Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

At the Akers’ house, Dasani and her housemates participate in an activity in which they write down what a baby needs. Dasani jokes that a “baby needs everything because it’s broke!” (540). Despite the disruptions in her family, she is doing well in school. Because of low test scores, she will stay for summer school. Dasani seems to reflect more on her potential, and when she can’t advance in track, she acknowledges it’s because she wasn’t serious enough.

Chanel makes a surprise visit to see Dasani, with Linda and a caseworker to supervise. Dasani notices that Chanel has lost weight and worries that she is shoplifting again. Chanel recognizes that Dasani is getting older and makes jokes about her maturing body. At one point she squeezes Dasani’s breast. Linda recognizes that Chanel “expresses herself physically,” so she doesn’t note the incident (543). Linda and Chanel seem to have a good relationship. They have a cake that collapsed during the ride. Chanel and Dasani dance. Chanel criticizes Dasani for posting videos of herself twerking on social media.

Linda knows that Avianna has not been accepted to Hershey, but she doesn’t let Dasani know, so as not to upset her. Avianna’s grades have dropped. Chanel goes through Dasani’s backpack and finds some poems. Dasani corrects her when she mispronounces “breath.” They talk about To Kill a Mockingbird, which Dasani has recently read.

Chanel has recently read a few books, but she doesn’t discuss them. She is feeling left out and surpassed by her daughter. They discuss the other kids, and Chanel informs Dasani that Khaliq is in jail. He recently hit a court officer. They play fight, and Chanel challenges Dasani to arm wrestle. Chanel can win easily, but says her daughter is getting stronger.

Mrs. Akers arrives. She tries to keep the discussion light with Chanel, who wants to connect with Dasani’s housemother. Supreme and Chanel still have the apartment in Staten Island, but Supreme fights with the neighbors, and they are now leasing month to month, which means they can easily be evicted. Dasani makes fun of how strict Mr. Akers is about buckling up. Chanel talks about how vans she was thrown in when she was arrested never even had seatbelts and how the vans now have little boxes. This puts everyone on edge and makes Chanel self-conscious. They part ways. Chanel notes that Dasani seems happy, and she complains that ACS makes her seem mean.

Dasani is now a sophomore who posts a lot on social media. It is the eve of the 2016 presidential election, and Trump will overwhelmingly win in the area around Hershey. Dasani is dismayed to learn that her English teacher supports Trump.

Khaliq is in a detention center. Other children have become detached. Avianna and Nana’s foster mother keep Chanel and Dasani away. At a visit between Dasani, Avianna, and Nana, the foster mother chaperones. Nana refers to Chanel as her stepmother. Dasani protests, and the foster mother ends the visit. In a few months, the foster mother says she wants to adopt Avianna and Nana. Avianna and Dasani are no longer talking.

Video of Dasani attacking a younger girl at Hershey is circulated online. Hershey asks Foundling to find a foster home for Dasani. Chanel is angry because Dasani was safe at Hershey. She calls to give the news to Dasani. Dasani is disappointed, but she also wants to be closer to her mother.

Dasani waits for a minivan that will take her back to New York City. Julie, her therapist, gives her a big hug, but Dasani otherwise can’t say goodbye to her friends. Later, she will understand her actions as the result of depression and her feelings that she had abandoned her family and caused things to play out as they did. She also believes Hershey wasn’t right for her, because succeeding there “meant losing, even killing off, a basic part of herself” (561).

Dasani arrives at a foster home. Her foster mother, Denise, has been fostering for a long time and seems to enjoy her role. She takes Dasani shopping. Dasani attends a new school. Dasani goes to a supervised visit at the Foundling agency. Papa shows up with handmade gifts for his mother on her birthday. His parents and siblings still blame him for the separation, discounting the parents’ responsibilities. He is medicated for ADHD, against his parent’s wishes, and has regular tantrums. Chanel and Supreme have been evicted by their landlord and are unhoused once again.

