Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott

Author:Andrea Elliott [Elliott, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, African American & Black, Social Science, Poverty & Homelessness, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9780812986945
Google: BzBGEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2021-11-15T00:11:20.336523+00:00

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Two days after Dasani’s argument on the bus, her siblings are nervously watching as an ACS supervisor inspects their Staten Island apartment.

A month has passed since Judge Lim ordered Chanel to take a drug test. She never showed up, hoping the matter would be forgotten. For a while, it seemed to work. The agency’s “progress notes” show little progress with either parent.

“When was their last drug test?” the ACS supervisor writes. “What were the results?”

Supreme stands in the living room as the supervisor questions the children, noting that they have no “marks/bruises on their face, hands, etc.” She asks to see Papa, but he is sleeping. The supervisor checks his room “to ensure that the child was alive and he appeared to be,” she writes, adding, “The family is in need of beds.”

ACS has visited the apartment six times in the last month. Chanel is never home. But the caseworker assigned to the family, Marisol Quintero, has found the children in good spirits, with Maya and Hada doing their homework, Avianna sweeping, Lee-Lee playing with toys, Nana watching television, and Papa bragging that he is “behaving much better in school.”

Supreme is also in reform mode. He has made a flyer advertising his freelance barber hours, and he has near-perfect attendance at his methadone maintenance program, testing negative for drugs. But his wife is another story.

Chanel comes and goes at odd hours, telling Supreme that she is “downtown,” which is code for Brooklyn—specifically, the back entrance of a Burger King on the corner of Fulton and Pearl. This small stretch of pavement is the province of addicts, beggars, boosters, dealers, sex workers, pimps, and other people cycling between jail and the street.

When Supreme hears the word “downtown,” he assumes that Chanel is getting high. Her pattern is to deny it. Only later, when she is clean again, will Chanel acknowledge the truth—usually as an act of reflection, worded in the past tense. Yeah, I was getting high. Supreme no longer bothers to ask. He simply tells Chanel to “turn yourself in,” by entering rehab.

“You’re starting off with a clean slate, you know what I mean? A fresh new track. A fresh new piece of paper and everything you do from then on is what they gonna document. So now you can write your own story…. Get a job. I get a job. We do what we gotta do. And then we move out of New York like we planned to do.”

Sometimes Chanel listens. She enrolled last month in an outpatient opioid-dependency program at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Manhattan, where she admitted to recent “opiate use,” telling the intake counselor that she supported her habit by selling candy. A few weeks later, Lee-Lee had her seizure. The next morning, Chanel left the hospital to attend her drug program. By the following morning, April 8, she had dropped out.

That same day, ACS referred the family to “preventive services,” adding a new form of scrutiny. When Chanel thinks about child

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