Wednesday, Oct. 05, 2005
I hope all teacher workdays aren't like this this year.
I had an insane day.
And tonight�s SVU episode didn�t help. I was on the edge of my seat on the verge of tears. Way too emotional.
Anyway.
After about an hour and a half at work, I get a phone call from one of my kids, RJ. She�s looking for her best friend�s brother, who is supposedly at the Museum. I tell her that I hadn�t seen him all day and ask why she�s looking for him. Apparently, his sister, Di, had an accident and needed to talk to him.
I asked what the accident was. All RJ would tell me was that Di had gotten burned boiling a pot of water. Now, I probably wouldn�t have thought anything else about it except that RJ started sobbing on the phone.
RJ is one of the most level-headed kids in our program. She�s always in control of everything. So anytime she�s upset or freaking out about something, we know it�s serious; unlike the other kids who are always throwing a fit over the silliest things.
Di refused to call her parents and I didn�t know how serious this �accident� was, so my coworker, Nande, and I decided to drive other. Before we left, we called Di and asked her what happened and she said that she was fine and that her skin was just peeling a little. But we told her we were coming over anyway. We raided the first aid boxes for burn gel and gauze and went on our way.
Once we got to the house, Di kept insisting that she was fine and that she spoke to her brother who told her not to worry about it.
Now, her brother, T, is a 16 year old going on 45. He thinks he knows everything there is to know in the world. He knows more than his teachers, us, and his parents. He knows more than God. I�ve noticed the dynamics of the family, and they all treat his word as definitive. Even the parents. Whatever T says, goes.
T told Di that she had to cover her burns in Vaseline and that she didn�t need to go to a doctor. He hadn�t even seen the burn, but he knew she didn�t need no doctor because he�s the expert and apparently the family�s financial advisor.
First of all, you NEVER put Vaseline on a burn where the skin has come off or there are blisters. It promotes bacteria growth, which is the last thing someone needs.
We looked at Di�s burns and they were bad.
Apparently, she grabbed the handle of a hot pot without any protection and she jumped and dropped the pot at the same time. The water must have flown up out of the pot and landed on her arm and the back of neck and shoulder. She�s not really too sure because she was shocked. But that�s what I think happened based on what she told us.
Regardless, her burns were bad. She had large patches of skin missing in some areas and huge blisters/boils in other areas. It was horrible. They were definitely second degree burns.
Nande and I went into EMT mode and we cleaned the burns the best we could, applied the burn gel, and covered it with gauze.
Then we made Di call her dad. She didn�t want her parents to know, but there was no way we could keep this a secret because she needed to have it checked out by doctors.
Her dad is no picnic. And she barely talks to him even though they live in the same house. The got into a fight over the phone because he wouldn�t listen to her, so she hung up on him. We called him back and told him he needed to come home. When he got there, he was not too happy. One, I think he was pissed off that Di called us before she called him. But can you blame her. She doesn�t feel comfortable talking to him because, Two, he made it seem like she was doing something she wasn�t supposed to be doing or that she was an idiot for getting herself burned.
I felt bad for her because I knew that�s why she didn�t call him and he acted exactly how she expected him to. Once he arrived, we told him what happened, then returned to work. That was all we could do.
Emergency #1 taken care of.
Around 3:45, I receive another phone call at my desk. As one of our students walked from the bus stop to her job, a job that is through the Museum, she was robbed. She was in the middle of a bad neighborhood, hysterical, and we were asked if someone could go over there and make sure that she was alright.
Yaya was in the middle of Liberty City, one of the roughest cities in Miami (where Tr!ck Daddy and Tr!na are from if you�ve heard one of their songs).
We were told that she was on 52nd St, when she was really on 62nd St. So we wasted like 15 minutes looking for her in the wrong area.
When we finally found her, it was already 4:30. She was inside a mini carniceria (like a deli/corner store). We went in and got her and she was in tears.
Yaya is about 4�11�. A tiny little 16 year old. And earlier that day at the Museum, she told us that her family had just been evicted from their house the day before. Not to mention that her mom is insane.
So she was already dealing with a lot. This was the straw that broke the camels back. Yaya is one of those kids that no matter what�s going wrong I her life, she always keeps a good mood and doesn�t let other people see her upset.
