Random Family

“Coco might have instinctually understood that success was less about climbing than about not falling down. Since there were few real options for mobility, people in Coco’s world measured improvement in microscopic increments of better-than-whatever-was-worse. These tangible gradations mattered more than the clichéd language of success that floated blandly out of everyone’s mouth, like fugitive sentiments from a Hallmark card. Girls were going to ‘make something of themselves’ as soon as the baby was old enough; boys were going to ‘do right’ and ‘stay inside’; everyone was going back to school. But better-than was the true marker. Thick and fed was better than thin and hungry. Family fights indoors—even if everyone could hear them—were better than taking private business to the street. Heroin was bad, but crack was worse.”

In this quote, LeBlanc incisively articulates the curtailed standards of success in the ghetto. Instead of having a solid and reachable ideal, Coco and those within her community instead measure success by how far someone was above absolute rock bottom. The poignancy of essentially using failure as the yardstick for success speaks to the severe limitations placed upon the lives of Coco and those around her. This quote also reveals a depth of sensitivity and detail that characterizes LeBlanc’s writing. She plumbs small subtleties in order to mine them for greater meanings. 

“Cesar wasn’t the only one who had noticed Coco’s chunky figure and appealingly sassy attitude. Her body had long generated unspoken acknowledgements. But now she’d entered the dangerous age, stepped into the open marketplace, and the desire behind men’s eyes came out in compliments and crude remarks. Smooth offers chased appraising glances. Boys lobbed aggressive comments, begging for a response. Older women warned her off.

You think he’s so wonderful? He ain’t so wonderful, ask him where he been!

Let me tell you, baby, he might buy you sneakers but he ain’t gonna pay the rent!

Check you out, Shorty!

Look at the way she walk!

Whatchu do, paint on those pants?”

Through this quote, LeBlanc reveals the feminine characteristics that are perceivedas attractive: a chunky figure and sassy attitude. Too, the designation of “the dangerous age” comes not from LeBlanc herself, but from her understanding of the community within which she has embedded herself. This passage, therefore, demonstrates the manner and style that LeBlanc consistently uses throughout the narrative. Her writing style seamlessly masks her very presence—in favor of a recitation of the words and even unspoken rules of the Bronx community that she has chosen as her subject. Here, catcalls and their counterpart—the prudish and cautious warnings of older women—are quoted word for word, which also lends the narrative a measure of authenticity. 

“Their banter supposed that men never passed up sexual opportunities and that young girls were good for little more than waving the chance at them. Men will be men. Boys were worse. Girls were naïve, stupid. To Coco, the women’s warnings sounded like jealousy, as if they wanted their dire predictions to be true. They seemed eager for the girl to lose what made her powerful. If older girls and women were supposed to have the knowledge to teach girls about love, the way they went about it wasn’t right. Coco noticed such discrepancies.”

This quote immediately proceeds the previously-listed quote. In it, LeBlanc reveals the norms that initiate young women into a sexual economy that both objectifies them and, as an outgrowth of that objectification, allows them to use their sexuality as currency. Too, the quote baldly lists the gendered norms and expectations that are placed on men and women: men are allowed to treat women as objects, while young girls are assumed to be naïve and stupid. The climate squeezes out woman-to-woman solidarity and empathy as well, as the conditions of female desirability pit women and girls against each other, in favor of men as, ultimately, the sexual agents who wield power through their selection of romantic and sexual partners.  

“Jessica saw George late at night if she saw him at all. George would have given Jessica money if she’d asked, but Jessica was more interested in winning his love. ‘Less money for her meant more money for me,’ George said. He teasingly referred to Jessica’s need as her ‘attention attraction.’ It would be years before he understood that Jessica’s desire for attention had the strength of a weed pushing through cement.” 

At this point, George has installed Jessica in one of his apartments. Here, we see one of many iterations of Jessica’s unflagging desire for romantic love. The quote confirms that, even in the midst of crushing poverty, and the ready availability of money that could assuage it, Jessica’s top priority remains something far less tangible—love, acceptance, and stability within a romantic relationship. This will remain one of her chief defining characteristics throughout the narrative, even when she has left girlhood behind. 

