On the morning of Diane’s first day as a caseworker the President announced his budget, which included 20 billion dollars cut from domestic programs. Millions of dollars of funding cut from the three largest federal food programs: food stamps, school lunches, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). One-hundred-and-fifty social programs shrunk or eliminated outright. According to The Department of Agriculture, 36.3 million people lived in homes without enough food. The National Low Income Housing Coalition found there was no place in the Red States where a person earning as much as $9.17 an hour could afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. A quarter of the national workforce earned $9.17 an hour or less—about $19,000 annually, only fifty dollars more than the official federal poverty level for a family of four.
Sandra’s case report made mention of her $12,000 income working second-shift janitorial at a William Morris office building. Her one-bedroom apartment rent was $1000 per month. Both income and rent numbers were the average for an adult citizen of the one-time textile city of Lawrence, North Carolina.
Winter, and the temperature had dropped below forty degrees. Drug paraphernalia littered the front-stoop and hallways of Sandra’s apartment building. The case report made mention of Sandra having passed her last three random drug tests. Sandra was trying. Inside the building wasn’t warmer than outside. Diane’s breath was white exhaust while walking the hallways and staircases.
Diane knocked on door # 213. A young woman, a teenager, a girl (Mom would’ve called her a pisher) opened the door, and held her baby, a moth-worn sweater concealing her cigarette-thin arms. This was Sandra. Diane mentally went through her checklist for signs of malnutrition: dry hair, red and cracked lips, glassy eyes, yellowing and dry skin. Diane reminded herself to watch for irritability, poor memory, strange or obsessive behaviour.
Her baby’s name was Drew. He was six months old and wrapped in a blanket. His file was included with Sandra’s case report folder.
Diane entered and saw the electric stove on and open. The only heat in the apartment. She said, “The heat seems to be out in the whole building.”
Sandra said, “You’re the woman I talked to on the phone? From the hospital?”
“Yes.” Diane extended a hand. Sandra’s hand was limp and cold. “I was happy to read that you agreed to continue the center’s counselling.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get. Does it say in that folder of yours that my landlord is missing along with the building’s heating oil?” Sandra put the baby in a bassinette near the oven. Her lips moved but she wasn’t talking. With the baby down, she rubbed her eyes, once, then twice, then a third time. Her lips formed silent words again.
Diane made her mental notes.
Sandra said, “You’re new to the center?”
“Yes and no.”
“I hate that. Pick one.”
“Yes. You are my first case. Congratulations.”
“Then why did you say no? I get confused easy as it is without you handing me bullshit head-shrinking kind of answers.” Sandra rubbed her eyes again in her three-cycle method. The skin around her eyes was now an angry, crayon-red.
Diane said, “I said no because I’ve been with the center for four months.”
“What did you do before getting assigned to me?” Sandra pulled a chair up next to the oven and bassinette, then took off her sweater. A potbelly one might describe as a distended abdomen (another sign of malnutrition) pushed against a tight, green T-shirt.
Diane said, “When was the last time you ate?” Diane didn’t sit, but opened the file and uncapped her pen.
“Yesterday morning.”
“Can you give me a time, roughly?”
“Eight . . . maybe nine or ten.”
“What did you eat?”
“Um . . . Ramen noodles, or maybe just some bullion broth. You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question was that?”
“What did you do before getting my case?”
Gail had instructed Diane that as a caseworker, blunt honesty would be her only chance at succeeding in gaining the people’s trust in Lawrence, as the residents had been abandoned by their government and had heard every manner of bureaucratic lie imaginable. So Diane said, “My first three months I cold-called and knocked on the doors of nice white, Christian people and asked them to donate interview-worthy clothes so the lazy, fat, poor people could look for jobs, even though there were no jobs to be had within fifty miles, even though there were no more government-sponsored community action agencies or jobs training programs. Why? The young poor people that the Red States doesn’t need for shit work can go into the military, avoiding the need to draft from the middle and upper classes.”
