nyj38: injustice in a J. Crew bag


Somewhere, recently, I caught part of a cable show about traveling on $40/day. Compared to my current budget, that’s luxury! But then it also involved a vacation (this is not) and only eating out (which I do rarely, now).

learning to make do
For those unfamiliar with New York living, we have a vibrant tradition of dumpster-diving, as it were. Trash-picking. Or as one friend likes to call it, “F.O.S.” (found-on-street). This tradition of curbside resourcefulness is one by which Christy and I have done quite well. Our futon frame played its siren song the weekend of the blackout. As did the makeshift desk I use. Christy found our TV table one afternoon this spring. Recently I found a nice solid bookshelf for her bedroom by the garbage cans a few blocks from our place. But the find I’m most proud of is the wood culled from various nearby garbage piles. Using 4 abandoned shelves and 14 slats discarded from a twin-bed frame, I fashioned an over-the-toilet shelf unit for our bathroom and a sturdy 5-shelf bookshelf for my bedroom. If you think I’m crazy, just ask to see the budget I’m attempting to live on with weekly unemployment checks. ;) (Yes, it really does appear to be $50/week for food and incidentals, after rent and other bills. *sigh*)

And yet, the challenge of frugality brings out what my mother might term a “pioneering spirit” long demonstrated by the Deffinbaugh side of my family. June 11 my sister Evie (22, now a second lieutenant) was commissioned as a Marine officer in Seattle. At first I didn’t plan to visit our 80-something grandparents during the trip, but changed my mind. The visit to their rural home (on lake-side property they’ve owned since the ’60s) was a reminder of just where I get my resourcefulness. Evie and I drank coffee with a cousin who told of a recent thrift-store bargain: a book selling for 60-odd cents, but discounted 75 percent! That kind of spree you can fund with a lucky coin find.

But then, Deffinbaughs have always been avid garage-salers and bargain-hunters. In the hours before picture-time the day of Gabe’s wedding, two carloads of us cheerfully drove off to inspect a Saturday swap mart a few miles from our hotel.



It was a study in micro-investing to watch my cousin’s two young children allocate the $2 they’d each pooled from various relatives. Mary, the younger one, bought a squishy yo-yo like ball filled with glittery liquid. After a few minutes of zealous flinging, the toy’s structural weaknesses emerged in a leak. True to the Deffinbaugh spirit, Mary insisted her father fully drain the sticky goop and turn the ball inside-out to retrieve a mysteriously shaped plastic object (we decided it was Siamese duck-twins). Her brother Nate, on the other hand, chose a suction archery set dubiously received by his parents but offering endless entertainment. My $2 find came a few days later, back in New York, when I passed a small sidewalk “flea market” near City Hall and Chinatown. In size and weight at least, my take won out: two 1970s candle-making kits, a dollar apiece. It cracked me up to find, while toting my boxes over the Brooklyn Bridge and exposing myself to sunburn, that the manufacturer’s address was Lorimer Street in Brooklyn, only a few miles from my former Williamsburg apartment!

Is candle-making a new hobby? you ask. Oh, no. I’ve done it since college days, when I decided leftover candle wax could be melted down and formed into new candles (hint: freezing homemade candles helps in removing them from their molds). But then, I have an aunt famous for making soup from potato peels. Sometimes, of course, such resourcefulness doth a packrat make. You get so attached to the raw-materials status of everything that nothing gets thrown away (witness a Lands End sweater I bought in 1996, promptly shrank, and haven’t used or gotten rid of since I always loved the color. Last winter I finally started ripping it out to use the yarn in other knitting projects). Other times, Deffinbaugh resourcefulness is truly an exercise in conservation of resources. Evie loves to tell the story of one family member’s subscription to a newsletter for cheapskates. Other family members also like the publication, but do they get their own subscriptions? Oh, no. Rather the one person’s copy slowly makes its way from one frugal relative to the next. Cheapskates indeed!

Having recently lived on a fairly comfortable salary, it’s easy to forget the challenges — and thrill — of learning to live on meager income, or with minimal expenses. But I think this tightening of the belt is good for me. It gets me back to cooking (oh, the glee at making something like a pie, or bread, or soup using only stuff that’s already in my pantry!). It helps me avoid debt. It lets me appreciate little splurges like the candle-making kits a lot more than the $4 latte I used to buy every day (now $4 buys enough milk to make a week of lattes!). And it provides a kind of intellectual challenge, even, in the absence of a job. And, when all else fails, makes me feel like a character in The Boxcar Children. I’m not sure what I think of that.

the serious side
About a week ago, I glimpsed a side of thrift beyond the hardship of my minimalist budget. It was a Wednesday night, and I was taking the long train ride home after listening to opera in the park. Because of the commute length, I’d brought along my knitting: a colorful jacket made of recycled silk saris (the yarn is made in Nepal; a splurge from wealthier days). A few stops in, two people boarded the train: a slightly disheveled, bearded, white man, and a heavyset black woman. Although the car’s A/C was working fine, she promptly opened a nearby window. The man almost immediately pulled it shut. Getting up, the woman opened it again and complained the car smelled like urine (apparently I’m scent-deaf). I wondered if the man himself was the source of the smell, but said nothing. And smelled nothing.

