Vendor Spotlight

After nearly two years of survival on the streets, the Duke twins finally made it

BY JUSTIN WAGNER

“I just remember it was… hell.”

“But we said we’d get through it, we prayed every night,” Michael Duke II recalled. “Prayed every night. Even during the day, we’d be at work prayin’.”

“I’d been talking to Him the other day,” Michael’s twin brother, Matthew, agreed. “Just please be a good day. Sometimes we didn’t even eat. When you’re used to eatin’, used to goin’ to your own house and eatin’, then you become homeless, you’re gonna lose weight. Just yesterday though, we bought two pizzas.”

PHOTO BY JUSTIN WAGNER

They nodded together under the glaring fluorescence of their new studio apartment. It’s the first permanent roof they’ve had overhead in years. It’s the first city apartment they’ve had to themselves ever.

“It’s been good, I’m blessed,” said Michael. “Blessed,” said Matthew. “And I’m so happy, boy. All my customers, I’m tellin’ ‘em, ‘I got an apartment now!’ Just puts a smile on my face, you know, it makes me happy.”

The Duke twins grew up in Cheatham County, far from the city but close to family.

“My granny passed away, we was still livin’ there. Then my pops got sick, and the health people was havin’ a hard time getting to his driveway through the hills and ruts and all … it was out in the country. He had an oxygen machine,” Michael explained. “I had moved in with my aunt, about two months later is when he got sick. There wasn’t enough room, so we moved out here.”

“Some families, you know, when their parents and grandparents die, they’ve got aunties and uncles to fall back on,” Matthew elaborated. “But our family ain’t like that. There’s distance.”

Michael said he and his brother “had it made” when they were kids, but life in the city was a brutal adjustment. Matthew shared the sentiment, saying every day was a unique struggle.

“When you’re out here, you don’t know when’s your last meal. You don’t know if you’re gonna make it. It’s survival mode out here, you know, you’re by yourself,” he said.

All the twins needed was a run of good luck to get back on their feet. They didn’t have much, but they had a 1999 Chevrolet Monte Carlo and the help of their father – another Contributor vendor named Michael Duke Sr.

But the car overheated and grew decrepit. Michael had sustained a number of injuries with no way to treat them, and without high school diplomas or GEDs, work opportunities were few and far between. They were able to stay with their father for a bit, but before long they were on the streets of Nashville, camping out in the woods to avoid trouble.

They had tried to enlist in the military before all this, but were rejected for health-related reasons. When Michael II was young, he dreamed of building helicopters and airplanes. All that had blurred into memory – now, the twins just needed a home.

Michael Sr. helped them sign up with The Contributor to make a little money, and to seek assistance with housing. But in their way was a long wait through the winter months, storms, and long days on the road selling.

“It was hard, but we made it through,” Matthew said. “The winter, the heat, walking back and forth for 12, 18 hours a day.”

“It breaks your body down, it really does. Out in that sun, walking constantly,” Michael said.

But after months of persistence, the twins have a home.

They got a call from The Contributor at the end of April saying their name had been pulled on a housing waitlist, and they jumped at the opportunity. Since then, they’ve been working on furnishing their new room at Parthenon Towers.

The brothers recalled the move-in experience in abject disbelief.

“I’m still not processing that it’s ours. At the end of the day, I’m still thinking, like, this ain’t true,” said Michael. “Being homeless, we got so used to it for every single day, I’m still processing it.”

“There ain’t nothing like your own spot,” Matthew said.

Michael and Matthew agreed that they had a story to tell after surviving so much, with the caveat that they weren’t sure how to put it into words. But when Michael summed up their journey in Nashville so far, it didn’t take many words to spell out the resilience this city’s homeless community manifests daily.

“It was hard,” he said. “But we made it.”