A Mother's Days of Desperation

It's the tenuous housing situation that's beating C.C. down. Rent is only part of the problem for this family of four girls, ages 16, 8, 7 and 6 months, and two boys, ages 11 and 3.

Lions at the National Zoo have more space.

Our meeting was conducted in a small living room where three well-worn sofas were arranged in a semicircle.

C.C. and the baby occupy one of the two bedrooms; the 16-year-old daughter has the other. The living room functions as a bedroom at night.

Four children sleep there: three on the sofas; the fourth child's bed consists of sofa pillows lined up on the floor.

The 7-year-old and the 8-year-old aren't doing well in school, said C.C., who dropped out of a D.C. public high school in 10th grade.

The 3-year-old, who was present during the interview, recently received a diagnosis of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As of the time of our meeting, he had received neither behavioral therapy nor medication.

I can hear some of you readers now: "What about the father?"

Make that fathers.

The father of the 16-year-old and the 11-year-old is in jail. So is the father of the 7- and 8-year-olds. The 3-year-old's father is an illegal immigrant from Africa, and the 6-month-old's father, age 24, is out of the picture, C.C. said.

C.C. will be 38 next week.

She now proudly wears an engagement ring given to her by another 24-year-old man, "who is not the father of any of my children," she bragged. He got a job last week, and he is good to her kids, reading to them and treating them like his own, she said.

C.C. now wears a birth control patch and says she hopes to study for her GED and get a job, as soon as she finds child care. "I want to get off welfare and not look back," she declared.

Affordable housing? Tax cuts? Get real.

This is a story about the fabric of our city unraveling before our eyes.

Happy Mother's Day.

kingc@washpost.com