The woman whose check did not come is on disability. (There’s a lot of that here.) That is the check she was expecting, which did not come, for . . . some reason. But whatever her disability is, it does not appear to be the worst of her problems. She has a daughter and a man in her life (it is not clear whether he is her husband or the girl’s father or both or neither), and they are obliged to maintain two separate households, “because of the domestic . . . event . . . that happened,” she explains.
The teacher in me cannot help but notice that when it comes time to explain the facts of the case, the people in this courtroom rarely appear as the subjects in their own sentences. A “domestic event” just “happened,” and now the man in her life cannot reside under the same roof as her daughter — or Child Protective Services will take that daughter away. Which means that after her eviction (which is never seriously in doubt) she cannot rely on the person upon whom most people in her situation instinctively would rely.
She is not the only person whose check didn’t come. The passivity and subjectlessness of these narratives is striking, and strikingly consistent. Domestic events happen. Checks come or don’t come. (Mostly they don’t.) Husbands are sent to jail, children are taken away by the clipboard-toting minions of Authority, disease descends. The money isn’t there. And, in the end, they are evicted. Bad things just happen, and, today, I am the bad thing that is just happening to one of these luckless and unhappy children of God. I am eviction, I am CPS, I am the check that didn’t come. I am diabetic amputation. I am cancer.
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