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Sebagai variasi lagi, tidak seperti biasanya, saya tayangkan satu artikel penuh kisah THP yang dimuat di halaman muka koran Toronto Star hari ini. Melalui teman-temanku, saya cukup mengenal Children's Aid Society ataupun Catholic Children's Aid Society sehingga saya dapat mengerti sedikit ke-THP-an Jennifer di dalam menghadapi CCAS. Karena sudah panjangnya tulisan ini, saya tidak akan mengomentarinya. Bila Anda sudah membaca 54 tayangan THP-ku, mungkin sedikit banyak Anda sudah tahu saya akan menulis apa. Namun, bila Anda ingin berkomentar atau mengemukakan pandangan maupun pendapat Anda setelah membacanya, saya persilahkan. Selamat membaca.
Plourde family fears split-up
By Patricia Orwen and Laurie Monsebraaten
Toronto Social Policy Reporters
The knock on the door came late one March afternoon. Nine-year-old Chantelle Plourde and her three younger siblings sat naked in their illegal one-bedroom basement apartment watching TV as their mother, equally naked, pinched and poked and twisted their hair, scouring their scalps for lice. With a burst of folk wisdom, 'heat kills nits', she'd stripped off their clothes and stuffed them all in the rented portable dryer that provided the only heat in the damp cellar. "There we were naked, me pickin' nits and we hear it's children's aid who's knocking," Jennifer recalls. "I freaked . . . the lady hadn't even phoned to say she wanted to see us."
Through this long winter of despair, Jennifer's attention had been focused on housing, on her bitterly contested eviction from a west-end apartment four months earlier and on her search for another home that would allow Chantelle to resume an education so shattered by truancy (bolos, mangkir dari sekolah), her last report card had her marked incomplete in 11 out of 13 subjects. But now, Jennifer was facing an even more terrifying prospect: The loss of her children. By this March afternoon, events were spinning out of control. Chantelle was missing school three days a week. Her 8-year-old brother Kyle's behavioural problems were escalating. And now 4-year-old Andramada had become so uncontrollable that Jennifer had confessed to a public health nurse that she felt pushed nearly to the brink of harming the child. "I told her that Andramada was driving me nuts, that I felt like shaking her or something," Jennifer said. She thought the conversation was private. She even hoped the nurse would help her get a permanent place to live. Instead, in a move that shocked Jennifer, the nurse reported the incident to the Catholic Children's Aid Society, which has the authority to remove children who are considered at risk. "I was scared, but I knew I had to open the door," Jennifer recalls. "I figured if I didn't co-operate, she could just go to the police and then I'd have to let her in. I figured I had nothing to hide anyway. I let her in and she saw us all naked." After asking Jennifer and the children to put their clothes back on, the children's aid worker surveyed the makeshift apartment with the communal bed, the battered couch where Kyle sleeps, the naked light bulbs, the piles of clothing and the toys everywhere. She asked why the apartment was such a mess. She also wondered how the family would escape in the event of a fire.
Why was there no battery in the smoke detector? Why were there no carbon monoxide detectors? "I thought children's aid was supposed to aid you or help you," Chantelle says, thinking back to that afternoon. "But they aren't helping us. They just ask a lot of questions and I'm worried they're going to take us away." And then came, for Chantelle, the bombshell. The worker questioned why the little girl had not transferred to a school closer to Hastings Ave., where they lived. She added she would be contacting the principal at Chantelle's school in the west end and demanding to see the child's records, particularly the ones concerning attendance. Chantelle shuddered. Though she didn't get there as often as she wished she could, Chantelle had held on to St. Cecilia (nama sekolah di daerah barat Toronto) as the only strand of continuity in her threadbare childhood.
For her mother Jennifer, the gray March afternoon reopened a window to some of the darkest hours of her past. In the early '90s, while living briefly in New Brunswick, children's aid took an interest in Chantelle and Kyle. When she moved to Toronto in 1992, the Catholic Children's Aid Society became involved. And exactly half a lifetime ago, as a troubled, rebellious teenager, Jennifer had lost her first baby, a girl named Mandy, to The Toronto Children's Aid Society. When she was four months old, Mandy died in their care. This tragedy would be the first of many in Jennifer's life. Thirty-four years ago, Jennifer was born to Peter and Jean Eng. She lived in a nice two-storey house on Victor Ave. in Toronto. Her father had immigrated from Hong Kong and had what Jennifer remembers as a good job at the post office. Her mother, Jean, of Chinese descent, was born in Timmins. Jennifer had one brother four years her junior named Bryce. Jennifer remembers her childhood as a difficult one. Her mother suffered from mental illness and found it hard to care for her two children.
"I was like a mother to my brother. I had to be there for him." When she was Chantelle's age, Jennifer attended Grade 4 at Pape Avenue Public School. She later went on to Castle Frank High School and says she has her Grade 12 diploma. "My Dad was very strict, but he was good to me," she remembers. "I had everything I wanted. He would give me enough money to buy a new pair of jeans every week." But as she grew older, her relationship with her parents deteriorated. She rebelled against her father's strictness. "I got wild when I was a teenager. I wanted to go places that I couldn't go. I'd hang out at The Terrace (roller rink) with the other kids." By the time she was 15, she and Manny, today her partner and the father of her three youngest children, were friends.
