Read Online Rachel and Her Children by Jonathan Kozol - Free Book Online

asthma just three nights before. “Same thing. No cabs. Leave the hospital at four, walk back home, get here at five. Make her a cup of tea. Put her to bed. Outside the window, sky is turning: black to blue. It’s daybreak. One day before Christmas.”
    On Christmas, she said, they made the children dinner but were interrupted when a little boy who lives next door had a bad accident. “The little boy was playing and he split his head. His mother was so scared I volunteered to go with her. They took us to the Roosevelt Hospital. That’s where I spent my Christmas.”
    In the days since my last visit I have read a book that has been given much attention in the past few years. The book is titled
Wealth and Poverty
. Its author is a scholar named George Gilder.
Newsweek
says the book is somethingof a bible now in Washington. The book refers to the “more primitive rhythms” of unmarried men and speaks of a “young stud” in its reference to a black man who disdains the obligations of paternity. Unmarried parenthood and the decline of the work ethic are two of the themes of Gilder’s book. “But even an analysis of work and family,” he says, “would miss what is perhaps the most important of the principles of upward mobility under capitalism—namely faith.” Exploring the sources of difference “between entrepreneurial Orientals” and what he refers to as “less venturesome blacks,” Gilder sees faith—its presence or its absence—as the key determinant: “faith in man, faith in the future, faith in the rising returns of giving, faith in the mutual benefits of trade, faith in the providence of God….”
    When I read this first, I thought of Gwen. If Gilder is correct, Gwen ought to be a very wealthy woman. Listening to Annie’s final words I think of Gilder’s faith again.
    “Do you pray?”
    “Every day.”
    “Where do you pray?” I ask.
    “St. Francis church.”
    “Why there?”
    “They let you pray. And they have social workers there.”
    “When do you have time to go there?”
    “In the afternoons. I go at four o’clock.”
    “What do you pray?”
    “Pray God to make me strong. If it’s a bad day I think of heaven.”
    “How do you think of heaven?”
    “Like Jerusalem in Bible times. Peaceful. Quiet. People there are civilized and kind.”
    Suddenly she laughs and points to Doby. “A TV reporterasked what he would do if he had an apartment. Doby said: ‘If I had an apartment I would make cheeseburgers!’ The reporter laughed.” Annie laughs. Her husband laughs. Doby stares at them, inscrutable behind those funny glasses. It is the first time I have seen this woman smile in four hours. But her cheerfulness departs her quickly. “When I came here summer was beginning. Summer passed and autumn passed and winter’s almost past and—[cries] I don’t want to be here for another summer. Please, if you could do something to help us to get out of here …” She cries. Her husband sits beside her but she cannot be consoled. Doby climbs up on the bed and pats his mother’s shoulder with his hand.
    One year later they are still here in the same room—and are still together.
    How does a family stay together under these conditions?
    There is a wealth of literature about the loss of certain values that provide cohesion for the family in American society. Less is written of the role played by society itself in the undoing of those decent family ties that do somehow prevail in even the most damaging conditions of existence. How do bureaucratic regulations in themselves conspire to annihilate a family?
    Annie says her husband has to live with her illegally. Because of her asthma she cannot go down each night to sign him in. He has to sneak in past the guards, unless a guard who knows him will allow him to sign in. Employees of the HRA tell me that the rules about cohabitation are erratically applied. Their implementation depends to some degree on the caprice of social workers. If a man is