I think about Betty Kitching quite often. It was in my first year as a social work assistant on the upper west side of Manhattan. We were called Community Psychiatry. I have no idea why I was hired. My education was a BA in English Literature and I had done a stint at the University of New Mexico’s drop in center for druggies and in Vista mental health program in West Virginia. Both of these experiences left me ill prepared to deal with the situations I got into in Harlem.
The call came in from one of our pediatric doctors. A premature baby had been discharged after a heart surgery into the care of his Mom. No effort had been made to ascertain whether Ms. Kitching had an appropriate home to return to or the necessary supplies to take care of her baby, or even if she had cab fare to get home. She didn’t show back up for her follow-up appointment after a week and the surgeon was concerned. We were asked to go out to her home. I went.
She lived in the worst part of Harlem (this was in the ’70s), in a four floor walk-up. There was no light in the hall. I found out later that long extension cords from the light outlets in the hall ran into each of the apartments. Electricity bills were just not on the budget in this building.
The halls smelled of urine and dead roaches(many live ones too). I was scared but determined to do this home visit. The door to their apartment was wide open to let the cords through. The stove was on with the door open to provide a little warmth. I walked down the hall toward the front room. I passed a room with a bare bed and a child on it. I passed another room equally bleak with an older boy, maybe 8 or 9. Betty was in the front room on two piled up mattresses. The room was filthy.
I asked, “Are you okay?” Stupid question. What I really wanted to say was WTF. You can’t live here. But in my newly acquired social workese, I said “I’ve come from the hospital. We have to get you and your baby back in to see the doctors.”
I gave her time to dress and I chatted with her older son. He was dressed in a school uniform and was clearly very concerned about my visit. He helped his Mom, agreed to look after the two other kids, and Betty and I walked down the stairs and got into a cab.
I accompanied her to her appointment and left her, never even thinking that I needed to make sure they gave her cab fare back. Two and a half weeks later I was back. I was jostled and teased on the street, but nothing serious. Folks knew I must be a social worker. I repeated my trip up the stairs. The scene hadn’t changed. I found out that no one in the hospital had bothered with a cab. They sent her home by bus on a cold winter day, which necessitated her taking a bus down Broadway, then transferring to a crosstown, and then up to her house with a very fragile baby.
She said she wasn’t going back there again. It was hard on her and her baby. She and I began meeting, week after week. Week after week I could see her slipping, see her despair, and then her deadness. I had never met anyone like her. We were the same age but from different planets.
On this Martin Luther King’s Day, I remember Betty Kitching—brave, hopeful, foolish, incomplete, despairing, loving, beautiful.
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This isn’t about my disillusionment with Betty. All she did was try to deaden the pain. She didn’t let me down by using again.
This is about the stupidity of our system. This is about racism, deliberate indifference, and cruelty. This is about me being unequal to the task. This is about the way we all let her down. How much agency would you have alone, bereft with four children? How much agency would I have in that situation?
Give her a safe apartment with lights, food, medicine, money. Give her a leg up, hope on that rock bottom level and maybe, just maybe, she could have made it. I didn’t have any of that to offer. I offered nothing she could use.
Hello. Yes, this is Dog 