When Arleen was alone, she sometimes cried for Little. But she was teaching her sons to love small, to reject what they could not have. Arleen was protecting them, and herself. What other self-defense was there for a single mother who could not consistently provide for her children? If a poor father failed his family, he could leave the way Larry did, try again at some point down the road.11 Poor mothers—most of them, anyway—had to embrace this failure, to live with it.
