FIELD-WORKER: Who called DHS?
JANE: I did. I got tired of it. Halima was having an asthma attack and she don’t come back for four hours. I got tired of it. I called DHS six or seven times that day. I got tired of my kids watching them. Lenny and Lori and Harold and Alexis and Guion and Runako. They should have their own (hesitates) should have their own childhood. She’d go off and leave them.
The children’s physical safety is also of importance to Ms. McAllister. For example, at Halloween, she took the children trick or treating and she restricted them to eating only packaged candy; they were not allowed to eat “candy corn, . . . cookies, oranges, and apples.” Also, as is noted later in the chapter, she instructs the younger children to steer clear of adults in the housing project who “have problems” and scolds teenaged Lori for spending time with the “wrong kind” of people. She extends a similarly protective stance toward the field-workers. She remarks to me casually:
I told the drug dealer, “That [field-worker] is doing a study of my son. I want you to not mess with him or I’m going to come down.”8
Ms. McAllister is proud of her high school diploma, and she conveys to the children her expectation that they will pass each grade. Alexis reports:
She says if you didn’t pass you’ll be on punishment for the whole summer. And my eyes go wide opened, like this (demonstrates). I’d be scared when I give her my report card. And she says—’cause I didn’t see it yet—and she said, “You didn’t pass.” And I was scared. I said, “Let me see!” And I looked at my report card, and I said, “I passed.”
Alexis also emphasizes her mother’s qualities:
My family is not nasty. Because my mom, I mean, this guy that threw a bottle in the street and it was rolling and the car almost got a flat tire. So my mom told me to push the glass over on the curb. And he said—the guy said, “Look at her, she’s cleaning up. She’s cleaning up the glass.” Cuz my mom is clean like that.
Similarly, Harold appears proud that his mother has the key to the sprinkler cap for the fire hydrant. Overall, Ms. McAllister is seen by family members and neighbors as a capable mother and a good citizen.
THE LANGUAGE OF DAILY LIFE:
KEEPING THINGS SHORT AND SIMPLE
Life in the McAllister household, as in the other poor and working-class families we observed, does not revolve around extended verbal discussions. The amount of talking in these homes varies, but overall, it is considerably less than in the middle-class homes.9 Sentences tend to be shorter, words simpler, and negotiations infrequent, and word play of the kind we observed with the Tallingers and Williamses is almost nonexistent.10 This does not mean that poor and working-class families consider conversation unimportant. McAllister family members talk about relatives and friends, tell jokes, and make comments about what is on television—but they do so intermittently. Short remarks punctuate comfortable silences. Sometimes speech is bypassed altogether in favor of body language—nods, smiles, and eye contact. Ms. McAllister typically is brief and direct in her own remarks, and she does not try to draw her children out or seek their opinions. In most settings, the children are free to speak, but they are not usually specifically encouraged to do so. The overall effect is that language serves as a practical conduit of daily life, not as a tool for cultivating reasoning skills or a resource to plumb for ways to express feelings or ideas.11
Around the house, the children frequently discuss money among themselves. They look at newspaper ads and comment on the prices of various things. They talk about who gave them money (for example, as when a neighbor gave Runako five dollars for escorting her to the bank’s ATM). The serious financial hardships the McAllisters contend with make all family members sensitive to the exact price of items, as well as where to find a bargain:
Jane hands Harold and Alexis each a bag of caramel corn, which they open soon afterward. She scolds, “Why you opening those things?” They don’t answer. Somehow the price of the caramel corn comes up. Jane says she got them on sale at a gas station up the hill—two bags for a dollar, when usually they cost fifty-nine cents each.12
Interspersed with this sort of intermittent talk are adult-issued directives. Children are told to do certain things (e.g., shower, take out the garbage) and not to do others (e.g., curse, talk back). Ms. McAllister uses one-word directives to coordinate the use of the single bathroom. There are almost always at least four children in the apartment and often seven, plus Ms. McAllister and other adults. Ms. McAllister sends the children to wash up by pointing to a child, saying, “Bathroom,” and handing him or her a washcloth. Wordlessly, the designated child gets up and goes to the bathroom to take a shower.
Children usually do what adults ask of them. We did not observe whining or protests, even when adults assign time-consuming tasks, such as the hour-long process of hair-braiding, which Lori is told to do for the four-year-old daughter of Aunt Dara’s friend Charmaine:
Someone tells Lori, “Go do [Tyneshia’s] hair for camp.” Without saying anything, Lori gets up and goes inside and takes the little girl with her. They head for the couch near the television; Lori sits on the couch and the girl sits on the floor. [Tyneshia] sits quietly for about an hour, with her head tilted, while Lori carefully does a multitude of braids.
Lori’s silent obedience is typical. Generally, children perform requests without comment. For example, at dinner one night, after Harold complains he doesn’t like spinach, his mother directs him to finish it anyway:
Mom yells (loudly) at him to eat: “EAT! FINISH THE SPINACH!” (No response. Harold is at the table, dawdling.) Guion and Runako and Alexis finish eating and leave. I finish with Harold; he eats his spinach. He leaves all his yams.
Perhaps because of the expectation that children will do as directed, adults do not routinely offer explanations for directives; periodically, though, the rationale is interwoven with the order itself:
Jane and Runako walk slightly in front of me. I’m in between the two, but Runako keeps curving in front of me. Jane scolds him: “Runako! Walk straight! Don’t get in her way!” He laughs and moves over, then says something about how his friends always get on him for walking crooked. Shortly, he moves in front of me again. This time, Jane snaps: “Runako! Cut that out!” He looks startled (his eyebrows shoot up, and he has a guilty-looking smile).
Runako is not consciously disobeying his aunt—he just lets his attention wander. Sometimes, contravening an adult’s directive is a more deliberate decision. Harold speaks up when he feels strongly about something. He voices his objections economically but clearly. Discussions that in the Williamses’ home might unfold over several minutes or more are raised and resolved very quickly, as the following example shows. Here, Harold, his father, and I are shopping for items Harold needs for Bible camp.
Harold picks up a plain blue [beach towel] in the bottom rack. He holds it up. His dad says, “You want a plain one?” Harold nods. His dad takes the towel and puts it in the basket. His dad then wanders down an aisle . . . He then picks up a peach [towel] set with an off-white, satin appliquéd duck on it and looks at it. He says, “These come [in a set] but they don’t have a big towel.” (Mr. McAllister seems to think this is a better buy.)
Harold firmly rejects the peach towel set:
Harold takes a step down the aisle and looks at the [towel set] and then firmly shakes his head. “Them girl colors,” he says. His dad picks the set up and raises it, suggesting that Harold is wrong and should get it. He looks at it and looks at Harold. His dad seems (nonverbally) to be protesting mildly but is smiling, too. Harold does not seem to think it is funny. He shakes his head again and says decisively, “Girl colors.” His dad smiles . . . [but] seems unsure of what to do next. He walks around and looks at what is in the cart and picks up the blue towel again. [He] unfolds the blue towel, and I offer to help him by extending my arm; we unfold it completely. It is about five feet long. Harold shakes his head; he says, “It big.”