claimed only by those who band together and try to take care of each other. Each person contributes his worldly possessions and talents to the welfare of the group. It is understood that no one is ever too “skunked” to be admitted. No one owns anything alone, and each can stay as long as he wishes.

In this constant search for “their thing,” Ruth told me that religion was an integral part of their lives—not religion as I had known it, with church every Sunday and many weekday meetings, but a yoga stance in meditation and communication, following the swirl of cigarette smoke up into the unknown, merging with laughter and companionship—building their souls to their gods. Who were their gods? Each had his own, and each experimented in various cults and rites.

Ruth was through with this form of escape. Seven years ago she had “cut out,” and now she was “cutting in.” She was not out of the woods yet, though. An alcoholic lives one day at a time, and meets often with others so they can buoy each other up.

Was she through with drugs? Mostly. She would never “shoot” again. At breakfast the second morning she exclaimed, “I’m going to give up cigarettes.” I knew she really wanted to. She made it for almost two days, but her nerves were so frayed that she finally gave in and started smoking again. Through knowing Ruth, I realized better that life’s big problems are not solved with dramatic suddenness, but usually through a long process of change, and then only with much tolerance and understanding.

As we said our goodbyes at the weekend, probably never to meet again, Ruth put her key into the lock and again it didn’t work. She turned the key over and checked the room number on it. Our eyes met in wonder, for now we realized that we had not been scheduled to be together. We were to have had separate rooms!

Fate? Coincidence? It is not important. I will always be grateful for that revealing encounter with a brave girl.

Ruth’s souvenir from Salt Lake City was a Book of Mormon; mine was a clearer insight into a world I had not known or understood. In the future, I will be more tolerant in my attitudes.