...In
the winter of 1993, when I first came to know him, Jamal was having a good
run, piling up many an eight-hour shift. At the minimum wage — then $4.25
an hour — he was earning only $34 on a good day. But if he could get
enough days like that, he could keep the family's head just above water. Trouble
was, he was usually only able to persuade the manager to put him on for five
hours and then he'd be sent home. "Everyone wants more hours," the boss told
him, "but this is all I got to give you." So Jamal would board the bus for
the hour-long journey across the Bronx, glad to get off his feet, but worried
about how they were going to pay this month's rent, much less the back rent
he already owed.
In some ways,
he was glad to leave work early. For in order to get to the job on time, he
had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. and board the bus by 5 a.m. That was a struggle
in winter when it was dark and bitter outside. Tired and freezing-cold in
his thin maintenance uniform and his green khaki duffel coat, Jamal had to
struggle against his own exhaustion just to make it to work. He was usually
late, but not late enough to rankle the manager, a Jamaican woman who, truth
be told, was often a bit late herself. Still, there were many days when all
he wanted to do was jump back under the covers and forget about the job. There
were all too many people in the neighborhood, God knows, who thought he was
crazy to work so hard, travel so far, for the grand sum of $25 on a typical
short-hour workday. Why bother?
...The day we
first met, on the campus of Columbia University where I was teaching, it was
easy to pick him out from a distance. The sea of young white students parted
right down the middle of the stately brick walkway to let him pass. At six
feet and 220 pounds, he had the look of a pro football linebacker. With the
hood of his gray sweatshirt pulled down low over his brow and a slight scowl
on his face, he probably looked dangerous to this crowd. And that is exactly
what most employ-ers see coming in the door: a young black man with an attitude.
What they don't see is Jamal's round-ed face, almost a child's face, his luminous
brown eyes, and the dot-ing love he has for his young wife.
Over the two
years that I got to know him, the Jamal I came to see was bright, perceptive
beyond his years about the motives and ambitions of the people around him,
and very, very depressed. At twenty-two, about the same age as many of my
effervescent, optimistic undergraduate students, he was sure that he knew
what his future would hold: an endless series of dead-end jobs that would
condemn him, and [his wife] Kathy, to life in a rat-infested tenement. He
had the brains to be one of those college students, but he knew he would never,
ever have that kind of chance. Instead, he was going to have to slog it out
on the crosstown bus at 5 a.m. and spend his days cleaning out french-fry
vats, catching hell from a manager "who acts better than other people."
...Still Jamal
realizes that he has a lot to be grateful for. He has a woman who loves him,
even though they fight a lot over nothing. She takes care of him, fusses over
him, and waits for him to come home from his job so they can share some popcorn
and watch C-grade movies from the local video shop. When their daughter was
born, about six months before I met them both, the young couple had nothing
to live on besides Jamal's part-time wage from Burger Barn. Kathy worked at
the Barn too, for a time, but finally gave it up when the baby was born. They
wedged the crib into their single room in a Brooklyn tenement and struggled
to manage the piles of Pampers and a squalling child in this tiny, claustrophobic
space. But Tammy developed colic and became difficult to handle. Neither Jamal
nor Kathy had ever taken care of an infant before, and they didn't know what
to do to make her stop crying. To his eternal regret, Jamal lost his temper
one day and lashed out at the helpless child, an incident he never did quite
confess to. He insisted that he had accidentally pushed the baby's crib and
the little one fell out. Social Services didn't buy this, though, and they
removed Tammy from her home, charging Jamal with abuse and Kathy with neglect.
When I first
began spending time with the couple, you could tell that there was a hole
in their hearts, a kind of grief and nervousness. They were absolutely determined
to get their baby back. Every week they visited her in a family center run
by the city Social Welfare Department, supervised closely by the foster mother
who had temporary custody of Tammy. They attended parenting classes, trying
to learn how to take better care of the little girl — how to change diapers,
hold a bottle, and tolerate the mind-numbing cries of a newborn. Just the
sight of Tammy, now six months old, turned them emotionally inside out. Jamal
marveled at "how big she is getting to be." Kathy just wanted to hold her,
give her toys to play with, make sure she remembered what her real mother
looks like.