“Lourdes chided Jessica’s ambitions and, like Lourdes, Jessica had resented it. George wasn’t much better. When Jessica confessed she wanted to be an interior decorator, he scoffed, ‘Those people go to school.’ But when Serena confided to Jessica that she wanted to be a singer, Jessica protected her hope; she told Serena that she could do anything. The few minutes Jessica gave to Serena were Serena’s entirely.” 

This tender observation shows a small, yet significant way in which Jessica interrupts the cycles of neglect that surround her. Unlike her own mother, and her most significant romantic partner, who treat Jessica’s ambitions with coldness and mockery, Jessica sensitively encourages and protects her young daughter. This is a small triumph in a community within which insidious repetitions of harmful patterns seem to be the unavoidable norm. 

“That day, waiting outside on Andrews Avenue, the cherubic Obsession case agent sat plumply in the driver’s seat of one of the Mercedes. Jessica recognized him from her long days in court during George’s trial. Another detective climbed in the back. Jessica recalled him leaning forward, his breath hot in her ear. ‘We hear you’re a freak,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s a freak,’ Jessica said sweetly.” 

In this quote, George has been apprehended, and the FBI agents assigned to his case ride around the block in George’s cars, in a shockingly boundary-blurring and purposefully demoralizing display of their power. Through this detail, LeBlanc reveals the vindictiveness and pettiness that lies underneath the faceless anonymity of the state and its agents. Too, the agent’s cuttingly lascivious remark to Jessica demonstrates the less-than-professional manner in which FBI agents treat those that they are investigating. Jessica’s sarcastic remark, said sweetly, also reveals a complex mixture of savviness, resistance, and flirtation. Above all else, Jessica remains indomitable and shrewd in this moment.

“[Coco had] grown fond of Serena, but she wondered how such an optimistic nickname had landed on a girl with such sad eyes. Little Star hardly seemed destined for brightness; she was more like an old lady. Her gravity spooked Coco; once, while she and Cesar were making love, Coco spotted Little Star peeking through the wide gap underneath Cesar’s door. She frequently asked Coco when Jessica was coming home. ‘I don’t know, Mami,’ Coco would say; then she would try to distract her with the offer of a game or a song. Coco preferred the sunny take on things. Children should be rambunctious. Coco said, ‘Serena was too grown for a six-year-old.’” 

This quote crystallizes the characteristics of both Little Star and Coco. At six years old, Little Star has endured far more than should be expected of a young child: sexual abuse, separation from her mother through incarceration, the emotional and physical unpredictability of Lourdes, and the many small and large indignities of poverty. Too, Coco’s patience, and her good-natured desire to preserve and protect the innocence of the child, reveal Coco’s generosity of spirit, and her unflagging commitment to finding and cultivating the bright and beautiful things in life.  

“The skyrocketing number of women in prison was the unintended consequence of a drug policy that snagged legions of small-timers in the attempt to bring the kingpins down. The perfunctory institutional attitude toward the women reflected their relative insignificance in the war on drugs: a high-tech fortress, Marianna operated more like a public hospital with extra rules than a prison containing violent criminals. The atmosphere was more depressing than punitive.” 

Here, LeBlanc describes the underlying social and political conditions which attend to Jessica’s stint in prison, as well as the daily realities of the facility that houses Jessica. In so doing, she provides a wider context for the deeply personal and individualized details that compose the bulk of the book. 

“The calls themselves were difficult. Stephanie would pick up the phone and say to Milagros, ‘Mommy, Jessica’s on the phone.’ Serena stretched the cord all the way around Milagros’s kitchen counter and curled into the receiver for privacy. She whispered ‘Yeah’ and ‘No’ to Jessica’s inquiries. Jessica wondered how she was going to help her daughter with what had happened to her when she was a little girl while she was just beginning to deal with what had happened to herself. ‘And I know there is so much more that she wants to say. And that I’m the only one she can say it to,’ Jessica said.” 

