bring down
the car, she studies the picture her mother left, which looks as if it was taken in
a photo booth. In it, Eva has dark recessed eyes, angry and scared, like an animal
encountered at night.
She crosses Central Park and drives north on Third Avenue. Beyond 100th Street, the
city changes, the surprise of a hill, the signs and voices all in Spanish. She parks
outside the building that houses the school, handing five dollars for watching the
car to Simon, the homeless man who, years ago, she tried to help get into a shelter
but who prefers his squat behind the steps of the bakery where every morning she buys
him a café con leche and a roll with melted cheese.
“Love, they have to take me out before anyone touch your car.” Simon makes a little
boxing move. It is already seventy degrees, but he is dressed in several layers of
clothes, one a hooded Harvard sweatshirt that was once hers.
When she first came to work at the school, twelve years ago, it was housed in the
basement of a church a block away. There were rats in the tiny yard where the children
played and peeling paint in the two classrooms. It took her a month to realize that
what she needed was a crash course in community politics and a grant writer. She invited
the city councilwoman and a friend who worked for the Ford Foundation to visit the
school. Minutes before they came, she opened the garbage cans in the courtyard so
the place stank and unscrewed two of the ceiling’s fluorescent lights. The city councilwoman
covered her nose and then told Caro about a nearby fire station that was being shut
down. The Ford Foundation friend offered to help Caro write the grants that led to
the station’s transformation into six light-filled classrooms with water tables and
sand tables and cozy book corners and an award-winning indoor playground in the former
fire truck garage.
Now, 120 children, ages three and four, attend the school. Hot lunches are served
family style. Because so few of the children have a pediatrician, Caro has organized
a liaison with Mount Sinai Hospital so that every week pediatric residents come to
the school. Vaccinations and flu shots are given on-site. Last year, Caro managed
to have the program extended to include the siblings of her little students. For five
years now, psych interns have run parenting groups for the mothers—groups that remained
empty until Caro thought to provide free coffee and doughnuts and to hire two college
students to watch the babies in tow.
Her father teases her, calling her East Harlem’s Jane Addams. In one of the many articles
that have been written about the school, a radical education professor from Teachers
College was quoted in a way that implied that the school is a Band-Aid in the community,
something politicians can point to and say, See how much we’re doing, when in fact
it is just a drop in the bucket.
“What knee-jerk baloney,” her mother responded. “It’s a line of reasoning that can
be used with any good deed. It reminds me of one of my patients who gets enraged when
her parents do something nice for her because it’s evidence contrary to her theory
about what brutes they are. You could make the same argument about my work. I treat
perhaps thirty-five different patients in a year. But if half those patients truly
change, who knows how many people they’ll touch.”
Her mother brushed her hair from her eyes. “Hard to accept that we can’t part the
seas or turn water into wine.”
12
Walking into the light of the airport, Eva seems only scared, a girl dressed in nappy
black pants and chunky boots with a fake leather jacket and an L.A. Lakers duffel
bag. She stares straight ahead so that Caro has to tap her on the shoulder to get
her attention.
“Eva? Are you Eva?”
The girl stands perfectly still. When Caro first heard that Eva came from the Amazon,
she imagined a hut surrounded by toucans
the car, she studies the picture her mother left, which looks as if it was taken in
a photo booth. In it, Eva has dark recessed eyes, angry and scared, like an animal
encountered at night.
She crosses Central Park and drives north on Third Avenue. Beyond 100th Street, the
city changes, the surprise of a hill, the signs and voices all in Spanish. She parks
outside the building that houses the school, handing five dollars for watching the
car to Simon, the homeless man who, years ago, she tried to help get into a shelter
but who prefers his squat behind the steps of the bakery where every morning she buys
him a café con leche and a roll with melted cheese.
“Love, they have to take me out before anyone touch your car.” Simon makes a little
boxing move. It is already seventy degrees, but he is dressed in several layers of
clothes, one a hooded Harvard sweatshirt that was once hers.
When she first came to work at the school, twelve years ago, it was housed in the
basement of a church a block away. There were rats in the tiny yard where the children
played and peeling paint in the two classrooms. It took her a month to realize that
what she needed was a crash course in community politics and a grant writer. She invited
the city councilwoman and a friend who worked for the Ford Foundation to visit the
school. Minutes before they came, she opened the garbage cans in the courtyard so
the place stank and unscrewed two of the ceiling’s fluorescent lights. The city councilwoman
covered her nose and then told Caro about a nearby fire station that was being shut
down. The Ford Foundation friend offered to help Caro write the grants that led to
the station’s transformation into six light-filled classrooms with water tables and
sand tables and cozy book corners and an award-winning indoor playground in the former
fire truck garage.
Now, 120 children, ages three and four, attend the school. Hot lunches are served
family style. Because so few of the children have a pediatrician, Caro has organized
a liaison with Mount Sinai Hospital so that every week pediatric residents come to
the school. Vaccinations and flu shots are given on-site. Last year, Caro managed
to have the program extended to include the siblings of her little students. For five
years now, psych interns have run parenting groups for the mothers—groups that remained
empty until Caro thought to provide free coffee and doughnuts and to hire two college
students to watch the babies in tow.
Her father teases her, calling her East Harlem’s Jane Addams. In one of the many articles
that have been written about the school, a radical education professor from Teachers
College was quoted in a way that implied that the school is a Band-Aid in the community,
something politicians can point to and say, See how much we’re doing, when in fact
it is just a drop in the bucket.
“What knee-jerk baloney,” her mother responded. “It’s a line of reasoning that can
be used with any good deed. It reminds me of one of my patients who gets enraged when
her parents do something nice for her because it’s evidence contrary to her theory
about what brutes they are. You could make the same argument about my work. I treat
perhaps thirty-five different patients in a year. But if half those patients truly
change, who knows how many people they’ll touch.”
Her mother brushed her hair from her eyes. “Hard to accept that we can’t part the
seas or turn water into wine.”
12
Walking into the light of the airport, Eva seems only scared, a girl dressed in nappy
black pants and chunky boots with a fake leather jacket and an L.A. Lakers duffel
bag. She stares straight ahead so that Caro has to tap her on the shoulder to get
her attention.
“Eva? Are you Eva?”
The girl stands perfectly still. When Caro first heard that Eva came from the Amazon,
she imagined a hut surrounded by toucans
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