American Dream

by Jason DeParle

  A week later, she was back in the chair, looking terrified. “I gotta shot with a needle?” she said. By the fourth shot, her chest was heaving. The sixth made her legs buck. By the tenth, she merely looked confused. Novocain was one drug she wasn’t used to. “My nose numb,” she said. Numbers twenty-eight and thirty popped right out, but thirteen, an upper-left bicuspid, put up a fight. It had broken off below the surface, so Dr. Perez had to peel back the gum. The root was so rotten it snapped in his pliers, startling everyone with its crack. He grunted. She gurgled. Her head jerked around. “My hand’s getting tired,” he said. “Unnhhhhh!” As the bloody stump succumbed, the dentist smiled. Three down, seven to go; come back in a week. “God, I just love this stuff!” he said. Opal made her way to the door still searching for her nose.

  Welfare was inflicting blows of its own. When she didn’t return to MaxAcademy, Michael pulled the attendance sheets and docked her check. He hadn’t figured out she was using drugs (though he should have, since it was noted in her case history). Still, she finally had a caseworker she couldn’t completely con. She suddenly seemed like a textbook example of a tough case meeting a tough law. In theory, the possible outcomes appeared to be these: (a) Opal could surrender her resistance and work for a welfare check; (b) Opal could leave W-2 and find a job on her own; (c) Opal could get kicked off the rolls and sink into deeper destitution. The answer turned to be (d): the bureaucracy screwed up again.

  As it happened, Maximus didn’t have jurisdiction over Opal’s case. In moving to Brown Street, she had moved to a region run by Employment Solutions, the Goodwill subsidiary. Once the error came to light, Michael transferred the case, and his dealings with Opal were done. In the name of private-sector efficiency, Opal was packed off to her third agency and seventh caseworker in less than two years. “I don’t feel I did a damn thing for Opal,” Michael said soon after. At Goodwill, Opal told her new caseworker, Darcy Cooper, that she had her high-school diploma and wanted to work as a teacher’s assistant. Cooper was impressed. “Very intelligent—very highly intelligent,” she told me afterward. “Very goal oriented.” Cooper gave Opal some time to find child care. In the meantime, she sent her a full check.

  “Thigpen, Kenyatta Q., # 362246. . . .” Jewell worked the eraserless pencil, looking too nervous to breathe. The Fox Lake Correctional Institution didn’t tolerate mistakes. No hairpins, no wallets, no Spandex, no tube tops, no paper money. No more than one rosary per visitor. No exceptions. The reception area was clean, cold, quiet, and hard, like an autopsy room. While the prison was just eighty miles from Milwaukee, it lay across a landscape of one-stoplight towns that looked as though they had fallen off a feed-store calendar. Jewell didn’t trust her car or her map-reading skills; she didn’t trust the small-town police. The trip made her feel her blackness intensely. The only time she got to see Ken was when I could give her a ride. A few weeks earlier, I had picked her up when she got off work, and we drove two hours to arrive at 7:23 p.m.—thirty-seven minutes before visiting hours ended. A fat guard with a walrus mustache had barely looked up. No new visits after 7:15. No exceptions. This time, Jewell took the day off and spent $150 to have her hair done. Ken had just had his parole hearing, and she was coming for the news.

  Jewell finished her form, removed her rings, and eyed another adversary. The Fox Lake metal detector was a tin-pot dictator, a court with no appeals. The wire in a bra, the button on a jean—anything - could set it off. There was no follow-up scan; what the arch said, goes. Another visit nearly ended in defeat when her pants zipper made it buzz. Jewell was accustomed to feeling powerless when dealing with Authority; she had mutely turned to leave when I spotted an old woman with a friendly face coming from the visiting room. The woman went home in Jewell’s Fubu jeans and Jewell cleared security in a rare out-of-style moment, in stranger’s baggy yellow shorts. “Hands to the side. Walk slow. You’ve got three tries.” The Walrus was working again. The arch buzzed. Jewell checked her hair for pins. The arch buzzed again. With the reception area empty, there were no shorts to be cadged. Jewell took one step back and two hopeful steps forward toward the visiting room. The arch acquiesced. “You’ve got three hours,” the Walrus said. She looked like she had won the lottery.