The first thing she said when she came out was that bad things always happen to her. Then she told us what happened.
She got off her bus and started walking the 2-3 blocks to the park where she works. Two boys started walking a few feet behind her, but she didn�t think anything of it. Then the boys were walking along side her, one and each side. One grabbed her while the other one grabbed her gold chain and ripped it off her neck.
She was wearing a huge diamond ring on her chain (I�d even noticed it earlier that day), and when the chain broke, the ring fell off and she caught it in her hand. The boy who grabbed the chain, but his hand in his pants as if he was reaching for the gun and told her to give him the ring or else. She handed it over and they started to walk away like nothing had happened.
She turned and started to run to the corner where the carniceria was, and when the boys saw where she was going, they took off in the other direction and rounded the corner.
The butchers at the carniceria, called the cops for her and let her stay inside. That was at 3:30.
The cops didn�t show up until 5:30.
When Nande and I got there, the mom, who had arrived a couple minutes before we did, was on the phone trying to get the cops over there. She wasn�t too successful, mostly because she was yelling and being hysterical, which is understandable under the circumstances. And when a cop finally showed up, he sat in his car and spoke on his cell phone for about 2 minutes before he got out, which really sent her over the edge.
Now, this entire situation really pissed me off because I know that if this had happened in my neighborhood or in one of the upper class Hispanic or White neighborhoods, the cops would have been there in less than 20 minutes.
But because this was Liberty City, which is about 98% black and 100% poor, they couldn�t care less. And that cop on his cell phone just added another insult. Then they tried to justify their lateness with, first that she hadn�t called when she said she did, and then second, when the dispatcher confirmed the time, that it was coded as a rape (or as the cop said, �a wape�) instead of a robbery. Now if it was truly a rape, I shudder to think that they would leave a just-raped young girl out there for that long. Fucking bastards.
The mom is pissed and she�s causing a scene. And that fucking asshole cop starts arguing with her instead of dealing with the situation. I had to pull him aside and ask him to just stop, because he was making it worse and wasting time. I explained to him that the mom was upset, she was a parent, that�s how parents get when their children are compromised. He didn�t get it, but I told him to just ignore the mom for the time being and to deal with Yaya.
The got her statement and the descriptions of the thieves and that was it. Then they lectured Yaya about how she shouldn�t be upset because things like that happen all the time, especially in �this area� and that they were just material things.
This is true, but she wasn�t upset about her fucking jewelry. She was upset because she was fucking violated in the middle of the day, no one did anything about it, and the popo took their sweet ass time getting out there.
I would have been pissed. And if it had been me, I would have raised holy hell. The only reason I didn�t was because Yaya was already so upset, and her mom, who even after we told her she was making it worse, continued to demand that the police pay for the jewelry since they took so long to show up, was making her feel worse. Plus, her mom was saying things to her like, �this is your fault� and �I told you not to wear jewelry� and �I told you to stay home today� etc. And after a while her mom was more concerned with being the center of attention than making sure everything was taken care of. It was sad.
On a lighter note though, when we were trying to take Yaya and her mom home, her mom didn�t want to leave until they went back to the spot where it happened so that they could place peppers there in an attempt to cast a voodoo spell on the perpetrators.
The whole day was just so emotionally draining because these kids go through so much. It�s bad enough that they have to deal with bad schools and being poor and all that other stuff, but then you throw in parents who just don�t give a shit or who can�t see past their own problems to take care of their kids, and we wonder why these kids have no motivation to achieve anything.
I was almost in tears when Yaya started saying that her mom doesn�t do anything for her; she pays all her own bills, and buys all her personal things and clothes, and makes A�s and B�s. Her mom hasn�t even asked to see a report card or progress report in years. She does everything for herself. And I�m pretty sure she helps to pay most of the household bills as well. The worst part was when she said �I can�t live like this anymore. I just can�t.�
To hear someone who is basically a child say something like that is so heartbreaking. And all we can do is try to be there for them and listen to them when they need someone to talk to.
Sometimes it just doesn�t seem to be enough.
summerroll at 1:09 a.m.