27 January 2004 CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE by Todd Strasser, Simon & Schuster, April 2004, ISBN 0-689-84169-8
"Come says Jack let's knock him on the head
No says Guy let's buy him some bread"
--Maurice Sendak, WE ARE ALL IN THE DUMPS WITH JACK AND GUY (1993)
" 'I'm so gross! I'm disgusting! I can't stand it!' Rainbow laughed crazily as she pulled me down the sidewalk about a block from Canal Street.
" 'You look beautiful to me,' I said.
" 'Oh, Maybe, what would you know? You're even smellier and dirtier than me.'
" 'I am?' Even though I knew that all of us street kids were dirty and smelly, it still made me feel bad to hear Rainbow say it. That wasn't the way I wanted her to think of me.
" 'Aw, look, I hurt your feelings.' Rainbow stuck out her lower lip and pouted. 'I'm sorry, Maybe. But I'm dirty and smelly, too. We're the dirty and smelly twins!' She hooked her arm through mine and started to skip. I tried to keep up with her. It made me happy when she wanted to be with me. Then she let go and did a cartwheel right in the middle of the sidewalk. The regular people looked at her like she was psycho."
Each of them has some real or imagined story about how they got there. But here they are: a small tribe of street urchins hostage to the natural and human elements of a winter on the streets in Manhattan. The story is told by Maybe, a girl with a highly visible skin condition, vitiligo, who has been here since last summer.
" 'Exposure,' Officer Johnson said over his shoulder without stopping.
" 'To what?' I asked.
" 'To the cold,' Officer Johnson said as he pulled open the car door. 'To drugs, drink, disease, and hunger. Basically to life on the street. If you kids had any sense, you'd go home.'
" 'What if you don't have a home to go to?' Maggot asked.
" 'You've got no parents, brothers, sisters. aunts, uncles, relatives?' asked Officer Ryan.
" 'You think I'd be living like this if I did?' Maggot said."
I rode the school bus on field trips to Manhattan. By high school, the teacher would let us loose for a couple of hours after we'd taken the compulsory tour of the museum du jour. Thirty years later I can still recall that sample of being a kid off alone on a frigid winter day with slate gray skies beyond towering granite buildings and fierce winds ripping west to east down the streets, whipping up grit and garbage and probing its way inside my clothes.
"There's a thousand shades of white
and a thousand shades of black
But the same rule always applies
Smile pretty, and watch your back"
--Ani "Every State Line"
CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE provides a vivid portrait of being there all the time, on your own, on the street, in the filth of alleys and doorways, with the nightly fear of being preyed on and the daily tasks of survival.
"Cold wind ripping
down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying
by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes."
--Neil Young "Don't Let It Bring You Down"
As you could imagine this is an unforgiving environment where twenty-somethings are perceived as old and worn out and there are plenty of kids who don't make it:
"Country Club was lying in Piss Alley next to a Christmas tree someone had thrown out a window of the apartment building next door. The Christmas tree was lying on its side; Country Club lay on his back. His eyes were open. Glassy and dull. Like he was staring straight up to heaven. Sometimes on sunny days Country Club's eyes looked green. But on this cold gloomy day his eyes were as gray as the clouds overhead.
"Under a film of dirt Country Club's skin was pasty and almost green. He had a wispy light brown beard, thin so you could see through it to his jaw and chin. On his left cheekbone was a long, crusty brown scab. On his right cheek was a small black tattoo of a spider's web. His long, tangled brown hair was spread out on the ground, mixed in with the torn papers and candy wrappers and bent straws that littered the alley. Bits of paper and dirt and a single strand of silver Christmas tinsel clung to his beard. His arms were spread out. One hand turned up, the other turned down. His hips were twisted sideways, his legs bent at the knees like he was running.
"But he wasn't going nowhere."
Yet every time CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE threatens to totally veer toward the hopeless and morbid, we are reminded that these are kids. Real kids. Silly kids. Sensitive kids. Stubborn kids. Questioning kids:
" 'Are you serious?' the man asked, nodding at Maggot's 'Money for Maryjuana' sign.
" 'Why not?' Maggot answered. 'If the sign said, "Money for Food," would you believe it? Least I'm honest.'
" 'At least you ought to spell it right,' said the woman.
"Maggot turned the sign around and looked at it. 'I spelled "money" wrong?'
"The man smiled. 'He's got a sense of humor.'
" 'Not for long if I don't score some pot,' Maggot warned them."
A quick online search finds estimates from a few years ago of 12,000-20,000 homeless youth in New York City. Nearly two-thirds are black or Latino. A disproportionate share are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, because adolescents in those groups are routinely jettisoned by their families and are frequently unwelcome in their schools or in foster homes. Many homeless teens are children of the victims of the mid-1980s crack epidemic. A study found one-third of those street kids surveyed engaged in prostitution in order to obtain money. There is a high expectation among street kids that they will contract AIDS.
"Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
That's an easy thing to say,
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend that you can build them again."
--Simon & Garfunkel "Hazy Shade of Winter"
CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE is one of those books to grab me by the throat and slam me against the wall. Like Spaz from Rodman Philbrick's THE LAST BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE, Maybe's "defect" is her savior. That highly visible skin condition ironically leaves her as a less visible target than 2Moro, Rainbow, Tears, Jewel and so many other kids in her position, thus allowing her to be the perfect observer and narrator for the story.
Homeless teens have no voice, no vote, few choices, and zero power. By melding remnants of childhood joy and innocence with the bitter bleakness of life and death in filthy alleys and dumpsters, Todd Strasser has written a story that will be the root of nightmares, prolonged discussions and, hopefully, change.
Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
30 June 2004 A Discussion: Hero, or Poorly-Written Character?: Anthony the Librarian from CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE by Todd Strasser, Simon & Schuster, April 2004, ISBN 0-689-84169-8
In Mildred Taylor's THE LAND, after Digger Wallace murders Mitchell Thomas and shoots Paul Edward's fine horse, after Mr. Granger breaks his promise to give Paul Edward title to the forty acres that Paul Edward and Mitchell have spent two years clearing, and after every banker he seeks out has once again turned down Paul Edward's last desperate request for a loan so that he can fulfill the agreement with Mr.Hollenbeck to purchase the land of his dreams, Mr. Luke Sawyer offers to personally lend Paul Edward the necessary funds.
It is clear that all the other monied white men in that part of Mississippi have conspired to teach Paul Edward a lesson for daring to think that a person of color could achieve his (American) dream. While it is not stated anywhere in the book, we know that Luke Sawyer risks his good name, his business, and his life by offering the money to Paul Edward and, thereby, opposing all of those white men who are determined to keep Paul Edward from owning the Hollenbeck land.
Is Mr. Luke Sawyer, then, the hero that I strongly contend he is? Or is he a poorly-written character because it is unrealistic for a white Southern businessman in Reconstructed Mississippi to so radically defy the close-knit white economic and social order of that time and place?
CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE is Todd Strasser's new contemporary YA novel involving a group of adolescents living (and dying) on the streets of Manhattan. The story is told from the point of view of a girl named Maybe.
After Maybe watches so many of her fellow street kids die one by one from life on the streets, she becomes desperate to try and save her friend Tears. Tears is a twelve-year-old from Hundred, West Virginia who ran away from her mother and stepfather because her mother wouldn't believe that the stepfather was sexually abusing Tears, and the mother's letting the stepfather know of the accusations made things even worse. Tears had tried to go live with her grandparents in the same town, but her mother tells her that's impossible because the grandfather is suffering from Parkinson's. The grandparents clearly didn't know the extent to which Tears was suffering before she ran away to Manhattan.
During the story, Maybe catches the attention of Anthony the Librarian because Anthony and Maybe both have the same highly visible blotchy skin condition, vitiligo. Anthony gives Maybe some food and his own sweater when he first meets her, wet and shivering, at the library.
It is then Anthony to whom Maybe turns in her hour of desperation. And Anthony responds. Based on Maybe's sketchy information he is able to figure out the small town from which Tears departed, and through a librarian there is able to contact Tears's grandparents and get assurance that they, indeed, desperately want to take their granddaughter into their household.
Then Anthony takes Maybe and Tears to his own home, providing them an opportunity to get cleaned up and sleep, before renting a car and driving them down to Hundred, West Virginia to successfully reunite Tears with the grandparents.
During ALA which just concluded, both in committee meetings and at parties I attended, people who were familiar with my extremely high opinion of CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE let me know that a major flaw in the book was Anthony's behavior. I was told that such behavior was totally inappropriate and would immediately get him fired.
I have been reeling from these conversations, because Anthony is my hero. If you have not already read the book, perhaps I have not adequately described how inevitable Tears's demise is, if she continues to live on the street. Nor would you understand The System and the girls' circumstances in the same way that Maybe perceives them and which Anthony has the ability to similarly understand.
I found an opinion more like my own at the CSK Breakfast. Instigating a conversation while breaking bread with my tablemates yesterday morning, I heard phrases like "If you save just one kid..." and "It could be your kid..."
Anthony the Librarian is my hero. I think that now and then adolescents need such adult heroes in their literature and in their lives. I see Anthony as one of the strengths of CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE. And to questions of inappropriateness, is Anthony suspect merely because he is a male?
What do you think? Is Anthony a hero?
Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
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