  Whether she was winning Ken was less clear. The drive to end welfare was, among other things, a drive to raise marriage rates; as a thirty-year-old mother of two, Jewell suddenly had her prospects, if not the kind the bill writers had in mind. While it had been eight years since her old boyfriend Tony had gone to prison for murder, he had just sent her a drawing of a wedding band. “Marry Me,” he wrote. Ken’s rival, Lucky, had moved out again, but he had sent Jewell a picture of clenched fists breaking free of their chains: “To my wife, I’m coming home.” Ken, in his letters, sounded marriage-minded, too, referring to Jewell as “my wife,” “my sexy wife,” “my gorgeous wife,” and “wifee.” But the separated lovers had hit a low point the previous month, after Jewell promised to send money and clothes and failed to follow through. Having given her something he usually withholds—his trust—Ken got so angry he cursed out a guard, and his next letter came from the hole. “I blame you because if you wouldn’t pissed me off I wouldn’t have a fucking attitude,” he wrote. “[T]hat came from trying to show you the soft side of me. . . . I will never look stupid again for no female. . . . I will be girl less.” They weren’t used to fights, and that one quickly passed. Yet now and then a trace of doubt crept into Jewell’s voice. “If we stay together, it’s just something to show us that we’re meant to be together,” she said one night. If? Does she ever have—“No—no doubts, no nothing!” she said.

  Trends in family structure nationwide were similarly hard to assess. The welfare bill proved spectacularly successful in putting poor women to work, but that was only half of its stated purpose. Shoring up the two-parent family was the other. “Marriage is the foundation of a successful family,” reads the first line of the Personal Responsibility Act, which goes on for three pages to chart the statistical correlations between single motherhood and social risk. Launching his attack on welfare in 1994, Newt Gingrich had warned that the growth of nonmarital births threatened American “civilization.” That year, 32.6 percent of children were born outside of marriage. As Jewell was visiting Ken in prison, hoping to have his baby, the figure was up to 33.0 percent, and a few years later it hit 34.0 percent. There may be no statistic that said more about the prospects of the next generation. By 2002, 23.0 percent of whites, 43.5 percent of Hispanics, and 68.2 percent of African Americans were born outside of marriage—a total of 1.4 million kids. That doesn’t mean that the welfare bill had no effect on childbearing. The increase in nonmarital births slowed to a crawl and did so just as the attacks on “illegitimacy” hit fever pitch. It would be remarkable if that were pure coincidence.

  Looking beyond births, some researchers have found potentially good news in subsequent living arrangements: fewer children living with lone single mothers and more living with two adults. Examining the National Survey of America’s Families, a database of 40,000 households, Gregory Acs and Sandi Nelson of the Urban Institute found a notable shift in family composition in the postwelfare years. In 1997, about 48 percent of low-income children lived with a lone single mother; five years later, the number had fallen to 42 percent. But just half of that reduction in single parenthood came from increased marriage between mothers and their children’s biological fathers, which statistically produces the best outcomes for kids. Most of the rest came from cohabitation, which was less encouraging. On average, children raised in cohabiting homes fare no better than those raised by single mothers alone. (Kesha grabbing a skillet to defend Angie from Marcus is an example of a cohabiting home.) Examining a database from the Census Bureau, Wendell Primus found the decline in lone single motherhood especially pronounced among blacks and Hispanics. The share of low-income black children living with married parents rose from about 20 percent to 23 percent over five years. But the share with cohabiting
mothers also rose. And the Census data don’t specify whether the marriages brought biological fathers or stepfathers to the home. To the extent it was the latter, past studies predict a high risk of conflict with the kids. Both Angie and Jewell spent a good part of their adolescence warring with stepfathers.

  If changes in family structure were unclear, the impact of welfare policy was even more so. Policies specifically aimed at reducing nonmarital births (like “family caps” that eliminate extra payments for additional kids) generally showed weak results. And there was no other obvious policy pattern. The District of Columbia had some of the most permissive welfare rules, and also the largest reduction in the share of children born to single moms. Even as Wisconsin was eradicating its welfare rolls, the share of children born to single mothers rose—at a pace more than twice the national average. For all the praise heaped on the two-parent families, the end-welfare years brought little new information about how to promote them.

