Why is it, you wonder, that everything you have to do, everywhere you have to go, seems to require a minimum 2 hour trip each way on multiple buses?
One of your jobs, the only one where you're an employee instead of an independent contractor, (big savings for companies- especially if their benefits package is decent, and if they didn't restrict employee status to management, they'd never be able to afford it) thankfully gives you 12 sick days and a week of paid vacation a year, so you're able to visit your son. It breaks your heart that you can't see him anymore behind those eyes, and if you could see him, what he has become - you can't really think about it too much, funny you always thought of yourself as a strong person, you never thought you'd be able to survive the kind of things you have learned to live with. Milestones, like applying for food stamps, when you finally realize that no matter how you slice it, you just can't afford enough luncheon meat, Chef Boy Ar Dee, milk, and much less at convenience store prices.
You've also learned that your monthly allotment of stamps will only buy food for about a week, and that you can't afford to spend all the stamps on food. You have to sell some for 50 cents on the dollar, for the non-food items like toilet paper, soap, aspirin.
You lived through the first time you saw the look in the eyes of the well-dressed woman in the next line, as she ordered her 20 dollars on pump 4 and glanced over at you, using your stamps, and you lived through the pain of your wife's tooth that went bad, and the humiliation of asking your old dentist for help, or asking his receptionist for help, rather; she gave you the name of an indigent clinic. Sarah really couldn't stand the pain any more, and you learned that in your state, the only procedure available for adults without funds is extraction.
A milestone. Sarah was lucky, she kept her job, although she was moved to the stock room. With a missing front tooth, she can't wait on customers any more. It's a policy you both understand, after all it's a business. But you had both let yourselves get carried away with this notion that with her exceptional knowledge of electronics and her personality, her smile that would light up the world, maybe one day she'd be made supervisor...
You know you can't really know what it's like for her, taking a sick day of her second shift every six months for the ride out to Planned Parenthood, waiting in the auditorium - she says that's the only thing you can call it, although technically it IS a waiting room, sitting there on an unpadded folding aluminum chair among the teenagers, some with their mothers, almost all with squalling infants and toddlers with runny noses, like all rooms full of poor, and like all rooms full of poor, smelling of urine.
She wouldn't meet your eyes the day that she took your daughter with her, and if there's one thing you're good at, it's always looking for the best in any situation, as your bus took you to your first shift, you fought back your tears with the thought that neither of you ever got to spend time with Caitlin any more, and at least mother and daughter would get a day together.
A part of you still clings to the thought that all of this is just temporary, although it was a hard thought to cling to that first night that the three of you huddled together around your cart, quite literally having no idea where to go.
Your co-worker Angela may have saved your life. Sure, she said, there are shelters, but you don't want to go there. For one thing, you'll have to split up. You'll go to one, Cat and Sarah will go to one across town. You have to be in line by 6 to have a chance at a cot, so that would mean each of you giving up a shift of work, you can't take your cart, and whatever you take in a bag you might as well just kiss it good-bye.
Angela showed you which dumpster had the best selection of boxes and packing materials, and walked with you, cart piled high, to the place, behind the fences and pilings of the highway cloverleaf. You are surprised that the newspapers and bubble wrap really do help keep the wind out. Angela tells you you'll have to find your own place to wash up in the morning, though, she seems ashamed about asking you to please not use hers, the Quik Trip people might start to notice, and you realize that Angela, too, lived differently, once.
Your new neighbors are impressed that both you and Sarah have managed to hang onto your jobs this long, and sympathetic about the loss of food stamps, which while not enough, were still something, but of course, without an address...
And now Sarah is late. Very late. Nauseous in the morning, tender breasts late. No need for you to take a sick shift for the bus out to the strip mall with the drugstore to steal an EPT test. (Yes, you have become a thief. Sometimes it is necessary).
Sarah needs to take a sick shift and go to the indigent clinic, but you both just took one to visit your son last week, and she doesn't want to risk taking another one so soon. Especaially since something like a routine pre-natal visit is a pink ticket, which can mean coming back every day, for three or four days, before she actually gets seen by anyone.
Her W-2 job does have a catastrophic hospitalization policy, pays 80% of everything beginning on day 7 of consecutive in-patient care, even if it's a complication of pregnancy. Sarah doesn't even have to pay for the insurance, it is 100 per cent employer-provided.
This is not a good time for a pregnancy, and although you had both hoped to have more kids one day, you both feel that under the circumstances, the best choice is to terminate. Sarah somehow manages to sneak some phone calls from her job, she knows there are resources for women in this kind of situation, and she soon learns that they do not include free abortions, although if she carries the pregnancy to term, the indigent clinic will provide free pre-natal care (provided she has 3 or 4 free days a month to wait for it), delivery, a 12 hour post-partum observation period, and a 6 week checkup.
You haven't really seen anyone from your old life since you left the $1200 apartment. It had gotten to be an uncomfortable situation, even before that, and now you rack your brains. It's not that you didn't have friends, just that for the ones who didn't get downsized, once you had been out for a while, it was as embarrassing for them as for you, and those that did have either moved in with relatives out of state, or they could be in the same boat you are, and neither of you has been anxious to see people you used to work out and eat brunch with pushing a shopping cart around and living under the expressway.
Sarah does have a cousin she hasn't seen since college, a few Christmas cards over the years, she thinks she remembers her getting a pretty good job at a Loral office, and as the days pass, and nobody else comes to mind, she tracks her down and makes the call.
You never forget that you have a lot of advantages that most people in your situation don't have, like even one relative who is "rich" enough to give Sarah the thousand dollars. A thousand dollars. That used to be your weekly paycheck, gross at least. Today even a hundred dollars might as well be ten billion.
Sarah has never been the weepy type, and it's disorienting to see her after she talks to her cousin. You know that you are a very lucky couple to be able to get out of at least this latest mess, and you are grateful to Sarah's cousin. She will wire the money to an office where you can pick it up. All you can do is hold Sarah, hope Cat won't wake up and see her mom like this, and tell your wife over and over again that it is not her fault, and that even with all the problems you have, the cousin is wrong. Making love is not irresponsible behavior.
Coming soon - part 5: OK if you really can't get a better job, Why don't you just get on welfare? Then you'd get a free apartment, wouldn't you?
Here are links to the first 3 for those who haven't read them, and want to.
Part 1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=582245Part 2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=582475Part 3
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=582720
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