My parents worked extremely hard to create the bubble in which I exist. Some parents try to expose their children to all kinds of different things, to help them grow as a person. My parents did too ... but only the nice things. I went to Disney World, family picnics at the beach, camping at National Campgrounds, out for dinner at the local Chinese food restaurants. One year, my Mom even planted a vegetable garden. But I was protected from anything unpleasant, anything that might upset me. Like when my cat died ... they buried it in our backyard and told me that she ran away. I never saw my parents argue - not once.
The children in Adrian LeBlanc's Random Family probably saw and experienced more terrible things before they were five years old, than I will in my whole lifetime. Sixteen-year-old Jessica is surrounded by drugs and drug dealers; she is beaten by her mother; when men ten years her senior ask her out, she sets them up with her mother instead; she regularly skips school and hangs out at the Hooky House; she watches her mother get high; before she is eighteen years old, she will have three children - first Serena will arrive, then twin girls about one year later. The little girls have different Daddies; in actuality, their paternity is uncertain. All of these things happened in the first fifteen pages of this lengthy four hundred page true story.
By the way, don't you just love the term, "Hooky House?" I absolutely love terms like that. In fact, I would probably go to the the Hooky House just so I could say it. All teenagers come up with nicknames, and their own slang ... it is what defines them as teenagers. When I was a teenager, everyone "hurt" and everything was "ignorant." For example, "My math teacher hurts ... that homework he assigned was ignorant." Ahhhhh ... those were the days ... but I digress, again.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent more than ten years of her life with the people in her story. She details their lives ... the crisis, the poverty, the chaos, the joys, the crime, the punishment, the reality. I recently listened to an interview she gave in 2003, when the book was first released. LeBlanc said that she would spend four or five days at a time in the Bronx, with her "friends," living their lives with them. She would sleep atop a mattress on the floor, someone else's baby snuggled up next to her, cockroaches scurrying across the floor. She attended court trials. She made visits to the prisons. She hung out on the streets. Some would call her home at 3am in a panic. It is a remarkable read, but I found it emotionally draining and I was exhausted when I finished this book. This is real; real people and their real lives.
The book revolves around three central players, and the people that come and go in their lives. Jessica, as I detailed earlier, started motherhood early in life. But so do most of the girls in the Bronx; many are mothers before they are sixteen years old. Cesar is Jessica's younger brother, sharing only their mother; and Coco is one of the girls Cesar loves.
It is just a fact that most young girls (in the Bronx) are sexually assaulted and Jessica is no different. Neither is her two-year-old daughter, Serena. Jessica was known to cause a stir when she walked around with her friends, and she had no trouble attacting boys. But for her, sex equals love; and she really just wants someone to love her ... for real. Jessica's story becomes really interesting when she gets involved with one of the most notorious drug dealers in the history of New York, Boy George Rivera. Boy George was a multi-millionaire by the age of twenty-one; it is thought that one of his hot spots for selling heroin was making $60 000 per day. It was also alleged that he earned more than $15 million in just over two years. And he lived the high life ... five cars (one specially outfitted like a James Bond car with crazy gadgets) - all paid for with cash; he travelled; he took Jessica to fancy restaurants and hotels and bought food for her family; parties on yachts, jewels, the Manhatten apartment he rented for the sole purpose of stashing his piles of cash. She felt like the luckiest girl in the world when she hooked up with Boy George because he was respected, he acted like a gentleman and he was wealthy. But eventually she paid the price, as did he.
But her story does not end with incarceration; she tries to find herself while she is in jail. She wants to do the right thing ... they all do. But sometimes, they just don't know how. She has an affair with a prison guard, and gives birth to his twin baby boys while she is on the inside. Desperate for true love she convinces herself that he is "the one." Of course he is not; and she will never develop any real bond with those baby boys because they are placed with the foster parent who has her three girls. It will be years before she sees them again. When she is finally released, after a seven or eight year stint, she goes right back to her old neighbourhood. Not necessarily her old ways, but she immerses herself back in the same culture. It's all she knows.
Cesar is a badass, but I love him. Of all the characters, I love Cesar most. He is the one I could have saved if I were there ... in the Bronx. He feels the pressure to protect and provide for his family ... any way he can. People chastise those who sell drugs, and in NO WAY do I support the activity. But take a look at it from a different perspective. The guys on the street are looking to support their families. They are looking for a way to put food on the table for their babies and pay their rent. The "bosses" are a completely different story - they are looking for a way to get rich. But the guys on the street are not unlike you and me, just looking for a way to make ends meet. And, in their neighbourhood, dope dealer is considered a viable career option. Again, I am not condoning their behaviour and if they come near any one of my children, I will not be held responsible for my actions; but it is understandable in their circumstances. Cesar says, "You get praise for doing wrong. I did not see it as doing wrong, because helping my family is right. How I tended to my family was different. Why is because we didn't have. The sequence led to the boy that created me."
