Advice for the New Poor, Part VII-1

[DuctapeFatwa]

What you have done, what you and Sarah have done, is incredible. You know the statistics, one of which is a screaming wound in your heart where your son was, where your son is.

You still go, every month, the long bus ride out to the "facility," They will let you bring him food, if it is inspected and consumed there in the visitor's room.

You wish you had more food to bring him, something more than a few candy bars from the convenience store or the vending machine at the chicken plant.

He doesn't know.

He thinks you still live in the apartment, the crummy place with mildewed walls you came home to that night, to find him gone. Gone on a journey to hell, where he still is. He doesn't say much on these visits, and neither do you. He eats the candy bars, though. You wonder sometimes if he really wants you there, and selfishly decide that you don't care if he does or not. You will come, every month, and sit with him, mostly in silence, for the two hours you're allowed to, because he is your son.

By mutual and unspoken agreement, sometime over the last few years, you stopped talking about Before. Stopped referring to it, and you do your best to stop thinking about it. It is gone. It is Before, and you are slowly coming to grips with the fact that it is not coming back.

The school needs to know what you have decided to do about Cat. She can stay there of course, finish high school with the rest of her class, although they have told you that she is not really getting anything out of it.

And after that, what? The chicken plant? The night cleaning crew? The "sales assistant" job at the electronics store that Sarah lost when she lost the front tooth? Those are the best, the cleanest jobs. On your feet all day, but you stay pretty clean, you meet the public, you have contact with Them. Something in you still clings to that old notion, that contact with Them is somehow desirable.

Sometimes, late at night, the only time you have together, the unspoken agreement is put aside, because it is impossible not to look at her and not remember Cat Before. Precocious, hilarious little Cat, how you talked about her future. College. A Wedding. She would wear Sarah's dress. Neither of you knows what happened to that dress, the album with the pictures either. The album you may have thrown away, accidentally on purpose, one night under the expressway, because you just couldn't look at it any more.
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split for siize

[DuctapeFatwa]

Yes, it is incredible what you and Sarah have done. All the statistics say that Cat should be pregnant by now, at least, probably a drug addict, renting out her body to feed her habit, or just to get some food that isn't beans, some clothes that don't come from Goodwill. How DID you do it? Gone from early morning to late at night, you have hardly seen her more than a few minutes a day since she was ten years old. But there she is, whole, drug-free, disease free, and so full of promise that They are begging you to please let Them spend almost a million dollars preparing her for the kind of life you couldn't have offered her, even Before.

The school needs an answer, and as you wrestle with the impossible inhumanity of deciding what that answer will be, something slams both of you at once - you didn't do it.

CAT DID.

You make it out of the hut in time before the sobs hit, just hang onto each other, try not to make noise, wake the others.

There are some cultural gaps that have no bridges, and some places that have no gaps, and you are now in the no man's land of their convergance.

Your little tribe, as you've come to think of these people who have become your family, will never be able to see why you are so certain that it is "better" for Cat to stop being your daughter, at least in practice, so she can become one of Them. Being one of Them doesn't seem to have served either of you very well, with what authority can you state that Themhood is superior to the kind of unconditional support and acceptance, and utter material poverty in which you now live?

At the same time, there is no parent on earth who does not know the awe and profound humility of looking upon a person that they brought into the world and seeing a human being who is more than his parents can ever be.

It is a brutal choice, a choice beyond unfair, a horrendous slimy viper-spitting demon of a choice, unthinkable to ask a child, even an extremely gifted child, to make.

But who's life is it, anyway?

Before, you would have said that as her parents, it is up to you to make the right decisions for her until she is old enough. But that was Before.

You don't want her to regret, Lalo and Concepcion are reaching hard. They don't understand about Before, they know, but you do understand about Now. How can you be sure that she will not regret giving up her parents, her little tribe more than she would regret not being one of Them?

Finally, you talk to Cat. She says she wants Both. She is, after all, still a child, and it is the hardest thing either of you has ever done, to tell her that she cannot have Both, that there is no Both. You could come visit, she says. You push the image from your mind. Shining, designer-everything Cat, surrounded by her equally shining designer tribe of Them, welcoming her ragged father, prematurely stoop-shouldered from chicken plant and carpet, her snaggletoothed rough-complectioned mother in the faded flannel shirt with frayed cuffs, you guys want some sushi?

She doesn't even try to wipe the tears, just lets them fall, they say two years and she'll have an undergrad degree, it's that accelerated. A job then, a good one, buy you a house. All of you, she holds out a hand. All.

Lalo looks blank. We all have a house. Buy us something we need. If we still don't have one by then, buy us a plow. We can plant beans.

Lalo also wants there to be a Both. Concepcion takes his hand. Come on, leave them alone, let them talk.

You don't, though. You pull her over between you and let her cry. Neither you or Sarah has any more tears. Tonight, you both put your arms around her at once and try to hold her tight enough to let her go.

Coming soon - Part 8: Somebody must have seen the fire