Driver4

Dry Rain
By Tyler Driver

A little girl sits alone in an apartment. It’s 9:42 p.m. on a hot, muggy summer night. A thin, torn bed sheet stretched and nailed to the painted woodwork framing the living room window partially diffuses the determined penetration of the nearby streetlight. Save for the always-on television, the streetlight is the only sure thing in this girl’s life.

Six hours earlier her mother left to “meet up with some friends,” satisfied, perhaps even proud, that she made dinner for her child. The little girl said, “Thank you,” and added gleefully, “You got the kind shaped like dinosaurs! That’s my favorite!” But by the time the little girl is hungry, she scrapes out the pot of hard, pasty cheese sauce and macaroni into the garbage can and washes the pot. She pulls a big yellow cereal box down from the cupboard, foregoing breakfast next week for the gratification of something crunchy and sweet now. She opens the refrigerator door to get the milk, this time by the blaring light between her apartment and the one next door and the little bit of light from the television that washes the far wall in muted, jeweled tones of breathing color.

The little girl wiggles into the corner of the couch wedging herself close to the arm and just missing the bite of a broken spring that gets mentioned nearly everyday but that never gets fixed. The little girl sits in silent anticipation, absorbing without much effort the final ten minutes of a show that first aired four years before she was born. She gave up trying to laugh at this show a long time ago, but this channel is clearer than the others; rarely is there reason enough to change it. Finally the show is over and the mad scramble begins.

The little girl grabs her bowl and spoon and makes a hurried dash for the kitchen -- washed, dried, put away -- she heads for her bedroom. She’s back before the end of the second commercial. In her hand are the only connections she has to her father. She has three pictures of him but no memories. Her mother told her that he was “out in Texas somewhere, probably in prison.” The little girl has studied those pictures and memorized every nuance but still, if given the opportunity, she wants to be absolutely certain.

The last commercial is over and her anticipation is rewarded with images on the television of assailants and thieves, robbers and other bad boys subdued and cuffed. The reggae beat of the show’s theme song provides perfect context for the question, “…whatcha gonna do when they come for you.” The answer is always the same -- only the faces change.

Faces change features and color but never an emotion opposed to the intrinsic meaning of what it is to be despondent, arrested, and videotaped. Are there so many bad men that they will never get around to showing him? A little girl wants to know.

It doesn’t matter much to most people that according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there are nearly two million men incarcerated in this country. It doesn’t even matter much to this little girl, so affected by all that is criminally wrong with our society. It only matters that there might be one.

There is a word that describes this little girl; yet this word cannot really mean what it says. The word is “fatherless.” Census data reveals that there are over 33 million fatherless children in this country. Fatherless? That can’t be. But there can be “joyless.” There can’t be “blameless.. But there can be “hopeless.”

There is a little girl more alone than any little girl should be. And as long as this little girl never shows up on our TV we can ignore her. But she is out there all the same.

I know. I heard this child’s story from her mother, a crack addict making her eighth valiant effort to let go of the chains she has held onto for the better part of 12 years.

So what are you going to do?

I am sorry if that question caught you by surprise. Actually, I am not sorry in the least.

I tricked you -- again.

You thought this story was about a little girl. Maybe you were drawn to this article by a would-be clever title that, by now, you know is meaningless. You were probably hoping for a happy ending. Am I making too many presumptions? Well, let me make one more: Compared to the presumptions you’ve made since you began reading this article, we’re not close to being even.

Irony is meandering through the air like hot, cinnamon cider on the stove at Christmastime. (I just made another presumption about you that you may have missed. I used a device intended to bond us through similar feelings about similar experiences. I assumed you had good Christmases, complete with hot cider.) Are you, at least, a little bit irritated now? Despite our disdain being directed in opposite directions, what we are feeling is exactly the same. (I know I made another assumption; let’s call it even and quit counting.). You think I am an arrogant writer -- I think you’re an arrogant reader. You’re proud for whatever you did recently to make this a better world -- I am proud to tell you that it wasn’t enough.

Using Census data and the estimates of a report published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, your share of the 500 billion dollars spent in 2000 on untreated substance abuse for things like its impact on the costs of incarceration, emergency services, drug traffic control, insurance costs, etc., was $2,400, much of that to fight an unwinable war on drugs that the 2002 elections indicated the majority of voters want us to keep fighting.

But, you see, the people promoting this fight are using your own money to buy your vote -- you like hearing "lock’em-up" politicians talk all of that tough rhetoric, and you are willing to keep paying and voting to hear more. But as long as we confuse having a choice with having a chance, crack-whore mothers who want to be something better won’t be, simply because treatment and prevention don’t grab headlines or votes.

The disparity between logic and action is grievously seen in our own state where last year much more money was spent on dealing with the effects of substance abuse than was spent on transportation, Medicaid or higher education. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), over nine percent of Georgia’s budget was spent on the aftermath of substance abuse. A paltry $44 million was allocated for treatment, and no money was allocated through the Georgia Department of Human Resources Division of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse (MHMRSA) for prevention.

It’s clear that citizens of this state need to educate themselves about issues concerning substance abuse and, just as importantly, acquaint themselves with those suffering most directly from its effects. We need to keep in mind that issues related to public policy and the allocation of tax revenue ultimately come down to individual people, some who make heinous decisions to leave their young daughters home alone and some who are the little girls themselves.

Others, perhaps including you (I make no assumptions now), are less directly affected by these circumstances, but still, if given the opportunity, might see in such lives the commonality of our humanness, in all its misfortune and hope. On that day, when we’re able to see, we might find that all of us do, indeed, have a choice, and some of us even have a chance, and for many of us, it’s a chance to help. If you are reading this in a newspaper, you likely have a chance to make a difference; if you are sleeping under it, you likely don’t.

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