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Fifty-three year old Rhonda was a high school history teacher. Her school district decided to cut costs by increasing class size and laying off teachers using their new “first hired first fired” policy. With just three years to go until she qualified for a pension and retirement health insurance, Rhonda thought that had she planned ahead for her future. Rhonda thought wrong.
Rhonda has two kids. Her daughter, Sarah is also in trouble. Her banking job was outsourced to India. As she struggled to make payments on her house, she let other bills slide---until the day they tried to cut off her electricity during a heat wave when the highs were 110. Panicked, she wrote a check for the outstanding bill, and then she scrambled to find money to cover the check. Sarah was not fast enough. Her “hot” check was sent to the District Attorney. And, because there was a new private jail in her city that was paid by the head, the court sentenced her to a year. Rhonda now has a job---of a sort. Her job is to sit in jail all day, so that a businessman can make a tidy profit protecting society from this “menace.”
Rhonda is now raising Sarah’s two children, until their mom gets out of jail. She has help with the babysitting. Her son, Justin has bipolar disorder. He has tried to kill himself twice and occasionally he threatens the neighbors. When Rhonda tried to get mental health care for her son, she was told to call the police. The criminal justice system would see that he got the care he needed. Rhonda knows about the criminal justice system. She prefers to take care of her son as best she can at home.
Rhonda has another grandchild, Justin’s son by his former girlfriend, Caitlin. Caitlin’s school district spent millions providing its students with an “abstinence only” sex education program which was developed and sold by the brother of the state governor. Caitlin was taught that only “sluts” plan to have sex, so she had unplanned sex, instead. Caitlan’s daughter, Alexis, is three. Caitlan is afraid to leave her child with Justin, so she takes Alexis with her as she makes the rounds of employers looking for one that offers child care. So far, she had had no luck. She can not rely on her own family. Her parents were killed by a drunk driver who had five other DUI convictions but who never spent a day in jail until he committed homicide. That was back before the jail was privatized.
The drunk driver, Henry who ran over Caitlin’s parents also has children---three of them---by his common law wife, Juanita. Though Juanita’s three kids were born in the U.S.A. and their father is a citizen, Juanita is undocumented. She has heard that if she tries to get the kids enrolled in Medicaid, so they will have health insurance, the government will deport her, and then the kids will have no one to take care of them. Juanita works as a janitor for a firm contracted to clean office buildings---including the headquarters of a big health insurance company. The firm has invested millions in the art that hangs in the halls of the CEO’s private office. The executives are given expensive cars to drive. Juanita once tried to apply for health insurance through that company. When they found out that her youngest occasionally has asthma attacks, triggered by air pollution, her request was denied. Her children get their “health care” through the emergency room of the local charity hospital. She typically has to wait ten hours to be seen, so she takes them at night, so that she will not miss work. Juanita has not seen a doctor for herself since her last baby was born. She bleeds about fifteen days out of each month. She does not know it yet, but her fatigue is a sign of anemia. By the time she collapses at work and is rushed to the hospital, her blood counts will be dangerously low, and she will have to get a transfusion. The ambulance and hospital bill will total seven thousand dollars. She will be told to follow up with a gynecologist and she will be given the name of a doctor. Unfortunately, that doctor will demand two hundred dollars cash for the first visit---and she does not have that kind of money lying around. Six months later, when she is back at the emergency room for the same problem, the ward clerk will roll her eyes when Juanita admits that she did not see the gynecologist as recommended. Juanita will be too embarrassed to say that she did not have the money.
The ward clerk at the county hospital has her own problems. Patrice is trying to take care of her elderly mother while raising two children and working two full time jobs. Patrice’s mom gets Medicare and Social Security, but these do not cover her medical expenses, which are huge, and they do not pay Patrice for all the time she has had to miss from work driving her mother back and forth to doctor’s visits. Someone once suggested that Patrice put her mother in a nursing home, but she refuses. She believes that family should take care of family.
Patrice’s mother, Ruby is grateful for her daughter, but she worries about being a burden on her. When she was younger and worked at the same hospital as a clerk, there was more money. Gas was cheaper and so was food. It seems to her that the cost of living has risen faster than the wages paid by her old employer. And there are so many taxes now! Sales tax is up to 10% in her area! The property tax on her old, two bedroom home is almost as high as her payments used to be. And yet, every time a new corporation moves into her town, they are exempted from paying taxes. That’s because these new businesses bring jobs---jobs for the people they transfer into her community from other parts of the country. She does not know anyone who has actually been taken off the unemployment rolls by these new “employers”. Ruby has a lot of time to sit around and think about things like this, now that she is retired and too sick to get out of the house. She wishes that there was more she could do about the sorry state of her country, but she does not know where to begin.