After a while, the woman asked about my knitting, which often happens. I explained a little and was surprised when she commented avidly about knitting machines one could get for the home. I tried to emphasize the therapeutic, creative pleasures of knitting, but soon realized she was more intrigued by the computerization of these curious devices than my pride in handcrafting. The conversation shifted to her hobbies, and eventually her work. She was some kind of computer tech for a cable company, and actually returning home (a schedule which interfered with her fondness for watching sports games). I commiserated about the lousy schedules one experiences in media jobs, referring to my newspaper days in college. Somehow we got talking salaries, and she asked how much I’d made then. “Oh, about $6.25/hour.”

This led to discussions about how poorly people are paid in general, which led to a story about an early-30s friend of hers who is some sort of electrical tech for another big company. This man, also black, recently found out that a younger, single, inexperienced but of course white employee he is currently training makes $35,000 — $11,000 more than he, an experienced, competent father trying to support a young child. (I could be forgetting the figures; the trainer might have made $28k. In case, the wage disparity was clearly gross.) We sat there a moment, grappling with the injustice.

The woman was mostly resigned to it, yet another instance where “the black man gets screwed.” But I, thinking how common pro-bono law work reputedly is here, urged her to have her friend find a lawyer. “I bet he’d be able to get some kind of improvement.”

“No, no.” She brushed my suggestion aside, sure the shady details of the discovery would bar the pursuit of justice. I pondered how such a difference could fly.

And then it began to dawn on me. “Does he have education? What is his degree?”

“Oh, he has a certification.”

“Yes, but does he have a degree?” She’d mentioned graduation … the younger guy’s graduation. The white man’s education.

“He has a certification.”

“That’s probably how they justify it, then,” I said softly. “They probably justify it because the one man has more education. Is there any way your friend could get more classes through the company? They might pay for him to get a degree…”

But it didn’t seem likely the man would either pursue legal action or company resources available to invest in his education (if such existed). Probably he’s just too busy making ends meet and caring for his child.

Our conversation drifted to other things, and before I knew it, my stop arrived. Collecting my knitting, I said goodbye. The woman greeted me likewise. As I was getting up, she noticed the J.Crew bag that served as my tote. “J. Crew … oh, that’s an expensive store.” Her tone changed slightly.

Feeling a sudden desperation, I made some excuse and hoped my farewell had seemed sufficiently sincere and kind. Had I made enough eye contact? Offered a smile? I didn't want her to think I'd just been humoring her all along.

The bag, truthfully, wasn’t from my own shopping. A friend had left it behind and I recycled it for its size. But I have dropped plenty of cash at that store: a winter coat, a wool sweater …It doesn’t matter that almost everything I bought on sale and sometimes, even, deep clearance.

I have an education — and all the debt that bought it — but an education nonetheless. Soon enough, that education will bring a new job, and resources to shop J. Crew again, maybe even the full-price rack.

I am reminded of a comment Michael Crow made during his speech at my graduation (2002). He said something about how only 1 in a 100 people have a college degree. Working, as I have, among white-collar professionals, it’s easy to forget that. Most days I’m reminded of how much more qualified and educated my peers and job-competitors are. But on the train … especially some trains more than others, I am definitely a minority. A privileged minority, with my bachelor’s and master’s degree.

I am also reminded of a strange conversation earlier this winter. For various reasons, I had gone to a Brooklyn salon in search of a wax job (don’t ask; it wasn’t for my non-existent car). The woman, as luck would have it, was a newly certified Russian immigrant whose tales of survival in America were as inspiring as her blatant racism was horrifying. While she labored (with great ineptitude) over my legs, I tried to advocate a different view. But she couldn’t appreciate how systemic injustice, among other factors, conspires to trap so many black people in America in a vicious cycle of poverty and unequal opportunities. I say “black people” not to imply that class-lines in this country break down strictly along racial or ethnic heritage, but because that was the primary group she deprecated.

Leaving the train June 16, I was reminded of my own participation in that system. This city confronts you with many kinds of injustice. Just because my path doesn’t go past Becky any more doesn’t mean I can escape that. Or that I should forget it once my own temporary “hardship” goes away.

On my stereo, just now, Nina Simone sings "Mississippi Goddam." Her music has been part of my soundtrack this summer. Some days I feel it changing me.



"... All I want is equality is for my sister, my brother, my people, and me. Yes, you lied to me all these years ... told me to talk real fine, just like a lady — and you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie.

"... I don't trust you anymore. You keep on sayin', 'Go slow.' ... 'Do things gradually' will bring more tragedy."

posted @ 08:12 PM on Mon - June 28, 2004 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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