Rachel and Her Children by Jonathan Kozol

Author:Jonathan Kozol [Kozol, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307764195
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

5

Distancing Ourselves from Pain and Tears

Men and women from the Coalition for the Homeless, who befriended Holly, note that, in the period she has described, her capability for making wise and long-term judgments seemed impaired.

This seems a realistic observation. I’m not sure it tells us much of Holly. It does tell us something of the impact of the shelter system on a homeless woman.

“You think only of the next day when you’re trained to think only of the next day.” These words were spoken by a homeless man with whom I spoke last year. “Be at the EAU by five. Be at your welfare office on the other side of town by nine …” When every moment in a woman’s struggle for survival calls for an alacrity in seizing the next opportunity for placement, for a medical appointment, or (when all else fails) for an appointment to obtain the money for her child’s burial, it may be a bit unfair to ask for longrange plans.

A friend who knows this story raised a somewhat different point: “I don’t believe you can exonerate the city. Nonetheless, you have to ask yourself: Why did she have another child? After all, she wasn’t married when the older two were born. She couldn’t support them. She hadn’t finished school. Why does she have a child if she knows she can’t provide him with a home? It seems a little harsh of me perhaps; but isn’t this a fundamental question that has got to be addressed?”

It is a fundamental question and it needs to be addressed; but it is not the issue in this book. This is a book about the fact of dispossession—homelessness—not teen pregnancy, illiteracy, poor education, or the evolution of an underclass. We do not know what we ought to do about an underclass. We do know that we should not manufacture one. We do not know how to bring an end to poverty and inequality in our society. We do know children shouldn’t live in subways. We also have a good idea of how to build a house—or many houses, each of which has many heated, safe, well-lighted rooms, doors with doorknobs, electric switches that go on and off, a stove that can be used to cook nutritious meals, a refrigerator in which food for children can be stored. Overwhelmed by knowledge of the things we can’t do, we are also horrified that we do not do what we can. I suspect that one of the ways we deal with this is to get angry—not at ourselves, but at the mother and, by implication, at the child.

It is easier to be impatient than to live with sadness. Finding fault with Holly may divert us from the thought of what we might have done—or what the people we elect to office should have done—to have prevented this disaster. It may also be a way of distancing ourselves: “She’s not like us. This nightmare could not happen in our lives or to our children. There must be something wrong with her—some flaw we do not share.

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