Ruby does not know what to do about her son, Raymond, either. Ray was doing well, with a good job and a lovely wife and two kids, when his army reserve company was sent to Iraq. It was supposed to be a short mission. Take down Sadaam, in retaliation for his bombing of the World Trade Center, and then back home to the states for a hero’s welcome. Instead, Ray spent four years overseas protecting Iraqi oilfields for Chevron. His wife divorced him and is remarried. He messed up his right knee, and the VA keeps putting off the surgery that might fix his problem. When he sees his VA psychiatrist about his mood swings and nightmares, he is given huge handfuls of pills to take. All the pills do is make him fat and sleepy. He used to play football in high school. Now, he can barely get out of the chair to go to the bathroom. Sometimes, when he watches the television news and hears about how there never were any WMDs, it was all a lie, he gets so mad he is afraid that his heart might stop. And he thinks to himself that might not be such a bad thing. And then he rolls himself a joint, because he has discovered that marijuana helps a lot more than the pills he gets at the VA.
Ray used to get his weed from a neighbor, Michael who grew his own, because it helped with the pain from his MS---multiple sclerosis. Mike is now living at the local (private, for profit) prison. Like Sarah, he is a menace to society, and so a company with ties to the governor is paid a lot of money to keep him off the streets. The DEA agent who grilled Michael is the same one who allowed huge shipments of cocaine to enter this country, in exchange for testimony about other cocaine distributors. It was a sweet deal for everyone. The DEA and the prosecutors got convictions. The cocaine lord got rid of his business rivals. Michael’s only son, Justice, died at the age of 34 from a heart attack brought on by cocaine.
Mike’s sister, Elizabeth visits him whenever she can. Liza has lupus. Her father had rheumatoid arthritis and one of her aunts had lupus, too. Almost everyone in the family has some kind of autoimmune disorder. Liza grew up in poverty, because her father was too sick to work, and her mother could only get a low paying “pink collar” job. Liza’s husband is healthy and he works and has “good” insurance, but the cost of her copayments and deductibles is still eating them alive. Liza feels guilty about being a burden on her husband. And she is often angry and frustrated. Her doctor suggested that she see a counselor, but her “good” insurance has piss poor mental health coverage, and she can not afford to pay $30 a week to see another specialist. Luckily, her church has a counselor, Bryan, so she has started seeing him.
For as long as he can remember, Bryan wanted to help others. There was not enough money for medical school, so he got a bachelors in social work instead, and now he works at a church. He likes his job. There are just two problems. One, he gets overwhelmed sometimes by the number of people he sees whose main stress is unemployment. He tries to give them some career counseling, but you can’t get blood form a turnip, as they say. Though the press keeps talking about how the economy is picking up and corporations are making money again, there are no jobs out there for most of them. They are all too old and over trained. The few places which are hiring will only consider people who are currently employed.
Bryan’s other “problem” is Larry, his partner. Larry was beaten half to death by a group of teenagers. The kids---all of them rich and white and from the suburbs---- were tried as juveniles. They got probation. Larry, who used to run marathons, is now confined to a nursing home. Though Bryan is his life partner, the doctors will only give information and take orders from Larry’s guardian, his sister, who blames Bryan for corrupting her brother.
One of Larry’s attackers went on to rape a cheerleader at the high school where he was a quarterback. When the girl, Michelle told school authorities, they suggested she keep quiet or risk being labeled a “whore”. When she found out she was pregnant and told the school counselor, arrangements were made to send her to a “special school.” Rather than face ostracism, Michelle decided to get an abortion. However, her state is one that requires parental approval, and when she told her parents, they kicked her out of the house. Her friend’s parents let her move in. One day, on the internet, she discovered how to induce an abortion with a coat hanger. Three days later, she was rushed to the local hospital, infected and bleeding. An emergency hysterectomy took care of the problem, but now she can never have children of her own.
On the day she gets home from the hospital, Michelle goes to the pharmacy to pick up the antibiotics she will need to take for the next two weeks. There, she spots her favorite teacher, Rhonda working the cash register. Both of then are embarrassed. They pretend not to know each other. They keep their misery sealed up inside them, where no one else can see their shame. On television, ‘reality shows” document the trials and tribulations of the rich and beautiful who live the American dream. There is no one to tell the story of those living the middle class American nightmare.
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