The Brooklyn Rail

Playing Bingo in Purgatory

Janice, 47, waits on a red bench—body bundled under a camel-hair coat, green purse clutched in her lap. Her eyes are glassy, but expectant, as if she’s ready for someone to arrive any minute and carry her out of the stuffy, windowless auditorium. From the look of her neatly pinned headscarf, one would never guess she has been waiting here, at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Women’s Mental Health Shelter, for almost three years.