Indeed, one of
the saddest days in Jamal and Kathy's lives came about because it was Tammy's
first birthday. The couple had brought me a handwritten invitation to her
party and clearly wanted me to come. But the baby's birthday was a teaching
day for me and I could not break free, so I asked a member of my research
team, Travis Jackson (now a professor at the University of Michigan), to go
to the party on my behalf, loaded down with presents for Tammy and her parents.
Travis had spent much more time with Jamal and Kathy than I had: indeed, he
was almost a member of the family by now. He traveled to the family center
in Brooklyn, the only place where the court would allow supervised visits
between parent and child. Later on, Travis recalled for me how the party had
gone:
... Kathy and
Jamal had decorated with a banner that said "Happy Birthday," and a few other
colorful things. The table was filled with gifts and a cake, sodas, and ice
cream. I could tell that they had taken some time to prepare this party setting.
Unfortunately, at that moment, I was the only party guest who had arrived.
Jamal said that they had invited other people, but that I was the only one
who had showed up. Kathy then went out to wait for the baby and her foster
mother to show up.
She came back
a few minutes later with the news that Tammy wasn't coming. Apparently, she
was sick, maybe with a cold, and her foster mother didn't think it wise to
bring her outside, especially because the weather was so cold — temperatures
in the teens. ... The disappointment was literally too much for Kathy. She
started to cry, and Jamal did his best to comfort her, telling her that the
baby would be back in a little more than a week. Kathy said she understood,
but at least had wanted to spend the baby's first birthday with her.
Jamal had a hard
time convincing Kathy that it mattered to him, deeply, that they regain custody
of their child. "It's hard for her, he would say, "not having the baby at
home. She thinks that I don't care, but I do. It's just hard to show my deepest
feelings." The biggest problem, though, was they couldn't meet the court's
conditions for the return of Tammy. Somehow on his Burger Barn salary, Jamal
was supposed to provide an apartment with a separate bedroom for Tammy. Kathy
was forbidden to work, since the law's position was that she had neglected
the baby's care. The cheapest place they had seen that met these conditions,
deep in the heart of the South Bronx, a place known nationwide for its mean
streets, was still $600 a month. And that would get them only a one-bedroom
apartment. Landlords were asking for a security deposit as well, a reservoir
of cash that was completely beyond the family's means. In the very best month
Jamal had ever had he earn-ed only $680 before taxes — and that meant
working full-time, something he could never count on.
Young couples
in this predicament often turn to their parents for help, but it was not a
real option for this couple.
...Jamal remembers
meeting his father in the dim recesses of his childhood, but hadn't seen him
in many years and had no idea where he was. In fact, he was pretty sure his
dad was dead, a rumor he heard from one of his half sisters (by another mother)
who lives in Queens. His mother, Jacqueline, used to have a good job working
for the Postal Service on a military base near Tallahassee, but she has been
drug-addicted since Jamal was in his early teens.
When I was thirteen,
it was real good, 'cause she was working at the post office. And you know,
she would do a lot of good things and we'd go hang out. But she started fucking
up her life, and it's like we just got more distant. I never really had a
father. My father is like ... who knows where he's at. And that's how it is,
[father's] don't want to be bothered with nobody. And my mother, too. They
could really care less. So I had nobody.
The worse Jacqueline's
drug habit became, the more she pressured 15-year-old Jamal for money. In
the beginning she just wanted him to provide for himself so that she could
use her own money on herself. But as time went on, she wanted him to give
up his Burger Barn earnings, or else:
She'd say, "Gimme money," and I'd argue, and she threw me out a couple of times. You know, it was just wild. I don't see how I can even see her. I seen her a week ago; hadn't seen her for like a month and a half. I can't be around her 'cause every time I see her she just wants money. I know she has problems, but I can't live with that because I have my own problems. I'm struggling myself.