  Jewell was a marriage-promotion movement all her own, with a target audience of one. She reached the visiting room to find Ken in the clothes she had finally sent: tank top, jeans, new gym shoes. Elated just to see him, she waited awhile before asking what the parole board had done. “They played me,” he said. “What?!” Jewell was crushed. At the hearing, he had stuck to his story: the drugs weren’t his; he wanted to go home and take up a trade, maybe computers. The hearing officer had called his story “bullshit” and warned him to learn from his mistakes. Even with good behavior, he had nearly a year left to serve. He asked Jewell: can you wait? He said he knew it was hard. It was hard, harder than he knew. Jewell had never been alone before. But she’d never had a cause, either. “I’ll be there for you now and when you get out,” she said. The visit sped past. Ken joked that they should prick their fingers and seal a pact in blood. When Jewell said she already had a pact—her “friendship” ring—Ken said that whoever had given it to her must love her very much. “They do,” Jewell said.

  Despite the disappointing news, Jewell left the prison in an upbeat mood. In the distance from Ken she had found a new closeness, but at home an opposite dynamic was in play. For all her closeness to Opal and Angie, a new distance was creeping in. Opal’s problems were obvious enough. But for reasons Jewell couldn’t understand, Angie acted as though she didn’t like Ken. Or maybe, Jewell thought, Angie didn’t like the sight of her in love. She spent most of the ride back to Milwaukee airing her frustrations. “She’s always saying little stuff. She told me once, ‘You changed!’ She said she never let a man come between me and her friendship. How did he come between our friendship?” With Opal, Jewell’s conflicts had been out in the open; with Angie, they smoldered.

  Even so, once we hit the city line, she made Brown Street her first stop. Family was family, and Jewell had news. “He got to do the remaining time,” she said, sitting on Opal’s bed.

  “Girrl!” Opal oozed empathy. “Even if one person on your parole board say you can’t be released?”

  “It was only one,” Jewell said.

  “I thought it was four or five, like you see on TV!”

  Angie had little to say about Ken or his parole. (“Whatever make her happy,” she harrumphed later.) But standing beside Opal’s dresser, she saw a flyer from the welfare office with a list of jobs and starting wages: “$8.25 an hour!” Angie said. That was more than she made after three years. They were all in places she couldn’t get to without a car.

  A second job was her way to get one. But six weeks after signing up with a home-health agency, Angie still didn’t have a client. May brought birthdays, Kesha’s and her own, and she came up empty on both. June brought graduation bills. With Von finishing fifth grade and Kesha eighth, Angie gave them each $100 for outfits and put off the rent. Two months after he shot up the ceiling, Marcus was adding to her woes. He was out of work and obsessively jealous, threatening to follow her wherever she went. Angie tried to send him home to his mother’s, but he wouldn’t go. Food was tight again; having fought to get her food stamps back, Angie still hadn’t received them. When she called the office, she learned they had been sent by certified mail and signed for two weeks earlier, on Friday, June 4. Angie remembered the date. Mercy had been overstaffed and sent her home, and when she got there Opal was gone. Angie’s heart sank: Opal and the food stamps had disappeared the same day. With Opal in Chicago, seeing the girls, Angie left for work, stopped by a friend’s, and came home at midnight full of frustration and beer. Just then, her “friend” Tony drove up. Marcus spied him and climbed in the car. As they drove off to settle their differences, Tony had his gun; Marcus left his behind, afraid of what he might do.

  Angie ignored them. Though it wasn’t clear whether a felony or a peace talk was under way, Angie was brooding about the stamps. It - could have been Marcus, she told herself. But Marcus doesn’t steal. “The only thing he might a stole was my heart and broke it,” she said. Maybe it was the upstairs neighbor; yeah, that was it. It couldn’t have been Opal. It wasn’t Opal. But what to do if it was? Angie mulled the question in a drunken soliloquy that was, by turns, angry, funny, wounded, and wise. “I love her, but drugs mess you up,” she said. “It’s not like she’s a bad person—she’s sweet as pie. . . . But she’s tripped her kids to nothing and herself, mainly, to nothing. So what the hell would she care about coming over and tripping me to nothing? . . . All that shit I said, ‘I’ll never kick you out’—that don’t mean shit. . . . I’ll be unforgivable hurt.”

  She was still parsing moral codes an hour later, when she heard the front door rattle. After a half dozen Hennesseys on his rival’s tab, Marcus was back. Angie laughed. “You’re drunk!” she said. “You’re fucked up!”

