3/08/2006
The Road to Hell Is Paved with Peanut Butter
My ninth-grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Robinson, changed my life with a single telephone call to Child Protective Services. I never found out why exactly he did it, I assume he had altruistic motives. A fourties-ish bottle-blonde woman named Dolly came to meet with me at school several weeks later, I took her for a librarian but she turned out to be a caseworker for CPS. She spent ten minutes asking me questions about my family life, scribbling notes on a powder blue legal pad, I wanted to see what she was writing but reading cursive upside-down is not one of my strong suites. Half an hour later I was being signed into Springhaven, a Phoenix shelter for “troubled girls.” Most of them were there for getting knocked up or running away from home. Thus began my six month sojourn into the seamy underworld of child-storing. Dickens would have had a field day.
That afternoon marked my introduction to government food. There is nothing like eating charity for lunch. A black woman named Deborah with oily skin and green contact lenses listed rules for me while spooning a bit of peanut butter from a white plastic jug the size of a mop bucket. First rule, no going into the kitchen unsupervised. She scraped green bits from a piece of wheat bread and indicated the padlocked cupboards and drawers; second rule, no handling the food, dishes or silverware without permission. Deborah slid the sandwich across the table to me along with a glass of water and a single sheet of paper towel folded into quarters. I ate nervously while she watched my face for danger signs. ¶ 1:08 AM
My ninth-grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Robinson, changed my life with a single telephone call to Child Protective Services. I never found out why exactly he did it, I assume he had altruistic motives. A fourties-ish bottle-blonde woman named Dolly came to meet with me at school several weeks later, I took her for a librarian but she turned out to be a caseworker for CPS. She spent ten minutes asking me questions about my family life, scribbling notes on a powder blue legal pad, I wanted to see what she was writing but reading cursive upside-down is not one of my strong suites. Half an hour later I was being signed into Springhaven, a Phoenix shelter for “troubled girls.” Most of them were there for getting knocked up or running away from home. Thus began my six month sojourn into the seamy underworld of child-storing. Dickens would have had a field day.
That afternoon marked my introduction to government food. There is nothing like eating charity for lunch. A black woman named Deborah with oily skin and green contact lenses listed rules for me while spooning a bit of peanut butter from a white plastic jug the size of a mop bucket. First rule, no going into the kitchen unsupervised. She scraped green bits from a piece of wheat bread and indicated the padlocked cupboards and drawers; second rule, no handling the food, dishes or silverware without permission. Deborah slid the sandwich across the table to me along with a glass of water and a single sheet of paper towel folded into quarters. I ate nervously while she watched my face for danger signs. ¶ 1:08 AM
