If only Zooey were an octopus, her life would be so much easier. It’s bad enough having to handle seventh grade where she is routinely bullied by the rich kids. She also has to take care of her three young siblings—one a baby—feeding them, getting two of them off to Head Start and picking them up from the bus afterwards. Then she must watch them all until their mom gets off work at the pizza parlor, and even then fill in for her tired mother.
If she were an octopus, though, she’d have eight arms to handle all these things at once. She’d be able to change her color and appearance to blend into any environment and become invisible. She’d be safe.
At least her mother’s new boyfriend Lenny lets them all live in his nice trailer, but he’s a neat freak who is constantly criticising their mother and demanding silence from the children. Zoey’s managed to make one friend from school, Fuchsia, mostly because no one wanted to be friends with either of them.
Why? Because they are poor.
Zoey takes the same bus as Silas who also lives in the trailer park. His strategy for avoiding the bullies is complete silence from the moment he leaves the trailer he and his father share until the moment he returns.
One teacher seems to recognise what Zoey, who can rarely get around to completing any schoolwork, is going through. Ms. Rochambeau encourages her to join the Debate Club that meets after school. Just what she needs: one more responsibility!
There are many children like Zoey in this country, trying hard to hold their families together in the face of poverty, having to bear adult responsibilities and fears on top of the usual adolescent problems.
It’s hard for someone who hasn’t been there to understand how impossible the lives of the working poor can be. Not only does Zoey not have trendy clothes, but there often isn’t enough money for the laundromat. There’s never enough time to do her homework because she has to fix dinner and keep the children silent so as not to set off Lenny or his perpetually angry father who often comes over to watch television.
In this Young Adult (YA) novel, Ann Braden captures the voice and attitudes of a seventh grader like Zoey. Plus the author has endowed her teenaged protagonist with a determination and persistence that Zoey herself probably wouldn’t recognise as courage.
Most of all, Braden has created an accurate portrait of the kind of lives many children and teens—and their parents—lead. She understands the despair and hopelessness of those who simply cannot make enough to get by, much less prosper. I wrote about this hopelessness in my memoir Innocent: Confessions of a Welfare Mother.
It’s common in the U.S. to blame poor people themselves for their plight—declaring that “They’re just lazy” or “They made bad choices”—instead of blaming the societal structures that keep them there, like low wages and lack of affordable housing, healthcare, childcare, etc.
This blaming-the-victim attitude is a leftover from the Puritans who settled in the northern colonies between 1630 and 1643. The Puritans believed poverty was a sin, and that poisonous lie continues to infect U.S. culture almost 400 years later.
The truth is that even with two jobs, many families today don’t make enough to meet their basic needs. I know a couple, both elementary school teachers with no children, who recently looked up their state’s Basic Needs Budget and discovered that even their combined incomes fell short.
The it’s-their-own-fault attitude is also an artifact of the misogyny rampant in the U.S. culture. There are those who believe a woman without a man to support her is expendable. As one fellow welfare mother said to me, “They would kill us if they could.” Well, they’re working on that now, cutting valuable programs that help the poor survive.
There’s plenty of suspense in Zoey’s story. How bad will life in Lenny’s trailer get? Can Zoey protect her family? Will she discover that she has more power than she knows? Perhaps this is a timely message for all of us right now: Let’s reasses our own power.
I highly recommend this story. Ann Braden recently delivered a powerful presentation at the Brattleboro Literary Festival. The video hasn’t been posted to the Brattleboro Literary Festival YouTube channel yet, but I’ll come back and add the link when it’s available.
Have you read a YA story recently that you can recommend?