Supreme is not allowed at the supervised visits because it is suspected he brought a gun to one. Khaliq is in prison, and the other siblings do not show up. Eventually Chanel arrives. She criticizes her daughter for getting kicked out of Hershey. The new caseworker, Tea, instructs Chanel to let it go. After the visit, Chanel sees Dasani wandering the projects with two boys. She calls Tea, who approaches Dasani. Dasani says she’ll go to her foster home. Chanel sees her again later though. She can’t approach her daughter because of the judge’s orders.

Dasani makes new friends, but she misses Avianna, with whom she is still not speaking. One day, an older, larger girl beats up Dasani’s new best friend, and Dasani responds by fighting the girl, who pulls out some of her braids. Dasani and her friend run inside while a group gathers outside. Chanel tries to get Denise to go get Dasani, but Denise refuses. Chanel goes herself, “carrying a baseball bat and a container of bleach” (567), but the crowd has dispersed when she gets there. Dasani posts video of the fight online, “earning the nickname Deedee Unstoppable” (568).

Denise is at a loss for what to do with Dasani, who is also difficult at home. Dasani says she behaves as she does because she’s never had a good role model, which Denise fixates on “because Dasani could not say, I never had a good mother” (568). ACS is now moving to terminate Supreme and Chanel’s parental rights. Dasani sees a therapist, who tries to get her to write to her past and future selves, but she is only willing to write to her future self.

The other children continue to struggle. Most are terrified of the idea of adoption, as they remain committed to their mother. Avianna is emotionally strained by the constant ACS supervision. At a supervised visit, Papa arrives with injuries from a recent fight. Dasani makes fun of him, which sends him into a rage. He is isolated, but he gets madder until medics threaten to sedate him. A similar event happens a few days later, and he is sedated. He talks about ending his life, and he is placed in a facility for troubled foster children. Dasani and Chanel become defiant at a supervised visit, leaving together against regulations.

Dasani gets into more fights, and she is now targeted by both boys and girls. Rumors spread that she be will jumped at a local party, so she tells everyone she knows to come. Her mother also shows up, with a disassembled revolver in her bag. When she arrives, Dasani is being confronted, but the encounter ends. Down the block, they are confronted again, and Dasani punches a girl in the face. The fight escalates, and Chanel stops the fight by throwing a glass bottle on the ground. Later, they come across another group, and this time Chanel is arrested.

Chanel ends up in the prison referred to as Rosie’s, where she received her Lady Red tattoo a decade earlier. Some of the other women there are involved in manslaughter and murder charges. Chanel explains that she got involved in the fight that led to her arrest because she wanted her daughter to know she was there for her. They talk on the phone every day. Chanel wants Dasani to stop fighting, but she refuses. She is the only child that has regular contact with Chanel now.

Avianna and Dasani reconnect on Facebook. Avianna asks her what happened to her scalp and if she is still a virgin. Dasani says no. Avianna says she is still a virgin. They both congratulate each other and agree to meet up. Dasani learns that Miss Holmes, her former principal at McKinney, has passed away. She skips school to pay her respects.

The courts continue to work toward terminating Chanel and Supreme’s parental rights. Near Brooklyn, Dasani senses that gentrification has continued. Chanel has complained about a mural going up: She sees it as a double standard, given that artists from her own community are often arrested for painting on buildings. At McKinney, the new principal asks Dasani why she left Hershey, and Dasani says she didn’t like Hershey and wants to come back to McKinney, though she knows it won’t happen.

Dasani continues to experiment with risky behavior. She smokes marijuana for the first time and joins a local branch of the Bloods. When her mother tries to reprimand her, Dasani becomes confrontational. She points out that she took care of everything when she was just a kid. This is the first time Dasani has openly acknowledged her mother’s failings. Dasani recognizes her mother’s warnings about leaving Hershey have come true. She doesn’t really have anywhere else to go. She misses Mr. Akers.

Ramel, Dasani and Avianna’s father, resurfaces, saying he wants custody. He is sober and has a steady job, but Dasani refuses the offer because she cannot forgive him for abandoning her. Khaliq is still in detention. Dasani “keeps tabs on all of her siblings” (588) though Avianna and Nana are keeping their distance. Supreme is frail and has a beard. Chanel can hear him weeping at night. Supreme feels that ACS will succeed in severing his parental rights.

