SANTA FE, NM — Natalie's eyes bear a wild restlessness, a feral wisdom. They’re agile and alert, yet heavy from the weight of learning the hard way who to trust. Her tattoos were commissioned on impulse, no urban planning. Each marks what mattered most in that moment; a teardrop, a dagger later become a cross, a semicolon. Together, they reveal the emotional cartography of her life.

If you were to ask, Natalie will readily reopen the wound and share the memory behind each one. Her alloyed, trumpeting voice bounces with a soft twang as she shifts a cigarette from hand to mouth and pushes up her sleeve.

"I didn’t even know my mother died," she says. "She’d been gone two years before I found out." She takes a long drag. "She abandoned me. She forgot about me." Then, dropping and shaking her head, "I would never forget about my kids."

A mother elephant never forgets.

At 42, Natalie lives at the Santa Fe Ramada with Chris—her boyfriend, partner, and lifeline of several years.  He is slender with tawny Brillo hair and has what he calls, "deep religion."  Each day, he reads from the Bible ritualistically; it rests prominently atop a hotel towel spread across the threadbare ottoman.  A laminated Jesus card bookmarks Psalm 23 with the important parts hand-markered in neon green.  He prefers the Good News translation of the King James Version we all know from ominous movie scenes and, some of us, church.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 

I wonder if Chris has ever felt forsaken by God.

At more than six feet, he glides across a room with unhurried steadiness. Natalie calls him her "husband" even though wedding plans slip perpetually out of reach. "We want to get married up in the hills, in the woods. Just us and a few friends. We’re thinking maybe next May."  She has picked out a wedding dress.  She hasn't paid for it yet.

The two share what they call "home" with three dogs: Athena and her two puppies, all of whom look nothing alike. In the modest 350-square-foot room, Natalie and Chris cultivate a version of domestic life: dog beds tucked under a desk, cereal boxes wedged beside a mini fridge, bowls stacked with spoons still inside. A secondhand Dyson peeks from a closet so stuffed with shirts and pants that it won’t close. 

"I clean my own house," she says. "As long as you tell the staff, they’ll leave you alone."

A Care Bear collection is propped on the back of the upholstered chair, surrounded by toys and trinkets throughout the room. The TV buzzes with an endless parade of Cartoon Network, a ceaseless funfetti of color and laughter cascading from the screen.

I accompany Natalie to Five Below.  She needs a birthday present for the daughter of a coworker at the Upper Crust pizzeria.  The little girl is turning four.  She purchases a t-shirt, a birthday card, and a colorful gift bag.  She also buys puppy pee pads to clean up after Athena, who has soiled the couch.  Chris gave her money.  She humble brags about how he always gives her a little extra, saying wants her to have nice things.  I wonder, as she selects a gift for someone else’s child, if she is thinking about her own.

Between them, Natalie and Chris have five children from previous relationships. None lives with them. They are scattered states away.  Raised by someone else. Natalie keeps their photos on her phone.  She remembers their birthdays. On her left arm, a tattoo reads "Lil-Man."  I wonder which of her children she means.  She keeps track of their ages the way other parents mark height in pencil on a door frame.  She celebrates the milestones but quietly, from afar.

Over the three days we spent together, she offers amorphous puzzle pieces of her life that I struggle to fit together. There was abuse. There were drugs. Her father, her mother, her mother's boyfriends, and step-siblings appear at different points along the way.  She doesn't say as much, because perhaps she doesn't see it.  It's clear that as a child, she slipped through the safety net. 

She alludes to vague, multiple felonies, but offers only a single instance of shoplifting at Target as explanation for her prison time.  Her then-boyfriend inches at the edge of the narrative, implicated but never explained. I suspect this isn't the whole story, but I leave well enough alone.

The truth is, life outside may be more complicated than life behind bars. Out here, there’s no one telling you who you are or a schedule telling you where to be. There is freedom, yes, but within the confines of invisible bars: jobs Natalie won’t get, apartments she won’t qualify for, assistance she’s barred from receiving. Rent is still due every week.  There is no grace period, no buffer, no tenant protections, no binding lease.  There’s always the fear of that one little thing—a sick dog, an injured arm, a slow week at work—shattering the fragile life she and Chris have built.

Still, Natalie gets up every morning and does it again. She feeds the dogs, toasts her bagel, climbs aboard the Santa Fe Trail bus to work. She puts on her makeup when she arrives home to look pretty ("It just slides off my face in the hot kitchen.").  She spends her leisure hours smoking in the grassy strip behind the hotel, careful to tether Athena away from the broken glass and parked semi-trucks.

They make plans they can’t always keep. They dream of a one-bedroom apartment with a yard for the dogs and a place where their children might come visit someday. Chris dreams of opening a substance abuse recovery house up in the hills.  For now, they'd be happy to haul away a secondhand couch they could call their own.  "The one in the hotel is uncomfortable and small."

