For Her Own Good

Angela B. sits at a card table in the dilapidated nave of St. Joseph's Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The church, whose floors are covered with thin, wrinkled wall-to-wall carpeting, has forgone statues of Christ, lofty tributes to the Holy Trinity and stained-glass renditions of the Ten Commandments in favor of more prosaic stuff. Computers line the walls, garbage bags full of donated clothes are piled in a corner, five kids in an after-school program lounge on the altar doing homework and a scrawled sign warns: NO CURSING, NO FIGHTING, NO NAME CALLING.

Oblivious to the noise generated by the kids, 33-year-old Angela (names have been changed to protect privacy) sits with her head in her hands, deep in thought. "Thank God for St. Joseph's," she tells me. "If it hadn't been for them I wouldn't have made it." Angela has been on welfare most of her adult life, and she has never been able to make ends meet. But lately things have gotten a whole lot worse. She runs her hands through her raggedly cropped hair and tells me firmly, "I wasn't thinking to stay on welfare this long, not fourteen years."

I've asked her what I thought was a simple question: "Tell me about yourself." But she struggles. Her story unfolds in fits and starts. With long pauses in between.

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