Jessica Baker tries to peel her three-year-old brother’s fingers from their viselike grip on the plastic handcuffs, but each little digit snaps back into place as soon as it’s removed.
“You can get in lots of fights with people at shelters. I mean, this girl, she wanted to fight me. I just stayed away from people after that. Only reason I talk to people in here is because we have our own apartment and stuff,” she says.
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Jessica seems to like her current shelter, especially since her family’s been given the privacy of a two-bedroom “transitional” apartment. Her mother pays rent equal to 13 percent of her income. They’ve been able to collect a few accoutrements of American normalcy in the few months they’ve lived here, among them some more clothes, which means Jessica’s no longer taunted for wearing the same outfit to school every day. She plays with her new hamster on one of the twin beds pushed together in a corner of the small room she shares with her brothers.
She already has a group of friends, and she talks excitedly about the 70s-themed dance at school this weekend. She jumps up and runs to an otherwise empty closet to retrieve her outfit. It’s a long gray T-shirt dress with a black-and-white-trimmed V neck and a small Guess logo. Slits on each side reveal a little leg. She’ll wear it with a pair of white platform sneakers and silver butterfly barrettes with little springs that make the wings flutter whenever she moves.
“They’d been under investigation for a year,” Mary says, “but nobody would stand up.”
