This Is All I Got

1

Nativity

At six o clock in the morning, alone in her twin bed, Camila began active labor. Breathing the way she d learned on YouTube, she made a path to the bathroom. At least she had a private one here. Camila pushed aside the polyester shower curtain, a riot of ruffles and butterflies mismatched with the industrial green tiles. She turned on the tap. As the water rushed into the low tub, she found a playlist of spa music to soothe her through her contractions and pulled up the app she d downloaded to time them.

She tapped out a text message to Kevin. Good morning. I think today is the day.

It was June 5.

Camila called the doula who had volunteered to coach her through labor. She didn t answer. Another contraction came, quicker than the last. She climbed into the tub, her long body lean but for the protrusion of her midsection. She closed her eyes and brushed her tight curls from her forehead. She lay there, listening to the new-age plucking of a harp, focusing on her breathing, tracking her contractions, calling the doula again and again.

Then the phone rang. She was jubilant to see Kevin s name on her screen. It was unusual for him to call; he usually texted. He said he needed to get some money and then he d fly down from Buffalo tomorrow. The bus was much cheaper, but it was a ten-hour trip. Maybe he had some more money coming his way he was getting signed to the Canadian Football League, or at least that s what he d told her. He was graduating the following week. Camila was supposed to graduate the following week, too, but that s not how it had worked out.

She hung up and sank deeper into the bath, breathing as she d practiced. The next contraction rocked her with its intensity. She splashed water on her neck and over her chest to try to calm herself down. Her breasts, usually so small, were engorged, ready. She tried to meditate the pain away. Camila had become interested in organic foods, homeopathy, natural childbirth all

Lauren Sandler is an award-winning journalist. She is the bestselling author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One and Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement. Her essays and features have appeared in dozens of publications, including Time, The New York Times, Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian, and New York. Sandler has led the OpEd Project's Public Voices Fellowships at Yale, Columbia, and Dartmouth and has taught in the graduate journalism program at New York University, where she has also been a visiting scholar. Recently, she has been a Poynter Fellow at Yale and a Calderwood Fellow at MacDowell. She lives in Brooklyn.

Too few journalists put the time in to allow the working poor and homeless to be heard, speaking clearly about their pitfalls and occasional triumphs, in their own words. Sandler has achieved this with skill. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

A remarkable feat of reporting . . . Sandler s such a keen observer, her writing so clear-eyed. . . . This Is All I Got is a testament to the bigness of the small story, to the power of intimate narratives to speak to something much larger. The New York Times

Meticulously crafted and brilliantly reported, Lauren Sandler s This Is All I Got exposes the Kafkaesque cruelties of America s disintegrating social safety net. It is a gut punch of a narrative, an electrifying summons to policy action, and an instant classic. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, associate professor of classics, Princeton, and author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
 
This Is All I Got is an absorbing portrayal of a resourceful, driven, brilliant young woman down and out in the richest country in the world. Sandler has written a book that reads like a novel, which only makes her indictment of dwindling affordability and the public assistance bureaucracy all the more penetrating. Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Disgraced
 
A timely and empathetic act of journalism, brimming with moral conundra and posing an urgent and implicit question: How could we do better for this mother? How could we do better for this child? Ted Conover, director of NYU s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
 
This is also a book you cannot put down: Lauren Sandler s remarkable, intimate reporting and her lyrical, specific prose shine.