This quote depicts phone calls that Jessica makes to her children from prison. With searing detail, it demonstrates the simple yet stark realities of the separation that imprisonment produces. Through the detail about Stephanie, LeBlanc intimates to the reader that Jessica has painfully lost the role and title of mother in her young daughter’s eyes, although LeBlanc does not directly state it. Instead, she lets the detail speak for itself. In addition, the quote depicts Jessica’s helplessness in the face of both her own sexual abuse, and that of her daughter. This helplessness is compounded by the expensive 15-minute phone calls that are vastly inadequate, which is made all the more heartbreaking by Jessica’s knowledge that she is the only one who can truly hear and help her young daughter.  

“The bad part of the letter involved Cesar’s discovery that another girl had a daughter of his. Cesar wanted Coco to track down the baby’s mother. The only clues were her name, Whitney, and an approximate address, a building near Burnside on Davidson. The child was said to look just like Mercedes.

The actual Mercedes was clamoring for Coco’s attention. She had learned a new song in preschool. ‘Put the letter down, Mommy, and hear my sing,’ she urged. Cesar instructed Coco to pretend that she was his sister, searching for a long-lost niece. ‘Tell the bitch I want the baby to have my name,’ Cesar wrote. The theme song from Cops wafted out of the bedroom—‘Bad boys bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?’

Coco said, ‘Oh! Mercedes! Go watch it, Cops in the bedroom!’ and pointed Mercedes toward the siren sound. Mercedes drifted toward it, humming the song in an eerie monotone. Nikki padded after her big sister. Coco wept.” 

This quote showcases several aspects of LeBlanc’s storytelling style. At the beginning of the quote, she paraphrases the bulk of Cesar’s correspondence with Coco, which leads into a direct quote that displays his misogynistic choice of words and the demanding character of his request. His demand is, perhaps, of heightened urgency due to his inability to act, from behind bars, upon the information that he has another daughter. This is followed up by a vivid and poignant depiction of Mercedes’s tender innocence. The quote then moves into the detail about the TV show Cops and its theme song, which fills the scene with a bitter and almost surreal irony. Ostensibly, Cesar is a “bad boy,” who the cops have indeed apprehended. However, far from the engineered, edited, and propagandistically caricatured Manichean world that the television show creates, Cesar is a living and breathing human, separated from the daughter who loves the show about the realities of policing, poverty, violence, and imprisonment. In a compounded written kernel, LeBlanc has woven a stunningly complex portrait of the family, which is accomplished understatedly, and through the seamless braiding of several distinct elements.  

“‘Gim-me! Mercedes cried. Cesar pulled out the gooey taffy and offered it to her, but just as she reached for it, he swallowed it and smacked his lips. He smothered her hurt feelings with hugs, making it into a game, drowning out her crying with laughter and kisses and silly smooching sounds. In the subtle tyranny of that moment beat the pulse of Cesar’s neighborhood—the bid for attention, the undercurrent of hostility for so many small needs ignored and unmet, the pleasure of holding power, camouflaged in teasing, the rush of love. Then the moment passed, and Cesar’s three-year-old daughter walked back out into the world and left him behind.” 

In this quote, Cesar is teasing Mercedes by refusing to give her the last Starburst candy, and instead devouring it himself, in a protracted manner. LeBlanc mines the moment for its greater significance, locating it within the context of life in the Bronx, as she sees the ways in which what can initially be read as simple teasing is actually a far more complex matter. The quote exemplifies LeBlanc’s knack for observing small details, sensitively situating those details within a larger context, and pulling poetic meaning from what initially may appear mundane. The fleeting rush of emotion and meaning is also here starkly curtailed by the realities of Cesar’s incarceration and his almost absolute separation from his family and children. 

“The pressure to buy things was always intense in the ghetto, but Christmas created a level of expectation that was unbearable, and the tension was further compounded by the blues that came with every holiday. Foxy didn’t have any money to buy things for her grandkids, so she avoided her own children more than usual. Lourdes lost her sense of drama. Domingo said her battery was ‘down low.’ He urged Coco to bring by the children to recharge her spirits.