Cesar is, what main-stream society would call, a troubled youth. He is on the streets, missing school, stealing, fighting, in shootouts. And, the majority of his adult life has been behind bars. In an ironic twist of fate, he is incarcerated for an accidental shooting ... the shooting and subsequent death of his best friend, Mighty. In the long run, Cesar seems to benefit from his time in jail because he educates himself and actually gains an understanding of the culture in which he grew up. He uses what he learns when dealing with his daughter, Mercedes; he sees himself in her. Cesar tries to encourage Mercedes and strokes her positive attributes, instead of just addressing the negative behaviour. He notes that nobody ever did this for him. Although he often feels frustrated and helpless with repect to his family and children, Cesar does acknowledge the idea that he may have had it easier than some of his friends from the neighbourhood, because he only has to worry about himself while he is in jail. There are no hungry mouths to feed; there is no rent to pay; the streets are not calling for him.
The street is like a "thing;" almost tangible. It draws kids in, and keeps them there. In a moment of astute awareness, Cesar refers to it a scapegoat because it is where the kids go when they do not want to be at home. If they argue with their Mom, they take to the street to escape. And although most are surrounded by "family," they still feel alone and/or betrayed. Girls carry deep-seeded anger toward their mothers because they fail to protect them - young girls are often sexually assaulted by their mother's boyfriends. Boy are resentful that they become the man of the family too soon. Siblings are jealous of each other. The street provides refuge from all that. The street provides a gathering place for like-minded kids.
The manner in which women are treated is appalling. They are used, beaten, raped, cheated on, intimidated, stolen from, manipulated and then beaten again. However, it is not just men beating women; women hit each other in fights and women beat their children severely - little girls and boys. The beatings that occur as part of an intimate relationship invoke an interesting dynamic. I have studied at length about abused women, and the Battered Women's Syndrome. Women are usually shocked the first time they are hit by their partner, and look for excuses - he had too much to drink, he was stressed out, he just lost his job, etc. But this seems different - the women in this story just expect to be beaten; they do not like it, but they expect it. For them, it is part of having a boyfriend. Men beat their wives/girlfriends to the point of almost death, and sometimes push their children around as well. In the case of Battered Women Syndrome, when her man turns his fury on their children, she will finally leave; it is not to save herself, but to protect her children. The women in the Bronx do not take such action. This is not a blanket statement about all the women in that live the Bronx, but a general impression taken from the book.
Coco loves Cesar; she loves him almost from the minute she spots him from a third-floor bedroom window. Coco and Cesar have two children together and an on-again-off-again relationship; of course, Coco has a total of five children fathered by four different men (I believe) which is part of the reason their relationship is on-again-off-again. Coco's mother, Foxy, uses drugs and lives with several different men throughout the story. She is of little support or guidance for Coco. Coco lives a life of chaos and disorganization and extreme poverty. The end of the book chronicles Coco's latest crisis ... oldest daughter in trouble at school, kitchen ceiling caving in and her apartment being infested with cockroaches - "wave upon wave of cockroaches made use of the sudden hole," she lost her job, she lost the disability benefits for her premature baby, the cable was cut off, her rented furniture was repossessed, she split up with her most recent love and her phone was disconnected. This is typical chaos in Coco's life. She is overwhelmed and cannot effectively deal with her own life; so, she often relies on her eldest daughter, Mercedes, to act as a parent to her younger siblings. Not because Coco doesn't want to do anything for her children, but because she cannot do it all by herself. There are too many children to care for, and too many problems to worry about. I think that is why Coco continues to get involved with different men ... she wants someone to help her. Help her financially or help her with the day-to-day care of the children. Because if she could get some relief in one area, the other would be easier to deal with. But ultimately, she seems to end up alone, coping the best she can.
I'll be honest - most of the time, as I read, I had a pit in my tummy. This is a harsh look at the realities faced by the poverty stricken in the United States. I wish I could say that I thought this was not a problem in Canada; I think it is. In fact, I worked in the midst of the poverty; and I have had women call me at the end of the month, begging me for more money or a food voucher to feed their children. It is heartbreaking. So, the bubble that my parents worked so hard to create had actually been burst some ago.
I began working for the Social Services Office when I was twenty-four years old and I had never personally experienced any kind of poverty. I mean, hardship for me was having to buy the generic brand instead of my favourite. But the first Christmas I working as a Caseworker opened my eyes to a different way of life. Conducting visits to peoples' homes forced me to confront "Charlie Brown" Christmas trees with one small box wrapped and carefully placed underneath for each child in the house. If they missed out on the Goodwill Food Hamper, one woman told me, they would splurge for a can of Spam, and bake it for their Christmas dinner. I had never been faced with such poverty until then. And now, although I have been out of the Social Service industry for almost ten years, I still think about some of the people I met and the struggles they endured ... abuse, loss, illness, poverty, lack of education.