  Marcus smiled and looked my way. “Did you tell him who Tony is?”

  “Tony’s my guy!”

  Whatever had happened at the bar, Marcus wasn’t ready to say. “Am I heartbroken?” he asked himself. “No, I’m not heartbroken.”

  “You all right?” Angie asked. “ ’Cause I want you to be all right.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” Marcus said.

  “I don’t care. You think I care?”

  It was 1:00 in the morning. She was out of food. Her men were facing off with cognac and pistols, and she was trying to decide whether to put Opal out. This struck Angie as just the time . . .

  . . . to pick a portfolio of stocks. Eight years after arriving in Milwaukee, three years after she had left the rolls, Angie had climbed to a rarified height in postwelfare life. She had qualified for a 401(k). The enrollment deadline was the following day, and she wanted a hand in assessing her tolerance for risk. She foraged in her bedroom and returned with a booklet called Help! Which Investment Options Are Right for Me? “What would make you more upset?” it asked.a. Not owning stocks when the market goes up.

  b. Holding a stock when it drops.

  c. I have no experience and can’t respond.

  “I’m number two!” Angie said. “Hold the stock and it drops, I’ll be pissed!”

  “Angela, Miss Angela!” Marcus broke in. “How you doing?”

  “Fine. Love ya!”

  “Do you?”

  Angie laughed. “I love me,“ she said. “Tired of you!” Tickled, she broke into song. “Love me, tired of you! Love me, tired of you!”

  Marcus grinned and talked about getting a four-pack. “Get yourself a job, nigger!” Angie said.

  “If you were invested in a stock and it suddenly declined 20 percent in value, what would you do?”a. I would never own a stock.

  b. Sell a portion to cut my losses.

  c. Sit tight, ride it out, maybe even buy some more.

  “I ain’t gonna buy no more!” Angie said. “But if my money already there, what the hell else can I do? I ain’t got time to be calling them!”

  Tallying her risk tolerance, the pamphlet judged Angie a “moderate” investor. “Yes, I am!” she said, giving it a toss. “I already know where I’m putting my money at—IBM computers and sh
it, cause that’s the future, computers!” She would put in $6 out of every $100 she earned, and Mercy would add $1.50, to vest if she stayed seven years. “Marcus get outta my bed,” she called. He’d gone off to sleep, but Angie removed him to the couch. It was 2:00 a.m., and Von warned her she was due to work the first shift, just a few hours away. “Won’t be the first time,” she said. She got to work at dawn and started buying computer stocks, shortly before the tech bubble burst.

  Opal stayed in Chicago a week, warring with her mother. Opal wanted the girls for the summer. Granny wouldn’t let them go. Little girls want to be with their mother no matter their mother’s condition. When Granny finally took a poll, the vote was Milwaukee 3, Chicago 0. They were back at Angie’s for all of two hours when the fights began. “This is my worst nightmare!” said Redd. “A house full of girls!” said Von. By day two, Opal and Angie were at odds. “Ain’t no motherfucking food in the house,” Opal fumed. While she denied any knowledge of the missing stamps, she had given Angie $200 out of her allotment to restock the cabinets. Now Angie was at work, and Opal was complaining that she hadn’t bought enough groceries. “Ain’t no meats in there!” she complained to Jewell. If Angie’s charity toward Opal was admirable, it was also increasingly costly, for herself and her kids. But putting Opal out required a greater willingness to enforce boundaries than Angie yet possessed. Of the three, Angie had found the greatest comfort in the First Street family. Perhaps if she evicted Opal she would be telling herself that ultimately she was on her own, too.

  On day three, Kesha had a fit. Her condom had disappeared. The romance with Larry had reignited, and everyone but Angie was worried. One of Angie’s friends had tried to get Kesha on birth control pills. But Kesha, who had just turned fifteen, said she didn’t need them. Then she spied a condom in Larry’s wallet; wrote “Kesha-N-LARRY” on her bedroom mirror; and kept the condom on her dresser. “It’s mine,” she said. “He’s going to use it on me!” After Opal’s girls spent the night in her room, the prized packet vanished. They found it, beneath the bed, just in time to keep Kesha from meting out blows. “I ain’t sexually active now,” she said. “But I’m gonna be in the future. Maybe two months.”