Christmas was even worse in prison. Jessica had crocheted hats and scarves for her girls and her nephews and nieces, but didn’t have enough money for stamps to mail them out on time; she knocked herself out with prescription pills. Right before Christmas, Cesar got in a fight in the yard with a Muslim. Guards expected such outbursts around the holidays. Cesar spent Christmas Eve on keep-lock—room confinement—waiting to get shipped farther upstate to an isolation unit. He wrote to Coco, ‘I fucked up real bad this time.’”

In this passage, LeBlanc makes insightful observations about the stress of Christmastime for not only the characters’ blighted community, but for Jessica and Cesar, who must endure the holiday and their forced separation behind bars. By making note of the unique burdens and stresses placed on both those on the inside and those on the outside, she intimates that the networks that connect the street to the prison extend deeper than those that are explicit. Both populations are bound and limited by scarcity, grief, and elements that are beyond their control. 

“Transportation companies like Operation Prison Gap, some managed by ex-convicts, hauled families and friends of prisoners upstate to visit loved ones. Without them, the visits would have been impossible; few people had cars. Prisons dotted the huge state, and inmates moved among them, seemingly arbitrarily. The bus riders were almost always women and children. Except for special charters on Mother’s Day or Family Day, the buses serviced primarily men’s facilities […] women inmates like Jessica had a much harder time seeing family.”

This passage sees LeBlanc providing useful background information that reveals the underpinning economic and political conditions that shape the lives of Cesar, Jessica, and their loved ones. It also sharply delineates the manner in which abstract, gendered perceptions of prisoners directly contribute to concrete realities. While Jessica’s prison experience is less harsh and brutal than Cesar’s, she is also less visible as a woman within the economic and political systems that dictate the allocation of resources. It can be argued that the style of criminalization that men undergo while incarcerated is one of hypervisibility, as the legislative and carceral systems mark their bodies as pronounced threats to be controlled and disciplined through harsh brutality, while the one that women undergo marks them for neglect and invisibility. 

“Meanwhile, Mercedes stared at the couple beside them, a young, skinny black man with a full set of gold teeth, and a large, middle-aged white woman in a modest silk dress. He was angry; she looked tired. He beckoned her closer, and she pressed her substantial bosom against the mesh. She bowed her head to listen. He cursed. Then, methodically, he smashed his handcuffed hands into her chest. He continued speaking in low tones as he punched her, and she held her body taut to receive him. Only her head jerked back. Coco furtively watched.” 

Although the bulk of this passage is spent depicting unnamed characters whom Coco “furtively watched,” it displays LeBlanc’s careful selection of detail, which she presents without commentary—because the detail itself is the commentary. Within the interaction between the inmate and his female visitor, we witness a quiet and wrenching moment of abject abuse, as the woman essentially offers herself up to be hit. Here, it is remarkable that cycles of misogyny and violence can literally transcend the limitations of the prison, which also occurs, in a different manner, when Boy George and Cesar write violent words to Jessica and Coco, respectively, and the women simply bear it. 

“There was a network of support and loyalty among some prisoners’ wives. The regulars informed other wives if a mistress had sat in their rightful visitor’s seat. Guards, too, sometimes hinted to a woman about a guy’s two- or three- or four-timing, or ‘accidentally’ shone the ultraviolet light on another woman’s signature that had been penned in invisible ink. Some of the guards were so uptight that they must have had less sex with their at-home wives than the inmates had in their trailer visits. Veteran wives counseled newcomers about regulations and circumventing regulations, important lessons they’d extracted from protracted dealings with the correctional bureaucracy.” 

In this quote, LeBlanc reveals the minute and subtle details and codes that prison visitors come to learn through long-term interaction with the state bureaucracy. In so doing, she exposes the cracks in the prison’s vast and opaque façade, revealing the complicated and eminently human experiences that lie beyond both headlines and the sterile and stoic image of the prison. She parses the sexual micro-economies that govern both the lives of inmates and the women who come to visit them, as well as those belonging to prison guards. In so doing, she depicts a complexity that is rarely seen in mainstream depictions of “the good guys” and “the bad guys.” 

