Beyoncé and Toriano’s Story: A Door They Can Lock

When Beyoncé and Toriano began living in the woods, she thought they might only be there a month or two, not all winter. By February, she celebrated her birthday while still sleeping on the ground in a tent near Gray’s Lake. Condensation froze into icicles and blankets stiffened. She remembers, “You could see the cold coming out of our mouths, our nose, and we just shivered until we finally fell asleep.”

Raised in Arkansas by grandparents she called Mom and Papa, Beyoncé lost them both before she turned 18. She moved between a car, relatives’ homes and random men’s houses, rarely feeling safe.

Toriano grew up in Des Moines with six brothers and two sisters, all sharing one bedroom. At 10, fire destroyed their home, forcing the family to live in hotels. Bullying, violence and eventually his father’s death followed.

When Toriano and Beyoncé met, they found safety in each other. “I felt more at peace. I wasn’t so scared to sleep at night,” Beyoncé said. Toriano had a warehouse job and an apartment. After he lost his job, they fell behind, lost their apartment and became homeless. In the upheaval, Toriano lost his birth certificate, family pictures, and a phone containing his late father’s voice. “I can’t even hear my dad’s voice no more because I lost that phone,” he said.

Rain soaked their bedding. Deer knocked down the tent. Raccoons tore it open and took their food. After a stranger appeared near their camp, Toriano feared leaving Beyoncé alone to seek work. For Beyoncé, homelessness stripped away privacy. “The low point for me was going through my menstrual cycle as a woman,” she said. “It was hard to use the restroom out there.” Sometimes she went weeks without bathing. When they missed shower hours at the shelter, they washed with cold jugs of water from Gray’s Lake.

Then a Joppa Street Outreach team found their camp. Joppa volunteers brought food, shoes, blankets, feminine supplies and propane. Their attention mattered as much as the supplies. “They actually gave us conversation, talked to us and just made us feel like we were human beings,” Toriano said. They were invited to the Iowa Homeless Memorial and Christmas Celebration. Hearing the names of people who had died homeless, Toriano realized, “That could have been us.” 

They decided they wanted a different future. Joppa helped them make a plan. Both found jobs at Walmart. Joppa vouched for them with a local landlord, contributed $800 for their deposit and helped furnish their apartment.

Today they have something they once wondered if they would ever have again: a place of their own. Beyoncé treasures the simple things. “My favorite thing is to be sitting on a couch, not on the ground, not a pallet. I’m on a couch.”