They pay a shocking amount—close to $4,000 a month—to live at the Ramada.  That's $133 a day.  They have one of the larger rooms and pay an extra pet cleaning fee, $10 per day.  (The hotel only knows about one dog.)  There is no reduced or weekly rate. This entitles them to breakfast, juice and coffee all day, ice, coin laundry, tv and internet, linens, some toiletries, and use of the outdoor pool. The city bus stops immediately outside of the hotel, making the 20-minute commute manageable.  When asked why they don’t find a cheaper motel–several options exist along Cerrillos Road–Natalie states as if the distinction were obvious, "Those ones aren’t safe."

They both make a little over minimum wage, barely clearing rent.  They live in a tourist town, so jobs are good in summer, but inflated rent is year-round.  At the end of the month, there is little left and nothing saved.

The life Natalie lives is deeply human. She balances between hope and survival, who she once was and who she’s trying to become, for herself, for Chris, and for her kids. The Ramada isn’t home, not really, but it’s shelter.   They've lived unsheltered before and know they could do it again.  Natalie doesn't hesitate to proclaim that if the manager disrespected her or if she got into it with one of the other guests, they'd just as easily move out.  Perhaps crossing the unthinkable threshold into homelessness the first time marks a turning point, making subsequent returns to the streets easier to absorb.

Chris loves Natalie in a way that doesn’t question where or who she’s been. The love they share is stronger than that of many couples I know. It is built not on ease or convenience or shared aspiration, but on endurance. A bit of a trauma bond?  Maybe. But with nothing to hide and no illusions left to protect, their relationship is forged in truth.

Natalie manages the Upper Crust. She's punctual, energetic, and respected by workers and customers alike. She cuts tomatoes, sprinkles shredded mozzarella, rings up orders, clears plates.  She takes time to welcome the out-of-towners and suggest the best places in Santa Fe.  Her hustle  is a form of protection against relapse, job loss, and falling back into the cycle again.  

Chris works at a convenience store a few blocks away.  He was hired as a facilities manager, but ends up stocking the refrigerator and running the register all day, never finding the time to make the repairs he was hired to do.  He plans to quit the minute something better comes along.  After his shift, he walks over to pick up Natalie.  He sits in the back alley and smokes until she counts the money in the drawer.  As manager, earning an extra dollar means she's always the last to leave.

Some nights are earlier, some nights are late.  Leaving before 7:00 means catching the last bus home, but little in the way of tips. On days when Chris arrives back to the Ramada before her, he waits on the concrete ledge out along the road. When she appears, darting across eight lanes of traffic, they embrace as if years of yearning had passed in between.

Like many I encounter, Natalie’s story is a bid for redemption.  She speaks openly about her transgressions and her recovery.  She moved thousands of miles to escape a life of gangs and drugs. To protect her identity, she uses Chris’s last name. Reinvention, for her, is not cosmetic, it is survival.  "I don't mess with anyone, as long as they don't mess with me."  Warm and personable, she also radiates danger.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, individuals who have been incarcerated multiple times are 10 times more likely to face homelessness, largely because criminal records cut off access to housing and work. The same group is often criminalized for street sleeping or urban camping, "life-sustaining" activities required to survive.

While personal accountability matters in society, breaking the cycle of recidivism means clearing barriers to reentry. Without the chance to work, support a family, and contribute as a productive citizen, peoples’ lives are stale bath water precariously circling the drain. When the plug is pulled, it all quickly swirls down.

Her story is example of America punishing poverty many times over: first with neglect and abuse, next with impossible barriers, and finally with absence of support.  This only leads the next generation to repeat the same fate.

In Santa Fe, like in much of America, the cause for homelessness is the proverbial multi-headed hydra: inadequate housing, a vibrant drug trade, mental illness, and policy mismanagement. A city of high-end art galleries and stunning vistas, it is also a place of overburdening cost and narrow opportunity.  New Mexico ranks among the poorest states in America (jockeying with Mississippi and Louisiana for the top spot) with one of the lowest household median incomes (approximately $64,000) and the highest poverty rates (19.1%).  Official counts list about 400 unhoused people nightly in Santa Fe.  Anyone who rides the bus to the far end of Cerrillos Road knows the real number is higher still.  

Sometimes, on her break at Upper Crust, Natalie steps out back for a smoke and looks up at the sky like it might offer a sign. She’s not waiting for rescue. She’s just moving forward, one foot in front of the other.  Stability isn't given to women like Natalie.  It's clawed back, shift by shift, dollar by dollar, day after long, exhausting day.  She and Chris scratch out an existence, her children grow up without her, and the system looks away.  Every morning she wakes up with a roof over her head, every shift she clocks in, every dollar she stretches, are incremental triumphs.  She claims every victory where she can.


Images from A Mother Elephant Never Forgets will be on display as part of Karen Lippowiths's Extended Stay photographic exhibit during the month of April at the Novi Civic Center at 45175 W 10 Mile Rd. All are invited to the opening event Thursday, April 16 6-8 p.m., which features light refreshments. Lippowiths will be on hand for a meet-and-greet as part of the event.