In those days, Manny had a $700-a-week job laying interlocking brick driveways. Jennifer, meanwhile, had a part-time job waitressing at a Greek restaurant that Manny and his friends used to frequent. "He always left big tips. I liked him," Jennifer recalls. By the time she was 16, Jennifer's family was falling apart. "At nights my brother and I would hear my parents arguing. We'd be scared. I'd tell him just not to listen to them." That year, her parents separated. Her father took Bryce and moved to a new house. Jennifer moved out on her own and soon became pregnant. Jennifer's mother Jean recalls it as a difficult time. "I was very sick then. I told Bryce I couldn't be there for him no more and when I said that I handed him the New Testament. I said he'd have that to help him." Jean Eng soon began a relationship with another man and she, too, became pregnant. Mother and daughter both gave birth to baby girls. Jennifer named her infant daughter Mandy. Her mother named Jennifer's new half sister Margaret.
Then children's aid stepped in. "I blame them (children's aid) for what happened to Mandy," Jennifer says bitterly. "I was taking good care of her, but I was young and children's aid didn't think I could handle a baby on my own. One time I left her (Mandy) with a babysitter. Then, that babysitter put Mandy in the same crib with her grandchild and children. The worker said that wasn't safe. Then children's aid took Mandy away." Jennifer remembers, the day Mandy died, being called to The Hospital for Sick Children and having to sign a form to have the baby taken off life support. The doctors told her that the child died of sudden infant death syndrome. Jean Eng remembers how difficult it was for Jennifer when Mandy died. She says she has always wished she could do more for her daughter and grandchildren. "I try, but she don't want nothin' to do with me," said Jean, adding that she has dropped by to visit Jennifer and the children, but has not been invited to stay. She says she has no contact with her son Bryce or her ex-husband. Jennifer doesn't keep in touch with them either. The last time she saw her father was when Chantelle was a baby.
"My Dad gave me $100 to buy shoes for her then," Jennifer says. "But he wouldn't be happy to see me now . . . all the children, the fact that I'm not married. He would want me to get married and I wouldn't want to do that, so we'd have problems." Her brother, she says, works as an accountant, but the two have not remained in touch because he, like her father, couldn't understand and would criticize the decisions she has made. "I love him, but he's a lot like my father." Remembering her childhood is painful, particularly these days. "I find it hard being poor. I'm really not used to it. I'd like to be able to give my children the kind of stability I had - one house, a nice backyard . . ."
One day, Jennifer hopes to return to school, perhaps to learn some computer skills and then find a job as a medical secretary. During high school, she worked briefly in a doctor's office. Of all the jobs she has had, that was the one she enjoyed most. The last time she worked was nine years ago at Country Style Donuts. "I've learned something from having these kids and being on assistance and strugglin' like this. I've learned that if you have kids, you need a stable place and a stable job." Now, half a lifetime later, she finds herself no closer to being able to provide either form of stability for her children. "Manny and me do the best we can, we're working on our problems," she says acknowledging how her part-time partner serves as a positive influence on the family - playing video games with Kyle, laughing and cuddling with Andramada and caring full time for the couple's 5-year-old son Justin, who was an infant when Jennifer and Manny decided to live apart.
Shortly after the visit from the children's aid worker, Jennifer decided she couldn't trust "the system." Children's aid "was making trouble" in her life yet again, this time by sending a fire inspector to the family's basement dwelling. Shortly after that visit, her landlord Stan received a letter from Toronto Works and Emergency Services ordering him to 'correct the deficient conditions in the building within 45 days' or risk being charged under the Fire Marshal's Act. The letter says the house doesn't meet certain Ontario Fire Code requirements such as having proper fire separation between the dwelling units.
Children's aid then wanted to review Kyle's file at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre. Jennifer would have to sign a form allowing the Hincks to release those records. "I don't see how that's gonna help us get housing," Jennifer said. Leaving the Hincks that cool spring day, Jennifer reached a breaking point and lashed out at the children. When 4-year-old Andramada lay down on Jarvis St., refusing to move - one of a dozen such tantrums she was throwing daily - Jennifer swore at the screaming child, then grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along the pavement. "I can't take this no more . . . you kids are making me nuts." Meanwhile, Kyle walked half a block ahead of his screaming mother and sister to escape her cursing. "I hope children's aid takes you away first 'cause you're the one that's caused all my problems," Jennifer yelled at Kyle. Determined to avoid more contact with social agencies, Jennifer got an unlisted phone number. She also called a local legal aid worker wondering if she could sue children's aid or the public health department for invading her privacy. "I told that children's aid worker she should go and bother people who are really hurting their kids instead of bothering us good people. "Chantelle said maybe we should just all move to Mexico, so nobody would bother us," Jennifer says. "But I'm worried about something else. I think I might be pregnant." :-( :-( :-(