The children must make their desires known. Three agree to be adopted by Auntie Joan. Nana is thinking about being adopted by her foster mother. Avianna is in a new foster home, and the three oldest children—Avianna, Khaliq, and Dasani—will wait because they are almost old enough to “‘age out’ of foster care” (589). Papa, who ran away three years ago after watching Annie, is now in an institution, “the only child living like an orphan” (590).

Avianna and Dasani reconnect again on Facebook and agree to meet up. They have a teary reunion at a Subway station and then go to visit their mother, riding the very train their grandmother, Joanie, used to clean.

Avianna and Dasani promise to remain close. Dasani stays with her friend Marie. Marie and Dasani share a love of fighting. Because of a gang rivalry and her reputation, Dasani’s life is threatened. She eventually hides out in Elliott’s apartment. She cannot see Marie. Nana has also been kicked out of her foster home and now moves between foster homes. Chanel is living in a shelter a few blocks from her mother Joanie’s former apartment. She and Supreme have split; Supreme is at a men’s shelter.

Chanel’s shelter is close to Dasani, and it is also near what will be Avianna’s fifth foster home. The youngest girls—Hada, Maya, and Lee-Lee—are also nearby. Avianna goes to see her sister, but she is not allowed inside. She almost gets into a fight, and Dasani becomes violent. She is taken to a hospital in handcuffs.

Avianna and Dasani get tattoos of their mother and grandmother’s names. Dasani is almost 18, and Baby Lee-Lee is almost eight. Dasani butts heads with her principal, but he has seen her promise. The court date regarding parental rights arrives. Judge Lim has retired and been replaced by Judge Alison Hamanjian. Among the many lawyers there is David Lansner, who is known for suing the child protection system on behalf of families wrongfully broken up (599).

Lansner challenges previous court orders, arguing that Chanel attempted to comply with requirements even though the family was provided the wrong services. Dasani and Avianna are given a choice between living with their mother or leaving the foster system with some of the perks that are involved (a stipend, help with school). Lansner tells the judge that Dasani should be given an opportunity to speak. Her attorney balks. The various attorneys exchange words, and eventually Dasani is given a chance to speak. Dasani argues that her mother is often tired because she does a lot for her children and that she has been separated from her for far too long.

After the hearing, Dasani is moved to a new foster facility unexpectedly. Lansner accuses the organizations involved of retaliation, which they deny. ACS relents and allows Avianna and Dasani to go back to their mother. Chanel, Dasani, and Avianna re-enter the shelter system in the Bronx, repeating a trek that is very familiar to them. While at the shelter for the unhoused, they meet a newly unhoused family with a little girl building an imaginary nest. They are assigned a two-bedroom apartment near where Chanel was born.

Papa, who is 13, will also be allowed to transition into living with Chanel. Dasani’s behavior has improved, and at school she has applied herself to improve her grades. In 2019, she becomes the first member of her family to graduate high school. Avianna and Chanel are both there. After Dasani turns 19, George Floyd is killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. The incident is similar to the death of Eric Garner and results in protests against police in New York and across the country. Dasani thinks this might be a point of change. Chanel focuses on the number of children in child protection services and sees it differently.

Chanel attends a Black Lives Matter meeting in which a speaker draws a connection between slavery and child protection services. Chanel believes her boys have been most hurt by the system. In 2020, Khaliq is charged with murder. Both his parents believe he will be found guilty even if he is innocent and that he will be in prison until he is in his fifties. Supreme attributes Khaliq’s violent trajectory to the system that separated him from his father.

Baby Lee-Lee, Hada, and Maya are still in Aunt Joan’s custody. Lee-Lee writes songs, Hada reads and draws. Maya wants to work in the nail salon business. Nana is still in foster care and hopes to study the psychology of trauma. Papa is able to move in with Chanel, Avianna, and Dasani. They attend a gender reveal party. Papa is initially distant. His uncles know that his process of integrating back into the family cannot be rushed. Fireworks reveal that the new addition to the Sykes family is a boy.