Martha Gibson, 66, waits for dusk before heading to her spot of pavement for the night.

Martha grew up in East L.A. Her mother left her and her eight siblings in foster care before she was 10. She had the first of her 13 children at age 14, and was jumped into a gang at 18. But she didn’t want that life. So she and her husband, a man from Peru, moved to Sacramento. Three more husbands and several odd jobs later, she lays out her cardboard and one blanket alongside other seniors across from the downtown jail where the Sheriff’s Department bus backs up into a loading dock with newly minted prisoners.

“My son, he’s in Donovan,” she said. “He comes out clean, then goes right back to his old ways. I’ve stopped sending him money.”
One of her daughters is also on and off the streets, largely due to drug addiction.

Most of her other children, the seven still living, and her 31 grandchildren, are doing well, living nearby, but she doesn’t want to live with any of them. She prefers her independence, and fears they’ll be telling her what to do all the time.

Quiet, thin, not a smoker, other women on the street consider Martha the peacemaker whenever there’s dispute. Women on the street are constantly being robbed while they sleep, beaten or raped, she said. And she is angry at city officials who turn a blind eye to the lack of public restrooms on the street. The one public facility near the city concourse is a cesspool, she said, with the attendants either being paid to say nothing about the parties going on all the time in the restrooms, with people even sleeping in there.

The rejection by her own mother still smolders in her heart. She fell into a deep depression, convinced that no one cared about her, and in 1991 tried to commit suicide. That experience put a lot of truths before her, she said.
“Now, I don’t fear death, I’m ready. But until then I’m here, doing the Lord’s work. I don’t have time for grudges. I want to help somebody, give them hope, before I leave this world. I believe you reap what you sow. If you give love, you get love in return. There’s too much hate in the world now.”