Sandra’s mouth had moved while Diane talked. Diane imag-ined this malnourished child-cum-single-mother trying to get sustenance from her words.
Sandra said, “I think you can help me and Drew.”
Diane said, “That’s why I’m here. When and what did Drew last eat?”
“I breastfeed Drew. He ate an hour ago. Just started him on cereal too.” Sandra pointed at the all-but-barren kitchen counter. On it was a box of rice cereal for babies.
Diane wondered how much of it Sandra had eaten. She said, “Have you kept all his paediatric appointments? Has he been getting his shots?”
“Yes.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Call his doctor.” Sandra fished around inside her jeans pocket and pulled out a wrinkled appointment card. She gave it to Diane and she paper clipped it to the initial hospital diagnosis of postpartum depression. The diagnosis detailed episodes of Sandra wandering the halls of the hospital and, upon release, her apartment building while crying uncontrollably. The diagnosis also detailed a history of drug use, physical and mental abuse at the hands of Drew’s father, and possible sexual abuse from unnamed members of her family or neighbours.
Diane said, “Have you had any uncontrollable crying fits in the last two weeks?”
“No.” Sandra said it fast. A dart.
Then they talked more about Drew. Diane stayed to watch Sandra breastfeed him and wasn’t convinced that Sandra was capable of producing or expressing milk. She watched Sandra mix cereal with tap water. Drew cried and shivered while eating. After Drew’s lunch they discussed the day care situation (the mother of the deserting dead-beat Dad lived on the floor below and watched Drew while Sandra was at work). They talked about bills, a schedule of payment, of creating a resume and practicing job interviews.
Diane made it a point to leave multiple copies of her contact information throughout the apartment.
Diane packed up the file and readied to leave when Sandra said, “This is all well and good, but all that liberal-type stuff you were saying before, you know the government keeping people poor on purpose, and all that stuff? Well, I thought it meant you could help me.”
Diane said, “It does, Sandra. And we talked about how I was going to help you.”
“I want you to help me and my baby to get out. To get to the Blue States.”
Diane only knew what her mother had told her when she was a child: only the rich and connected and gentile could leave the Red States for the fabled Blue. Diane had greeted this matronly proclamation with a Blue-Jew and Jew-Blue singsong rhyme.
Diane went against her truth-and-trust social worker paradigm and didn’t tell Sandra this. She said, “I really don’t know much about the Blue States.”
Sandra rubbed her eyes three times, then stared hard at Drew, a look that could bore through skin. She said. “My parents escaped to the Blue States. Somewhere up north, I think. They can’t contact me now because the Red States won’t let ’em. But they can get me in. Didn’t you know if you knew someone who lived there that you could get in? They have computerized lists at the bo
rders. They can check that kind of stuff. I just need to get to the borders.”
“I really don’t know anything . . .”
Sandra said, “They help people like me in the Blue States. They’ll help Drew, keep him fed, clothed, and educated. They’ll know it isn’t his fault that his Mom is a screw up. They won’t blame him for being poor. You know, I even hear they have free hospitals, socialized medicine they call it . . .” Sandra ran out of breath and words. She rubbed her eyes.
Diane said, “I’ll see what I can find out. I promise.”
Diane shows them the obituary; a small rectangle cut from a newspaper that is decades older than the young men are:
Tuckett, Drew—Of Lawrence, April 31st 20__. Beloved son of Sandra Gomes, grandson of Robert and Julia Earls, and Brenda Thatch. Funeral Service will be held at Old South United Methodist Church, 12 Conant Street, Lawrence, at 10:30 AM on May 3rd. Relatives and well-wishers are invited to attend. Internment will be at a later date and will be private. Expressions of sympathy may be made in his memory to Social Care: Charlotte State Hospital, 478 Admiral Avenue, Charlotte, NC.
Ten days after Diane had met Sandra, Diane’s mother had a massive heart attack and died. Mom was sixty-four years old.
