This is fiction, of course, but it's about a reality for the poor and working people of my city:
Starasia is a very good girl. She is eight years old. She lives with her mother in the projects. Starasia's mother's name is Jessica and Jessica works at a McDonald's that has replaced a hospital cafeteria in The Bronx.
Starasia gets up every morning and takes a shower and brushes her teeth. Starasia puts on the school uniform her mother has laid out for her before she goes to sleep. Starasia's mother fixes her breakfast and walks with her across the street to her school. Jessica catches the D train and goes to work. She comes home at six thirty every day.
Starasia is, like I told you, a very good girl. Her mother told her that she could watch cartoons when she comes home for half an hour and Starasia usually does just this, and then she does her homework and cleans her room, because she knows that she and mom are a team. Starasia heats up some ravioli or spaghetti in the micro wave, eats it and drinks a glass of milk. Then she does her homework. I was a city kid like Starasia, only not such a good kid, but for a while both my parents had jobs and I was, like Starasia, a latchkey kid. Millions of us were, and millions of them are.
This is how Starasia has been doing things since September, when she got into the third grade. Last year mom's best friend Gloria, who lived across the hallway, would take Starasia into her home until mommy got home, but Gloria's kid Humberto was taken by ACS because Gloria tested positive for marijuana at the municipal hospital and Humberto was a preemie. Gloria sort of lost her mind and her apartment soon after that.
So now Starasia takes are of herself till mommy gets home.
Alfred is the manager of the McDonald's where Jessica works. He likes Jessica. He thinks she is very pretty. Alfred likes pretty women. Jessica does not like Alfred. She does not want to sleep with him.
One day Alfred told Jessica that she would be very sorry if she did not come home with him. Jessica told him to leave her alone.
That evening, while Jessica was coming home on the D train, Alfred called 911 to report that Jessica's six year old child, name unknown, is home alone without supervision.
The police came and knocked on the door. Starasia looked through the peephole, (her big mistake) , and went back to her bedroom. Officer Sonia Ortiz saw the peephole open for a second and told her partner, Jimmy McMahon, that the kid was home. McMahon took his nightstick and started pounding on the door very hard. Staraisa was very scared, but her mother had told her not to open the door for anyone.
McMahon picked up his pace and now the door had dents in it. "Open up or we'll break it down!" McMahon shouted. Neighbors came to the hallway to see what the commotion was about.
Starasia called mommy on her cell phone and got the words about leaving a message. The pounding kept up.
There was a problem on the D Train that evening. A man on the train in front of Jessica's had thrown up and fainted and the train was being held at the station in front 'till the cops and EMT's got there.
Ms. Hendricks, the downstairs neighbor who Jessica called "the quiet lady" because she would come knocking on the door whenever mommy would listen to music on the weekend and tell her to make it lower, and because when Starasia had her friend Tania from school visit on a playdate on no school nights she'd be banging on the door saying that the kids are too loud. The quiet lady asked Ortiz and McMahon what the problem was. She told them that Starasia's mom was always making noise and letting Starasia run wild.
The quiet lady came to the peephole and McMahon stopped for a minute. With the quiet, Starasia came back to the peephole. The quiet lady was there and she told Starasia to open the door because the police were going to break it down if she didn't and that she knew that mommy would say it's okay because if the police break down the door the bad people would come inside at night.
Starasia called her mom one more time and there still wasn't an answer. Starasia opened the door.
When Jessica got off the train and out of the subway station it was dark and her pager went off. She heard the messages from Starasia, that the police were knocking on the door and that they said they would break it down.
Jessica ran home and took the stairway the ten floors because the lobby was packed with people waiting for the one elevator that works.
Starasia wasn't there and there was a notice on the door saying the police had taken her into protective custody.
Jessica got to the precinct a few minutes later. The sergeant said that her kid wasn't there, that she should try at the housing cops stationhouse a mile away.
When Jessica got to the housing cops stationhouse she was put into the holding pen before she could even see Starasia, who was in a room with Ortiz and McMahon. Ortiz was typing out the child abuse report and McMahon was calling up the hotline. One of the cops ordered a cheeseburger for Starasia from the Burger King across the Avenue. The police were very nice to Starasia. They also gave her some Pepsi and told her what a good kid she is.
Two hours later a nice man called the stationhouse from the child welfare office and he asked to speak with Starasia. Star told him that mommy is a good mother. She told him that mommy doesn't give her pow pow. She told him that she knows how to microwave ravioli and that she never opens the door for anyone. The man told Star that he would call aunt Naisha if he could get her telephone number.
Star watched and listened while Oritz got on the telephone with the man. Officer Ortiz was telling the man that he could not talk with Jessica. She said that she would ask Jessica for Naisha's telephone number. Star watched as Ortiz came back from the holding pen. She heard Ortiz tell the man that Jessica didn't remember Naisha's telephone number, that it was on her cell phone and that the cell phone was already vouchered and that she couldn't give it to Jessica.
Two nice policemen brought Starasia to a pretty clean building in the city. Nice people asked Starasia a lot of nice questions and let Star sleep in a very nice bed. But Starasia couldn't sleep.
Read Stop Locking Up Good Parents!
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