Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

Almost half of New York’s 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line.

She trots into the cafeteria, where more than a hundred families will soon stand in line to heat their prepackaged breakfast. With only two microwaves, this can take an hour. Tempers explode. Knife fights break out.

To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: The donated clothing is top shelf. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the baby’s creaky stroller.

Children are not the face of New York’s homeless. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets, and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses—pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home.

hunger, violence, racism, homelessness, parental drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. Any one of these afflictions could derail a promising child. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all.

Charters are known to exclude children with learning disabilities or behavioral issues. More than half of McKinney’s children fall into these categories.

Dasani can count the white people she knows on four fingers: a court-appointed lawyer, a sidewalk preacher, an activist nun, and a computer science teacher. Adding to their ranks is the occasional social worker, beat cop, or city inspector. White people divide into two categories: those who are paid to monitor Dasani’s family, and those who are called to help.

It goes unremarked that here, in a shelter with a $9 million budget, operated by an agency with more than a hundred times those funds, the plumbing has fallen to an eleven-year-old girl.

She reports negligent parents because it is the law—not because she thinks that children are better off in foster care. Usually it is the opposite. A child does better at home, even under the stress of ACS monitoring.

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.

Those who had moved before age thirteen did better: They were significantly more likely to attend college, earn more money, and avoid becoming single parents. Those who left the projects after age thirteen fared less well. Perhaps the disruption to their former lives was too great, or the influence of their early years had already left its mark.

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.

Next door, Supreme is taken from the holding cell to a judge. Supreme explains that he had come to family court to reclaim his children—only to be arrested on a warrant for failing to make a different hearing because he was so overwhelmed caring for these same children. The judge takes pity and releases Supreme without bond. But by the time he races back to the family court, the conference is over.

Avianna and Nana are fond of Mrs. Byrd, but they sense danger in the house. They do not know the details: that Mrs. Byrd’s thirty-one-year-old son was arrested three weeks ago and charged with possession of cocaine, while Mrs. Byrd’s husband, according to a complaint his wife will later file, has physically and emotionally abused her for “many years.” Nor do they know the most chilling secret of all—that eighteen months ago, a child drowned on the premises. The victim, a three-year-old boy, had been enrolled in Mrs. Byrd’s on-site daycare center. Among Mrs. Byrd’s employees was the boy’s mother, who had found her baby son in the backyard pool, floating facedown.

Only after Dasani returned to her mother did her behavior begin to improve.