“On Tremont, near the steps of Lourdes’s old building, Mercedes savored her last few minutes in Rocco’s arms. Rocco shared a story. ‘Your daddy sat here with his head in his hands and cried and cried. “You get in a fight?” I asked. He had a toothache!’ Rocco laughed.” 

Here, we return to one of the first images of Cesar that the narrative has offered, through the words and nostalgia of Rocco. The moment sparkles with intimacy and tenderness, which is made all the more poignant when we consider the fates of both Cesar and Rocco. Rocco essentially groomed the child that he saw that day into a hardened young man, and both he and Cesar have endured time behind bars. This image, though, repeats an enduring image of Cesar as a neglected child, and the image is relayed to Cesar’s own child. Through this understated, yet highly effective, layering, LeBlanc asserts the humanity of all involved.

“Still, the women gave Jessica extra leeway because she was pregnant—and then even more leeway when it turned out she was having another set of twins. Babies were about hoping and growing, not just surviving. They pulled you into the future, even if you were literally imprisoned by your past. Any belly—inside or outside of prison—required at least the perfunctory gestures of optimism. One night, a guard with whom Jessica was friendly placed his hand on Jessica’s belly to feel the babies stirring and blessed it with a kiss.” 

In this excerpt, LeBlanc depicts the indelible hope that attaches itself to any baby—while situating that hope within Jessica’s distinct circumstances. The hope that her babies offer is valenced by the hopelessness of imprisonment and mere survival.

They serve as a concrete reminder of life and potential, which in turn point to a larger world than the small one that exists behind bars. They encourage not only Jessica, but those around her, to both remember and concretely grasp at marvelous possibilities beyond incarceration.  

“A guard escorted her to SHU. There, she vacillated between her choices: opting out or acting out. She wanted to escape, and she wanted to be noticed. Sadness was like falling; sleep was temporary, rage let her feel alive. She slept, then demanded to be screened for bipolar disorder, the diagnosis a doctor had given Robert following one of his suicide attempts. She sought oblivion through medication, which prison medics liberally provided—Naprosyn, Flexeril, Dolobid—and then fought against it. ‘They think I need to be kept in the fucking dark,’ she said, resentfully. Imagining her reunion with Serena got her through the worst stretches, with a little help from the voices of the other isolated women on SHU harmonizing to old R&B. The songs lulled her to sleep.” 

This passage captures the searing emotional, psychological, and concrete realities that envelop Jessica’s stint in the Solitary Housing Unit. LeBlanc also parses the cruel inhumanity of the practice of solitary confinement, as she outlines each of Jessica’s distressing options. Ultimately, the prison provides psychiatric pharmaceuticals in lieu of actual treatment or attention to Jessica’s contexts and needs, which baldly demonstrates an instance of very obvious injustice. However, as always, Jessica carves out a way to survive, clinging to her child and the subtle solidarity of her fellow inmates. 

“From an early age, even before she was a toddler, Mercedes garnered attention for having attitude. A fog of despair so pervaded the ghetto that the smallest gesture of rebellion could seem like a bold, piercing light. Bad said with fond exasperation, was almost always a compliment…Bad meant the opposite of cowed or frightened…Bad was encouraged in small children, but its meaning changed as they got older and their cuteness waned. Adults’ impatience might have had something to do with the extra labor of caring for spirited children, and the looming realization that as the children grew in size, they could physically back their badness up. Whatever caused the sudden shift, it took children years to sort out the subtleties, as they learned by excruciating trial and error. Errors took place publicly, and humiliations were routine. For the early year of Mercedes’s life, though, bad remained an affirmation.” 

Here, LeBlanc parses the complicated cultural code of “bad” children. She reveals that, paradoxically, the designation does not always carry a negative meaning, because it indicates something beyond mere survival. It indicates heart, strength, hope, and resilience—qualities that are treasured within circumstances that too often produce hopelessness and despair. However, she also reveals that the “bad as good” designation wanes in inverse correlation with the growth of children, because there comes a point at which heart, strength, hope and resilience morph into insubordination that presents an actual physical threat. The baffling manner in which children must navigate this subtle and seemingly senseless change speaks to the way in which adults must find ways to re-assert their power and dominion through public humiliation. 

