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the “parentified” child. In chaotic, trauma-prone families—rich or poor—firstborn children tend to take on parental duties. This can make them self-sufficient, quick on their feet, and adept at survival. But once they assume a parental role, they have trouble transitioning back to childlike behavior. They are more resistant to authority and less trusting of people. They often struggle to develop lasting emotional bonds, having learned to care for themselves rather than leaving the task to anyone else.
Today marks the family’s reentry into a system so complex that even lawyers struggle to understand it.
involve allegations of neglect, which is strongly correlated to poverty. The parent has failed to provide adequate shelter, or to properly dress, feed, and get the children to school, or has turned to drugs or alcohol—a common form of self-medication in a world of untreated traumas. Nearly all of these parents are people of color.
While Yost has barely registered Chanel, she has been watching this white lawyer since he barreled into the courtroom, saying, “Who’s payin’ me? Cuz I should be playing golf right now.”
She would rather sleep on this chair than return to Laurel Avenue, she tells me. She does not say why, only that the apartment is “boring”—a word Dasani tends to use when she is angry. She will soon be on the bus back to Hershey, which she calls by another name. “In three days, I go home,” Dasani says.
“The Key to Success? Grit.” It drew more than 22 million views, spurring a movement among education reformers. Success, according to Duckworth, hinges not solely on talent or IQ but also on “grit,” which she defines as the “passion” for a goal combined with the “perseverance” to meet that goal. Absent the passion, perseverance wanes. Absent perseverance, passion is fleeting. When a person possesses both attributes, long-term goals can be met.
“Fake” is a word that Dasani uses all the time. Politeness is “fake” if it hides a person’s true feelings. Restraint is also “fake,” whereas giving someone the middle finger is “real.” Dasani will only be real. She is fond of saying, “This is who I am. Love me or hate me.”
It doesn’t take away from who you are. But it is just a different representation of who you are.”
Around 44 percent of ACS’s budget depends on federal funds, of which the lion’s share goes to foster care and adoption services—not prevention. Put another way: More than a century after President Theodore Roosevelt’s landmark conference concluded that America’s homes “should not be broken up for reasons of poverty,” the federal government is giving ten times as much money to programs that separate families (most of them poor) as to programs that might preserve them.
It’s as if Chanel is representing herself from behind the suit of her white lawyer.
Yet for African Americans, the test presents a serious flaw: what the federal government’s researchers and other scientists call a “hair color bias.” Black people tend to have more melanin in their hair, which absorbs a higher concentration of metabolites—sometimes just from the atmosphere. This means that a Black person who is drug-free could test positive simply from being in the same room as someone smoking crack.
Only later, when she is calm again, will Chanel think of a more measured response to the question of who “created” this “situation”—the situation being too many things to name in a court conference lasting seven minutes and twelve seconds.
There are no food stamps, because the welfare office has not transferred the children’s public assistance benefits to Supreme.
She wonders why ACS or Foundling lack “petty cash” for emergencies, to which Marisol replies that “a lot has changed,” that budgets have been slashed. But at whose expense? Chanel wonders. She does not even know the figures involved—the fact that the president and CEO of Foundling will earn $572,902 this year alone.
An officer can kill a person. An ACS worker can mislead a judge. And they get away with it.
“If you show your feelings, it’s like you’re showing you’re weak,” she says. “I don’t show my feelings to nobody.”
“If you don’t like the results you’re getting, then check out what you’re giving!”
For Dasani, the words “senior division” are as thrilling as candy. Hershey’s high school students can walk to campus by themselves. Their good behavior is rewarded with up to $20,000 per year in college savings. The most unusual perk comes at the end of junior year, when students move to “transitional living.” They live in homes free of houseparents (though an adult is on the premises) and are given a budget to follow and a bank account to balance, buying groceries, cooking for themselves, even sharing a car.
“If you have a big enough why, then you can endure almost any how,” says Mr. Akers, enunciating the key words of this classic quote.
That way, on the “rough days,” Mr. Akers says, she can reach for her “why” card and be reminded. To endure almost any how. This Dasani has always done. She is a doer. She knows her “hows” better than her “whys.”
“To get a good education. To make a difference in my family.”
“NO FOOD,” writes Supreme’s new Foundling worker on July 24. It is becoming clear that ACS made an error: Dasani’s family is in the wrong preventive program. Therapy is a mismatch. What they desperately need, the Foundling worker tells an ACS supervisor, is material help. The family cannot benefit from therapy without their “concrete needs met,” the caseworker says—things like “daycare, food supply and food stamps, early intervention, household needs and more.” On August 10, ACS agrees to transfer the family to a “general preventive program.”
The gas bill remains in Chanel’s name, along with the family’s welfare case—nearly two months after Supreme tried to rectify the error.
“You see how quick they come and take the kids?” he grumbles. “That’s how quick they should have had them people come and fix the hot water and gas!”
The four oldest children are told they must be “scanned.” They step through a metal detector while their coats and bags are searched. Khaliq is made to relinquish his phone. The children must also surrender their father’s snacks, so they rush to eat them instead.
They finally fall asleep at 1 a.m., their bodies leaden. Five hours later, the staff wakes them. They must now go to court.
The judge’s focus has shifted: He wants both parents to take a drug test—despite the fact that Supreme’s last four urine exams came back negative (reports that none of the lawyers have in hand).
