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“I Wanna Make It through the Week” Field Notes, February 13, 1996: Interview with DCF Worker Antonia Vovnyestevski The security guard in the DCF office had me sign in and watched as I told the receptionist behind the bullet-proof glass who I was and who I was there to see. The lobby was small and grimy, with a few officelike couches and a few beat-up magazines. Along the side walls of the lobby were playrooms. I knew from my days as a social worker that these were for parental visits. DCF workers could watch parents’ involvement with their children; brothers and sisters could visit each other while social workers assessed familial functioning. These were rooms made to accommodate rituals of rehabilitation as hoped-for reunifications between parents and their children existed beside the realities of failure and distance. Deep inside one room, surrounded by toys, an African American boy of about ten, maybe eleven, is playing. At first glance, it strikes me that the toys are too young for him. But there is nothing “cool” about him— no foreboding of adolescence and all its turmoil. A young, African American man sits on a stool by the door. There is someone else in the room, but I only occasionally perceive this person’s movement out of the corner of my eye. The child is playing frantically. It is not the abandon of a child who forgets himself and really plays—impervious to time or place, or space, or people. It is a kind of forced abandon that, while joyful on the surface, never allows him to relax. While he plays, he always keeps a wary eye trained on his surroundings. He never looks at the man sitting by the door, even though he never turns away from him. I sit down on a dirty couch in the main lobby to wait for Antonia. The boy throws a blue-green ball up in the air and with a smile plastered on his face asks the man, “Have you gone to court yet?” His voice is strained with joviality. 10 186 The man says, shaking his head, looking down at his feet, “Yup. I been to court.” The child asks, “You talked to the judge?” The man says, still looking at his feet, “Yup, I talked to the judge.” The boy throws the ball into the air again. He watches the man—or perhaps a spot above the man’s head. “What did the judge say?” The smile is still on his frozen face. “The judge say—” He stops. “Well, I don’t exactly know what the judge said.” The ball is thrown into the air again, but I don’t believe I ever see it come down. Antonia breezes through the lobby door, smiling. She shakes my hand and says, “Let’s see if we can find a room down here to use.” Her parents are from Eastern Europe. She is second generation—maybe first, though she does not have any trace of an accent. She is very pretty, with large round blue eyes and long red hair. She moves swiftly, fluidly. While she talks to me, she seems always to be either moving or just about to take flight. A number of women come bustling in and out of the small lobby while Antonia glances into one room—the one with the boy and the man—and then the other. Some of the women appear to be social workers , recognizable by the comfortably casual dress and a look that pronounces their destination before they arrive. Others could be the mothers they work with. They come and then vanish behind locked doors that are buzzed open by the woman behind the bullet-proof glass. The walls in the second small room are bright yellow. A young African American girl sits near the door, with her coat on, not moving. Her back is to me. I noted her mentally when I came in but never really noticed her; she sits so still, motionless and emotionless. It is as though she sits there hoping not to be noticed, hoping to be invisible, hoping to blend in with the grimy walls and be missed in the confusion of the office . Antonia breezes into that conference room by leaning into the room, her hand holding the door jamb for balance, her long hair falling to the side. There are no toys, just a desk and two straight chairs. The girl sits facing the empty...

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