Despite the loss and while sitting shivah Diane met with Sandra twice that week, and every week after. She fulfilled her official caseworker responsibilities to the best of her abilities (and she picked up a new client with each passing week). But in the process, Diane broke a few of Gail’s policies. She let Sandra call on her private line and initially they had chatted like old friends. When Sandra’s phone was shut off, Diane gave her the cell phone that her mother had owned. They talked about Diane’s mother. They talked about male-companion prospects, of which there seemed to be very few. They talked about Drew, but not in a social-service way. Though, eventually, Sandra forced the conversations to be about the Blue States. Always the Blue States, and Diane always had the same still investigating response.
Sandra became increasingly impatient and desperate.
After two months, Sandra was no longer eligible for food stamps or help from WIC. Diane took to treating Sandra and Drew to a lunch at a local diner once a week, money coming from her own pocket.
This is how Diane remembers her last meeting, her last lunch with Sandra:
Sandra ordered her usual, the Big Country breakfast with pancakes, grits, two eggs (always scrambled and mixed in with the grits), sausage, and a large OJ. Drew nibbled on dry toast. Diane had ordered a turkey-club, but hadn’t eaten a bite.
Sandra said, “What’s the matter? Not hungry?”
Diane was not hungry. She said, “Just because you get a good meal once a week doesn’t mean that you can skip out on eating the rest of the week.”
Despite these weekly feasts, Sandra still looked as gaunt and washed out as she had when they had met. Diane noticed Drew’s new clothes. A football shirt, number twenty-seven, a logo-less blue baseball hat, and mini-work boots. Diane assumed Sandra used the once earmarked food-money (what little of it there was) to buy new clothes for Drew.
“You gonna get all professional on me now?” Sandra smiled. She meant it as a joke, but it sounded hard. Despite their apparent closeness this was a reminder that Diane did not really know Sandra. But she knew enough to know Sandra was far from well. Sandra’s behaviour was still erratic; swinging from giddiness to despair like a pendulum.
“You need to eat on a consistent basis. That is priority one. You are not helping Drew by starving yourself.”
Sandra aimed her eyes at her plate and filled her cheeks with food. She touched Drew lightly on his arm twice. He smiled and shoved his fist into his mouth. She said, “I bet you sound like your mother right now.”
That hurt Diane. But she didn’t want to show it. She went from saying nothing to saying, “My mother was meshiginah, crazy as a bedbug. She didn’t throw anything away. Newspapers, brown paper bags, tin cans; she saved, flattened, and reused tinfoil. She took baths and pestered my father into reusing her dirty water. Last week I helped Dad empty out the house of all the stuff. I threw it all away or donated it to the center. She invited homeless people over for dinner once a week, even when we couldn’t afford it. Someonenew each time. We had things stolen of course, and most of those dinners were so very uncomfortable, but it never stopped her.”
Sandra had an empty-screen stare, focusing somewhere beyond Diane, and she said, “Am I you’re mother’s homeless person then? Your weekly charity case that makes you feel better about yourself?” Sandra jiggled her legs and banged the table with her fork like a drummer in a heavy metal band. She was a one-woman ruckus.
Drew’s saucer eyes became teapots. He didn’t like the sudden movement and noise. He cried and threw his toast on the floor.
Diane said, “She told me she loved everyone, even the schmucks. I knew who the schmucks were. And she told me she loved God, even when I didn’t. I envied her faith. I think she saved it, but I threw it away.”
Sandra’s Tasmanian devil stopped spinning. She said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know . . . I woke up on the wrong side of the couch this morning,” then stopped, a balloon out of air.
Diane kept talking. “My mother also said God didn’t make or design poverty. People did. But I think I blame both.”
Sandra said, “Did you talk to your boss about the Blue States yet? You said she knew something. Can she get me in? She’s rich enough. She must know how.” Sandra pleaded, begged, and reached her matchstick arm across the table trying to touch Diane.