“[Jessica] said her favorite class, Feelings, helped the most. She seemed interested in examining the connections between the present and her memories of the past. She became animated about subjects other than love, and even somewhat curious. She said, ‘So much chunks of my childhood has been erased, I guess cuz of the trauma and everything.’ It was hard to tell if her new confidence stemmed from having absorbed anything useful or simply from having become part of a new culture of recovery, with its terminology and sense of legitimacy; either way, she seemed better than she’d been in years.” 

This quote addresses Jessica’s time in classes that are mandated by the prison’s Drug Abuse Program. Interestingly, LeBlanc finds it difficult to determine whether the prison class has actually allowed for Jessica to make some emotional breakthroughs, or if merely the new language and legitimacy that the classes grant is the true change. The inability to distinguish between the two speaks to the manner in which Jessica has essentially been neglected: she has not been previously afforded the explicit space to voice her trauma and her experiences. And so, when that space is granted, it becomes unclear whether Jessica is truly progressing, or whether she is simply trying out the use of language and terminology within a completely foreign territory. 

“Coco cranked up the volume on the radio when she heard Frankie’s news, then grabbed him and danced. Frankie rarely danced; he felt self-conscious, and Coco sometimes made fun of him. But now he held Coco’s hands and the girls piled in: Mercedes hulked over Nikki, who shimmied her skinny hips and coyly flicked her wrists; Pearl bounced slightly off-beat to the music; and Nautica, with perfect timing, did her crowd-pleasing butterfly. The moment later reminded Coco of happy times when she was growing up, when her stepfather, Richie, would dance Spanish with her mother in the middle of the afternoon. Said Coco, ‘It was music everywhere. Music all around.’”(

This scene follows Coco’s good news that she has enrolled in school. Tellingly, Frankie has met this news with a dire prediction: that Coco will leave him. When Coco hears his good news, about a new job, however, she initiates the impromptu dance party that this passage depicts. The stark contrast between the two characters’ responses to each other’s good news reveals much about their respective characters. Coco’s indomitable joy and generosity, her knack for uniting her loved ones through mirth and celebration, shines brightly here, and in contrast to Frankie’s short-sighted selfishness. 

“Following her evacuation from the flea-infested house on the hill, Coco reapplied for Section 8 certification and also for public housing. (Part of the application asked her to write an essay, ‘Why I Want to Live in Public Housing.’ ‘Because I’m homeless,’ Coco wrote.)” 

Here, LeBlanc reveals the dehumanizing absurdity of the public housing system. She begs the question of what the application’s question could have been soliciting and exposes one small indignity that Coco must endure as a member of the urban poor class. Too, Coco’s matter-of-fact, but brash response, which borders on sarcasm, reveals her unflagging spunk and intelligence. 

“Frankie, who had been released after the drug charges were dropped, was nowhere to be found. Or he’d appear when it was too late to do Coco much practical good. ‘Ma, you want something to eat?’ he asked sheepishly at two o’clock one morning, trying to pat down Coco’s anger as she lay beached on the floor at Foxy’s among her daughters and the rumpled sheets. ‘What do you think? The girls had oatmeal for dinner, with a package of hot dogs! I have a belly to feed!’ Coco yelled. He stood dumbly, still waiting for the order. She screamed, ‘Chicken and cheese!’” 

This quote reveals the compounded caretaking responsibilities that threaten to drown Coco. Not only must she care for her children and herself, while pregnant, but Frankie is completely inept at either anticipating or sensing her needs. While the moment reveals that Coco is a full person, who is not always sunny, it also parses the gender dynamics within which she and Frankie operate. As a woman, she is expected to care for everyone else—to create the conditions that literally sustain life—while Frankie, as a man, is not expected to do any care work. This is why he finds himself baffled by a situation which Coco finds utterly simple: she needs food.