I feel like this post is unorganized and just a bunch of thoughts thrown together ... sorry for that. But this book leaves your head spinning - in a good way, I think. Random thoughts about Random Family. We should know about the struggles of those who have been born into life of poverty and drugs. This book should be mandatory reading for teenagers. It is shocking and there are no secrets. But, maybe it is okay for teenage girls to read first hand the consequences of becoming a teenage mother; losing the opportunity to get an education without having the responsibility of a child; the dangers of drug use; the effect of poverty and the cycle it begins; the effects of incarceration, not only on the person on the inside, but by the family/children s/he leaves behind.
Because not everyone grows up as lucky as you and me, and maybe it is time our children realise it.
I feel as though I have been neglecting my beloved blog recently. But it has not been out of disinterest. It has been because of life and choices.
Two weeks ago, I came down with a throat infection and it knocked me out. It was great for reading, but that was about all I accomplished. I was rendered helpless for a week ... but then I had to make up for so selfishly being sick. Laundry had piled into a mountain, the house looked like a place where there was a shortage of mothers, like a rental house full of university boys students. And I wish I could tell you that I had been off jet-setting to important meetings out of town, or lounging on the beach somewhere very hot. But no ... instead, I had just been sitting in the big brown chair reading and trying to stay awake. So now, I have been stuck doing what any good wife and mother would do ... picking away at it all, as tolerated. While still trying to read one hundred books in one year.
But I have also been doing something else. After all the reading I have done on food and health, I decided it was time to make some changes and go back to what I knew was right. Right for me, that is. And I have been inspired by Jonesy, who has made some radical changes in his diet, all in the name of his Bucket Quest. He has brought some of the old familiar things back into the house ... things that I use to enjoy eating. If you want to see what he has been up to, click here.
I decided to give up all sugar, including fruit, as well as all dairy and wheat products - just for a couple of weeks to cleanse my body a little bit; in the hopes that this old thing would jumpstart itself and feel healthy again, restoring some of the long-lost energy that disappeared about the time baby number three was conceived.
This brings me to another thought ... which will lead to another thought. Don't worry ... this happens all the time. Eventually, I will stop typing. In the last couple of weeks, it has become increasingly apparent that children are willing to try new things. Especially if their parents are eating them too. They innately enjoy healthy foods. For instance, Jonesy brought home dried (organic) apricots, which are one of the best sources for iron, and are extremely healthful. I made a plate with an assortment of dried apricots, and big plump organic raisins, as well as (new to us) green raisins, and just placed it on the table one night at supper time. I didn't say a word about the plate, but they were all eager to get their hands on the new treats. All three kids tried the dried fruit and loved it ... especially the apricots. Remember ... nature's candy? It's true and kids really do like it; there are lots of different dried fruits out there. The same thing happens with a new/different vegetable ... they always want to try it. They might not always like it, but at least they have tried.
I have just learned how to sprout seeds in mason jars ... so we now have fresh sprouts at our house all the time. The kids, especially Caiden, have taken great interest in watching the sprouts come to life from little seeds. Give your children the opportunity to try different things ... you'll be surprised.Guess where we got all these new things to try? In the most unlikely of places .... The Bulkbarn. I thought The Bulkbarn was mostly an assortment of candy and chips - snacky foods. I have friends who would go there before a movie and fill bags with candy to sneak into the theatre. Turns out, there is a whole lot more than that! There were so many things to choose from, my head was spinning. They have alternative flours ... like Kamut and spelt and oat; they even have something called coconut flour. Don't you love coconut? As soon as I'm done with this whole "no sugar" thing, you can bet your last dollar there will be cookies with some coconut flour made at my house. We have to be very careful because Caiden is allergic to walnuts and peanuts (known, for sure) ... so for years there have been no nuts allowed in our home. However, you cannot eat a raw diet (see above, the Bucket Quest) without consuming some nuts; so, Jonesy has devised a system for storing nuts ... away from everything else. And what is good for the goose is good for the gander, right? I mean, I don't have any allergies to food; so, when the kids all go to bed - Jonesy and I - we sneak nuts ... like we're doing something dirty and to be ashamed of, or something. When we are finished, I clean the counters frantically and wash my hands until they are raw and then wipe down every single thing that I may have touched or looked at. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? But the nuts are worth it ... Anyway, go to The Bulkbarn - apparently it is a health food store in disguise.
Wow ... I guess I'm feeling better 'cause I got my "chat" back. I am hopeful that the "healing crisis" has passed and I will just continue to feel better and better. Then I can blog and blog and blog again. And the shift in thinking has begun because I had one half of a spaghetti squash for my lunch today. Who eats spaghetti squash for lunch?
I have actually been reading and will have my next discussion up soon. Random Family ... so good. Cannot wait to tell you about it!
Oh ... no. There may be a set back to my shift in thinking. I have just learned that I will have to confront the very thing that I want to eat more than anything. It's Jonesy's night to cook for the family. And, guess what? He just left to pick the kids up a submarine for supper tonight ... that's what.