It barely matters what the lawyer says next: that Supreme was only arraigned for menacing and harassment, because the weapon charge was dropped.
Lately the therapist has tried to shift Dasani’s focus to the things that she can control. She can run track and cheer. She can make good grades. She can succeed “for them,” for her siblings. “ ‘To show them that even when you have a minor setback in life, you can still move forward,’ ” Dasani recalls Julie saying. “That was her main thing.
All of Dasani’s siblings have been placed in therapeutic homes, bringing the foster parents an average monthly income of up to $1,900 per child. For each day that these children remain in foster care, the Foundling agency receives another $93 for every child. In total, the care of Chanel and Supreme’s children is costing more than $33,000 per month—a figure that will approach $400,000 per year.
The Foundling supervisor, Linda, often thinks about this math. It would cost far less to keep a poor family intact, sparing them the trauma of separation, by placing a full-time aide in the home to prevent the problems that lead to neglect.
“loves to keep a clean kitchen.” Chanel would tell it differently. He does not want “to keep” a clean kitchen. He wants the calm that a clean kitchen brings.
But to comply with the demands of ACS means that she must take parenting and anger management classes, arrive on time to family visits, make repairs to her home, get a mental health evaluation, enroll in a new drug program, and test negative for prohibited substances. She has fifteen months to succeed. If she fails, the court may terminate her parental rights, placing the children up for adoption.
Under this law, once a child has spent fifteen months in foster care, the state’s child protection agency (with few exceptions) must move toward ending parental rights. Otherwise, the state cannot be federally reimbursed for the cost of foster care.
“celebrates as victories cases that end with the permanent severing of parent-child bonds.”
She cannot, like Miss Hester, pull an orange suitcase out of the projects and walk into the future, undistracted by the past. Miss Hester grew up at a time when it was easy to disconnect, when the word “unplug” referred to electricity.
For Khaliq, “here” is not just jail or the surrounding North Shore, with its rival gangs and drugs. “Here” is a borderless territory determined by whites and lived by Blacks. It is the defeat he sees in his father’s face, and even in his own. When a caseworker asks Khaliq how he wants to “be perceived,” the answer is that it does not matter. Society already sees him as “a thief, a trouble maker, and angry.”
Because he is a first-time offender, the judge drops the charge. Khaliq must write a letter of apology to the victim and will be on probation for sixty days, with a strict curfew.
Throughout Foundling’s case notes, the children are observed as parenting one another. To address this, the caseworkers come up with behavioral goals. Khaliq’s goal is “to allow” his foster mother to “take care of” his little brother. The siblings must begin the process of “de-parentification,” which is the reverse of growing up. They must learn to be children again.
That same afternoon, Dasani is also shoveling. She must clear the periphery of her student home, digging her way out of detention. Lately, the Akerses have seen improvements in Dasani. She is learning to apologize and to express gratitude. Back in New York, she rarely did either. To say “I’m sorry” was to show weakness. To say “Thank you” meant you needed help.
Dasani’s pride and self-sufficiency—the very things that enabled her to come this far—are now a detriment. They interfere with what Mr. Akers, a devout Christian, calls “that healing part of her life.” He wants to see Dasani “allowing herself to become vulnerable and be able to really face some of those things that hurt her so much.”
By the time the police arrive, Avianna is too afraid to talk. She “refused to answer any questions,” writes an officer, who files a report of harassment. The police do not arrest Mr. Byrd because, according to Foundling’s notes, both his wife and the foster children are found to be free of “marks and bruises.”
After they hang up, Dasani is glum. Maybe her sisters are right. “I’m gonna turn white at Hershey and I don’t wanna be white,” she tells me. “I wanna go home.”
“Home is the people. The people I hang out with. The people I grew up with. That, to be honest, is really home. Family who have had my back since day one. It doesn’t have to be a roof over my head….At Hershey, I feel like a stranger. Like I don’t really belong. In New York, I feel proud. I feel good. I feel accepted when I’m in New York.”
“I be having to correct myself. It just makes me feel like I can’t really be myself. I always gotta be aware of how I talk, all the time.”
The roller coaster of Dasani’s life is one that never ends. On March 14, she gets into another serious fight, attacking a girl so ferociously that she lands a Level 3, for “serious acts of aggression,” her worst disciplinary infraction yet. Over Easter, she must go to “intercession,” a temporary residence for students who have misbehaved. She is so bitter that she tells the Akerses she wants to leave their home permanently. She blames everyone but herself. The girl she fought is to blame: “Don’t disrespect me and you won’t feel my fire.”
The Akerses are to blame: “If they wanted to help me be successful, they should have done that by now.” Her parents are to blame: They “don’t listen. And they’re lazy. And they do nothing to help me.”
The goal is to get all these disparate adults to work together as one coordinated team. In addition to Chanel and Tara, Dasani’s team includes her counselor, her new track coach, and the Akerses. Right now, they are worried that Dasani will keep fighting the same girl.
But when it comes to fighting, Dasani trusts her mother: To protect yourself, Chanel says, is to protect your reputation.
To “trust” means to believe in things you cannot see. This has never worked for Dasani. She trusts what she can see—her phone, her cheerleading team, her best friend, Kali.
