NON FICTION
Mark Silverman
[Mark Silverman is a social psychologist.]
Enormous self-reflection. To become conscious not as an individual but as mankind. - Nietzsche
1. I pick up the crack lady and we go to the Bagel Shop for coffee. She's a bit raggedy-ann today: loose clothes, not combed, hang-dog manner, the look of someone who could but can't. Just like the other times we meet -- when she doesn't stand me up -- we choose the booth in the window so we can watch Main Street. I've been trying to help her son adjust to life after a year in what he calls lockup, aka a residential treatment facility. She's recently out of jail herself. Welcome to the land of de-institutionalization.
She's in a spooky mood, more so than usual. She fingers the cigarettes she can't smoke in here. I ask what's up, and she unfolds her story like a crumpled towel in the closet -- a little damp and smelly. I've suggested she write down her words, that she's a natural yarn-spinner, and she even has a lap-top from work, but . . . Today she starts by saying she's been too scared to tell anyone.
When life gets tough she heads for crack houses in Syracuse, in the pits, a neighborhood white women from the boonies never see, and if they do they're up to no good. The crack lady goes there again and again, testing the limits to get her fix. Cash and carry and never mind that she often gets robbed. But on Monday it got worse. During a trip north to the city -- she skips work, doesn't tell her family, just disappears for a day or a weekend or longer -- she went up to her spot and found a 'girlfriend' who took her to an apartment, then went out to buy a bag. The crack lady thought of going too, but stayed back to read a magazine. After a long, long wait a hulking, cursing, wild eyed black man thundered at the door. She figured her time was up. He was her friend's brother and he snarled: “Who the fuck are you?”
After
she calmed the man down, which wasn't hard because he was crying and pissed
because he thought his sister might have borrowed the crack lady's car, he
delivered the bad news. His sister had been t-boned on Salina Street, broad-sided
and creamed by a delivery truck that ran a red light, just a few blocks away.
So after a lot of deep breaths, the crack lady went down to the city morgue
to identify the body, since somebody had to. “I've been shivering ever
since,” she said, “like I keep thinking, what if . . ."
2. Later that day I pick up her son at school. His friend Tony (not his real name) wants to come along so he can avoid the bus ride, but I say not today.
At The Car
ME: Oh, here's your script. (A therapeutic device I sometimes use, prepared the night before).
BRANDON: What the fuck is this?
ME: I thought it would be easier if we read our lines today. Try. Anyway, what are you going to do about getting a job?
BRANDON: (getting louder) There you go again. You people don't leave me the fuck alone. First at school, now you're up my butt. The reason I don't have a fucking job is because that guy promised me a job and then screws me. I'm gonna punch him in the face.
ME: I'm sorry that didn't work out, but there are still plenty of signs up all over.
BRANDON: (yelling now) I don't have to get a stupid job just because you say I should.
ME: (trying to ignore the yelling) Look man, I care what happens to you. You can't just take money from your mom, or steal stuff from the cars you find open. That's no life.
BRANDON: (extra loud) You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I DON'T STEAL.
ME: And that VCR you took from the college dorm?
BRANDON: You don't know about that, so forget it.
ME: And now that kid Tony's getting into it.
BRANDON: He does what he wants.
ME: Yeah, but he follows your lead. (Brandon shakes his head). And your mom's worried, she knows what you're doing.
BRANDON: My mom is a fucking crackhead who's trying to kill herself and she doesn't care about anything . . .
ME: (Trying to catch my breath) And because you got away with jacking stuff a few times you think you won't get caught. I don't want you to go to jail. Your mom doesn't want you in jail. Your dad . . .
BRANDON: (extra extra loud) Shut the fuck up. He's not my dad. I wish you people would just send me back to lockup. Yeah. It was better there. (He tears up his script, we ride in silence for a while.) Just take me up to the Wall.
ME: Sure. (I drive to the high school. They're just letting out. I leave Brandon at the smoker's Wall, fifty yards from the wooded spot where a girl got knifed a couple of years ago.)
3. The New York Times Magazine had a piece on my old high school in Brooklyn, a story filled with the fresh faces of high achieving teenagers, the ones who are up at four a.m. to get ready for their subway rides to the labs where they work on important experiments. Then at 7:30 they're off to school and a packed schedule of advanced placement college work even though they're only juniors. They make music, volunteer in the community, sing in the choir, fight world hunger. They are not the youth I know.
Upstate, I drive across the green hills to get to the small rusted city where I work, watching the seasons change as wonderful cloud shadows embrace the land. My job is to help children who grow up in a nicotine-stained world where men drink and beat up their wives or girlfriends, where women drink and are the victims. Many are mentally ill or intellectually limited. In these families there's not a lot of interest in nurturing the kids, and not surprisingly, they struggle in the absence of stable, caring adults. So you better grow up fast. Some make it, but the wild ones, mostly boys, are labeled emotionally disturbed by the school system and funneled into behavior management classrooms where they're punished for acting emotionally disturbed. On the downhill as they get older, preventive services are provided, then Probation, Family Court, and eventually placement in foster care or institutions. I usually meet them late in the game.
Yet these loser children often turn out to be smart and funny, even creative. Unfortunately, their motivation to succeed is often zilch as they quickly pick up the habits of their parents. But they do have an incredible, threatening power: a fearless ability to say 'no' to our expectations -- mine, yours, the whole planet. We urge them to listen to their parents, go to school, behave reasonably, manage their anger, set goals for themselves, defer gratifications, get a job, not to smoke pot or trip or huff or whatever, not to fight or swear, and most importantly, no boat rocking. But the response comes back fast -- an uppercut in-your-face expletive, delivered with plenty of venom. That's hard to ignore.
A couple of days ago I got uneasy when a sixteen year old threatened to hit me. I'd become the enemy, and it started me thinking. Was I scared, afraid of a wired jaw, eating through a straw, or worse? No, it wasn't that. Finally, I circled to the question of power. Who defines reality, anyway? With all my education and good intentions and empathy and understanding, the truth was I didn't like the loss of control, my own private trip. I saw the whole scene as my turf, not the kid's, and with that perception I knew I was part of the problem. Unless I change.
The children and families I see each day are mostly low income, have low self-esteem, don't express themselves very well, are bored of education, easily duped by mass media culture and its myths. They are the anti-christ from the South Pole, angry and distrustful. As I cruise the fault line between the generations, I try to reconcile my own experience with their longing for a piece of the action. I don't have the guts to tell them it ain't ever gonna be there for them, the ultimate non fiction.
THE END