Diane thought about the case file and the details of Sandra’s drug and prostitution arrests. Diane tried not to cry and she tried not to flinch away from Sandra’s touch. She went one for two.
Sandra retracted her arm and wrapped it around herself. “You didn’t answer my question, girlie. You not hungry?”
Diane was not hungry. She wanted to lie to Sandra.
Diane shows the young men an article. Two rectangles cut from the same newspaper in which the obituary had appeared:
MOTHER CUTS OFF INFANT’S ARMS, CALLS 911
By Charlotte Observer Staff: April 29th, 20__
Lawrence, North Carolina: Brian Talbot, landlord of Conant Street Tenement said, “It was just her and that kid. She was quiet. Paid her rent on time.”
A woman suffering from postpartum depression cut off her baby son’s arms, then called 911 and her social service case manager and stayed in her apartment until the police arrived.
Her son died in the hos-pital, three hours after police response. Sandra Gomes, 20, was charged with first-degree murder.
Police found Gomes sitting in the common room, covered in blood. The baby was cradled in her lap. She was calm and told police she was responsible for the baby’s injuries.—continued A23
Mother Cuts Off Infant’s Arms
—continued from A2 Investigators are quiet on whether they’ve recovered a weapon.
“Both arms were completely severed,” Chief Ryan Stanley said. “The mother was unresponsive when we left.”
According to audiotapes of the 911 call obtained by the Charlotte Observer the operator asked if there was an emergency. Gomes calmly answered, “Yes.” The operator asked, “What happened?” Gomes said, “I cut off his arms,” and there is audio of the child’s song, “Baby Beluga” playing in the background.
Charlotte State Hospital and Social Service representatives reported Gomes was battling chronic malnutrition along with postpartum depression, but there had been no history or signs of violence. Further, a caseworker reportedly knew Gomes had recently become despondent and had tried to visit her apartment the night before, but Gomes refused to let the caseworker in. Gomes lived at the apartment with only her infant son.
Gomes had two prior arrests for drug possession and misdemeanor solicitation. After giving birt
h to her son, Gomes stayed an extra two weeks at the State Hosptial due to postpartum depression symptoms. Once she was released, Gomes agreed to seek counselling. Caseworkers visited her apartment throughout the winter and early spring.
Neighbors said Gomes seemed to be a loving, attentive mother. Landlord Talbot said he saw Gomes walking with the stroller on Monday.
“She didn’t give off like she was in her own world or didn’t care about the baby,” Mr. Talbot said.
She places the clippings back on the refrigerator, taking care to smooth out any wrinkles in the paper.
Diane says, “I’m just an old maid, and I want to lie to you. Really, I do. After Sandra, I lied. I lied for all these years and I told people what they wanted to hear. I’ve sent hundreds of Don Quixotes on their merry way, and I felt good with hiding truth behind hope. But I look at you fine mensch and know I was wrong. So I’ll tell you what my beloved mentor and friend Gail told me, and what I told Sandra. I’ll tell you what you already know. There are no Blue States, no goldeneh medinah. A myth, perpetuated by the government as much as common folklore, to have people believe change and being good to each other is as easy as going somewhere else. I am sorry, but the Blue is as much a fable as Paradise.”
The young men exchange a long look and say nothing.
Diane tells them, “My mother used to say: A mentsh on glik is a toyter mensh. An unlucky person is a dead person.” She grabs each of the young man by the wrist and says, “Come. Follow me.”
She shuffles into her living room. “I was unable to do this properly because I just didn’t feel like going out today. But you fine yeshiva students can help me. Before you leave, on this, the anniversary of my mother’s death, her yorzeit, would you join me in lighting candles and saying a prayer? It would mean so much to me. You know, I became a good Jew in her honour.” She edges deeper into her living room and the young men dutifully follow.
Diane tells them, “You are fine young men. A leben ahf dir! Do you know what that means? You should live! And be well and have more! You make me proud to be a Jew.” Diane pauses, then adds, “It’s true,” and smiles.
In the Mean Time Page 11
